Mariam fled Asmara with her family in 1988 when she was only 5, and her brother 7. The conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia since 1961, had made the country bloodless. The great drought of the 1980s, had finally convinced his father to migrate to greener pastures. The misfortune settled them in Libya, and especially in Benghazi, one of the closest the land to the European continent, was a gate that eventually would have took them to Europe. However, the departure for Europe finally didn’t happen, Libya ending by offering her family a stable job for her parents, and the opportunity to go to school for her brother and herself. Libya of the 90s was resolutely turned towards development, and modernity. The fall of the Berlin Wall undoubtedly helped to soften tensions on the continent. The War, which has seen the involvement of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi with his support to some factions in conflicts in neighboring Chad ' Was completed after a retrocession of the Aouzou military base to Chad, by a ruling of the Criminal Court of Justice in February 1994. In the 1990s Libya had become an El Dorado for emigrant workers from the rest of Africa. Young Libyans finishing their studies refused low-end jobs, just waiting for the state to provide them with highly paid jobs, cozy apartments and new public servant cars. The fortunes of Libyan nationals, helped the one of emigrants, opening up an employment market whose demand could only be mitigated by the offer of the hundreds of thousands of workers, who came from the rest of the African continent. The Libyan guide who now had pan-African ambitions, could only appreciate the situation at its true value. Since Libya, is a vast country of 1 million 759 450 km2, for a population of barely 6 million.

The manna of emigrant workers Could only help its development while giving the country a radiance across the continent that it would deserve. The troubled past of supporting the so-called terrorist organizations for some, and freedom fighters for others was over. The embellishment was unfortunately only going to last for 2 decades, during which the parents of Mariam had returned on the banks of the Barak, after saving enough money to buy a farm, and to live a peaceful life of peasants. Their father was born on the shores of that river, which drew its spring on the plateaus of Eritrea. Mariam had stayed in Libya, she had completed her studies as a nurse, and had just married a Libyan she was for 3 weeks pregnant, expecting her first child. Her brother Mickael, had since settled in Spain where he worked as a building engineer. Mariam spoke and wrote perfectly Amharic, Arabic and English while she had a good command of Tamazight the second national language of the country.On March 31, 2011 her world was going to shift into horror. When the unrest and strikes began she had continued to work at Al Hawari Hospital, the most modern medical center in the city of Benghazi, located east of the country. She told herself that it would be a mood, that will vanish with time. she was a little shocked when she listened to the demands and did her best to silence her opinion. What were they asking more, these Libyans, who seemed to have a social situation better than that of Westerners who spoke to them of human rights. She had an echo of life in Western countries, through the long discussions she often had with her brother, and more than once she had the opportunity to go to Germany, and France. everything was not So rosy in those countries, and yet they boasted of giving lessons to the world. The Libyan people were being sold a nightmare as a libertine dream. Her parents had lived in a country at war, and herself she had lived the war, and she knew that the big loser would be on the people embattled in the selfish interests of power broker.Benghazi, was already known as the Mecca of all kinds of trafficking, with at least a thousand African workers wishing to travel to Europe, passing through the town every day. And of course to succeed in the bid to cross to the West, it was necessary to deal with the mafia of the city. The situation of Benghazi's underworld crime had become so worrying, that the central authorities, a few years earlier had dispatched to the city a unit of the Libyan intelligence service. The Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya. Mariam's husband, Moustapha Kamis, came from this contingent of barbouzes, who tried to see more clearly, in the odious trade Which seemed to become the norm in the port area. If corrupt police officers, tended to turn a blind eye to the racist treatment of Africans from the south of the Sahara, it was not the same for the elite forces that often received instructions from the guide himself, To protect the weakest such as migrants from black Africa. Also in the city two camps had been created, there were those who tolerated dark-skinned Africans, and those who abhorred them.

