ABOARD THE IONIAN SPIRIT — The scene was testimony to the wrenching changes war brings. It turned Dr. Ali Salhi, a Libyan dentist, into a battlefield medic. In a ship’s corridor transformed into an intensive-care unit, the patient he hovered over was his little brother, a lawyer who became a fighter to defend their home city of Misrata from Moammar Gadhafi’s forces.
Near a stack of life vests, Khaled Salhi lay unconscious on a mattress, a hunk of shrapnel lodged in his brain. Ali silently watched the tubes running into his brother’s mouth and nose and listened to the beep of the heart monitor. Khaled hasn’t woken up since he was hit.
But the 33-year-old doesn’t regret that his brother, who is six years younger, fought.
“If we all prevented our brothers from fighting, there would be no resistance to Gadhafi,” he said Thursday. “My brother might die, and others as well, but we have to defend our city.”
On Thursday, the Ionian Spirit, a Greek passenger ferry, carried away more than 1,000 people fleeing Misrata for the de facto rebel capital of Ben ghazi. Also aboard the vessel, which arrived late Thursday, were the bodies of Tim Hetherington, a documentary maker from Britain, and U.S. photographer Chris Hondros. They were killed covering clashes Wednesday.
Areas below deck were turned into impromptu clinics for the wounded. The ship’s bar-disco was settled by Libyan families. Every hallway and seat was filled by others, including African and Asian workers, sleeping, eating, taking the opportunity of their first electricity in days to charge their cellphones.
