When US basketball player Alex Owumi
signed a contract to play for a team in
Benghazi, Libya, he had no idea that his
employer was the the most feared man in
the country. Nor did he guess the country
was about to descend into war. Here he
tells his story, parts of which some
readers may find distressing.
It was a beautiful flat. Everything was
state of the art and it was spacious, too.
It had two big living rooms, three big
bedrooms, flat screens everywhere. The
couches had gold trim and were so big
and heavy they were impossible to move.
The door to the apartment was reinforced
steel, like on a bank vault.
It was 27 December 2010 and I had just
arrived in Benghazi, Libya’s second
biggest city, to play basketball for a team
called Al-Nasr Benghazi. I had stayed in
some nice places playing for teams in
Europe, but this seventh-floor apartment
in the middle of town was something
else. It was like the Taj Mahal.
I didn’t immediately notice the
photographs dotted around the place – of
Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi and
his grandchildren.
When I did, I phoned the team president
– we called him Mr Ahmed – and he told
me how it was. “The apartment belongs to
Mutassim Gaddafi, the Colonel’s son,” he
said. “Al-Nasr is the Gaddafi club. You are
playing for the Gaddafi family.
Gaddafi! When I was a young kid growing
up in Africa – I was born in Nigeria –
Gaddafi was someone we all looked up to.
He was always on the news and in the
paper, helping out countries like Niger
and Nigeria. I thought of him as one of
the faces of Africa – him and Nelson
Mandela. As a kid I wasn’t really aware of
any of the bad things he was doing.
Maybe I was too busy playing sports.
In my first practice with my new team-
mates there was a weird atmosphere. I
asked the other international player on
the team, Moustapha Niang from Senegal,
“Why does everybody look so depressed?”
And he explained it to me. “We’ve been
losing,” he said. “They haven’t been
getting paid, some of them are getting
physically abused. If we don’t win our
next game, some of these kids are going
to get beat.”
A lot of the players had scratches and
banged-up bruises on their arms. One
had a black eye he was trying to conceal.
Gaddafi’s security goons would push them
up against lockers, things like that – and
some of these guys were not big athletes
like me and Moustapha. During practice
you could see some of them were just
scared to make mistakes. But in any sport
you’re going to make mistakes, you’re
going to make bad plays. I can’t go into a
game and trust people who are scared.
The next day, we travelled to a game in
Tripoli on a private jet like we were a
team playing in the NBA [the National
Basketball Association in the US]. That’s
how it was with Al-Nasr and the Gaddafi
family – they got extra funding, extra
millions of dollars. But the deal was we
were supposed to win – and when we
lost, it was a problem.
Col Gaddafi was at that game. Before the
start I saw him sitting with his military
personnel up in the stands in a white
dress uniform. Walking on the court was
his son, Saadi Gaddafi, the man in charge
of sport in Libya. We spoke and honestly,
he seemed like a nice man who just loved
sport.
As we were talking, I looked into the
stands at his father and we locked eyes.
It lasted just a moment, but my team-
mates saw it and my fans saw it. We won
that game by 10 points and afterwards, in
the locker room, Mr Ahmed handed out
envelopes, each containing about $1,000
(£600) in dinars. “From our leader,” he
said.
After that game I started to get a lot of
special treatment around the country
because I had been personally
acknowledged by the Gaddafi family. I
never had to pay for food at the markets
or in restaurants again. Everything from
socks to a new TV and laptop – I got it all
free or on a sort of open-ended loan. I
never had to pay anything, not a dime.
And after that game, we just kept winning
and winning. I was the point guard – the
captain, the conductor of the orchestra.
We just kept winning and my team-mates
weren’t scared any more.
But we noticed that our team coach,
Coach Sharif, was often sad during
practice. He was Egyptian and was
worried about the situation back home –
by this time, the revolution there was in
full swing. There were rumours that there
would be an uprising in Libya, but I never
really took them seriously. We’re talking
about a country where the leader had
been in power for 42 years. Who in their
right mind would cross that kind of
leadership, that kind of army?
From the roof of my apartment in
Benghazi I could see the whole of the
city. I liked going up to the roof,
especially when I was homesick and
missed my family. I could really clear my
mind up there.