The beginning of the Libyan crisis was going to give a great advantage, to those who hoped one day to put the grapple, on those negroes with bizarre customs, that invaded their country. In the same way, the underworld of Benghazi, with whom the international community allied itself to drive off Gaddafi, had as natural enemy, the authorities of the central government, which did not allow their commerce to flourish. In Benghazi, human trafficking networks, pedophilia, male and female prostitution, trafficking in human organs, narcotics and the speculations of smugglers to the West were fought by the authorities. Forcedly the fall of Muammar Gaddafi's government, could only help this necrosis to prosper. So the gangsters became the transitional coalition council for the liberation of Libya, from the tyranny of the Berber colonel. They valued the demonization of the one, who terrorized their infamy. When the first demonstrations began, this informal coalition of terrorist groups and gangs of traffickers, who had received considerable support from the foreign armed forces, and clandestine training by the Western special forces, immediately attacked the high security prisons outside Of Benghazi, where some of the kingpin of the cyrenaic underworld were secluded. Scoundrels authorities had managed to muzzle. The ranks of this criminal rebellion now grown up by all these convicts, attacked, police stations and official buildings. Spreading death, under the approving glance of the NATO bombers who contributed to the carnage from the air. It had been two days since Mariam had not seen her husband. Terrible massacres had been committed in the city. The bodies of police officers summarily executed by gunfire were hung at highway bridges where they continued to receive bursts of submachine guns. There were pogroms. Ethnic cleansings. The war allowed the unpunished realization, of the odious instinct of some. An unspeakable number ofAfrican migrants were raped by Kalashnikov, the macabre testimony of their bodies littering the streets reminded passers-by, that Libya was no longer the land of pan-Africanism. The militiamen had restored to the taste of the day, the mode of execution which had been a rage in Lebanon. Shooting a bullet in the rectum of someone, whom one wanted to see die in agonizing sufferings. The hospital where Miriam worked had been partially bombed, she was split between going to continue her service to the hospital, or going in search of her husband. all the phone lines had been cut off. It was total blackout. While she was still pondering on the question, she hear automatic gunfire around her concession. There was a manhunt against Africans from the rest of the continent, who were wrongly or rightly accused of supporting the regime in place. Militiamen entered her house , Exploding the lock with a burst of submachine guns, and asked her to follow them. She was roughly frisked, thrown into the back of a white pick-up truck and driven to a makeshift camp, that the militiamen had arranged, outside of the city in a building that once served as a prison. Questions were asked about her husband's job, and when was the last time she had seen him. She told them what she knew, knowingly omitting to say that he was a kind of security service agent without uniform. A spook in fact. The interrogators, however, seemed to know who he was, so she understood that it was necessary to play the foreign wife, who does not know all about her husband's activities. The prison was crowded with Africans and Libyans, supposedly collaborators of the regime of Colonel Gaddafi. The prison was crowded with Africans and Libyans, supposedly collaborators of the regime of Colonel Gaddafi. The few Westerners who were among them had been quickly released. After a second muscular interrogation, where she was copiously beaten, she lost consciousness and awoke in a pool of blood. She realized that she had been raped and that her bleeding was probably due to the consequences of an abortion. She asked the jailers for help. They made her understand that they had better things to do than deal with slaves. On the third day, humanitarian aid, which had been dropped by air at the same time as the weapons And ammunition for the rebels, was distributed to them. Each of the prisoners received the bare minimum to hold some days. The criminals disguised as rebels, had now become the authorities of the city. And of course they had not lost their criminal habits, on the contrary. The odious trades had resumed beautifully, fresh organs torn from the victims of war, were delivered almost daily to brokers arising out of nowhere, paying cash a kidney, a heart or a human liver. Slavery also offered a very attractive perspective, all warlords did not have the opportunity to control a territory with oil fields. So, they had to transform into wealth what they had in profusion. The death of human beings, and the desolation of the survivors of the armed conflict. A week after she had recovered from her abortion, the jailers told Mariam what they had for her. Pretty as she looked, she could be sold to a wealthy Arab, she would end up in the depths of a harem in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, as a sexual slave. Or she could always open her legs, offer sulphurous graces to some clients that the war business had taken to Libya, and thus earn some money that would allow her to leave the country. . It was that or suffer. Become a sulphurous bitch, or remain a trapped sufferer, and endure from time to time, rapes of some uncontrollable elements. She could not complain to anyone, the law was them, the Western journalists who covered the war, were employed by their friends, the United Nations refugee organization would not offer her any better option, before a negotiated truce. And In front, the government of Muammar Gaddafi for which worked her husband, who was untraceable and probably dead now, would fall in a few days. The breath, cut off by so much contempt and blatant exploitation of her misfortune, Mariam preferred not to answer. She stood there, haggard, her eyes empty of emotion. Her interlocutor who spoke in Arabic, said to her before leaving: "think quickly, I will not make this offer to you twice. It is a chance that must be seized. Moustapha Kamis had felt the wind turning, Colonel Gaddafi had entrusted to some of his faithful lieutenants whose his commander was among, to exfiltrate his family in Niger. It was a secret mission and his wife Mariam, had never known, anything about his real duties. She simply knew that he was a policeman who never wore a uniform. Gaddafi had decided to face his own destiny, he had refused to leave Libya to save his skin, as a good military strategist. He knew very well that the enemy's firepower was superior to the Libyan army. The carnage of the bombing of NATO forces on the population of Tripoli, who had gone out to shield themselves around him, suffered phenomenal losses, which the cynical Western press had soon blamed him for. This had convinced him beyond doubts, that It was not only his skin but his country they wanted. Even his appeal to mediation with the transitional government was lost in the blast of the NATO bombing. It was not only Libya that was targeted but all of Africa, he knew. He Then decided to face them. His fate, would defeat the enemy by exposing its crimes, and others would understand that it is necessary to check this horde of evildoers, who were advancing with freedom and democracy as scarecrow. How can one kill a people to free it from one man, even a tyrant? If they wanted to whack him, they had several opportunities and significant means. The scheme was to destroy the country and take possession of its wealth. He was part of the old school who knew that, even the supreme sacrifice was part of the strategy of psychological warfare. Kamis, after helping to shelter some members of the Colonel's immediate family, had returned to Libya to seek his wife. He was far away across the desert of Niger, when the assault of March 31 on Benghazi was launched. He had received reports that his wife had been abducted and held captive in the disused prison, at the southeast end of the city. He knew where were hidden the 500,000 thousand dollars that had been recovered during an operation against a kingpin of the mafia of Benghazi, a few days before the situation of the country deteriorated. It was easy to camouflage the town by pretending to be a fighter. He had conducted the operation on his own. The times were uncertain no one could be trusted. First he had been enlisted by a militia as a Tuareg voluntary fighter. He had allowed his beard to grow, and it was virtually impossible to recognize him. The chaos helping , in the east of the country they were no longer fighting really to drive out Muammar Gaddafi from power. Warlords fought much more to widen their cartel and their influence. The wicked warlords henceforth made the law, and sometimes the rivalry of the factions was born not from the support or opposition to the decadent regime, but rather from material and strategic advantages. while entering the ruins of his former office, he was shocked at the sight of the pandemonium which reigned there. There were still traces of blood on the ground, and the fire had ravaged part of the public building.There was not a soul living in the place. The elevator course had been pulverized and instead there was a gaping hole more than 20 meters deep. He took the stairs he knew the path by heart and came to the basement.

