After nearly three years of living in Europe I decided to go home for a visit. I spent six weeks between Tripoli, the capital, and Bani Walid, my hometown. The whole experience was like visiting a foreign country and, despite my well-traveled life, my home country seemed like a strange place to me.

The first thing that struck me was how desperate and disappointed Libyans are three years after the NATO-backed rebels toppled the Moammar Gadhafi regime in what is wrongly described as a “revolution” instead of a civil war, as my old schoolmate had described what happened in 2011. When the war ended, Libyans were full of hope and optimism. Today, they are hopeless and pessimistic as never before.

To gauge the public mood I used taxis to move around, frequented cafes, spoke to strangers and met as many friends and acquaintances as possible. During my entire stay, and out of dozens of taxi trips, only one taxi driver sounded satisfied with the current state of affairs of the country and was still hopeful that “it will settle down,” as he put it.

Tripoli’s buildings are still covered with graffiti, almost all of it anti-government, anti-General National Conference, anti-Islamist political parties, scornful of militia and in some cases anti-“revolution” itself. Only a very few are shaming or blaming Gadhafi and his regime anymore. In 2012, with aspirations and hopes very high, almost all graffiti was anti-Gadhafi and his supporters. Nowadays, he is hardly forgotten. Actually, he is still remembered, particularly at times of high tension. Many Libyans I spoke to seem to miss the peace and security in their lives under his rule. Others seem to think he should have fled the country alive. If he had, now we “would beg him to come to our rescue,” as the hairdresser told me in the Gargarish district west of Tripoli.