Diplomacy

Our fridge has all of two things on it. One is a photo of me at five. The other is a magnet that says LIBYA. 

Two years ago, I couldn't find my mom for the life of me. She surfaces a week later to say she'd been flown to the desert to talk shop over camel milk with Gaddafi. (Note: this is not even the strangest thing this woman has ever said.)

It helps to know that Libya was a major benefactor of Liberia. As you can imagine, this became...tricky.

We're driving through Monrovia, for example, and Pierre says, "That's Gaddafi's building." I look up: it's U.N. headquarters.

Liberia severed relations with Libya this year. Unfinished projects (rice paddies, rubber farms) dot our country; the saddest and least-practical of these is the five-star hotel that was also, later, a homeless shelter.

Once, I asked a family friend what she was still doing with her husband. Not one of her reasons was entirely satisfactory. I must have gotten her thinking because a year later she left him.

I guess being friends with Gaddafi was a lot like that.