Half Alive Again: An Evening At Zawia Dahmaani

Tonight I feel as if I were only half-alive
Part of me died with all the Gibsons I knew.
- Siegfred Sassoon, June 30,1916
Wishing “I could find a moral equivalent for war”.


What constitutes our understanding of society? The market, state and civil society in varying degrees form our conception of the world. We take from the table of life, what best suits us.

The people of a country are much more widely spread than the confines of the modern nation state. As I walked up to eat “Paan” in a stall in Tripoli, the food culture came alive. The ingenuity of humans came alive to me when I first walked the streets of North Africa over 6 years ago. In these years, I have known many people of different nationalities who have created their own small home countries and (sub) cultures here. As I saw a patient from Serbia I told her about Mosaaka ( A Serbian dish) she asked me how I knew. Well, I have tasted a lot of it, blended with camel meat, to give it a Libyan touch.

KHEER AT ZAWIA DAHMAANI

The Kebabs and Kheer which I ate in Zawia Dahmaani of Tripoli, made me remember Nizamuddin of Delhi. Prepared by the wife a doctor who held a Pakistani passport, but was the alumnus of King George Medical College-Lucknow, a Libya veteran since 1966, he is a Citizen of the World. The Dal Tadka made in typical North Indian style has a distinct touch, which cannot be replicated by the Hyderabadi friends who have their own “Biryani charms”.

When I first met him, he was talking in Arabic, I was new to Tripoli but the way he was talking made me spontaneously talk in Hindustani with him. He responded warmly and therein started a beautiful association. He was a mentor and guide in many ways, having come to Tripoli many decades ago and built his life here, exploring the Tripoli route to the world.

CIVIL SOCIETY

The three components of a society –the market, the civil society and the State have different expectations and perspectives. The market requires trained personnel for the technologically complex economies. Exploring this market in the international “global village” many people from the subcontinent find themselves in the Arab world, in Oil, construction, health sectors.

Then the state requires a corpus of trained elite to run it’s apparatus. Hence we have the diplomatic corps, and one sees them come and go every 2 to 3 years, representing in their own ways (and distortions) what they think represents the official policy of their people (actually representing the view of the ruling elites).

The third component is the Civil society. Families, schools, parent-teachers associations, photography and reading clubs may be some examples. They explore the formation of an educated human being, deepening and broadening perspectives beyond just jobs and government-work shifts and visa requirements.

Officials are the same everywhere (in differing degrees they have the 3 Is-they have I for Inertia, I for Indifference, I for Incompetence). The technological-scientific world too has a uniformity which is sometimes boring, sometimes frightening-the roads are the same, the sign boards are blue and the machines make the same noise.

The officials come and lay wreaths. But do they go beyond the rhetoric?

If you ask them why there is a lack of trained teachers in the community school, they will say we are from a poor country. The same ‘poor country’ can acquire property worth millions of dollars to house an official who is busy trying to get air conditioners for the coming summer.

The representatives of the parent-teacher’s association of the community school of any of the expatriate communities can tell a more real (and different) version of the state of the community and society than the officials. (some of whose favorite pass time is ranting about how much they have done for the community)

It was in the differing families, different ways of pronouncing and interpreting the same stories by children of different nationalities, different ways of cooking rice (baking after a bit of frying in stages gives a different flavor which I never knew before) or preparing salads and questioning the ‘official perspectives’ of war and history that I learnt many new things here.

So, as I questioned the Serbs about the indictment of their leaders by the war tribunals, I also came to know of the not much heard of Organ trade market in Kosovo where they killed people to trade their organs in the international market.

LIFE HERE-THEN AND NOW

Another Indian veteran of the Arab world told me when I was new here that these are not the countries where one can think of settling down. Their visa rules require people to work here and then return to their home countries. There is a partial truth in what this veteran had told me.

However, one does develop some type of life here. Watching the school fairs, seeing the stalls of different nationalities, the books which one would otherwise never have come to know of, gathering perspectives of writers who have spelt out the secret lives of the families of their societies, the shame and longings which are common to humans.

Trying to find out a bit more about the families who made this part of the world their life and home, recently I went back to the Italian cemetery of Tripoli after receiving a letter from an American of Italian origin, Alvaro Bettucchi. After having read the narrative “The Road to Misuraata” www.chowk.com/14507 he had written about a construction company in Tripoli over a hundred years ago, run by the Bettucchi family

One branch of his family had stayed and developed their life in Tripoli. He sent to me a family tree going back to 1750. One of his family members, Pietro Bettucchi was born on June 29,1857 and built his life in Tripoli.

