The Dictator's Last Night Read online

  I was at Saif al-Islam’s the evening it happened. I was playing with my grandson in one corner of the living room. Saif was standing in front of the TV, his arms folded, stunned by the spectacle on the giant screen. The demonstrations in Tunis were getting bigger and bigger. The crowd was wild and hate was written on everyone’s face. Foaming mouths were screaming for the death penalty. The police were scattering like rats at the inexorable advance of popular fury. No amount of ultimatums or tear gas could stem the human tide.

  I paid little attention to the commotion that the Tunisians were making. All the same, I was delighted to see Ben Ali challenged by his citizens. That evening I was the one stifling my giggles while he, in his quavering voice, begged his people to return to their homes. His panic was a treat. It filled me with pleasure. Ever since his bizarre inauguration I had known that he would only fly higher in order to fall further. A gangster elevated to the rank of rais! I was almost ashamed to have him as a fellow leader.

  Suddenly Saif punched his fist into his other hand in a gesture of disbelief.

  ‘He’s gone … Ben Ali’s cleared out.’

  ‘What did you expect, my son? The man is just a pig in shit. He would mistake a cow’s fart for a gunshot.’

  ‘It’s unbelievable!’ Saif swallowed indignantly. ‘That’s not how it works. He can’t leave now.’

  ‘It is always time to leave for those who do not know how to stand up for themselves.’

  Saif could not get over it. He kept punching his palm, astounded and outraged at once by the speed of the rais’s departure from the scene.

  ‘He shames us all, all of us. He has no right to throw in the towel. An Arab chieftain should never give up. That wet rag is humiliating every single one of us.’

  ‘Not me!’

  ‘Dammit! He’s the one in charge. He only has to frown to bring everyone back in line. What are his police and army doing?’

  ‘What little girls in uniform usually do.’

  ‘What a disgrace for a leader!’

  ‘He has never been a leader, Saif. He was no more than an upwardly mobile pimp, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. A street thief would know how to behave with more honour than he does.’

  Saif went on cursing. I picked my grandson up in my arms and turned my back on the TV. Arab revolts have always bored me. Their bark is worse than their bite.

  4

  I hear a car arrive.

  Is it my son Mutassim returning with the convoy?

  I dash into the corridor and down the stairs. The ground floor is deserted. Footsteps are hurrying to the building’s emergency exit.

  In the courtyard a requisitioned vehicle backfires before its ignition is switched off. It is a pickup, in a pitiful state: crazed windscreen, smashed side windows, bodywork like a sieve, a flat tyre, a wheel practically on its rim with shreds of rubber flapping on the side.

  The driver opens his door but stays slumped over the wheel, with one foot on the ground and the other on the floor of the cab. Soldiers drag two bodies from the back seat. The first has a smashed skull, the second’s mouth is gaping, his eyes rolling upwards. A third man, sitting next to the driver, groans.

  Abu-Bakr approaches the vehicle, Mansour behind him.

  ‘Where have these men come from?’

  ‘They’re the reconnaissance unit, General,’ a captain tells him.

  ‘Unit? I only see one vehicle.’

  ‘The other two copped an RPG,’ the driver explains in a dying voice. ‘No survivors.’

  ‘What do you mean, no survivors?’ Mansour thunders. ‘And kill your lights, you idiot. D’you think you’re on the Champs-Élysées?’

  The driver turns off his headlights. His movements are clumsy and slow.

  ‘What about Colonel Mutassim?’ I say to him.

  ‘He went on past point 34.’

  ‘Did you see him go through enemy lines?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he says, breathless as if about to faint. ‘We escorted him to the edge of the district, then covered him when the rebels tried to stop him.’

  ‘You stand to attention when you speak to your rais,’ I admonish him.

  The driver is collapsing over the steering wheel. He gathers all his last strength to raise his head a tiny bit to groan: ‘I can’t stand, sir. I’ve taken two rounds in my groin and some shrapnel in my calf.’

  Mansour gestures to two soldiers to remove the wounded man on the front seat.

  ‘What happened?’ Abu-Bakr asks.

  The driver writhes, takes a deep breath and gabbles, as if afraid he will pass out before finishing his report, ‘When we were sure Colonel Mutassim was not in danger, the sergeant tried a sortie between points 34 and 56 to locate the new enemy lines. We got four kilometres past their defences without meeting any resistance but on the way back we drove into a trap. Infantry attacked us with rocket launchers. Two vehicles blew up. I don’t know how I made it back.’

  ‘Why did you come here?’ I shout at him. ‘And without switching your lights off. The enemy is bound to have followed you. They will know where we are now because of your idiocy.’

  The driver looks stunned by my reaction.

  ‘But where could I have gone, sir, with three wounded men with me?’

  ‘To hell, you imbecile! You never place the headquarters in danger. I warn you, if we have been discovered I shall have you shot.’

