A Symbol of Defiance in Gadhafi’s Libya, Eman Al-Obeidi Just Wants to Be Left Alone in Colorado
The caller ID on Eman al-Obeidi’s smart phone says private number. She guesses the call is from a fellow Libyan and promptly silences the ringer.
“I think the halal meat seller gave out my number,” she says, picking up another piece of sizzling beef fajita. “That’s why I don’t buy halal meat anymore.”
If only that were enough to lose the gossip that follows her, even in her new home far away from the native land she fled. Her fellow Libyans are her harshest judges.
The world knows her as the Libyan woman who stormed into Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel a little more than a year ago in March, screaming of gang rape by Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s thugs.
In that moment of utter defiance, splashed on television screens everywhere, she became a face of the Libyan revolution, her heroism a source of inspiration for men and women fighting a longtime tyrant. Some even said she was to Libya what Mohamed Bouazizi, the fruit vendor who set himself afire, was to Tunisia’s revolution. A few weeks ago, Newsweek magazine included her on its list of 150 fearless women.
Al-Obeidi drew sympathy and fame, her image painted for the public on a canvas of courage.
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Now, in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies, she says she craves anonymity.
The accidental activist wants no longer to be one, though she’s aware that had she remained quiet, she might have been just another one of Gadhafi’s nameless victims.
She stopped looking at Facebook, where her distress was debated, and distanced herself from anyone who dared to judge her.
Some people didn’t believe her story after Gadhafi’s government labeled her a drunk and a prostitute who had lied for attention. They said she had brought shame upon her people. She grew frustrated, too, with compatriots who squabbled with each other about a post-Gadhafi nation. And those who she felt did little to help her.
In this Boulder cantina, she takes stock of her life. She only did what she felt she had to do, she sighs.
Then, in those indelible hotel images, she was hysterical — tears streaming down her cheeks, her flesh bruised and torn. Now, she manages a smile, lips quivering.
She gained asylum last summer in the United States and found herself a refugee in Denver even before Gadhafi was gone and a new Libya took root. She thought she, like her homeland, would begin again. But like Libya itself, al-Obeidi is struggling to reconcile past and present.