On 2 January, New Lines Magazine published an article by Libya researcher Mary Fitzgerald, titled ‘In Life and Death, Libyan Poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi Sang the Song of Derna’. Looking back at the flooding disaster that swept through the eastern Libyan city of Derna in September last year, Fitzgerald recounts the harrowing final hours in the life of local poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi, who is said to have predicted the tragedy in his final poem about the rain. In the lead-up to the catastrophe, she says, Trabelsi lamented that ‘local authorities were not only ill-prepared but also lacked sufficient rescue personnel and equipment’. Fitzgerald concludes that for the Libyans today, ‘the poem — and the story of Trabelsi’s life and death — was a damning indictment of their political elite’.
Read the full article here.