But on 17 February 2011, at about 09:15
in the morning, I go on to the rooftop
and see 200, maybe 300 protesters
outside a police station across the street.
A military convoy is coming closer and
closer. Then, without warning, shots.
People running, people falling. Dead
bodies all over the ground. I’m praying,
praying that this is a dream, that I will
wake up sometime soon.
With these bullets flying everywhere, I’m
hugging the floor of the rooftop. I am so
frightened. So many things are running
through my head and I just can’t think
straight. After 10 minutes or so, the
shooting stops and there is only wailing
and screaming.
I go back to my apartment and close the
door. I call Coach Sharif. It takes a long
time before my call is connected, but
eventually he picks up. He tells me that
he’s on his way out of the country, back
to Egypt, but that I should stay in my
apartment and that somebody will come
for me.
I try calling Moustapha but there is no
connection. Over and over I punch the
numbers on my phone, but the networks
are down. The internet is down. I sit
huddled against a big metal bookcase,
praying.
Every now and then I peek out the
window. The crowds of men have
dispersed. Instead, I see kids, kids I
played soccer with on the street. They
have turned into rebels now, with their
own shotguns and machetes. Regular life
is over – it’s every man for himself.
I watch as a little girl tries to drag her
father back to their house. He’s so heavy
her mother has to come and help her. I
can see the blood leaking from his head.
His eyes are just gone, popped out of his
head. And they can’t move his body. They
just sit by the road, wailing.
There is a bang on my door. I open it and
two soldiers ask me, “American or
Libyan?” I show them my American
passport and they let me go back in. I
shut the door. About 15 minutes later I
hear a commotion in the hallway – yelling
and scuffling. When it dies down a little, I
open my door to see what’s going on and
I see a man, my neighbour, lying in the
doorway to his apartment. He’s covered
with blood and isn’t moving. For a
moment I think he’s dead.
I know this man and I like him. He has a
daughter, about 16 years of age, and
sometimes after practice I sit with her in
the hallway and help her practise English.
I hear these noises coming from around
the corner of the hallway. Strange noises
– crying and heavy breathing. I creep
slowly around the corner and see an
AK-47 on the ground. I creep further
round the corner and see one of the
soldiers on the stairwell with his pants
down raping that little girl.
There’s so much anger in me. I reach for
the gun, but then the other soldier steps
out of the shadows, and pokes me with
his own AK-47. I think he might just pull
the trigger and blow me away.
But he doesn’t. He just shoos me back to
my apartment, jabbing at me with his
gun. I’m yelling at him in English, calling
him every name under the sun, but I
don’t have it in me to take him on.
There’s nothing I can do. He closes the
steel door on me and I sink to the
ground, weeping, banging my head
against the door. I can still hear that poor
girl on the stairwell. I can’t do anything to
help her.
As a Christian, it’s hard for me to say this,
but there were many times I questioned
my faith in God. That first day I just sat
on the ground, crying and praying, trying
my phone again and again.
There was a group of women next door
who had a baby who was crying with
hunger. Libyans don’t tend to keep much
food in the house – they buy fresh
groceries every day. So I gave them most
of what I had – just a couple of slices of
bread and some cheese – thinking that in
two or three days this would be over.
But it carried on – the screams, the
sirens, the gunshots. Non-stop, 24 hours
a day. My apartment was in a war zone. It
was all around me, I was just a dot in the
middle of the circle of the bull’s-eye. I
told myself that I would be rescued, that
at any moment Navy Seals would come
crashing through my steel door. I kept
myself ready to go at a moment’s notice. I
didn’t go to bed, but just took short naps
throughout the day and night.
The police station on the other side of the
road was set on fire. The policemen
climbed on to the roof, which was the
same height as my apartment building. I
stared at them across the street and they
stared back at me.
I had no power and no water. The food I
had left over was gone in a day or two. I
rationed the little water I had for four or
five days, then it was gone. So I started
drinking out of the toilet, using teabags to
try to make it more palatable. When I
needed to go to the toilet, which wasn’t
much, I would urinate in the bathtub and
defecate into plastic bags, which I tied up
and left by the door.
