Episode: 25 — "Seize All Opportunities" · Full Episode #25
Date: 9 June 2020 (Season 3)
Language: Libyan Arabic
Recorded in: Remote (Tripoli / London)
Motasim Dhawi (المعتصم الضاوي) is a Libyan civil servant who works as a secretary and aide to the head of Libya's Presidential Council. He began his public life as a volunteer with the Tripoli Local Council in 2011 and co-founded the Free Media Center in the same period. A graduate in economics and e-commerce, he is also a photographer.
Dhawi was expelled from engineering school in 2011 after a physical fight with another student who had leveraged connections to the old regime. He happened to hold a valid Malta visa and left for four months, using the time to complete ICDL and Cisco certifications. He treats the expulsion as one of several accidental corrections in his life.
See: Malta as Springboard
Returning to Tripoli after Malta, Dhawi faced his father — a man whose office wall displayed excellence certificates from his own time studying in the United States. His father told him the salary Dhawi was earning was now his own, and that he should leave the house and find work. Dhawi describes the moment as a direct strike at the heart. He committed to making his father proud by a different route.
After more than two years of near-continuous government work, Dhawi's system "shut down" between a single day and night. He could not sleep. His family's response was to tell him to pray. He went to a psychiatrist despite the taboo, and friends advised him not to let anyone see him there.
See: The Panic Attack, PTSD and Collective Trauma
Dhawi rebuilt his life around a short set of rules: deactivated Facebook, threw away his phone number, slept before midnight ("like my grandfather, who went to sleep with the chickens"), exercised daily, and switched from phone calls to voice notes and text messages.
Cycling one afternoon, Dhawi passed an empty dirt football pitch and was pulled back to his childhood — skipping school to play football on Sharia Al-Sareem. A song on his Spotify became a reset ritual that he played on the spot. He describes crying first and then smiling. He treats the moment as the beginning of his return to baseline.
See: The Bike Ride
Asked why he remained in Libya when so many of his peers had emigrated, Dhawi's answer was brief: if everyone leaves, no one rebuilds.
"If everyone leaves, who rebuilds Libya?" (EP 25)
"My grandfather slept with the chickens. I decided I would too." (EP 25)