Design Birth Through Pain and Revolution
From addiction recovery to CEO through design mastery. The crying months in Tripoli, geometric healing, and evolution from designer to systems engineer during Libya's revolution.
I arrived in Tripoli in 2006 knowing no one, waiting for a visa that would never come, carrying addiction I didn't know how to handle.
And to make it harder, alcohol is banned in Libya and very hard and illegal to get. I was an alcohol addict forced into recovery all by myself, with no support, no program, no guidance. Just me, my addiction, and the consequences of my choices.
What followed was seven years of transformation—from crying alone every night to becoming CEO of Giorgio Armani's North Africa operations, from design as survival to design as consciousness engineering, from witnessing revolution to navigating impossible escape with young family through collapsing countries.
I arrived in Tripoli in 2006 knowing no one, waiting for a visa that would never come, carrying addiction I didn't know how to handle.
And to make it harder, alcohol is banned in Libya and very hard and illegal to get. I was an alcohol addict forced into recovery all by myself, with no support, no program, no guidance. Just me, my addiction, and the consequences of my choices.
Night after night, I recalled all the people I'd hurt when I used to drink all the time. Crying every night for months. The pain was unbearable—not just withdrawal, but facing what I'd become, what I'd done, who I'd hurt.
The framework that had guided me through so much felt useless against this internal war. Or so I thought.
Then I started creating designs with geometry and other words and styles to describe how I felt. Illustrator became my therapist. Sacred geometry became my medicine. The patterns that had been academic before became survival tools.
Every design was exorcism. I'd take the chaos inside—the guilt, the shame, the craving, the self-hatred—and transmute it through geometric patterns into something coherent. Something beautiful. Something true.
The Hermetic principles guided this process without me fully realizing it:
Design saved my life. Literally.
What started as survival became mastery. The portfolio I built during recovery caught attention.
2006-2007: Graphic Designer
I could immediately get work in Libya having become natural in Illustrator, Photoshop, and 3D Max. Each project refined my understanding of how geometric patterns influence consciousness.
2007-2008: Marketing Manager at Kortag
Major languages institute and educational services company in Tripoli. This role combined design, psychology, and business strategy—exactly where framework principles applied most powerfully.
2008-2009: Art Director at Design Agency
Complete creative control over major campaigns. I began consciously applying sacred geometry principles to visual design—not as aesthetic choice but as consciousness engineering.
I'd spend hours testing specific geometric relationships:
2008-2010: Systems Engineer
I started building organizational systems—for telecommunication companies, banks, other organizations. The same patterns that worked in visual design worked in system architecture. Code was just another medium for expressing geometric consciousness principles.
This is how I naturally became systems engineer—seeing that software architecture followed same sacred geometry patterns as visual design, same consciousness principles as marketing psychology.
During intensive design work, something profound happened. As I became more fluent in pure geometric pattern recognition—seeing visual structures beyond verbal description—a surprising quality emerged: genuine compassion.
The patterns showed me something I hadn't seen before. When you can see universal structures underlying all consciousness, you can't help but feel compassion. Everyone operates from same fundamental architecture, just expressed differently through different life circumstances.
This was the missing piece. My earlier Machiavellian phase had used framework principles without this compassionate understanding. I'd seen patterns but not their deeper meaning—that all consciousness shares same geometric foundation.
This realization clarified something crucial: the framework needed two components to function properly:
Either alone was insufficient—even dangerous:
Together, they created complete framework function—ability to perceive truth accurately AND respond with wisdom.
In 2008, my mother in Damascus insisted she wanted to find good wife for me. I eventually married a girl I never knew or met. She came to Tripoli and lived with me.
We had a son, Mohab, in 2009 and a daughter, Maya (she likes being called Kai), in 2010.
I was sober now. The framework had stabilized me. Design work had given me purpose. But the marriage was arranged, not chosen—built on cultural expectation rather than genuine connection.
This would have consequences that wouldn't fully manifest until Sweden years later.
By 2011, my design and business success attracted attention. I got job as CEO of major fashion company in Libya representing Giorgio Armani and Hugo Boss for Men in North Africa—Masa Inc.
This role combined everything: design, psychology, business strategy, cultural understanding, technical implementation, regional leadership.
As CEO for North Africa, I was responsible for operations spanning Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco—each with distinct cultural patterns, political situations, market dynamics.
The framework proved invaluable for navigating this complexity. Rather than implementing identical strategies across different markets, I could perceive underlying consciousness patterns common to all North African contexts, then adapt expressions to honor local specifics.
Working with Giorgio Armani—brand synonymous with elegance and refinement—taught me how universal patterns manifested in luxury contexts. Armani designs honored same sacred geometry principles I'd been studying. The clean lines, proportional relationships, subtle sophistication—all reflected consciousness architecture principles.
This wasn't coincidence. It was evidence that aesthetic excellence naturally emerges from geometric harmony.
February 2011. The Arab Spring arrived in Libya. I watched as the country erupted in revolution against Gaddafi's regime.
As CEO of major fashion operation, I had privileged views of multiple social strata. I observed how consciousness patterns operated under revolutionary conditions—how fear, hope, identity, and power dynamics created complex emergent behaviors.
As violence escalated, I made difficult decision to evacuate to Syria. Ironically, Syria seemed safer at that moment—though that would soon change catastrophically. I left behind significant business assets and my CEO position.
When Gaddafi fell in October 2011, I returned to Libya. The post-revolutionary period proved even more instructive than revolution itself. I witnessed how consciousness patterns suppressed for decades suddenly expressed themselves, often chaotically.
Removal of authoritarian structure created power vacuum. Various consciousness patterns—tribal, religious, regional, ideological—all competed for dominance without any unifying framework. The chaos was predictable: when consciousness patterns are artificially suppressed then suddenly released, they don't immediately harmonize—they oscillate wildly before finding new equilibrium.
Maintaining operations during this period required extraordinary framework application. Political instability, security threats, economic disruption, supply chain chaos—every day brought new challenges that would overwhelm normal business thinking.
But framework provided tools for managing complexity at scale. My staff told me they didn't understand how I remained so calm during such chaos. I didn't explain framework fully—they wouldn't have understood—but I demonstrated its principles through leadership.
By 2012-2013, both Libya and Syria were descending into full-scale conflict. Shit hit the fan completely. I had wife and two children—Mohab and Maya. Now I faced impossible situation: two collapsing countries, young family, limited options for escape, and the only airport completely destroyed by bombs and missiles.
Framework guided decision-making even in crisis. Using pattern recognition, I analyzed potential routes to safety, assessed risks probabilistically, chose path that, while dangerous, offered best chance of family survival.
This wasn't mystical guidance—it was practical consciousness architecture application:
Years of applying consciousness principles across domains had developed abilities I could now deploy under extreme pressure:
The decision: cross Mediterranean by boat from Libya to Italy. Dangerous—hundreds were dying in such crossings—but staying meant certain death or indefinite suffering.
The journey from Tripoli to Zwara, the smugglers' city on the coast, was itself harrowing—dangerous roads through country in chaos. But what awaited us there would test framework principles in ways I couldn't have anticipated.
Part 2 covered my Libya years: arriving as alcoholic refugee in 2006, design birth through recovery pain, work evolution from designer to CEO, the revolution, and dual collapse forcing impossible choices. Part 3 will continue with the Mediterranean crossing and Swedish reality.