When the Libyan uprising happened, I was protesting alongside other young people my age.
While we were marching towards Martyr Square there was a lot of tear gas explosions from
pro-Gaddafi soldiers and a lot of bullets started to hit the peaceful protesters.
There was a young man, younger than me, I think 16 or 17.
That was the first time that i see a man who gets shot and draws a lot of blood from his
body.
The experiences that happened to me and that happened to the people around me and the stories
that I heard, I think that's what shaped and influenced my writing.
In the first months of the uprising everything was shut, the internet was shut and that was
the platform that we were working on but through those months writing helped me to get through
the period of desperation, the period of loss of hope.
What I write about is not everyone's cup of tea, the things I talk about the stories I
write, not everyone writes about those things, not everyone writes about the fears of the
Libyan people, the little details that's happening inside the country beside the political change
and the political tension and political conflict.
I wanted to discover the point of view of a Libyan soldier who was a supporter of a
Gaddafi regime, because in that time in 2012 and 2011 there was a lot of tension against
everyone who supported Gaddafi.
Not just the soldiers themselves, and people started to call the soldiers devils and minions
of the tyrant and there was a lot of tension so me myself, I was in frustration but i wanted
to discover the humanity in those soldiers.
I think the power that literature has in all its forms is that it gives people an alternative
history, an alternative way to look through things and and to look through themselves
before they even connect to the outside world so when they look to put themselves through
the stories, through novels, short stories, through poetry they they get to connect to
their place in the world and how they can see the world in a different view, outside
of the formal and political and traditional point of view that the government or anyone
in power wants them to see.