Tragic Libya

Hisham Matar, who largely grew up in Cairo, the US and the home counties, writes beautifully in his award winning book, 'The Return' about his tragic experience of having a father with too much character.  His father's life mirrored his grandfathers life, in that they both resisted tyranny.  For his grandfather, this was the Italian Fascists.  For Jaballa Hisham this was Gadaffi.

Hisham describes his interest in a damaged painting which is now in the National Gallery of the execution of the emperor Maximilian in 1864.  His own father is likely to have been murdered by the Gadaffi regime in about 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Execution_of_Emperor_Maximilian

He notes that the history of Libya can fit into a slim pocket size book.  The vast majority of it written by oppressive occupying forces.  Are we surprised that oppressed nations find freedom so difficult to manage?  Like animals released into the wild after years in a zoo.

E Manet,  National Gallery London. All you can see of
Maximilian is his hand, griping that of his general.

Hope

Matar beautifully describes the long anguish of grasping onto hope.  Just as he begins to feel that he able to relax, and let go of the last few grains of hope, someone tells him that he has seen his father post- 1996 massacre.  I think of the grain as those used to grow a plates of wheat seen at the Nur Ruz festival.  Young green shoots, so vulnerable to scorching sun, or passing goats, as used to symbolise 'hope'. But how secure is our hope?

Matar goes on to say Certainty is better than Hope.  I am reminded of the verses at the end of Ecclesiastes that say "The Philosopher tried to find comforting words, but the words he wrote were honest." Good News Translation.

Attibuted to
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9699735