They blindfolded us and stuffed us into a small sedan, three tall people with their hands bound behind them. This is what they mean by a “stress position,” I remember thinking. I don’t know how long that ride lasted—two hours, three?—but it seemed longer. The car’s sound system played a somber remix of Qaddafi’s famous “zenga zenga” speech—in which he pledged to purge Libya “alley by alley”—set to the martial theme of the movie 300. At the point in the speech when the Leader rhetorically demands “Who are you?” the guard who was riding shotgun instructed us, “Say it, say Qaddafi.” “Qaddafi,” I mumbled.
“What I Lost in Libya.” — Clare Morgana Gillis, The Atlantic
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