There was no doubt that electricity, no longer powered the building, so the electronic combination hiding behind the plaster wall was no longer working . He had planned a small cocktail, to blow up the door. After the dull explosion, he waited a minute to be sure that nobody had heard him, and then entered the safe. Everything was untouched. Cash, and bags of drugs. he took the box containing the banknotes opened it and placed all the new bundle in his backpack he was sure there was more than the $ 500,000 he had no time to count. He left the premises while setting fire to the rest of the contents of the safe. There were at least two million dollars’ worth of cocaine and heroin. of the contents of the safe. There were at least two million dollars’ worth of cocaine and heroin. The appointment had since been taken with the head of the militia who controlled the former jailhouse. He would take delivery of the parcel for $ 50,000, he was obliged to pay as much as the militiamen had made him understand that it was a rather special package, which had a husband working for the guide himself and that her disappearance would entail questions. Many hands should be greased to encourage forgetfulness. Otherwise generally women of her age over 25 years old, were traded between $ 5 thousands and $ 10,000. In the middle of the night Mariam was awakened by a guard. The latter ordered her to follow him. Once outside, her eyes were bandaged, and she was thrown in the back of a Pickup truck, they drove for more than an hour. Then She was taken out of the vehicle. Her eyes still bandaged, she walked a gun pointed in her back, knocking her feet in the in sandstones. A minute later she felt she was in a house. Then strong arms lifted her off the floor to put her on a bed, and she heard the guard who had taken her out of the prison, say to her in Tamazight: "Do not move, or you will get hurt badly" Petrified she stood there in the dark , without uttering a word. A few moments later she heard the vehicle start and go away, she was not tied up, but she was terrified to take off the blindfold she had on her eyes. She could feel a warm, damp wind, the sea was not far away. Finally she felt a presence in the room, and a voice she knew well said to her: "Mariam are you well? While she was trying to figure out if she was not hallucinating, the person came closer and took the blindfold off her eyes. In front of her stood her husband. Whilst she was about to get overexcited, he asked her to remain calm, and whispered in her ear, hugging her: "soon it will be over." There is still a stage, he took herto the window and showed her the sea ,where a boat was approaching making subtle light signals. They embarked in the silence of the night. A few hours later they were out of Libya. The owner of the small fishing boat had taken, well-calculated risks. He knew the Mediterranean Sea on that side like his pocket. In spite of the radar and the blockade of the air and naval space by NATO forces, it was not forbidden for a fisherman to gain his pittance in case he was to be spotted this is what he would explain and better, the 10 thousand dollars that he was raking in this smuggling operation would put him in the shade of need for a good time.

Mariam after a brief stay in Egypt following her exfiltration from Libya, settled in France with her husband. Since 2014, she has been the mother of a little girl. Currently she is finishing a master's degree in hospital management. Her husband has invested in real estate. NB the names of the characters in this story have been changed for anonymity.

Hubert Marlin Journalist