I realised that if I didn’t do these things I
wouldn’t survive. Three or four days after
the massacre I had seen from the roof, a
building across the street collapsed. The
next day, the Libyan Air Force started
dropping bombs all over Benghazi as they
tried to retake the city.
I thought – I have those couches with
gold trim but I can’t eat this gold. These
flat screens are not going to feed me.
Everything in this apartment is worthless.
The things that we take for granted as
human beings – water, a bit of cheese, a
slice of bread – suddenly these things felt
like luxuries, luxuries I didn’t have. I was
getting weaker every day, slowly starving.
When the hunger pains got really bad, I
started eating cockroaches and worms
that I picked out of the flowerpots on my
windowsill. I’d seen Bear Grylls survival
shows on TV and seemed to recall that it
was better to eat them alive, that they
kept their nutrients that way. They were
wriggly and salty, but I was so hungry it
was like eating a steak.
I started seeing myself, versions of myself
at different ages. Three-year-old Alex,
eight-year-old Alex, at 12 years, 15 years,
20 years and the current, 26-year-old
version. The younger ones were on one
side, and the older versions on the other.
I was able to touch them and I talked to
them every day.
And I noticed that the younger Alexes
were different, happier somehow, than
the older versions, who seemed to have
lost their direction. I asked the younger
Alexes: “What happened? How can I get
back to that happiness? How can I get my
life back on track?” I asked them, “What
made me make bad decisions?”
Twelve days after I shut myself away in
my apartment, my mobile phone rang. It
was Moustapha. “My brother, how you
doin’?” he said. I told him I wasn’t doing
too well. He was stuck in his apartment
on the other side of the city, too. And he
told me that my girlfriend, Alexis, had
called him from the US, frantic with worry
about me.
When we spoke again the next day
Moustapha told me that our team
president, Mr Ahmed, had promised to
get us out of the country. We had to make
our way to his office – it was only two
blocks from my apartment, but I wasn’t
sure how I would get there. “I will see you
or I won’t,” I told Moustapha. “I will make
it or I won’t.”
I was so weak that it took me about 15
minutes to climb down the seven flights
of stairs in my apartment building. Out on
the street I saw the empty shell cases that
had been fired at the crowd two weeks
earlier. I picked one up and thought, “Did
this go through a human being?” They
weren’t like handgun bullets – they were
the sort of thing that could take a limb
off.
Then I saw those same kids I had
watched from my window, the ones I had
played football with – one had an AK-47
that was almost bigger than him. They
recognised me and called out: “Okocha!”
They called me that because they thought
I looked like Jay-Jay Okocha, the Nigerian
footballer. These kids saw my legs start to
buckle and they raced to grab my arms.
Two of them took my arms and I made
them understand where I needed to get
to.
They basically had to carry me for about a
mile. We went the long way, down
backstreets and alleyways. Sometimes
they would break into a run, and
sometimes one of the kids would shout
and we all stopped dead and looked
around.
At my team president’s office, Moustapha
and I hugged, and Mr Ahmed told the two
of us, “I could get you out of here, but it’s
going to be very dangerous.” He said it
would mean a six-hour drive on a long
desert road to the Egyptian border. Just a
few days earlier, he had hired a car to
take a Cameroonian footballer to the
border. But this footballer had panicked
at a rebel checkpoint and made a run for
it across the desert. He had been gunned
down.
Moustapha didn’t want to do it but I
managed to convince him. And all the
time we were talking it over, I was
stuffing my face with cakes and drinking
bottles of water. It gave me enough
energy to get back to my apartment on my
own two feet, accompanied by my band of
miniature warriors.
I packed a small suitcase and at about
02:00 a car horn beeped outside. It was
our car to Egypt – a tiny vehicle with
Moustapha – all 6’10″ (2.08m) of him –
already jammed into the front seat.
Fifteen minutes outside Benghazi we got
to our first checkpoint – rebels searching
through our stuff, throwing our clothes
on the floor, looking for our passports. As
black men, we were suspected of being
Gaddafi mercenaries trying to escape the
country.
At one point the rebels, guns in hand,
kicked the legs from under Moustapha. I
thought he was going to be gunned right
down in front of me. The driver kept
telling them, “They’re just basketball
players, they’re just basketball players.”
