Posted by Happy birthday to my mother!! Well, yinz got a story about my father yesterday. Here’s one about the rock of our family, my mother:
Shortly after getting married, my mother moved from Bangladesh to Tripoli, Libya where my dad was living. It was the first time she had left the subcontinent. On one of their first nights in the city, she was awoken by the sound of gunfire in the distance.
“What’s going on?!” she asked my father.
“Oh it’s just a wedding. The Libyans like to shoot off their guns into the air to celebrate,” he replied.
“Oh okay.” And she went back to sleep.
The next morning she awoke to the news that there had been a Coup D’État in Libya! Some hotshot Colonel named Muammar Qaddafi had seized power! Yup, she slept whilst a coup had been taken place.
In the ensuing years, whilst working at a radio station, she actually met Qaddafi and would see him driving around Tripoli (unguarded) in his convertible.
To hear her tell this story is pretty hilarious because it’s just so matter-of-fact. “Oh sure, we used to see Qaddafi driving around all the time.” Just regular ol’ life. Nah, that’s anything but regular. Much like my mother.
Well, if I can live my life with even just a fraction of my mother’s grace and humor, methinks that’ll be more than good enough.
