CAIRO - Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi has recently been making many speeches to his people, while a lot of short videos have been springing up on the social networking sites Facebook and Youtube of men trying to imitate and ridicule his way of talking. One of them, Hamada el-Hagg, a photographer, from the popular area of Shubra in northern Cairo, has used his digital camera to video himself and then send the recordings to the Internet. He has made several video clips and in one of them he's dressed like Gaddafi, with his strange clothes, and wearing the emma (turban) and sunglasses. He raises his hands and says in a loud voice: ‘Who are you? The time for work has come. The time for revolution has come. The time for marching has come. Forward. Forward. No retreat. Thawra, thawra [revolution, revolution]!' “I wrapped a brightly coloured sheet around my body like Gaddafi, bought some sunglasses and an emma, and then memorised some of his speeches,” Hamada says. “What helps is that I can speak the Libyan dialect as I spent some time there a few years ago. In fact, people have given me the nickname ‘Gaddafi of Shubra'.” In a second clip, Hamada rides a tok-tok and carries an umbrella because it's raining heavily. “I spent the whole morning looking for a tok-tok. While I was having my lunch, one drove past my house,” Hamada told Al-Shorouq independent daily. “So I asked the driver if I could hire his tok-tok to shoot a video clip of me doing one of Gaddafi's speeches. The driver was only too happy to help,” adds Hamada, who never imagined the clips would be so popular, encouraging him to make more. So far, he has made three clips, costing a total of LE200, including a memory card and batteries for the camera. Hamada, who shot the third clip, ‘Gaddafi in Al Tahrir Square', in Al Tahrir, says he won't be offended if any production company wants to borrow his idea. He is delighted when people ring him to express their admiration for his work. One of the callers was a Libyan living in London, who wants to meet him when he visits Cairo. “Some of my admirers have also given advice about how to make myself even more like Gaddafi. As long as people like it, I'll continue imitating the Libyan leader.”
