Salaam to Libya

The people of Libya are very friendly and welcome foreigners with open arms. Theirs had been a closed society and under the long oppressive regime of Gaddafi, they had very little contact with the outside world.




Now that they have gained their freedom, granted that there are still battles to fight to gain control over Sirte and Bani Walid before the whole of Libya is liberated, free from the grip of the dictator; they are free to express themselves. In days of old they could not even trust their neighbors and Gaddafi's name could not pass their lips for fear of being reported and arrested.

A Sign in Freedom Square

In my last run in Misurata, I walked into a building that suffered quite a bit of destruction and did a little bit of exploration. It must have been used as a battle ground. The ceilings were down, shattered glass covered the floor and papers strewn all over the place. It is not unusual to find spent shells and cartridges on the ground.  On the second floor more of the same except up here were windows through which shooting and firing must have occurred.  Through one of the windows, I could see the school that Walid said Gaddafi attended and the gate to a garden on which were scrawled "Fxxx Gaddafi".

A few days ago I ran past the make-shift war memorial that displayed captured Gaddafi's weapons. A father was looking over the display with his daughter and son. When he saw me, he enthusiastically opened the gate to the display and narrated to me what he knew of the various kinds of weapons in his broken English, that Gaddafi had used the heavy machinery to kill his own people and how Libyans captured these weapons and used them against him. He was so into the narration that his daughter had to remind him that she might be late for school.








During my last few days in Twarga and Kararim, I worked with Dr. Muhammad, a Libyan from Tripoli who spent his free time volunteering all over Libya. Volunteering made him happy, he explained that helping people touched a chord in his heart. He showed up one day at the clinic and rolled up his sleeves and worked alongside me. He was quiet, gentle and reflective. He spoke with a calm demeanor and without a trace of bitterness about the situation of Libya then and now. He expressed his hopes and desires for his country and for the people of Libya, that they would respect their new-found freedom and the rights of their neighbors, that they would not harbor malice or ill-will towards pro or anti-Gaddafi factions, that they would look past all that and work together to build a new Libya.

Muhammad was also opposed to big families which he thought was one of Libya's problems.  Each family consists of eight and ten members and some men have multiple wives.  He recalled the biggest family he knew was a fifty-year-old man with four wives and thirty-five children.  One day the man called a boy over and asked him, "Who is your father?"
The boy replied, "You!"
Angrily he said,"Go to your mother."
He had so many children that he could not recognize one of his own.

It rained fairly heavily one afternoon for about twenty minutes, at the end of which a rainbow appeared--a rainbow of hope for the people of Libya? The cool breeze was welcoming.  A tabby cat lurked at the gate of our clinic.  I offered it my spaghetti lunch, by this time she had run and hid under a car, she did not care for it.  I peeled three pieces of laughing cow's cheese and that she ate heartily.  Even a war time cat became rather picky unlike the undiscerning camels.

In my last few days in Libya, I felt in my bones that the war was nearing its end.  I wished very much to remain for a few more weeks to witness the victory and the joy and relief of the Libyans.  In any case I am glad to be here to witness history unfold for the Libyans. The Freedom Fighters and the medics are tremendously brave people fighting for freedom for their country and saving lives in the front lines. The people who are forced to flee the cities are suffering now and I hope it is not for long, insh' Allah that peace will prevail and all of them will return to their homes to rebuild their lives and to enjoy their freshly-minted freedom.

SALAAM!

Kararim and Bloody Friday

A few days ago a group of military police moved into the same building that we held clinic in Twarga. All morning the police carrying guns trouped in and out of the building passing by the clinic, it was not a particularly comforting situation to work in.  The Refugee International came to see the conditions of the IDPs. Time magazine journalist and a freelance photographer came to interview me about our work at the clinic. Because we were not to work alongside the military, we closed the clinic to move to Kararim, a town closer to Misurata. The apartment complex here was a lot better, the grounds were cleaner; there was electricity and running water. The diabetic patients now could keep their insulin in a refrigerator if they could find one. All the Twarga IDPs were moved here. I saw the girl with the gun-shot wound for dressing change. Her wounds had become considerably smaller.






