<i>Life with 'Daddy' </i>
In the Ukraine house where she grew up, Oksana Balinskaya's hazel eyes transfixed on television images of Muammar Gaddafi.
He was now a fallen leader, a fugitive sought for justice. He had been known as the ruthless leader of a pariah state, a butcher, a delusional man divorced from reality.
But Balinskaya, 25, who served as one of Gaddafi's five Ukrainian nurses for nearly two years, had always seen him in a different light.
She even called him "Daddy." All the Ukrainian nurses did.
"Daddy gave us jobs, money and a good life," she said.
Far removed now from the sands of Libya, Balinskaya sat at the kitchen table with her Serbian husband, looking upward at the boxy TV set atop the refrigerator. Images of Gaddafi's fiery defiance flashed in the face of ouster.
She would feel sorry for him if he were killed or captured, she said.
She took turns with the other nurses accompanying him on foreign trips, sometimes sparking rumours spread in the media about Gaddafi's harem.
All of what was being said about Gaddafi seemed contrary to what she knew about the man -- including the allegations by Gaddafi family nannies and domestic staff that they were tortured and abused.
"Gaddafi was quite considerate to us," she said. "He would ask us whether we are happy and whether we have everything that we need."
Her job now lost to Libya's civil war, she pitied the nation.
"If it were not for Gaddafi, who else would have built it?" she said. "It was he who constructed it. He has transferred Libyans from camelbacks into cars."
The rules were strict while working as a nurse for Gaddafi. The attractive Ukrainian nurses wore no flashy makeup or revealing clothes.
He was always surrounded by others -- Gaddafi's wife, children, grandchildren, officials within his inner circle.
"None of us had ever been one on one with him," she said. "There wasn't even a single room in his household where we could have possibly been left alone with him."
That's why she was shocked by the gossip that Gaddafi had sexual relationships with his foreign nurses.
Veteran Ukrainian nurse, Galina Kolonitskaya, 38, who had worked with Gaddafi for nearly a decade, was described in a US diplomatic cable posted by WikiLeaks as a "voluptuous blonde" who "knows his routine." It said the Libyan dictator was deeply attached to her.
"I can only say good things about him," she said. "I very much hope that we will return to Libya," she said, flipping through an album with photographs of herself in Libya.
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