A Dallas business owner born in Libya is more grateful than ever to his adopted country.
The events Libya are all-consuming for Mohamed Yousef, who owns USA Thrift. News in English from the Al-Jazeera television network plays on his laptop almost 24 hours per day.
"Even you're asleep, you wake up in the middle of the night and want to see what's happened in the last two or three hours, especially when Gadhafi was bombing," Yousef said. "You don't know what's happening; it changes hour by hour."
Seeing the uprising unfold has been hard to watch, he said. But when U.S. forces stepped in to help, he was grateful.
"When you see people are dying and being just shelled, killed, bombed indiscriminantly, you need help," Yousef said. "You say, 'Somebody help me! Help me!' When somebody comes, that's worth everything in the world."
Yousef came to the United States more than 30 years ago to get a college education. It was the last time he would see his mother, father, brothers and sister.
"When I got here, every year the situation got worse and worse, and it was not possible to go back there," he said.
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Though he hasn't seen his family, he keeps in contact with them through phone calls, emails and Facebook.
Yousef said America welcomed him with open arms. He has lived more of his life in the United States than in Libya.
His sister lives in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, where the latest bombings have occured.
"They are doing fine," Yousef said. "Some of them are in Tripoli. They are just staying indoors. There are snipers everywhere, and everybody is scared."
Now that the revolution has begun, Yousef said he can only hope it ends soon and that his country builds a democratic goverment.
"And we set forth a system that really protects this freedom that we did not get cheaply," he said. "It was very, very expensive, the price that Libyans had to pay. I wish we did this 20 years ago."