Our new clinic is housed in the guest room of an apartment on the ground floor. This apartment has three bedrooms, a sitting room for the women, a kitchen, two bathrooms and three balconies. Furniture and cushion, pillows were strewn on the carpeted floor, flour strewn on it as though the owners in their hurry spilled it. The floor of one of the bedrooms was filled with clothes and two open suitcases packed with clothes but abandoned, perhaps there was not enough room in the vehicle. Another bedroom had a photograph of a baby next to an ID card of a young woman, perhaps the mother, stuff animals…The kitchen had a bin with a collection of moldy bread, packed but not taken with them, another big bin filled with pots and pans left on the floor as though the owners decided that they should be abandoned. The scene all seemed very chaotic. I could only imagine the turmoil and the heart-wrenching decisions that the family had to make.






War has its way of tearing people apart and bringing misery to the lives of ordinary people who only wish to have a better life for their children and themselves.


I was requested to do a house call.  Muhammad, my translator and I were brought by a man to another apartment complex.  The patient was a big 75-year-old woman, diabetic and hypertensive.  The finger-stick showed that her blood sugar was low and we gave her some juice.  Then one of her daughters asked me to change her Foley.  The last time I did that was when I was a medical student although I did recently watch a nurse insert a Foley at the Field Hospital.  I had to do this without the help of my translator for men were not allowed into the women's apartment except family members.

A Freedom Fighter walked in one day with an obvious limp to get his dressings changed.  He had a wound in the left shoulder and the right thigh.  The bullets were still lodged in there.  He faced a long period of recuperation ahead of him.

Many more people were leaving the apartment complex, long lines of cars were waiting by the check point to be processed.  A big lorry parked by the complex; two children sat in front with a driver and their mother.  In the back of the lorry out in the open sat several grown women dressed in their ubiquitous black abayas patiently with a mound of blankets in the center.  In one of the pick-up trucks was a lamb standing among furniture and blankets, looking out of place and lost.  Apparently there has been a 48-hour truce to allow the people from Sirte to leave before fighting begins again.

Hani was my new driver. He spoke some English and is actually a Palestinian. His father moved to Libya 44 years ago. Hani is now 38 years old and a school teacher before the war. But because he earned 200 dinars a month which he said was only enough to buy food for himself, he could not save enough money to get married. He was hired as a driver by IMC just five days ago and the pay was much better but in his heart he still wanted to be a teacher.  He fought in Misurata in April and May and did not know the whereabouts of his two brothers for two months and later he found them alive but their home right across from the display of arms in Tripoli Street was all but destroyed. All he said was "Al hamdulillah" (Thank you my God).

Since the weekend truce there had been talks about a big push to topple Sirte. Each day was supposed to be the day of reckoning but it did not happen till this Friday-their Prayer Friday which was destined to be their Bloody Friday. The Freedom Fighters decided to make their big attack today. Casualties were brought to the Field Hospital all day. This afternoon on my way home from Kararim, the road to our guest house which was also the road to the hospital was blocked to enable easy passage for ambulances from the heliport. Hani told the police that he was bringing a doctor through and they allowed us to pass.

It was as though Mother Nature was sympathetic to the situation, out of the blue a fierce wind blew sand, dust, debris and palm leaves through the streets. Dark ominous clouds gathered over the heliport. A helicopter took off having dropped off the injured fighters. The rain came pelting down and almost immediately the streets became flooded. Stream of ambulances came roaring by. The hospital ground and ER entrance were filled with people and the streets were packed with parked cars of relatives looking for their loved ones among the injured. Then all of a sudden the whole place was plunged into darkness except for the hospital.  The fierce wind blew the window shutters senseless and rain came flooding into our apartment.  I was the only one back in the guest house and ran around frantically closing the windows.



As each fighter was unloaded from the ambulance, the crowd chanted "Allah Akbar” (Allah is Great). I was able to get into the ER with my badge to see if I could be of help. Surprisingly it was not full. The fighters there were not seriously injured. The ICU however had five fighters all seemed mortally wounded. There was another room filled with the injured waiting for x-rays or other studies, all were splinted and dressed. As I left the ER, it was quickly filling up.