He wrote:

I have included a copy of a letter that I have in my possession, of Margarita Bettucchi written from Tripoli in 1916. She wrote to my great aunt Elisa, that her brother Savino died in the war and to tell her mother (my grandmother) of his death.

PRIVATE

There is a deeper justice than was intended when, in the days of Elizabeth I, the lowest ranked fighting man was dubbed “Private”, for only through the diaries and letters can the corporate mass of vivid feelings which comprise the battlefield be examined. The soldiers’, sailors’ and airmens’ diaries make up a rational language which has been severed from the roar of battle, and represent a different truth from that mentioned in dispatches (1)

After reading these letters and diaries, one changes the approach to historical, cultural and philosophical understanding of the people who had made this part of the world their home.

I talked to some ‘officials’ posted here whether they would like to join in these ‘readings’ and discussions. The answer was educative and enlightening. “When I joined the services I gave up that ‘civil right’ to engage in such discussions.”

Going beyond the official dispatches and ‘thin’ theoretical languages which encourage the analysis of life in terms of discursive systems and power relations, one learns some other aspects of truth which go beyond official histories.

INTERNAL PERSPECTIVES

The philosopher Charles Taylor claims that a human life is not well understood if it is analyzed from a purely external perspective-in terms of sociological explanation, for instance. For Taylor, the first-person perspective, which reveals what is of moral or spiritual significance in shaping a life is essential for understanding what it is to be a “self”

In the diary of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) kept from New Year’s day to 8th April,1917 (the day he died) is among the most moving private statements of the First World War. Almost forty years old, he was an efficient and inspiring officer to the much younger men of 244 Battery. In the diary, preparations for yet more human slaughter on a grand scale are calmly described but are interwoven with matter-of-fact domestic detail, nature notes and sharp reportage of the shelling, trench digging, burning , and pain. Family names break into the confusion. The diary of his last weeks on earth is a kind of savoring of what is appalling and what is precious (2)

WHAT HAPPENED TO PIETRO?

Are there any living Bettucchi in or around Tripoli, my friend queried? I tried to found out, but the answer was in the negative. You can go to the church at Dahra and try to see the records, one friend said. I went to the San Francisco church in Dahra, trying to find out about the Bettucchi family. A priest looked at me as though I was a bit “weird” and smiled in a sarcastic way as I told him regarding a family who had lived here 100 years ago. Apart from the market, and state, the religious structures are another place where one can try to find some continuity, but are used by the powers-that-be to their own means and ends. In the past decade there has been a serious rethinking of the clichéd ‘opium of masses’ view and how the whole quote of Marx has been replaced by the opium catch phrase. The role of religious experience in spiritual exploration has been covered by some Marxist theorists.

How does the first person perspective shape our understanding of human life?

I returned to the tombs which had a different meaning for me now.

Some part of Pietro lives on.We have never met, but we belong to the “Family of Man”.

RETURNING TO ZAWIA DAHMAANI

The alienated middle-aged man sat at the Turkish restaurant at Zawia Dahmaani, with his family, on the last day they would be with him in Tripoli. As there is no proper education here, and lack of overall development for the children, he has sent his family back to the subcontinent. This is the reality of many who work here.

Part of his alienation stem from the market conditions of his home country which make him seek better pastures. A few years here will change the way our family lives forever, he said, thinking of his own father’s trials in field stations, serving the Army in wars which no one ever understood and those who questioned were termed as traitors. Or his uncle who himself served in the Arab world. Or remembering the seniors of this part of the world with their roots in the subcontinent, who had made the Kebabs and Kheer, with warmth and affection, welcoming and mentoring in their many ways, teaching the ropes of how to explore the market and life in this part of the world.

And then find other aspects of life which add flavor. The modern nation state cannot confine a people. And in their own different ways, they have changed the discourse and life of the places which they made their home.

The salad and Turkish kebabs came. Then with his eyes on the road, remembering the Kheer which he had been treated to in Zawia Dahmaani a few years ago, he said in a resigned note-“This is my life.” Today he was happy, but there was a tinge of sadness as he knew this would be the last day of eating with his children. The little boys munched at the food in their different ways. The elder son ate the Pizza but removed the olives. The younger son at the chicken kebab but left the lamb grill to his father. His wife ate the Lentil soup (which tastes just like Indian dal).

That dinner table, their last meal together, was a symbol too, with a message and a summary of their lives. We take from the table of life, what best suits us.