FATHERS OF NATIONS GUIDE, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERSFathers of Nations Chapter Nine (Pg.117-125)Engineer SeifTahir loses his left eye.
After graduating from Abdelaziz Academy in Tripoli, Libya, Engineer Seif Tahir had left Libya and gone to study weapons development at the University of Paris. Some skeptics scoffed at him.
He returned from overseas (France) on the day the leader of Libya was celebrating his twentieth year in power. The leader's opponents were not happy with these celebrations. Engineer Tahir dismissed them as "crackpots left alone and ignored." He believed the ruler had the right vision for Libya and so was the right person to rule it. He defended the ruler. Engineer Tahir joined the "Fist for Allah" after his return from the overseas. In a happy coincidence, the leader of Libya adored the "Fist of Allah." He gave it all the money it asked for. Al-Qaeda struck on the American soil. The leader of Libya knew America would retaliate and not necessarily with bounds of reason. He scrambled for his bases to shield Libya from America's revenge. He even dismantled thc "Fist of Allah" itself. Engineer Tahir would have learnt to live with anything but not with the dismantling of the "Fist of Allah." This was the beginning of Tahir's dislike for the leader. The dismantling of the "Fist of Allah" was shirq or sacrilege, an offense so dreadful that it was eternally unforgivable. Angry beyond words, Engineer Tahir now hated the man he had once liked. No more was the leader of Libya his hero. He had become a villain. Meanwhile, dismantling of the "Fist of Allah" coincided with the peaking of unrelated crisis: "the accident." Engineer Tahir fell in love with Rahma Mahmoud, a female member of the "Fist of Allah" and Engineer Tahir's junior staff mate at the weapons laboratory. He approached her. She did not say anything. Later, she smiled and after sometime, she said no. Engineer Tahir misinterpreted the sweet no to a sour no and reacted to it violently. Unwisely, he vowed to retaliate. Engineer Tahir slapped Rahma Mahmoud in the name of administering discipline to her for shedding her head veil in public which was in violation of the Libyan culture. But the truth was he did it to take revenge against someone who he thought had rejected his advances. Discipline, revenge or whatever it in fact was, Rahma, did not take it lying low. She struck back and hit his left eye and slit it open. That was "the accident." Engineer Tahir lost his left eye.
Engineer Tahir was hospitalized and discharged after a month. Turned bitter and vengeful, Engineer Tahir to Ms. Mahmoud to court. After proceedings, the made a ruling basing on Hammurabic verdict: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
With this ruling, Rahma Mahmoud also lost her left eye through surgery. Engineer Tahir sank into deep gloom. He refused to shake it off even after friends talking to him. When they (friends) persisted, he left Tripoli and moved east to live alone in Benghazi. There were two reasons for Engineer Tahir's gloom. One was object, forcing and lifeless. He got it after losing an eye in what he used to call "the accident." The other was "the effect", deep and weakening. This he got when he decided to have an artificial replacement for the eye he had lost. While at Benghazi, Engineer Tahir ran into a green-eyed stranger at a street-side café. The two got talking, mostly about the history of Libya; one such story was that Libya was inhibitedby Phoenicians and Greeks. The other man said he was a Berber. The two had long conversations about Libya. The visitor introduced himself as Mr. Tad Longway. Mr. Tad Longway described the mission that had brought him to Benghazi. Engineer Tahir enlisted on the spot.
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