The helicopters that took off a couple hours ago returned and the Chinook was also busy transporting patients. There must be at least 20 ambulances coming into the ER. All night long they continued to come and the chanting of "Allah Akbar" continued late into the night. By some reports, there were over 200 injured and 22 people died on this Bloody Friday.

Sirte Gate 30 the Polyclinic

Desiring to explore another area of Misurata, I decided to run east of where we live.  Destruction was much less here but there were still a few burned out buildings.  Children have started school and school vans came to fetch some of them.  Hordes of young girls and boys carrying school bags smiling at me as they walked to schools, the boys put up their thumbs.  Tankers with slogans in Arabic parked in a big plaza, rust has already begun to set in.

Today we drove to Gate 50 where the Field Hospital is and then changed vehicle and drove with security to Gate 30 where we delivered many boxes of medicine and supplies. We then spent a couple of hours seeing patients there; they were mostly children with diarrhea. Intermittently through the windows sounds of bombing could be heard. The window panes rattled with the blasts. Gate 30 (that 30 kilometers form Sirte) brought us a lot closer to the center of Sirte where fierce fighting is still going on. After we finished seeing the patients we went on to Wadi Inffra, after passing a check point. Again we delivered medicines but we were told that almost all the patients came early in the morning and had left because they feared that fighting which usually is more intense in the afternoon would pick up. A father came in with a crying boy, the father spread his arms simulating a plane flying and then he made the sound of bombing. The boy was traumatized by the constant shelling.



Off to the Field Hospital we went. In the morning there were no patients but in the afternoon there were three, all of them being transferred out of Sirte Hospital after the Red Cross had received safe passage to bring out the injured. One of them was an elderly man with a chest wound that resulted in a punctured lung; he had a chest tube placed, another was a young girl with fractured pelvis and shoulder and the third was a woman who recently delivered a baby, she was in a bomb blast and suffered many shrapnel injuries and was paralyzed from the waist down. Because she was a woman I helped the nurse there to wash her and we dressed her wounds as best we could before all three patients were transferred to Misurata in a helicopter. The man with the punctured lung told me that his family was evacuated from Sirte two days ago but he was not able to because he was injured.




Although there was supposed to be a truce for a few days last weekend to allow civilians to leave Sirte some shootings continued so many people were afraid to leave. The Hospital in Sirte has few doctors most have left Sirte to volunteer outside of Sirte. The hospital is within hostile territory close to Gaddafi's stronghold.  There are many snipers, patients and staff alike have to run through the gauntlet of gunfire and snipers to get in and out of the hospital.  Diesel has long run out so there is no electricity or oxygen and little medicines. Many patients who were brought to the hospital died. The current Field Hospital will be moved closer to Sirte to shorten the distance of transport of the injured.

In the evening I took the Chinook along with a fighter with a broken arm and many other healthcare personnel. We stuffed our ears with cotton wool to cut down the noise from the Chinook.  The noisy Chinook flew far out in the Mediterranean supposedly to be away from the line of fire. In the distance we could see the sunset over Libya, the sun's rays pierced through the gathering dark clouds. The Chinook hovered slowly and laboriously for what seemed like a long time before finally landing.  When we arrived at the Misurata Airport forty minutes later, there was no cruiser from IMC so I rode the ambulance carrying the fighter with the broken arm to the Polyclinic Hospital with the ambulance driver who was an IT guy from Tripoli but he is now driving the ambulance in Misurata during the war. The contributions towards the war efforts of the people of Libya have been tremendous.

Sirte-The Field Hospital and Clinic at Gaddafi’s Beach Resort

This morning we drove for about two hours through flat, monotonous, arid landscape to the Field Hospital and Clinic in the beach resort of Gaddafi, 50 kilometers from Sirte. Signs for camel crossing are posted at regular intervals along the road. Occasional camel carcasses are seen on the road sides.    At night when the temperature of the desert dips, loving the warmth of the tarmac the camels often settle on the roads and are hit by vehicles.  Packs of camels walk slowly and patiently across this unchanging landscape feeding on scattered short clumps of brushes. Their breakfast, lunch and dinner are one and the same; scanty and unappetizing. Like the cats the camels must be wandering about the unrelenting bombings. There seems to be smiles on the faces of the camels.  On our way to Sirte I saw the head of a camel hanging in front of a butcher shop, it still wore a patient smile despite its demise.




