STATEMENT

I don’t want my father to disappear a second time. I feel an urgency to overcome my void in the midst of Libya’s relentless chaos and instability, which I fear will eventually bury my connection to Libya. In my documentary film, My Father and Qaddafi, I search through other people’s memories trying to create a clearer picture of my father who I don’t remember.

Making this documentary helps me understand the importance of a father figure and the impact of losing a father on a family, a community, and even a country. Sharing my father’s untold story is also sharing an untold story of Libya, one that spans almost one century of Libyan history and politics. As I reflect with my father’s colleagues over their lost Libya, I wish I could ask my father, how did we end up like this? And how is Libya going to break free from this cycle of trouble?

As I reconstruct my father’s portrait, I plant the seed for a deeper, more honest connection with him and to free my hidden voice. Instead of compartmentalizing my father as a one-dimensional hero from the past, I search for the man behind the myth and try to reintegrate him into my present life as a human being and a loving father.

Since I was 6 years old, my mother told us the truth, and although this has tempered the shock, I still struggle with a constant surreal feeling. Despite my fragmented memories, my fears, and my cultural limitations in Libyan society, I am trying to overcome this surreal feeling and reconnect with my father and with Libya on my own terms, as an open-hearted woman. This is one of the ways I am hoping to hold my father before he disappears completely from my memory and even potentially from Libya’s memory.