By Deborah Pasmantier“Azul (hello). I’m going to teach you the language of your forefathers,” Sara Abud tells the children of Yafran, assembled around her for their first lesson in Berber, once the native tongue of western Libya’s mountain folk.
Speaking Berber could land people in jail under Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi’s rule, but since the rebels now control the Nafusa mountains southwest of Tripoli, it now represents the language of freedom.
As such, Berber culture has flowered anew. It is on the radio, in newspapers and museums, in songs and in language courses.
Not to mention the graffiti, which are everywhere.
Colourful geometric designs feature opposing semi-circles linked by a line, illustrating how the soul bridges heaven and earth. It is the symbol of the Amazigh, as the Berbers call themselves.
“We used to be treated as second-class citizens. We are at the root of this country, but now we can stand tall,” said 22-year-old Taghrid Abud.
Under Kadhafi, it was forbidden to speak or write Berber in public, even to read or print Amazigh-language material.
He was deeply suspicious of this people who have lived in the country since before the Arab conquest of the seventh century and whose military resistance to the Italian occupation in the early twentieth century has been well chronicled.
Over the years, people spoke the language only in secret if they were to avoid being sent to prison, and the alphabet was never learned because it was never printed. The culture was buried, almost lost.
“Many people do not know their own history,” said Abud, a 27-year-old historian
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