A year at the University of Tripoli included countless and seemingly endless bombs targeted at the author's campus, city, and country, Libya, during an international proxy war instigated by a warlord named Khalifa Haftar, backed by some countries including France and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who terrified the city of Tripoli in 2019-2020. His assault began the day that the United Nations Secretary-General Guterres was to fly into the capital city, April 4, 2019, to provide impetus for a forthcoming peace conference. The chapter shares how wellness was sustained in the most tumultuous setting given deep and abiding faith, which was reaffirmed even further in the midst of conflict. The author shares insights and experiences about the role of faith in higher education during violent upheaval. It also addresses the question: What do faith and wellness have to do with each other in the midst of scholarly pursuits from the perspective of living and studying in a country that had experienced a 42-year dictatorship?
Nuha Dadesh is a pharmacist who enrolled at the University of Tripoli in 2015. Her educational experiences at the University of Tripoli were marked by recurrent skirmishes between militant groups, ongoing terrorism, a civil war, military bombing, and, ultimately, COVID-19. She credits her Muslim faith as a key component of wellbeing during these traumatic experiences.