“That a man dies is insignificant, but that a people’s heritage with its language and myths dies is the significant death,” wrote Libyan Said Sifaw Mahrouq in his novel, ‘Midnight Sound.’ The sentiment can be applied to the near death of the Amazigh culture in Libya.
Eight-year-old Amesnaw A’war is teaching his parents a part of their culture they had almost entirely forgotten. Having grown up as Berbers under Gaddafi, Amesaw’s parents were not allowed to speak their native language or celebrate their culture.
“That a man dies is insignificant, but that a people’s heritage with its language and myths dies is the significant death,” wrote Libyan Said Sifaw Mahrouq in his novel, ‘Midnight Sound.’ The sentiment can be applied to the near death of the Amazigh culture in Libya.
Eight-year-old Amesnaw A’war is teaching his parents a part of their culture they had almost entirely forgotten. Having grown up as Berbers under Gaddafi, Amesaw’s parents were not allowed to speak their native language or celebrate their culture.
Berber is a very old language and was the official language of the inhabitants of North Africa prior to the seventh century Islamic conquests. It is still spoken by Berbers in Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.
The Berbers of Libya in particular were exposed to brutal suppression under Gaddafi’s regime, which even prevented parents from giving their children Berber names, which made most of them hold two names: one in Arabic officially registered in their IDs, a Berber one, by which they were known in their areas and among their families.
Individual initiatives
After the fall of Gaddafi, a number of citizens took the initiative and began teaching Berber (Tifinagh) again.
“In the midst of the revolution, my son, Bundug, started teaching children Berber at a charity, which prompted citizens to ask the officials of the city of Zuwara—in far western Libya— to teach it,” said Fawziyah Ezabi.
Under the supervision of the local council and civil society organizations, a Berber teacher from Morocco was invited to teach 73 citizens for two weeks, according to Ezabi.
“I immediately enrolled for such courses after a long wait,” said Riyad Qattoussah, a 35-year-old participant in Berber language courses. “The first lesson started with exclaiming ‘God is Great’, tears and asking God to have mercy upon martyrs. We were taught grammar and basics of pronunciation and writing.”
Qattoussah stressed that the courses were characterized by greatly responsive participants. One impressed teacher said: “I thought I would teach you Berber but it seems that it is I will learn it more through you. I did not think you knew it that much.'”
Irresponsive authorities
All the Berber-teaching initiatives have so far been from private individuals and sometimes supported by local councils, while authorities have taken no positive step to support this requirement.
“We have formed a committee to follow-up teaching Berber and it has contacted the Ministry of Education and the Prime Ministry in this regard several times, but we have received no answer,” explained Riyad Saki, a member of the Zuwara Local Council.
This prompted the local councils of Zuwara, Nalut, Kabaw, Jadu, Qalaa, Rhebat and Yafran – regions of Berber majority located in Western Libya – to issue a decision in the first half of December 2012 to teach Berber in their schools.
Berber in school curricula
“The councils in Nalut held an expanded meeting that was attended by all the General National Congress members for the Berber-speaking areas. During the meeting, a decision was issued to teach Berber for the first three elementary grades as an initial phase.”
In implementation of this decision, those local councils held training courses for a number of teachers who would assume that task. The last course graduated 78 teachers in Rhebat.
Nuha Assi, a teacher who followed one of those courses in Zuwara criticized the authorities for neglecting Berber, saying, “The new state has never paid attention to our dream and right to learn and teach Berber; therefore, we have relied on ourselves.”
Assi explained that after she and her colleagues followed the course, they started teaching schoolchildren letters in addition to some songs. “The day we received the textbooks was a day when tears of sadness shed on those who left us for such a day was mixed with tears of joy for what we received,” she added.
Persecuted for teaching Berber
Three decades ago, Omran Abu Assu’oud was kidnapped from his hometown, Zuwara, and imprisoned for seven years in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli for teaching Berber. Given that the four decades of Gaddafi’s rule were long and capable of damaging and weakening the language, activist Abu Assu’oud was one of the founders of ‘Al-Jazira Cultural Club’ in Zuwara in 1964, through which they carried out several activities to support their right to speak Berber.
“Despite all pressures made by Gaddafi’s regime, we used to include Berber within the club’s cultural activities. We also published posters and leaflets in Tifinagh at a time when demanding a right was a treachery and the victim was the culprit,” Abu Assu’oud said.
“While policemen were wiping those slogans off walls, teachers of the Southern School in Zuwara used to allow me to take their classes to teach Berber, unnoticed by officials,” said Abu Assu’oud tearfully.
Political asylum
Abu Assu’oud’s suffering by the former regime was repeated in other forms among the Berbers who are mostly based in the Nafusa Mountains, Zuwara and the southern desert. Osman Ben Sasi had to flee abroad because he was wanted by the regime, making him Libya’s first Berber political refugee. The regime also liquidated his colleague, writer Said Sifaw Mahrouq.
“In 1975,” recalled Sasi, “I was a bank employee. The manager issued a decision banning speaking Berber inside the bank. Provoked by this unjust decision, my colleagues and I founded a Tripoli-based secret group concerned with cultural activities in general and with Berber in particular. This group was a great success in most Libyan areas, which angered the regime and consequently forced me to leave the country.”
Abroad, Ben Sasi continued his struggle for his cause and co-founded international organizations advocating for the rights of Berbers. “This struggle was not in vain when we see that Berber is taught in schools, whether we agree or disagree on how to teach it, because we are content with Tifinagh being written by our children’s pencils,” he said.
