I had lived in a glass castle for the first 8 years of my life but that too was shattered on an unforgettable night in Paris. It was August 1978, the sly gaddafi had been leading Libya for 8 years consolidating his powers, silencing his rivals, infiltrating the Libyan society with his minions and thugs, and waiting to seize the moment. We were in route back to Benghazi, Libya, from the States. We had stopped in Paris, to wrap up our vacation with a few well placed purchases from the Champ Elysee. I was nestled between my parents in an upscale restaurant when my dad had gotten the notice. My usually undenied requests to stay longer were brushed aside and we were homeward bound the next day. Gaddafi had nationalized my Dad's company and, overnight, my Dad had lost an empire built over thirty long years and two bankruptcies. I don't remember the trip back to our house, I am sure it was quick, silent, and nerve racking to my Father. Benghazi had just gotten a visit from the southern winds laden with the Sahara's finest brown sand. The winds were still rumbling and teasing the already brown and dried out leaves on the huge eucalyptus trees lining up our street. We drove into our neighborhood of grandiose homes still defiantly standing, although beaten, by the sand storm and its menacing grinding sand.
I remember pulling up to a cordoned street, our street. It was eerily quiet and dark, the orchestra of wild birds that greeted people to our home was silent. The sand storm had painted everything brown; the army trucks, their camouflaged canopy, and the green clad soldiers stood out as the only colorful objects in a brown painting. Our street was unusually deserted, not a neighbor in sight, not a single servant welcoming us home, not a stray dog barking wildly, no feral cats begging for food. I stepped out of the car and my black shiny shoes sank in a layer of dust licking at my already brown ruffled pants. I remember sneezing and inhaling a lungful of air tainted with the desert sand still freshly laid on everything in sight. The commotion of the soldiers was whipping out its own mini sand storm; my eyes were stinging but the tear drop I felt was no mine; it was my dad's. He was towering over me with a forced smile telling me to walk straight on to my room and not to linger. My Mom was standing next to me transfixed by the real meaning of the moment; her grasp on my hand was tight and cold defying the warm evening temperature of a late summer day. My dad had disappeared and I proceeded by walking up the stairs to our vast veranda littered with boxes upon boxes of papers freshly unloaded from the trucks. Some loose leaf papers were still fluttering, like injured birds, before being smothered to death by the soldiers' uncaring footsteps. Our compound felt like a military base, it was buzzing with young revolutionaries clad to "wipe our likes from the face of this earth". They were in frenzy under the spell of the loud speakers jutting from one of the trucks; Gaddafi's scathing voice was reverberating against the marble surfaces amplified by the eerie silence of nature. The soldiers were in a frenzy of allegiance and their mocking eyes and insults were the final blow to my glass castle and my parents' dreams. I was returning to a hostile takeover and the beginning of a nightmare that will last 40 years. My dad was powerless, I was still clueless, my mom was defiant. The next few days our house was filled with a stream of people, who had worked for my dad; some were crying, others left shaking their heads, and a few continued to make the pilgrimage over the next forty years, and even after my dad had passed away, to pay their respect to a truly amazing man, my dad; "he was a kind, just, and generous man" I was told. I wanted to scream back that my dad is gone, he was only a shell of his former self but, as expected of me, I continued to smile while they etched these painful words in my subconscious.
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