Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

Moammar the Novelist
Wednesday, March 21, 2007

I'm in the process of planning a trip to Libya that I hope will happen sometime this year. Getting a visa is a huge challenge. So my brother and I (he would accompany me) have been exchanging any news articles we see. He sent one from the WSJ talking about Libyan fiction. It almost sounds like a joke, like that novel Saddam wrote, but no!

Libya's decision in late 2003 to dismantle its nuclear weapons program was the first hopeful announcement to come out that country in about 30 years. Before then -- and, alas, since -- Libya has often played the international oddity, thanks to its self-appointed "guide," Moammar Gadhafi, whose ludicrous pensees and Poncherello sunglasses can make him seem, at times, more buffoon than danger. Occasionally his genuine danger posed by Libya flashes beyond Libya's borders, as with the murderous bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. But to the Libyan people who live under the constant threat of Mr. Gadhafi's regime, he has created a nation of fear.

Hisham Matar depicts this terrified climate in his semi-autobiographical debut novel, "In the Country of Men." At the age of 9 in 1979 -- when Mr. Gadhafi had been in power for a decade -- Mr. Matar fled Libya to safety abroad and has returned home only through the writing of this book. The novel tells the story of Suleiman, a young boy whose parents exile him to safety in what amounts to a Libyan Kindertransport after the Mokhabarat, Mr. Gadhafi's secret police, tortured his father and executed a neighbor. "In the Country of Men" is a poetic and powerful account of the days of dread that Suleiman and his mother endure while pockmarked government agents stalk their small family in ever-tightening circles.

Labels: Middle East

Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM
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