Guitar hero, or confused combatant?
One of the memorable images of the Arab Spring shows a man providing musical accompaniment to his fellow National Transitional Council fighters as they exchanged gunfire with Muammar Qaddafi loyalists in Sirte, the last stronghold of the soon-to-be deposed dictator.The man, unarmed except for an incongruous orange guitar, stands in front of a wall pockmarked with bullet holes. The award-winning image was made on October 10, 2011 by Agence France-Presse photographer Aris Messinis, who remembers the scene well.
Messinis said he could not hear the strumming or singing above the roar of mortar and gunfire, but soon figured out the man was there to provide support of a slightly different calibre than AK-47s. "I realised by looking at him through my camera that he was trying to encourage the other fighters," Messinis told Channel 4 News.
Several news organisations have reported that the warrior warbler is probably Masoud Biswir, a former businessman from Benghazi who has been seen and interviewed in other areas of unrest, including Martyrs’ Square in Tripoli.
"The 38-year-old moved through the crowd with his guitar in one hand and his Kalashnikov in the other. Soon he was on a plywood stage as young girls in colourful headscarves were jumping and cheering," Steven Sotloff wrote in his September article for Time.
* Mark Angeles