  The captain helps the driver out of the pickup, puts an arm around his waist and drags him to the aid station. The other soldiers stay where they are, by the vehicle, as if they have been turned to stone.

  Squeezed into an armchair, Mansour Dhao inspects his fingernails and meditates on his anxieties. Now and then he talks to himself, one of the first signs of mental illness. Watching him deteriorate is hard to bear. I need my closest supporters to display a certain amount of restraint. There is no difference between a man who surrenders and a man who refuses to fight. I would go so far as to say that if the first has the courage of his cowardice, the second lacks any courage at all.

  This man in the throes of giving up, this human derelict, utterly adrift, disgusts me. I consider him the dregs of humanity.

  In the room we are using as our crisis centre, General Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr is studying a staff map, with broad patches of sweat on his shirt and under his arms. It is clear to me that he is merely going through the motions in a role he is no longer capable of performing. From time to time he clears his throat, pretends to study intently some detail on the map, leans his whole body across the table, his cheek resting on his hand to show me how much he is concentrating. His little show lacks all credibility, but he has the excuse of not wanting to exasperate me.

  All three of us are looking out for Mutassim’s runner. Without news of the colonel we are unable to stop ourselves falling apart. Every minute that passes takes away another piece of ourselves.

  My nerves are hypersensitive. To be cut off from the world, stuck here like a vegetable waiting for a sign from my son who cruelly refuses to show himself, is intolerable. My fate rests on the throw of a coin that hangs suspended in the air, as sharp as a guillotine blade.

  Mansour stops inspecting his nails. He looks right and left, seeking who knows what, then wriggles in his chair, apparently asking himself where he is. When he finds his bearings, he buries himself in his seat again, holding his temples with thumbs and middle fingers, shaking his head enigmatically. Then, slowly emerging from a long inner turmoil, he turns his attention back to the general, commenting in a sarcastic voice, ‘Do you see anything in your crystal ball?’

  ‘What crystal ball?’ the general grunts, not turning round.

  ‘Your map. You’ve been stroking it for the last half-hour; it must have given you the answer by now.’

  ‘I’m studying the various possibilities for a withdrawal southwards.’

  ‘I think we’ve known the route since this morning. Put it another way, south is south, and it’s the only way we’ve got now.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes, but the enemy’s centre of gravity changes by the hour. According to our reconnaissance units—’

  ‘You mean those two or three patrols we’ve got? They’re just yomping about in the dark, if you want my opinion.’

  ‘You can keep your opinion to yourself. You’re not going to teach me my job.’

  Mansour goes back to contemplating his nails, which he gnaws incessantly. His head hunched between his shoulders, he grumbles, ‘We shouldn’t have left the palace.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ the general answers him.

  ‘We were all right in the bunker. We had places to sleep and food to eat and we were protected from air raids and artillery. Look where we are now. A single chopper could wipe us out.’

  The general puts his pencil down on the edge of the table. He has guessed that the commander of the People’s Guard is seeking to provoke him and so is doing his best to avoid confrontation. It was his plan to evacuate the palace. He did not need to persuade me; it was what I thought too. Every residence where I was supposed to have taken refuge was destroyed by coalition air strikes, including my relations’ houses and my children’s. In this vile manhunt NATO had no hesitation in dropping its bombs on my grandchildren, shamelessly murdering them, without remorse.

  ‘We ran the risk of getting trapped underground,’ the general argues, momentarily impressively calm.

  ‘You think we’re safe here?’ Mansour insists.

  ‘At least no one has pinpointed us here. We also have greater room for manoeuvre in case of an attack. If we’d stayed underground at the palace, all the rebels would have had to do is break through the reinforced concrete with a pneumatic drill or a digger, run a pipe through the hole and switch on a generator to gas us.’

  ‘Better than being torn to pieces, though.’

  I am a hair’s breadth from leaping on the commander of the People’s Guard and stamping on him till his body is ground into the floor. But I am tired.

  ‘Mansour,’ I say to him, ‘when a man has nothing to say, he shuts up.’

  ‘The general is being overtaken—’

  ‘Mansour,’ I repeat in a hollow voice that betrays the fury beginning to well up inside me, ‘yazik moï vrag moï,1 as the Russian proverb says. Do not make me rip yours out with pincers.’

  Suddenly a powerful explosion reaches us from a long way away.

  The general wheels round, white as a sheet.

  ‘The NATO strikes are starting!’

  Mansour gives a short snigger.

  ‘Calm down, my friend. You’re getting ahead of yourself.’

  ‘Who says?’ the general snaps crossly.

  ‘Even so,’ the Guard’s commander persists, ‘not to be able to tell the difference between a bomb exploding and a shell bursting is a bit tragic for a general.’

  I am itching to draw my pistol and shoot the insolent Mansour at point-blank range. His impassiveness dissuades me.

  ‘What is it then, in your view?’ I ask him.

