My Father and Qaddafi

I don’t want my father to disappear a second time. I feel an urgency to overcome my void in the midst of Libya’s relentless chaos and instability, which I fear will eventually bury my Libyan identity. In my documentary film, My Father and Qaddafi, I search through other people’s memories trying to create a clearer picture of my father who I don’t remember.

Making this documentary helps me understand the importance of a father figure and the impact of losing a father on a family, a community, and even a country. If my father was alive today, he would be 93 years old, sharing his untold story is also sharing an untold story of Libya, one that spans almost 100 years of Libyan history and politics. His legacy gives me unique access to my father’s generation, to Libyan former government officials and opposition members. These men take the opportunity to reflect honestly with me over our lost Libya and our future. I wish I could ask my father, how did we end up like this? And how is Libya going to break free from this cycle of trouble?

As I reconstruct my father’s portrait, I plant the seed for a deeper, more honest connection with him and to free my hidden voice. Instead of compartmentalizing my father as a one-dimensional hero from the past, I search for the man behind the myth and try to reintegrate him into my present life as a human being and a loving father. The wound of his disappearance begins to transform into new possibilities.

Since I was 6 years old, my mother told us the truth, and although this has tempered the shock, I still struggle with a constant surreal feeling. Despite my fragmented memories, my fears, and my cultural limitations in Libyan society, I am trying to overcome this surreal feeling and reconnect with my father and with Libya on my own terms, as an open hearted woman. This is one of the ways I am hoping to hold my father before he disappears completely from my memory and even potentially from Libya’s memory.