Colonel Gaddafi’s Hat

Cars and ambulances are soon screeching up to the front entrance of the hospital, loaded with casualties. One man is brought in lying on his stomach with a large anti-tank bomb sticking up into the air, having lodged grotesquely in the back of his thigh. It is unexploded and he is still conscious, muttering ‘Allahu Akbar’ repeatedly as the medics run with him on a mobile stretcher straight into the lift so he can be taken up to the operating theatre. ‘He will be all right,’ one doctor tells me as he sees my horrified face.

A young boy is brought in screaming, writhing around a stretcher as adults try to hold him still to tend to the wound on his head. The doctors say he was shot as he sat on his front doorstep playing with his friends. Was that the indiscriminate spraying we saw earlier? The hospital staff show us at least two ambulances which have been strafed with bullets, through the windscreens, along the sides and through the rear windows.

While we are watching the injured being unloaded from one of the wrecked ambulances, with crowds of hospital staff around them all wearing white coats, there is more firing. Some of the bullets seem to land in the centre of the crowd of doctors. They scatter, leaving the injured man at the entrance marooned on his stretcher. It is a knee-jerk reaction and, within moments, a few return and drag the casualty to relative safety inside. Nowhere seems safe any more.

Tim and I go outside to make a satellite phone call. We have to be outside for the signal to work. But while we are trying to make the connection a Gaddafi jet roars overhead, sweeping low over the hospital. Christ! Is he going to start dropping bombs on his people from the skies now? When we get through to London – while we are telling them the news of the latest attack – there is firing above us. It seems to be coming from the hospital roof. Is there someone up there? Who is shooting, and are they shooting at us? Have they seen us? Are we being targeted or is this shooting, so close by, just coincidence? We run back inside.

There are tanks firing now and the noises sound very close to the hospital. The shelling is making the windows rattle. Nurses are busy trying to barricade the windows and give themselves more protection by leaning stretchers up against them.

Martin has gone to try to find a window higher up so he can get a better view of the area. He hopes to spot some of the military vehicles and get a clearer idea about what they are doing. There are clouds of smoke coming from the direction of the Square. Those poor, poor people. I can barely stop myself weeping for them. And I am scared for us too, very scared. I hate being apart from Martin or Tim now. I am constantly wondering and worrying about where they are. The doctors occasionally see me wandering around on my own and without prompting they say: ‘He’s gone upstairs to film’ – talking about Martin, or ‘He’s in the office’ – referring to Tim. I must look terribly lost and worried. I certainly feel it.

Dr M is still with us, popping in and out of surgery to find us and check on us. He is still working hard at trying to find someone to drive us out. Still no joy at all. He has been back to the Square himself to try to locate his own car and shows us pictures of it on his mobile phone. It has been blown up or incinerated by some sort of bomb. We don’t know what destroyed it but we do know it’s probably not going to pass an MOT test again.

Like us, the doctor and his son are stuck. I am constantly amazed, we all are, by his composure. He is here in the most horrible of circumstances with his young son. It’s bad enough being here as an adult, looking after yourself and hoping. But to also have the worry of making sure your child is OK too? Yet he is calm and charming and constantly worrying about us.

I find myself down one of the corridors trying to get back to our ‘office’ and the others when I turn a corner and see the formation of about twenty doctors all in their white coats kneeling down in the corner praying. They are praying for help. I stop, sensing I am intruding. But this feels like a public demonstration, an affirmation of faith. This is INSHALLAH in big, capital letters. It is in God’s hands.

Chapter Four