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Big Muammar’s House

Gaddafi Loves Hosting Babes at His Bachelor Pad

By Muir Vidler

This was an extremely weird and awkward moment that stood out from the perpetual onslaught of oddities I encountered on my two trips to Libya. Tecca Zendik, who here is wearing an American-flag t-shirt, was plucked from a modeling agency by a Lebanese businessman and summarily named “honorary Libyan consul to America.” This was taken during a ceremony in which she was given a Libyan passport.

Over the past two months, as the world watched Libya descend into an orgy of chaos and violence, I reminisced about my two visits to the home of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The first time, in 2002, I was invited to photograph 25 international beauty-pageant contestants selected through regional modeling agencies. The idea was that people would vote for the winner online, and we were hired to shoot a behind-the-scenes feature about the spectacle. It quickly became apparent that no one had planned anything, and we were all part of some strange publicity stunt that didn’t seem to have a point other than “Libya is an idyllic kingdom run by a benevolent father figure who loves women and dresses like a flashy black grandmother who spends most of her time in Atlantic City.”

Every day we were told that we’d be meeting the colonel—or the Brother Leader, as we were told to address him—but it never happened. Then one morning we were taken on a tour of Gaddafi’s old house, the one that the Reagan administration bombed in ’86. Supposedly it hasn’t been touched since it was destroyed, and visitors are often taken to the site to witness what the Libyans call “evidence of American terrorism.”