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Rating: As the sharpest among you might have realized, in this brief but well-structured account of the last night that is (and will already remain in) History, a true leader's story is told in a novel-like manner, and yes, it’s indeed about that certain someone, ehm, معمر محمد أبو منيار عبدالسلام القذافي that is Mu 'ammar Muhammad Abu Minyar 'Abd al-Salam al-Qadhdhafi commonly known (at least here in Italy) as the "Colonel Gaddafi".
It’s a book that can easily be read in three afternoons (as long as the boss doesn't notice) since it consists of only 168 pages in Sellerio format.
The book offers several surprises starting with the author, someone named Gelsomina, sorry I meant Yasmina, who as you can verify, is not female but rather male, whose real name is Mohamed Moulessehoul, now a former soldier, recruited at the age of 9 as a military cadet and who became an officer in the Algeria army, adopted his wife’s name because after his first published books, his superiors began to frown, so before having something delicate get twisted, he decided to escape to France and freely continue there his activity as a writer appreciated and esteemed by the rest of the world.
Another surprise was finding out while reading that apart from his descent or ascent in Italy during the time of the Government (alas) Berlusconi, according to what Yasmina suggests, the father of the Rais could very well be an Italian soldier catapulted into Libya in '42 and passed through that village in Tripolitania located about 20 km from Sirte, at the time part of the Italian province of Misurata, where the future Libyan Head of State was born who with a true revolution overthrew the throne of King Idris.
Another surprising fact (at least for me) is that Gaddafi before beginning his career in the ranks of the Libyan army attended in '64 the “General Staff Course” at the “Army War School” in Civitavecchia and the “School of Anti-Aircraft Artillery” in Bracciano in our Beautiful Country…
I can assure you that these last hours of the Rais will leave you quite shaken and with a bitter taste, but it could not be otherwise; yet despite that, they will also take you on a real journey through space and time and reveal things not many Westerners have seen or thought of, which in many ways seems almost like a fairy tale, like that of the ehm, "The Ugly Duckling"... but I don't want to spoil anything except that at the beginning, this thought by Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Abu'l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khayyām Nīshāpūrī (May 18, 1048 - December 4, 1131, Nishapur, Iran), a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet known as Omar Khayyàm, is posed:
“If you want to set out
Toward eternal peace
Smile at the fate that strikes you
And strike no one.”
and unfortunately for him, in the end, our Rais had very little to smile about (as you will read), given that in his life he struck many of his own people without sparing any violence, indeed...
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