Return to An Infamous City

Confronting Benghazi demons, four years later (Part 1)

October, 2016

“Go, go—you’ll be okay,” the Ambassador said to me. She knew who had made the arrangements.

“It’s very important that people here, in the United States — understand what’s happening in Benghazi now.”

I knew that if I thought about it too much, I would not go. I’d gotten damn good at compartmentalizing.

I was in Benghazi during the 2012 attack that killed a former colleague and three other Americans. Four years later, the experience wouldn’t leave me.

But I continued to write about Libya, the attack, and its impact on US domestic politics — and places near and far from here.

I felt I needed to return. For me, a matter of credibility, perhaps. I had certainly paid my dues over the years, but that was the past. Once, I’d loved the city.

***

There were no flights direct from Europe to Benghazi. So, I would have to travel to Cairo, still experiencing aftershocks from its own Arab Spring convulsion. And from there to Alexandria, where I would need to take a flight to Labraq, a few miles from the seat of the cabinet of Libya’s Eastern Government, in the city of Al Bayda.

I arrived in Alexandria by car early in the afternoon. The airport seemed to spring from the desert, like a massive inflatable mattress, fitted with enormous glass windows. Why build a glass airport in the middle of a desert?

I arrived several hours before departure. Nothing in the Middle East ever left on time — early, sometimes, but never on time. Before me, a desultory line of hundreds, if not thousands of passengers snaked towards the entrance. I got into the line and followed it to the front, which took two hours. A guard waved me off.

“Flight to Labraq? Try later.”

I repeated this exercise and this time was let in, only to find the plane was in the last stages of boarding. I pushed my way to the check-in, where the agent gave me a once over, and refused to let me in - despite having a confirmed ticket. I wrote a name and number on a piece of paper (it was the GM of the airline) and pushed it over the counter. Open sesame.

Fifteen minutes later, I stood among a collection of Libyan families, most with small children.

I was anxious. But not as much as I really should have been, about to plunge myself back into an environment from which I had been lucky to escape several times before. Was I absolutely nuts?

I examined that anxiety a bit. Twisted it around in front of me like balloon-animal. Normal reaction? Yep. I could still walk out. I didn’t have to do this. Part of me wanted to, very badly. Another part of me was elated I’d made it this far.

I wondered how similar the urge that was drawing me forward was. to the one the slain Ambassador had described to me in Washington, four and a half years before.

Why was I so determined to go back now?

***

The interior of the plane looked like it had been torn apart: Seats were worn ragged; windows were scratched in places so deeply you could barely see out onto a rapidly darkening sky.

The heat rising from the desert created turbulence that kept me and the 90-odd passengers in our seats for most of the hour-and-a-half flight.

To my left, a Libyan man who looked to be in his fifties.

I’m sure he noticed my discomfort, and, obviously, the fact that I wasn’t Libyan. And that I was alone. Presumably he didn’t see me as the threatening sort. And he found a way to lighten my thoughts.

“I assume you’re not here to see your uncle,” he said, then a split second later smiled broadly.

“No, no” I replied. “Not this time.” I smiled back.

For all the pain they’d been through, over decades, Libyans seemed always to have a reserve of humor, secreted away for moments like these.

He told me his family was returning home after spending time with their relatives in Cairo. They had been forced to leave as war engulfed eastern Libya.

When the plane came to a stop on the tarmac, and as other passengers scrambled for their bags, I made my way to the front. I had gotten halfway down the movable stairs when suddenly, I saw two figures race up the steps past me and disappear into the cabin, asking repeatedly, Wein al Amrikeee, Wein?” (Where’s the American…).

Subtle, I thought, feeling a need to escape. Someone pointed to me. The two young men with long hair, in their early twenties at most, raced back down the stairs to catch up with me.

I asked for a password agreed in advance. They hesitated. One of them uttered a short phrase that wasn’t correct, but was just close enough that I thought, warily, “screw it.”

They brought me into a hangar, where a taller, much older man in fatigues extended his hand to shake mine. He did not smile.

The two younger men led me down an alley to a brand-new, white Lexus SUV. A 70,000 dollar car, at least. They motioned for me to get in. One lit a cigarette. The two spoke to each other in hushed voices.

Once inside, they maneuvered the car jerkily off a dirt path onto a paved road. I was forced to brace myself to avoid getting bounced violently against the side of the car.

I asked how long it would take to get to our destination.

“ghayyerat al barnamaj — The plan has changed,” the kid in the passenger seat said.

“We no go there anymore.”

My pulse shot up, as I made a concerted effort to remain cool.

Had I been kidnapped? And if so, by whom? And for what purpose? I could think of no other reason why the two would be so evasive. We were traveling through an area that had seen heavy fighting not long ago. I contemplated bolting from the car, at one of the many checkpoints we passed. But I thought better of it.

I had been on these roads before. Though it was dark, I tried to use the names of the smaller towns and exit numbers we passed as a primitive GPS.

To be continued.

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