One hand

My stake-out of a Tripoli mosque during noon-time prayers yesterday led to a conversation with a professor of forensic science.  Admittedly my sample is infinitesmal and my sampling technique highly biased:  I need someone who speaks English (my years of studying Arabic produced little) and is willing to talk with a foreigner.  Very few randomly approached Libyans speak passable English, and my Arabic is truly primitive.

The sermon focused on unity, the professor said.  “One hand” is the metaphor used both here and in Egypt.  This includes all Libyans, he said, referring explicitly to the Catholic church around the corner, not just Muslims.  The biggest threat to unity comes from tribalism, which my professor (against conventional wisdom) thought strong even in Tripoli, where there are occasional wall posters advising against it.  The sermon asked people to be patient and to support the new authorities, who would bring greater prosperity.

Libyans are at pains to emphasize their gratitude to NATO.  My professor thought that without NATO the rebels would surely have lost to the regime.  He and other intellectuals who sided with the February 17 revolution would have been hung, or even chopped into pieces.  He and others are grateful.

Many people did lose their lives in the six months of fighting.  Perhaps 2-3000 lie in mass graves in Tripoli and elsewhere.  Some were burned alive in containers doused with gasoline.  DNA analysis will be possible, but there is little capacity to conduct it in Libya.  They are just starting to organize the effort, hoping that instructions to leave the mass graves undisturbed are followed.

Then there is Abu Saleem, the notorious prison where Qaddafi ordered a massacre of more than 1200 prisoners in 1996.  Their remains, too, need to be identified.  Both in Benghazi, where the court house square hosts a big display on the Abu Saleem massacre, and here in Tripoli there is a vivid memory of the event and a strong feeling that justice has to be done on behalf of the victims.

As in so many Muslim countries, the religiosity on display in Tripoli Friday had little to do with going to mosque, where not much more than a handful of classically thawb-dressed men seemed to attend noon-time prayers in my neighborhood, though I understand there was a big crowd in Martyrs’ square for prayers with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan.  Just as important are the pervasive sounds and symbols of Islam:  the call to prayer (but if they are doing the early morning adhan I am missing it), the star and crescent moon that appears on the “independence” flag and therefore on most revolution paraphenalia, and women covering at least their hair (well over 90%).  I imagine Islam is also present more or less constantly in both public and family life.

The natural question is whether Islam will take a political form in Libya.  The Muslim Brotherhood is far weaker than in Egypt, but some of the militias and their leaders are explicitly Islamist.  I have no way of telling whether they will gain traction in the nascent political arena.  I imagine that they will to some extent, even if every Libyan I’ve asked about this so far says no.

One hand cannot endure forever if Libya is to be a democracy, or even a proto-democracy.  The emergence of parties and factions will be an important test for the revolution, as the fingers on that one hand start to point in different directions.

But for the moment, unity is still producing results:  the UN General Assembly acceptance of the NTC to occupy Libya’s seat and yesterday’s at least partly successful attacks on Qaddafi’s holdout towns of Sirte and especially Bani Walid.

We’ll have to wait to see what tomorrow will bring, but last night all of Tripoli was down at Martyr’s square to show support for the NTC and commemorate the hanging eighty years ago of Omar Mukhtar, Libyan hero of resistance to the Italians.  Ironic therefore that many Libyans today dream of visiting Italy, admire the Italians and make a very fine caffe’ ristretto as well as a half-decent pizza rustica.  Strange that a decent ice cream, even of the packaged (confezionato) kind, seems impossible to find.  That’s one of my religious devotions.  Maybe in the New Libya.