It was a calm enough evening until the television was thrown in the mix.

My grandfather sat down to listen to the Leader give an impromptu speech. Whether it’s a soccer match or a political speech, men raise the volume on their TV sets as if all they want is to hear the cheers, when they really just want to drown out whatever words might slip out of their own mouths.

His eyes fixed on the screen, Jaddi went pale and clutched his stomach. He called out to my grandmother for a glass of water and some aspirin. She’d been ironing in the nearby hallway and could hear the words being broadcast.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

He huffed. “This reckless man is going to drive Libya to ruin with his mad decisions!”

Grandma put a hand over her heart. “Allah, take care of us. What did he say?”

Jaddi called my father over from our apartment, which was just opposite in the same building. When he arrived, Jaddi said, “Did you hear that speech?”

Shutting the door behind him, my father whispered, “Keep it down, the walls have ears.”

Jaddi shrugged and exhaled sharply. “Everyone in this building has their TVs on listening to that loud-mouthed hero. Just stick your head out the front door and you’ll hear his yells filling the stairwell.”

Grandma repeated my father’s warning: “Hush. Our neighbor upstairs is a taxi driver. Or have you forgotten?”

But Jaddi had to say what was on his mind. “The country is about to walk off a cliff. What this stupid man is going on about is dangerous.”

“He’s just rambling, Bouy.”

“Rambling, yes. But we’re the ones who’ll have to pay for this garbage of his. What he’s saying is more than just a revolutionary flight of fancy surrounded by a halo of applause from the Zuwara people. I swear, they probably don’t even really understand what he’s saying. He’s calling for nationalization and monopoly of power. This will go down in the history books. You’ll see how right I am soon enough.”

“He’s just a chatty buffoon. He likes to be seen and to be applauded,” Grandma asserted. “Don’t go blowing things out of proportion, Ahmad Imran.”

Jaddi’s eyes grew wide and he scoffed. “Me? I’m the one exaggerating here? I’m slandering him? Of course—the saint that he is, I must have it all wrong here.”

My father stepped in, “Ummi didn’t mean it like that. How about you take a few deep breaths, Bouy, and let’s think through this together.”

Jaddi sat reluctantly, his anxiety evident. “He’s calling for nationalization, isn’t he?” he asked, as if seeking confirmation from my father and grandmother.  “He’s pitting those who don’t own anything against those who do, and those who own a little against those who own a lot—hoping to stir up a socialist revolution. He’s orchestrating a revolution just to stroke his ego! What a move. And do we really need socialism when we’re barely three million people and our country floats on a sea of oil? What’s it to us if the rest of the world wants to adopt socialism, or capitalism, or even wipe themselves off the face of the earth? This rogue is going to finish us off, and the country too while he’s at it. He’s made us into a target for legalized theft. He’s going to blur the lines between people, and we won’t have a chance to defend ourselves from the lowlifes, the loafers, the flops, and the envious losers that he’ll set on us.”

“Take a deep breath. It’ll all blow over soon enough.”

“Nightmares are always quick to come true.”

Jaddi clenched his fists and pressed them into his face.

“He’s made chaos acceptable, and recruited the riffraff for everything. He’ll get rid of all personal property like he said in his speech and the workers will come for privately owned factories and take control. They’ll come for your father’s mill, Amina Yaqoub, in Cyrene. Because according to him, the land doesn’t belong to anyone.”

“Allah won’t accept injustice,” my grandmother said, submitting herself to God.

Jaddi then launched into everything he had just said again, seemingly trying to convince my even-keeled grandmother to get as irritated as he was.

“He’s stripping away our property, Amina. He’s going to help himself to what I spent my whole life working for, as if I had stolen it or just found it lying on the roadside, or he gifted it to me. And all for what? To give it to others who didn’t work anywhere near as hard as I did, others who chose to be poor, and didn’t do anything to change their station in life. All of this is happening right in front of my eyes and I can’t even open my mouth to say a word. Don’t you dare say anything to your brother on the phone—they’re all tapped.”

“Yes, don’t say anything,” my father echoed. “The phones are tapped.”

“I won’t say anything, he’ll find out himself—some way or the other.”

My father expected the banks would make the decision to change the banknotes in order to force those merchants and other people who had squirreled their money away from the banks to bring it in. Why do all this to my family, and others?

“He’s a bastard. Yes, a bastard, all right.”

My father took my mother, who had just arrived, to the kitchen, making a show of staying calm. My grandfather was overreacting, he claimed, because he absolutely hated the Leader. He asked my mother to brew coffee for everyone while he stood on the balcony, smoking. Mama asked him what he really thought, but he avoided telling her about his fears.

