In life, a feared tyrant; in death, an object of ridicule

Misrata: His body lay pale in the half-light of a meat locker, head tilted to one side, blood streaking his chest. Men laughed and ridiculed him as the scent of onions rose from the souk.

In life, his spectre was towering, but in death Muammar Gaddafi was diminutive, put on display along a row of butcher shops and vegetable stands. Boys and their fathers lined up for hundreds of yards outside the market's gates as if going to a carnival to glimpse the man they once believed invincible.

"I want him to keep the face of a tyrant in his mind," said Abdul Rahman Swasi, pointing to his 11-year-old son, Mohammad. "We saw Gaddafi talking for so many years on TV. Blah, blah, blah. But now we see him dead."

Swasi and his son inched forward, stepping over blowing trash, past men in fatigues brandishing guns. They pushed through the doorway into the room's chill, hurrying past the bullet-marked corpse and out into the air of a country much changed since Thursday, when revolutionary fighters killed the man who had ruled Libya for decades in still unexplained circumstances in his hometown, Sirte.

Surreal

The viewing was emotional and surreal, but Gaddafi's reign was often beyond imagination. It seemed fitting that Misrata, a city by the sea that was pummelled into a hallmark of Gaddafi's brutality during a siege this spring, gave the leader — stripped to the waist, his once famous locks forlorn — his final humiliation.

"Yes, he's gone," said Nagwi Omar, "but I'm an old man. He took my youth."

Gaddafi's burial — reportedly to be in a secret place so his grave doesn't become a shrine for loyalists — has been postponed until an investigation is completed.

This has angered some Muslims who contend that he should have been given a funeral quickly in keeping with Islamic law. For Libyans, the death of their mercurial dictator has silenced the personality that defined their collective hatred. They must now confront tribalism, a wrecked economy and other problems that could lead to suspicions and new divisions.

— Los Angeles Times