But there was so much turmoil, so much
death around the city, that people didn’t
believe anything.
By the grace of God they finally let us go.
But there were another seven of those
checkpoints, and instead of it being a six
or seven-hour journey, it was 12 hours
because we had to stop so often. We were
searched and kicked to our knees so
many times, thrown in the dirt. It was
rough – and if I ever see that driver again
I will give him all the money in my pocket.
We crossed the Egyptian border and after
three days in a refugee camp, I could
have begun the journey home to the US.
But while I was waiting at the border for
the Cairo bus to leave, I got a call from
Coach Sharif. He told me: “I want you to
come to Alexandria, stay with me and my
wife, and get yourself back together, talk
to us.”
I thought about it and realised that I
needed some time – I didn’t want my
family to see me the way I was. So I said
goodbye to Moustapha and took the bus
to Alexandria.
When Coach Sharif saw me, he shook his
head, saying: “This is not the guy I’ve
come to know. This is not him.” I looked
different – the pigment on my face was
discoloured, I had hair all over my face.
My teeth were rotten brown, my eyes
were bloodshot red. But it wasn’t just
that. He basically saw that my soul was
gone. And he said, the times I saw you
happy were when you played basketball.
So while he and his wife took care of me,
he got me involved with an Alexandrian
team called El Olympi, coached by one of
his former players. And it wasn’t about
the money any more, I didn’t care about
that. The big thing was being normal
again.
I had a check-up before I started playing
and I found that that fortnight without
food had killed my body. Being a
professional athlete, my body was used to
a high-calorie diet. My liver was messed
up, my lungs were bad, my blood was not
right.
But I played anyway. El Olympi wanted me
to help them make the playoffs, but we
ended up winning 13 games in a row and
taking the championship. It was amazin
That decision to play the rest of the
season in Egypt was a lot for my mum
and my girlfriend to take, though.
When I went home and saw my father
again I shed tears. He was in a diabetic
coma. Had he gone into this coma
because I didn’t want to come home, his
youngest son? I felt very, very guilty.
I was diagnosed with post-traumatic
stress disorder. I would shut myself at
home for 15 hours with the blinds closed.
I didn’t shower. My girlfriend, Alexis,
would come home and find me like that
and it took a toll on our relationship. I
got a lot of treatment, a lot of therapy.
But I was raised in the Catholic church,
and I found going back to church was a
way back to my regular self.
As for my old team-mates in Benghazi,
there was nowhere for them to go, no
way for them to escape. A lot of them had
to fight in the war. I am still in touch with
one of them and with Moustapha, who I
speak to about once a fortnight. I saw him
last summer and gave him the biggest
hug in the world. We’re partners for life.
I have tried very hard to get in touch with
that girl who lived across the hallway
from me in Benghazi. I’ve found nothing,
just nothing.
I was trying to forget about everything
that had happened to me. But my family
convinced me that I needed to get my
story out there, so I wrote a memoir,
Qaddafi’s Point Guard. Doing that was
hard – there were a lot of tears.
I don’t regret going to Libya. In life, just
like in basketball, you’re going to make
mistakes, you’re going to make bad plays.
But God has a plan for everybody – you
could go left, you could go right, you’re
going to end up on his path at the end of
the day.
My girlfriend and I are still together, and
after a break from the game, I am playing
again, this time in England, for the
Worcester Wolves. My team-mates don’t
really know how to deal with me. I still get
depressed just like that. In a minute, I go
from happy to sad. I am liable to snap at
people. They just leave me alone and I’m
grateful for their understanding.
When I close my eyes I relive moments
from 2011. I see faces, I see spirits. So
staying awake is my best bet. I only sleep
for four hours and by 08:00 I’m excited to
go to practice. Basketball is an escape for
me. The only time I get to be calm is in
those 40 minutes of a game.
I do get really bad anxiety attacks before
games, though. My hands get sweaty and
start to shake. I can’t breathe, I can’t
function. Sometimes I can’t leave the
locker room. People look at me and say,
“Woah, this dude is so crazy.” But that’s
normal for me now. That’s normal life.
Source: BBC
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