One of Gaddafi’s beach houses within the walled compound has been converted into the Field Hospital. It has 10 beds two of which are resuscitative beds. An annex room serves as a storage room for medicines and equipment. There was only one patient when we arrived. Later in the afternoon Red Crescent ambulances brought in four casualties, evidently fighting had heated up. The latest news is that the Freedom Fighters have reached the round-about of the city center of Sirte where the west and east flanks of the fighters convened.  They have also captured the port thus cutting off the possible retreat route of Gaddafi and his forces who were fighting back refusing to surrender.  Unfortunately many civilians get caught in the cross fire. One of the patients brought in by the Red Crescent was seriously injured, he was unconscious and intubated, blood pouring out of his mouth and nose. The Chinook that landed this morning at the beach would likely transport these casualties to the Polyclinic Hospital in Misurata right across from where we are staying. Two additional tents were set right outside the Field Hospital for patients who are stable.  Several of the beach houses are being used as dormitories for the volunteers who have to stay overnight and one was converted to a labor and delivery room where I found my Misurata companion, Dr. Fatma.  Helicopters and Chinooks arrive and take off at intervals bringing healthcare personnel and patients.




Muhammad, my translator and I were sent to the Field Clinic right outside the compound by the check point. It is a container with three rooms, one of which is really a room for storing medications. There were several doctors and medical students seeing people who were fleeing Sirte. Outside lines of cars were stopped and searched thoroughly by the Freedom Fighters. They flipped through their belongings and the folds of their blankets. The people were waiting outside their cars patiently in the heat with their suitcases. One Freedom Fighter approached me to look at a veiled woman to see in fact she was a woman and not a man in disguise. She did not wish to have a man peer at her. In the clinic I saw a young woman with a cut on her arm, that was cleaned and dressed and she and her father went on their way. Because there were so many volunteers in this crowded and airless container, Muhammad and I retreated from there and back into the compound. We had a lunch of couscous and some meat which I later found out was camel meat!  It tasted like beef but not as tough as goat meat.



The beach is beautiful save for the trash that has been discarded by the current occupants which is regrettable. I tried my best to imagine the pristine beach before the Field Hospital was set up. There was a lull in the afternoon.  Borrowing a long shirt and pants, I dipped in the crashing but refreshing waves of the Mediterranean Sea in a quiet corner behind some rocks away from the eyes of the Muslims in order not to be conspicuous or offensive.  I wonder how many people could say they swam in Gaddafi’s private resort.

The Twarga Clinic for the IDPs

Despite the fact that we were told medications were ready for us to start the mobile clinic for the IDPs in Twarga, we did not find them. At the IMC office, we went through all the boxes of the International Emergency Health Kits (IEHK) and realized that the promised medicines to set up the clinics were not all there. Amjab wanted me to e-mail a list of needed medicines to the field coordinator who had been unreachable. Fearing that we would lose another day Falid Abood and I requested that we be allowed to buy the medicines. In the end Hassan drove us to an unmarked pharmacy and we spent a few hours purchasing medications. The owner graciously donated some boxes of medications and went to the polyclinic Hospital and obtained some more free medications for us.  He even discounted our total bill.  Hassan stopped at a make-shift road-side store for me to stock up on vegetables and fruits: onions, cucumber, tomatoes, apples and pomegranates with my new dinars.

I checked with Amjab whether it would be safe to run in the streets of Misurata, he said it would be alright to run in the back roads.  One morning I was not sure whether I heard some gun shots when I was running close to the hospital so I avoided the Polyclinic area.  Another morning I went running by the heliport, a few blocks from the guest house, this time I distinctly heard gun-shots.  I quickly turned around and decided to run on the street that ran by the front of the guest house.  This street led straight up to Tripoli Street.  It being Friday, all the streets were eerily quiet.  I stopped for a moment at the road side display of ammunition and tanks captured from Gaddafi's army.

