The attendant at Zia international was so pleased I'd visited the country that she bumped my return flight to first class. "Please come back and visit us, sometime!". Following me onto the plane were a large group of Bangladeshi men of various ages, all dressed in dark blue uniforms. On their backs, in letters they could not read, was the logo of the construction company they'd be serving. Each man held a manila folder with a job description written clearly at the top. "Welder", "Sanitation Engineer", "Heavy Equipment Operator", "Pipelayer"....it looked and felt like something out of a dystopian novel.
When I asked Nazrul sitting next to me (until a flight attendant forced him to move) where he and his men were headed, he smiled and said, "Libya". He said he would be there for two years, maybe more, that he knew nothing about the country, and not a word of Arabic. In the unfolding drama that is Bahrain, Libya and beyond, the role of these men, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, will remain largely untold. When all of this is over, will they remain a vulnerable, disposessed class of laborers living in constant fear of deportation?
Perhaps Nazrul made it to Italy as he said he would, maybe he's among the hundreds of deshis now held hostage in eastern Libya. For now, though, all I can think of is a nervous Ghaddafi pacing to and fro in a room somewhere, surrounded by his trusted Amazons, wondering how he got there and where he'll run away to next.
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Update: Hostages Freed.
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