I met a friend of a friend in the lobby of my hotel who used to know the Gaddafis. After a rather lengthy conversation about them, he gave me these videos. Videos like this circulate the city via Bluetooth and cell phones. They are war porn.
This video was retrieved from one of Gaddafi’s former mistresses’ homes after her and her family left Benghazi post revolution. Her name is Huda Bin Amer, and the story is that Gaddafi slept with her and then had a member of his security team marry her. But I can’t verify that.
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Who knows who shot this. Just another shootout in Benghazi.
A friend of mine shot this. It’s hairy.
Despite what some might like you to believe, it’s not life on Mars in Libya. It’s quality cappuccino-drinking people who are just beginning a new life. Remnants of the old society linger, but it’s disappearing. Building a future is all that remains, and there are no quick-hit photos for that.
When our driver and his friend dropped me off at the hotel I hid some money in their car, but they found it and stuffed it in my pocket. We argued for an hour before I finally gave up. My best payment is a meal, cigarettes, and caring… but I wish they would have taken some cash too. Fidel kissed both of my cheeks, then we all shook hands and hugged.
We left Libya in a friend’s Kia Cerato. The driver’s seat was reclined almost into my lap, and if I wasn’t so zonked I would have been irritated. Smooth roads made sleeping easy. The wind blew big waves in off the Mediterranean that leapt the barriers and washed over the westbound lanes. The water was three shades of blue–we could have been in the south of France or Italy. Then a convoy of UAE trucks carrying supplies west steamed past us and I remembered we were still in Libya.
Finally we made it to Egypt. The arrivals lounge was the same as the departures lounge–refugees stuck in limbo, unable or unwilling to form a line. Libyans were smushed against one another at the only open booth, where a guy processed and stamped everyone’s passport. I became Jeremy Brian Relpm.
They ran our bags through scanners. I left my helmet in the car, but I was worried they would stop my bag because of the body armor. As it turned out, however, the security didn’t appear to be terribly interested in the scanning. They looked like teenagers crowded around a computer watching porn. I jumped a bar and walked around a metal detector and the guard didn’t care. He didn’t care when my friend set it off either.
Once we were safely inside Egypt my friend started catching up on his emails with his Blackberry. Four journalists went missing just east of Brega on the fourth. Among them was James Foley, an acquaintance of ours who we met at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan last summer. We were stuck there for days with nothing to do, but when the base was attacked and we woke up to the sounds of rockets and small arms we weren’t allowed to cover it. James and I bonded over our love of film and music. He gave me an .avi of The Thin Red Line and I gave him Borat. He also gave me the type of advice only a veteran journalist can before I went to Libya. He was riding in a van that was hit by indirect fire when he and three other journalists were taken by Gaddafi loyalists. It could have happened to any of us. But for the Grace of God is the saying.
PHOTOS AND WORDS BY JEREMY RELPH
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