by Hisham Matar, 2024
My Friends is Hisham Matar’s third novel and was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. It covers the tumultuous decades just before and after the Arab Spring in Islamic countries and in the surrounding countries where those fleeing persecution took refuge. The main character, a young Libyan student named Khaled, is purportedly attending college in Scotland in the early 1980s. But in 1984, his friend Mustafa talks him into attending an anti-Qaddafi protest outside the Libyan Embassy in London, just across from St. James Square. Khaled is no activist; he’s going along almost reluctantly, for the thrill of doing something rebellious, for the thrill of wearing a balaclava so he can’t be identified…he’s never done anything like this before.
[Links in this post are affiliate links, meaning if you make a purchase I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.]
The problem is, the protest was also attended by the Libyan secret police, who were armed. They considered anyone who was openly protesting Qaddafi to be enemies of the state. They opened fire on the crowds, killing a British police officer and wounding several others. Khaled is one of the civilians who was severely injured, and he ends up in the hospital for six weeks, using a false name. He is eventually granted political asylum in Great Britain after his release from the hospital.
Even though this book is historical fiction, this protest outside the Libyan Embassy is historical fact—it did take place in April 1984, a female British officer was slain, and many others were injured. As a result of this incident, Britain and Libya broke off diplomatic relations and the Libyan Embassy was closed.
After this event, the political situation is so dangerous that Khaled cannot even divulge to his parents back in Libya that he attended the protest for fear that he will put them in danger. He does not know if his letters back home are being read. He does not know if his phone is bugged. He does not know if he would be arrested upon setting foot in Libya again, so he stays away. He does not see his family again for the next 10 years, and when he does, they come to visit him in London. It’s staggering to see the political and personal consequences a young man is forced to pay for making one foolish choice that ended up altering the whole course of his life.
The friendships he makes in the UK are the subject of the book and they are what sustain him during this period of exile. He describes how his friends grow and change, come together and drift apart, as they all navigate living in a place where they never intended to stay. After the Arab Spring around 2010, they must all contemplate and decide about whether to return to Libya, and all make different decisions that make sense for them. It’s rare to read a book about male friendships and it’s one of the reasons I chose this one.
Khaled remained an exile in the UK for more than 30 years after the protest. In all that time, he never returned to St. James Square until the very end, after his friends had dissipated. The way he put this stuck with me: “You can live a lifetime in a city, avoiding places.”
I listened to the audiobook edition of My Friends, and often the narrator can make or break a book. In this case Hisham Matar narrated his own book, and usually that’s a mistake, but this time it’s a triumph. Never have I listened to a more melodic, soothing male voice, almost as if he’s a father reading his child a lullaby at bedtime. His nationality is Libyan but he’s British educated, so it’s a lovely, complicated accent that was hard to place. He pronounces his home country “Leeeb-ya,” which caught me by surprise every time I heard it. Have I been saying it wrong all this time?
