![]() What interested me was the size of the audience. The image of the Lockerbie bomber recently returned on compassionate grounds from a Scottish prison to Libya had also flickered very briefly before our eyes. It all ended at 0300 in the morning in a paean of praise for African unity with a voiceover giving a roll-call of all the countries of Africa. The often eccentric, unpredictable leader has come in from the coldĪ cast of nearly 1,000 dancers, acrobats, actors on stilts, and scores of galloping white-robed Bedouin horsemen recreated the history of this huge country during a three-hour sound, light and laser extravaganza.Īll this against a running backdrop of films of the resistance movement in the early years of the last century against the often brutal Italian colonial occupation, and of the achievements of Colonel Gaddafi's 1969 revolution. The flaps of the plastic and steel mock-up mega-tent opened to reveal a stage larger than that of La Scala opera house in Milan or the Bolshoi theatre in Moscow. And a useful place for meeting and greeting foreign dignitaries. The colonel still likes to take a tent with him to stay in when he travels abroad. Imagine a monster Bedouin tent, the sort that the nomadic Libyan tribesmen from whom Colonel Gaddafi claims descent call home during their journeys through the unending desert wastes of the Sahara. It could stand comparison with any Cecil B DeMille Hollywood production - a lavish one-night seafront spectacle costing millions and ending with an apocalyptic firework display in the steamy heat of an African summer night. David Willey, who first visited Libya seven years before Gaddafi took over, witnessed the festivities. The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been celebrating the 40th anniversary of the military coup which brought him to power in 1969. ![]() A cast of dancers, acrobats, actors, and scores of galloping Bedouin horsemen recreated Libya's history ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |