Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi liked to be surrounded by beautiful things and people, says Oksana Balinskaya, his former nurse, who fled Libya in February to return to her hometown Moguilnoe in the Ukraine
The 24-year-old, in an interview to Newsweek, said that though her former employer was much more discreet than his friend and Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, he chose to hire only attractive Ukranian women
Balinskaya clarified that her relations with the Libyan dictator was nothing more than that of a caretaker and dismissed Ukranian media claims of her being part of Gaddafi’s harem as “nonsense”
“None of us nurses was ever his lover; the only time we touched him was to take his blood pressure readings,” she said
Balinskaya, who was employed as Gaddafi’s nurse when she was 21 years old, said she was picked from a line of candidates during the selection process after the dictator shook her hand and looked her in the eye
“Later I came to know that he made all his decisions about people at the first handshake,” she said, calling Gaddafi a “great psychologist”
The former nurse also said they had nicknamed Gaddafi as “Papik”, which means little father in Russian
Talking about her initial days, the nurse said she wasn’t allowed to go to the palace for the first three months
“I think, Papik was afraid that his wife Safia would be jealous
But soon I began to attend to him regularly,” she said
The job of the nurses was to make sure the leader took daily walks around his residence, got his vaccinations and stayed in shape
About his health, Balinskaya said that the dictator was fit as a fiddle and had blood pressure and heart rate that could “easily match that of a young man”
Commending his generosity, the nurse said Gaddafi gave her a two-bedroom apartment, a personal vehicle and driver, and many gifts
She claimed that Gaddafi kept a close watch on her personal life
“My apartment was bugged,” Balinskaya said, adding how the local medical staff envied the nurses because they earned $3000 a month, three times of what the local staff earned
The nurse also talked about Gaddafi’s odd habits such as listening to Arab music on an old cassette player and his penchant for changing clothes several times a day
“Sometimes he would keep his guests waiting while he would go back to his room to change his dress,” she said, adding that his sartorial sense reminded her of “a rock star from the 1980s”
The nurse, who travelled around the globe “in style” with ‘Papik’—from the US to Italy to Portugal and Venezuela—also talked about how he would give them bonuses for shopping when he was in good mood and gift gold watches every year with his picture on them
“Just showing that watch in Libya would open any door, solve any problems that we had,” she said
According to her, while travelling in poor African countries, Gaddafi would fling money and candy out of his armoured limousine to children but never got too close for the fear of contracting infection
About Gaddafi’s power, the Ukranian nurse said she got the impression that half the population in Libya disliked him
“He is like Stalin
He made all the decisions, had all the power and the luxury all for himself
” Talking about the uprising, Balinskaya said when she watched the pictures of revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, she never thought it could happen in Libya
She feels had Gaddafi relinquished his power to one of his sons, Saif, when he had opportunity, the situation in Libya would have been much better
“I had a very personal reason to get out
I was four months pregnant and Papik would have never approved of my Serbian boyfriend,” Balinskaya said, adding that two of her Ukranian colleagues weren’t lucky enough to flee as they were forced by Gaddafi to stay and perhaps die by his side
The nurse said that though she knows the Libyan leader would never forgive her for the “betrayal”, she was happy to have made the right decision for her safe future At least, she was lucky She got out