Twarga was one of Gaddafi’s strongholds. When fighting reached this area, the occupants who supported Gaddafi fled and the town was emptied. Now the rebels use them as transitional camps for the IDPs. On one of the check points there scrawled on some enormous pipes in English and Arabic: We fight for freedom and justice. We will never surrender, we win or die.

In the evenings when we left Twarga for Misurata, we could see smoke arising from burning buildings.  When I asked Walid why the building complex was being burnt, he turned around and laughed but refused to answer me; he only jokingly mentioned that Zoro was at it again.  From what I could piece together from the translator, the Misuratans display their vengefulness towards the people of Twarga by burning their houses so that they have no place to return to when the war ends

At Twarga the Committee swept a room clean for us for our clinic.  There were no tables so we sat on chairs to see our patients. In the back of the complex there was a room with an examination table. There seemed to be a whole lot of pregnant women almost all of them near term or past their due dates. They were often accompanied by their protective husbands and mothers-in-law. We transferred them to Misurata after writing them an official pass to enable them to get through the check points. The solders check the passengers and the trunks for possible infiltrated persons from Sirte. Most of our patients had minor problems. Our very first patient was a 7-year-old girl with a gun-shot wound in the left thigh. According to the father, the bullet came through her bedroom in Sirte, ricocheted off a wall and hit her in the thigh.  It did not go through the thigh and the father  had to cut it out.  X-ray later showed that it just grazed the bone.  A young boy who looked healthy came in with diarrhea but seemed quite happy showing off his victory sign. Most women were reluctant to come out and often asked the men to come asking for medications. As oppose to other African countries, here in Libya, fathers not mothers brought their children to see us.







One pregnant woman was brought in by her husband.  She was covered from head to toes with a black veil over her face and black abaya. When I was ready to see her, the men left the room  including my translator who stayed right outside the door, refusing to come in.  She remained with her veil covering her face and only lifted it up when the room was closed.   I thought she was rather pretty.  After I was done examining her, she gestured whether she could put her veil back.  When she got out of the room, her husband immediately took her to the back room away from the prying eyes of the public to wait for her transfer paper.

Muhammad told me that there is a wide variation of how much a woman should be covered.  Universally all Islamic Libyan women are covered down to their ankles only exposing their faces and hands.  However there are groups that require the women to be covered entirely except for the eyes.  At home they could be uncovered but men and women remain in separate quarters.

Marriage is arranged by the mothers and sisters for the men.  The woman then meets the man in the presence of  her father or brother for a few minutes.  The men and the women could say "no" to the match but sometimes the women are not given a choice if their fathers insist.

Walid our driver lost three uncles in the fierce fight for Misurata in April and May. Like many young Libyans it was the first time he ever held and fired a gun. Cats were used by the Freedom Fighters as decoys for Gaddafi's snipers.  At night Freedom Fighters tied light to the cats and let them free.  The snipers fired at the lights thinking these were the Freedom Fighters and in so doing revealed their positions and were in turn fired upon.  I feel sorry for these cats which probably had no idea what all the shelling was about.

Curious about Tripoli Street one evening I found my way there by foot. A lot of buildings were destroyed; some were riddled with bullet holes and there were enormous gaping holes from bombing. It was said that Gaddafi sent more than twenty tanks there and fired indiscriminately. On one side of the street, the victors displayed missiles, warheads, tanks captured from Gaddafi’s forces. Libyan families gathered there, young and old, women and men to view the spoils. Boys climbed up the tanks, their backdrop being the bombed-out and burnt buildings. At one point an elderly man called out slogans in Arabic and at the end a soldier who stood by him fired, “Tat, rat-tat-tat…” into the evening sky. Now things are quiet in Misurata with occasional shots of celebratory gun fire. Outside our accommodation is a sign that said” Misurata is Misurata, we have broken the dictator”.













I ran in Haiti after the earthquake dodging rubble, live wires, gaping cracks in the roads, scavenging pigs and goats and now in the early mornings I ran in the streets of Libya and on Tripoli Street where one of the fiercest fighting in Misurata took place, it was quite surreal.