  Mansour answers with an offhandedness that makes me regret that I left my weapon in my room.

  ‘It’s just Mutassim. He’s blowing up the local ammunition dump so that it doesn’t fall into the rebels’ hands.’

  ‘How do you know?’ the minister grunts.

  ‘It was you who tasked him with the operation yourself, General,’ Mansour says with disdain. ‘I suppose in the panic you can’t remember the orders you’re handing out right, left and centre.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I order the Guard’s commander, simultaneously maddened by his attitude and relieved to discover that it is a false alert. ‘I forbid you to show such a lack of respect to my minister. If he is being overtaken by events, he is nevertheless straining every sinew to keep up with them, while you continue to wind us up with your mood swings.’

  ‘At least I’m looking at things soberly. The rebels have turned themselves into arms dealers. They’re flogging our arsenals to AQIM2 and company. According to the latest information, the squads of revolutionaries whom we instructed, gave shelter to, financed and equipped for years on our home soil are now joining forces with the Islamists.’

  ‘Propaganda! Those revolutionaries are my children. They are being hunted down by the renegades. Saif al-Islam is striving to bring them together to launch a gigantic counter-offensive that in less than a week will sweep aside this puppet army being manipulated by the Crusaders as they please.’

  Mansour flaps his hand as he gets to his feet and leaves the room, scowling.

  ‘We shouldn’t blame him,’ Abu-Bakr says to me. ‘He’s depressed.’

  ‘I do not like people being depressed in front of me. Fifteen minutes with that defeatist is as bad as a year’s hard labour. He simultaneously bores and maddens me.’

  ‘I know what you mean. But he’ll get a grip on himself. It’s just a bad day.’

  ‘I shall have him shot as soon as we stabilise the situation …’ I promise Abu-Bakr. ‘All right, I am going to my room. Send Amira to me.’

  As I leave I place my finger on the general’s chest.

  ‘Watch Mansour like a hawk and do not hesitate to kill him if he attempts to make a run for it.’

  The general nods, staring at the floor.

  1 ‘My tongue is my enemy.’

  2 Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

  5

  When Amira finds me I am lying stretched out on the couch with my turban over my face. She is a solid, brisk woman, almost black, with a thick head of hair and curvaceous bust. She was one of my first bodyguards: a fearless and indefatigable Amazon who has never left my side since she was recruited. There is something arrogant about her but her loyalty is unswerving, and when she was younger I sometimes appointed her to share my bed and table with me.

  She clicks her heels and salutes. Strapped into a commando battledress, she looks bigger than ever.

  ‘Take my blood pressure,’ I order her.

  She unbuckles a side-pack and takes out the monitor.

  My personal physician vanished from Tripoli the day after the air strikes started, so I appointed Amira as my nurse. We have two or three doctors in the headquarters but for reasons of caution I have decided to dispense with their services. They are the same age as the rebels and too unproven to deserve my confidence.

  ‘Your pressure is normal, sir.’

  ‘All right. Now give me an injection.’

  She pulls a small packet of heroin out of her side-pack, pours its contents into a soup spoon, flicks a lighter.

  I close my eyes, my bare arm lying at my side. I hate syringes; I have hated them ever since I was thirteen and a nurse nearly left me disabled by breaking a needle in my backside. The infection that followed kept me in bed for weeks.

  Amira fastens the tourniquet and flicks her finger two or three times on my forearm to find a vein.

  ‘How many syringes have I got left?’

  ‘Half a dozen, sir.’

  ‘And heroin?’

  ‘Three doses.’

  ‘Are you sure no one is going into my stock?’

  ‘The bag never leaves my side, sir. It’s with me when I wake up and when I go to sleep.’

  She tidies the equipment away and waits for my orders. As I remain silent, she starts to undress.

  ‘No, not tonight,’ I stop her, ‘I am not in the mood. Just massage my feet.’

  She buttons up the top of her jacket and begins to unlace my shoes.

  Women.

  I have known hundreds of them.

  Of every background.

  Artists, intellectuals, virgins, maids, wives of compliant apparatchiks and conspirators, I had them one after another.

  The ritual was simple: I placed my hand on the shoulder of my chosen one, my agents brought her to me that evening on a beribboned platter, and my bed unpeeled its silken sheets for our bodies to revel in the intoxication of the flesh.

  There were some who resisted. I loved to conquer them, like rebel territories. When they surrendered, inert at
my feet, I knew the extent of my sovereignty and my climax was greater than paradise.

  Nothing is more beautiful than a woman, and nothing is more precious. The heavens may twinkle with their millions of stars, but they will never make me dream as much as the figure of a concubine. Poetry, glory, pride, faith are but empty vessels unless they help to make a man worthy of a kiss, an embrace, an instant of grace in the arms of that night’s muse … I might possess every one of the earth’s riches, but it would only take a woman to refuse me to turn me into the poorest of men.