On Monday, I watched footage of the street battles in Misurata in the company of a young man who had led one of the rebel “brigades” (made up of 96 men in his case). Many of the scenes I had watched before, when they were news. This time they were being broadcast by Misurata’s own TV station as history, edited, with music, slow motion and poignant repetitions. And I had the running commentary of my companion, Yusif.
Many of us have watched the scenes of the lithe young fighters scrambling over walls with a machine gun in hand, taking turns to step round a street corner into full view of a major street to return open fire, coordinating mortar fire or just giving the camera a sidelong glance, a crooked smile and a V sign. But it all looks fresh when several fighters are being identified for you by name and, in some cases, with the lapidary comment that they died two days, three weeks, one month later.
It was a roll call of fallen heroes and, when members of the loyalist 32nd Brigade were filmed in close-up entering the city, a survey of some of the most ruthless enemies. “Watch that one! A shaytan kabir (great devil)!” Each scene called up a story, each wrecked building a battle, each face an act of courage.
This was history as living legend. Misurata had almost 200 small brigades, ranging from 40 to just over 100 men, each responsible for some 150 square metres of the city boundaries. Before Nato’s air support, the rebels had killed some 9,600 professional crack troops and lost about the same number of lives. Machine guns were bought at $3,000 apiece. Women sold their gold dowries to help pay for them. Misurata TV did not need to say all this; evocation was enough.
Over the course of a few hours the same footage was broadcast several times. We never tired of watching it. And I suspect that Misurati viewers watched it the same way I did: with full audience participation as the story evoked in this or that scene was completed by memory and exclamation.
I also believe this kind of watching is not unique to Misurata but typical of all the towns that joined the rebellion. If you ever wondered what the Arabic scrawled across the doors or back of the “Mad Max” pick-up trucks said, it was usually the name of the home town of the fighters in the car. The rebellion was never just a military struggle. It was also a struggle for history: to escape one era and enter another, to show the world’s cameras one had joined when the fatal hour came.
Two things in particular have struck me about the Libyan conversations I’ve participated in since the February uprising and, especially, since Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall. One is the compulsion to narrate what one has heard or went through with fellow Libyans. It is virtually non-stop. Of course, the stories are so dramatic and epic that they impose their own telling. In the sharing and repetition of the stories of different localities, a national story is being sifted and clarified.
The second thing is the role that film has played. Any story – of a massacre of innocents, street demonstration, battle – is usually accompanied with a reference to a YouTube video or website where one can see the filmed evidence. I don’t mean this was a reality show. Rather, I have a hunch that film has performed some of the functions that poetry about epic episodes of Libyan or tribal history fulfils.
The National Transitional Council’s station, Libya al-Hurra, has transmitted such poetry and, no doubt, the art will continue to play a role in narrating the various battles as part of a seamless narrative. However, the film footage will doubtless also be used to articulate a narrative that will contribute to the national imagination. Except that not all towns participated in the rebellion. Some major ones remained on the sidelines. News and gossip emerging now suggest some of the reasons. Nato’s entry may have saved Benghazi and Misurata, however, it effectively turned many western Libyans against the rebellion – however resentful they were of Col Gaddafi – because they believed a new colonialism was afoot that would lead to the country’s division.
In addition, it appears that the time Col Gaddafi spent off the national TV screen was not wasted. He is said to have personally broadcast every day on Bani Walid’s radio station – Bani Walid is the main town of the largest Libyan tribe, the Warfalla – making promises that other Libyans would not have heard. I am not sure but one cannot exclude that he did the same with other major towns in the interior.
One of the results of staying on the sidelines is that one does not have the same kind of stories to tell that fit into the emerging national narrative. Whether that will have consequences for inclusion in the national imagination remains to be seen.
ranierfsadni@europe.com