This lack of organization in a time of crisis gave Naas the idea for the first-aid course at LIMU that she now manages, which has taught basic medical response techniques to over 600 people. "I saw lots of medical students [at the hospitals] who could be more helpful, but who didn't know what to do," she says. "And I saw people on television carrying wounded patients or trying to stop bleeding," she added, "but they were doing it the wrong way."

But the spontaneous upwelling of goodwill in the early days of the fighting was a powerful antidote to the disorganization. "Doctors and volunteers were treating the wounded, while singing to them and encouraging them at the same time -- [saying] things about Libya, about freedom, about Qaddafi leaving," Naas says. Even the wounded were upbeat: "They were being brought in, covered in blood, looking miserable, but even they were doing this," she recalls, making the opposition's V-for-victory sign with her fingers. "I never thought that I would live to see these things."

And people took renewed pride in their newly free city. Mardiya El-Fakhery, a 28-year-old anesthesiologist, recalls that before the revolution, "you'd never see Libyan boys cleaning up the street and taking ownership [of their city]. People had the attitude that [Benghazi] is already [dirty], so just let it go." But as soon as the revolution began, she saw young boys and old men taking to the streets with brooms. The opposition government has sought to build on this goodwill in the territory in its control, posting billboards throughout eastern Libya exhorting citizens to keep their cities clean. One such billboard (pictured above), featuring a giant hand holding a cartoon Qaddafi by the scruff of his neck as if he were a used tissue, reads:

Every day, all of the youth will participate in cleaning our beautiful city, starting with you yourself and your own house, with your family, as well as cleaning the street with your neighbors and cleaning the area with your brothers and friends. This is our country, and it's our responsibility.

But nowhere is the new spirit more clearly on display than in Libya's hospitals. Under Qaddafi's rule, the dilapidated medical system had become an infuriating symbol of the spotty distribution of resources in the country. Mohammed, who trades in used cars, is typical: He told me he had to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket to take his ailing mother to Tunisia, where better medical facilities are available. Noting Libya's oil wealth, he asked, "Why can't my country pay for decent hospitals? My mother should be able to get treatment here in Libya." He then took out his phone and showed me a video of his elderly mother, grimacing in pain before she went to Tunisia for treatment. She died soon thereafter.

Before the revolution, some Libyans took their frustrations out on Libya's doctors. "Just a few months ago," remembers El-Fakhery, the anesthesiologist, "people hated Libyan doctors. They'd run off to Tunisia or Egypt for something as simple as a common cold." She recalls that a surgeon at her hospital was even physically attacked after a failed surgery. "We didn't have the facilities [to provide proper care]," she says.

But with the revolution, people in Benghazi began showing an outpouring of support for their doctors. She recalls how on March 19, as Qaddafi's tanks were rolling through Benghazi's streets and Revolutionary Committee members were shooting at civilians, she and other doctors were overwhelmed by the number of wounded they had to treat -- and by the kindness that ordinary citizens were showing them. "In the hospital, men as old as my father would run around the ICU [intensive care unit] at Jala Hospital [in Benghazi], passing out milk and juice and boxes of dates to the doctors," she says. "They'd stuff them in the pockets of my lab coat and shake my hands, and they'd hug the male doctors. They'd bring pillows and blankets from home, giving everything they could to the hospital."

"It's funny," says El-Fakhery, "but he" -- Qaddafi -- "brought out the best in us."

Ryan Calder

PREVIOUS 12