The days tiptoed by, heavy with anticipation. Jaddi was swept up in hushed discussions with his businessmen friends. Some of them planned to sell what they owned in order to cut their losses when the state came for their properties. Others had started funneling their money secretly to Egypt or Tunisia, in preparation for leaving the country.

Investors and other wealthy individuals were called in for investigation into how their fortunes had come to be. The “Where Did You Get This?” law materialized, and national security investigators from middle- and working-class backgrounds began far-reaching investigations of the bourgeoisie, as they called them, which led to arrest after arrest.

My grandfather’s fears grew, but the factory kept on ticking away at its usual pace. Then Jaddi was summoned for investigation for the first time. When an unknown visitor arrived, he realized at once who he was and why he was there. The stranger said, “Boss needs you to come in for a chat. Tomorrow morning at the Internal Security Bureau.”

Jaddi inquired who this boss was. The man didn’t respond and instead launched into a barrage of questions.

What do you sew here? What’s your profit? How much do pay your workers? When did you start this work? Are your bank accounts inside Libya or abroad? Which foreign companies do you partner with? Where do you import the raw material from? Who do you sell to? Show me your books.

Then he asked my grandfather to gift him something that the factory had sewn. So Jaddi gave him overalls, their only product, what he made for the oil company workers—maybe he would leave then? But the man started strutting around the factory as if it were his home instead.

Jaddi didn’t sleep that night, and in the morning he mustered his resolve and went to the Internal Security Bureau. They left him waiting at the gate for a long time, testing his patience. They finally ushered him into the office of one of the undercover officers. He had that particular revolutionary look sported by those who mimicked the Leader in voice, appearance, and mannerisms.

The officer started off talking about the ills of capitalism, global imperialism, spies, traitors, and enemies of liberation before attacking my grandfather with questions: How did you get rich and what business do you do? When the Jews were thrown out in the 1967 Naksa, did you fill your own pockets? What does your son do abroad? Who are his contacts? Who in your circle has links to the former reactionary monarchy inside the country—and what about abroad? Are you involved in X, Y, Z?

They made notes of everything, their eyes hidden behind dark glasses. They wore short-sleeved khaki suits, had identical handlebar mustaches, and an affected nasal quality to their voices that they put on to be more like the Leader, smoking Rothmans as if they were going out of style.

Jaddi left the Internal Security Bureau after the never-ending interrogation smelling of tobacco and weighed down with fear, still unclear why he had been summoned—other than as groundwork for them to steal everything he had.

They dug up the time when Jews were exiled from Libya. What link were they trying to create between what we own and what was stolen from the Jews? Everyone across this country knows who stole from the Jews. Some of them were promoted during Gaddafi’s era despite the suspicions of theft trailing them.

The Jews were forced to flee with their lives to Europe during the era of the monarchy. They were subjected to blackmail and robbery and were forced to haggle their way out of the country after the repercussions of the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine.

The Jews became a legitimate target in Arab nations and the Libyan king lifted his hand of protection from them.

Jaddi knew two brothers from Derna who used to work for a Jewish merchant in Benghazi. The brothers took advantage of the chaos, the acts of violence, and the burning of Jewish property by blackmailing the merchant into giving them his property through a sham sale in exchange for securing his safe departure to Egypt with his family.

Those two brothers then went on to become prominent figures in Benghazi, but Jaddi never said a word about their past. It’s unbelievable that the police still don’t know what they got up to and the fate of the Jews’ property—where and in whose hands it ended up.

A few days later, Jaddi heard that his friend Ezzat had been detained and was under investigation. After a very large bail was paid, the authorities released him but put a stop to all of his business. A Mercedes 100 planted itself opposite Ezzat’s home. In it two men sat, reading the same newspaper day and night. They both had the same revolutionary air about them, right down to the brand of their cigarettes, their purposely disheveled hair, and the fact that they didn’t speak to anyone.

Even though they were there day and night in front of Ezzat’s villa, his wife and children were still able to slip out and escape to Egypt. 

How did they pull it off? Security was none the wiser. Unless it was the internal security bureau itself that illegally smuggled them out of the country. Maybe it was all a ruse to frame Ezzat for his family’s escape and arrest him again on another charge.

They did arrest Ezzat a second time, and broadcast his trial, as well as that of others, on the official TV channel every evening. Following his trial, the general public called for his execution. It seems he was a thief after all. He confessed to his crimes and, under mysterious circumstances, died in prison.