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“How can you
hear a million words from a million mouths at the same time?” Page 60 Libya’s Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi
is an enigma. Hated and loved in equal measure, he has become a global
political icon, a chameleon ruler who has gone from freedom fighter to
terrorist pariah to trusted ally. The ENO’s brave production Gaddafi: A Living Myth, which
opened its current season, explores the life and times of ‘Brother
Leader’ through an evocative cacophony of live music, theatre and film.
Playwright Shan Khan talks
about how he got inside the head of a man who defies stereotypes. So, I walked into the posh room at the Coliseum in St Martin’s Lane and behind the table there was a big board with pictures of Gaddafi on it and, what he calls, his revolutionary nuns - women dressed in military gear, make up, red stilettos, carrying AK-47s. I almost choked on my coffee when they told me they wanted me to help write an opera on Gaddafi. I thought this is insane, you can’t do an opera about Gaddafi, But when I stated reading about the man, I came to the conclusion that this absolutely had to be done, and I absolutely had to be the person to do it. Why? I wanted to use this opera and this man to examine the relationship between East and West. This is a man whose whole political existence has been punctuated by relationships with the West. I mean this man rules a country of about 6 million people, yet everyone knows Gaddafi. Ronald Reagan made him the Muslim bogeyman of the day as there always seems to be one, whether its Saddam, Gaddafi, Arafat or Bin Laden. Reagan called him the “mad dog” of the Middle East. This is a guy who would turn up to the Arab League meetings in a Michael Jackson outfit because he saw it on the TV and thought I want that outfit, and said to his minions ‘go and get me a Michael Jackson suit’, so they’d go away and he’d turn up to a League meeting with a white glove on, slip on shoes, and glittery socks. I know it’s insane. I’m not saying this in a way to ridicule him. I don’t ridicule him at all in that respect. I think in one respect he’s a refreshing leader. When I first started thinking about Gaddafi, my first instinct – having been brought up over in this culture, being exposed to western propaganda – was that Gaddafi’s that “mad dog” of the Middle East, blew up people on a plane, killed a British police woman and he’s a “godfather of terrorism”. When one reads into it a bit more and tries to see the other side of the coin, you see that things are never that black and white. And it quickly becomes apparent that certainly before sanctions hit them, Libya had better health services than Britain. In order to write something like this, you have to try to get into someone’s head. I tried to get into Gaddafi’s head, although I couldn’t grab him or speak to him. We did go to Libya to meet him. I remember because it was Ramadan in 2004. He certainly knew about this happening. I think it had been announced on Al-Jazeera. I always had this image of him sitting in his tent with his feet up drinking a glass of camel milk watching Al-Jazeera reporting that the English National Opera were doing “Gaddafi the Opera” and saying, “I want to meet these people.” We went over there on the promise that we were going to meet him and every night we would be met at our hotel and taken to a halfway house and told to wait. Because it was Ramadan, there was a lot of food put on. What was ironic was that we were sitting in a Bedouin-style place with a banquet of food and behind us would be a 50” rear projection TV showing Arsenal v West Ham. Eventually towards the end of the week we got a message saying he wasn’t going to meet – it was Ramadan and he was extremely busy. We were told we could meet his son Saif. When one thinks of Middle Eastern leaders and their sons, they think immediately of Uday and Qusay and conjure up images of malicious, sadistic, violent playboys who see their whole country as their playground. That was certainly not the impression I got from Saif al-Islam. He seemed like a very charming young man in his thirties and we met him at his ranch just outside Tripoli. He was studying at the London School of Economics. He answered our questions without fail and we asked him tough questions. “Your father was accused of killing people in Lockerbie?” “No, absolutely, categorically he did not,” he replied. “Your father is accused of killing PC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy?” “We accept responsibility for this.” There is a general sense in Libya that they are very sad about that. When we mentioned Yvonne Fletcher, there was a real sense of sorrow and regret in his eyes and he at least to me seemed very ashamed of what happened there. There is a lot of turmoil in his head and it wasn’t until I began to get into his headspace that another aspect of the opera appeared: what it’s like to be a world leader. I read a lot of literature on Gaddafi and a lot of his own writing. He’s written quite extensively and considers himself quite a writer. One morning he wakes up and says, I want to be an interior designer, so he designs a modern Arab tent. Another morning he wakes up and says I want to design a rocket car, so he goes about designing a rocket car to rival Porsche and Ferrari. One line of all his writing is very telling of how it must be. He says, “I am just a simple Bedouin, how can you hear a million words from a million mouths at the same time?” I soon realised that Gaddafi’s dream never was the destruction of the West – it was Arab unity. The only person who ever united the Arab people was the Prophet, peace be upon him. It’s a trap to think someone else could do it. If I were Gaddafi sitting down and watching the show, there would be certain moments when I’d feel a bit coy, there would be certain moments where I’d feel like, “Well they made me look good here”, and there would be certain moments where you’d be like “Well, I didn’t do that, they made me look bad there”. Well the reason I do that is because I certainly haven’t gone out of my way to make this a propaganda piece for Gaddafi. Initially, Steve from Asian Dub Foundation was kind of concerned that we couldn’t find enough Arab looking people to play all the parts. Then we sat down and thought about that for a minute. I thought that if I’m only looking for Arabic looking people then I’m falling into the same trap that casting directors used to fall into with me: “you can’t be Hamlet because Hamlet wasn’t Asian.” The whole thing is called Gaddafi: The Living Myth. It is a London production and London is a great multicultural city. The show should represent that. We don’t have to be forced into boxes. White commissioning editors want us to be gollywogs. I’m not gonna be that gollywog, you know? Some people make a good career from shows like the Kumars at Number 42. It’s like, “let’s give them the Asian show that they can watch.” You don’t call up Scottish writers and say, “can you write us a thing about shortbread, living in the Highlands skipping round swords and heather and wearing kilts?” That’s what I love about London, getting on the tube and nine times out of ten I will be counting all the different nationalities in my head. As the Quran says, “Allah made us into tribes so that we could get to know each other.” I grew up in a very small town just on the west coast of Scotland in the 70s. We were the only brown family around for what felt like a thousand million square miles. It felt like another planet. It’s not something I would wish upon anyone – to grow up in that environment. I mean small towns by their very nature become very insular. Growing up there was very f--king difficult without a doubt it – your windows getting smashed in, fights, names at school. If it wasn’t for Muhammad Ali, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here. For once you’d turn on the TV and see a handsome, non-White and, above all else, Muslim who was funny, articulate and could whip some serious ass as well. Twenty years ago you kept your head down, kept yourself to yourself. Today, it’s a great time to be a Muslim. |