Yasmina Khadra
Sellerio Editore, Palermo 2015
pagg.162
I am Muammar Gaddafi, the myth made man. If there are fewer stars in the Sirte sky tonight, and if my moon looks as small as a nail fragment, it's because I remain the only star that counts.
Perhaps it is all in this sentence the essence of this book where Yasmina Khadra, the female pseudonym of the writer Mohamed Moulessehoul, tries to empathize with the Rais during her last night, the last one, between 19 and 20 October of 2011, hidden in a bunker of Sirte. The memories of childhood, his adolescence and the conquest of power envelop him. For the most faithful, who remain with him to the end, he is always the brother Guida. And he is so blinded by his omnipotence and his pride that he refuses to believe that that end is near.
I refuse to believe that the bells of the crusaders sound dead to me, the enlightened Muslim who has always prevailed over infamies and plots, and who will still be here once the danger is averted. Today's protest - this simulacrum of insurrection, this botched war conducted against my legend - is only a difficult step on my journey sheet. Aren't the tests to forge the gods?
He cannot conceive that the people of nomads covered in dust, whom he had made free and envied, can be turned against him.
The fury that poisons the square is a degeneration, an infamy, a sacrilege. An incredible proof of ingratitude.
Lived, as a child, in poverty, so drowned in his saliva dreaming of a chicken leg, once he gained power, he decided to live in luxury, to be able to despise him and to show that no precious artifact deserves to be sanctified, that no Grail is able to take a sip of wine to the status of a magic potion. Whether you're dressed in rags or silk, stay what you are ... And I'm Gaddafi, however sovereign, seated on a throne or on a curbstone.
A portrait, the one that is painted by the author, of a man lucid and crazy at the same time. The fog of pride and thirst for power, which obscured his sight, begins to thin out only when he feels the end coming. Only then does he realize that a sovereign cannot have friends, he is surrounded only by enemies who plot behind him, and by opportunist snakes that he raises in his bosom. Only then does he realize that the people are a siren song. His fervor creates a pernicious addiction. It is the vice par excellence of the exalted egos, their evening nirvana and their planned perdition. And that people, who had acclaimed him, were now represented by a thousand howler monkeys, whitish barking mouths, bloodshot eyes, hands trying to crush him.
The Rais, narrating voice, describes those moments in the smallest details, even the most brutal ones, until his death and his transfiguration.
I have passed the stage of men, of these perishable beings mixed with pride and errors. I bequeath my carnal shell as a bundle where their own miseries are enclosed, and - free from fears and constrictions - I prepare to fly to the eternal skies, with the sins washed in my blood, expiated in my last breath , because I die a martyr to be reborn in the legend. I am no longer the Rais, I am a prophet; defeat is my fertilizer: in the future I will grow out of proportion overcoming the tops of the mountains.
And his soul detaches from the body.
Gianlorenzo Capano
