The revolution has finally permitted Mohammed Gadir to say who he really thinks is responsible for the "curse" placed on his son as an infant. But that freedom has also brought a fresh threat to the life of Wanis, now 13, that has left his father torn between the joys of throwing off the shackles of dictatorship and fear for the immediate future.
"My son has HIV. Gaddafi is to blame. We could not say it then. We can say it now. But the revolution means the drugs he takes every day are not coming from Tripoli," he said. "It is not only Wanis. There are 450 children like this and only a week of drugs left. Most of them are in Benghazi. People have forgotten about them."
Wanis Gadir was among hundreds of children infected with HIV in a Benghazi children's hospital in the late 1990s. The regime blamed foreign doctors and nurses, saying they were part of a conspiracy by US and Israeli intelligence agencies to spread Aids in Libya. European governments and aid agencies said Libya's health ministry failed to screen blood products adequately.
Seven years ago, as the government was making scapegoats of a group of Bulgarian nurses, Gadir took the public position that he was "100% certain" that his son had been infected by foreigners testing a "manufactured" strain of HIV on unsuspecting Libyans. He says now that was not his view then but asks what he was supposed to say when living under Gaddafi's regime. "Gaddafi gave them Aids. The sheikhs told us that," he said.
Gadir, 56, has come a long way since serving as a diplomat for Gaddafi, including working at the Libyan embassy in London.
But freedom may come at a high personal cost if attempts by the families with HIV-positive children, who have appealed to foreign aid agencies for help, are not successful. Even a few days without the antiretroviral drugs that keep Wanis a fit teenager could have a profound impact.
While there is no grand humanitarian crisis in the rebel-held areas away from the immediate fighting, there is a constellation of individual struggles and sacrifices, some getting more difficult by the day, even as support for the revolution appears only to strengthen. Young mothers are grappling with the loss of husbands to the fighting. Tens of thousands of people have been driven from their homes. Hundreds are dead in the uprising and hundreds more missing.
Families have been torn apart, divided by geography from partners or children living in what might be called Gaddafi-land, which now seems a very different, almost unreal, country from the one newly liberated Libyans inhabit.
Large numbers have no jobs and are struggling to find cash to get by as many businesses in the rebel-held areas remain shuttered. Schools are closed and students due to take exams this summer are falling behind.
Then there is the sheer exhaustion of the revolution rollercoaster. The ride has taken them from the euphoria of believing Gaddafi was all but out of the door to watching his troops jump back to the gates of Benghazi. In rapid succession came the relief of the western air strikes, the front sweeping forward and back, and Gaddafi's army once again menacing the de facto capital of the revolution.
A few weeks ago Benghazians were loudly proclaiming that their fear of the regime was gone. But as the fighting has swung against the rebelsit has crept back in a different form.
"People find it very hard," said Iman Fannoush, with her two children in tow and a husband she knows not where. "They are up all night shooting because of good news. We hear the UN is coming to help us or our fighters have taken Brega or the air strikes have destroyed Gaddafi's tanks. Then everyone is afraid again when they hear Gaddafi's army is coming and they all want to know where is France, where are the air strikes, why is the west abandoning us?"
Against that, Libyans have surprised themselves with a solidarity and consideration for others many said they didn't know they had because the regime poisoned relationships with suspicion.
The families who fled Ras Lanuf, Brega and Ajdabiya as Gaddafi's forces advanced found a welcome in the houses of strangers in Benghazi. When that city then came under attack, and those families fled again along with their new hosts, they were taken in at homes along the coast all the way to Tobruk.
Fannoush, 25, was among them. She last saw her husband, Mohammed, three weeks ago as he left their home in Ajdabiya, about 90 miles south of Benghazi, to fight Gaddafi's advancing army. Days later, as the Libyan leader's forces bore down on Ajdabiya, Fannoush could no longer wait for Mohammed to return and fled with much of the town's population, leaving a note for her husband. "It said I have gone to Benghazi but I do not know if I can stop there. It said we might not stop until Egypt," she said.
She has no reason to believe that any harm has come to Mohammed, only that in the chaos of retreat and advance and dislocation he cannot find his family.
Fannoush did not have to go all the way to Egypt. She fled to Benghazi with her two girls, aged four and two. When the rebels retook Ajdabiya last weekend she briefly returned home. The note was still on the table. Her husband had not returned. "I don't know where Mohammed is. He had a phone but it doesn't work now. I have tried to contact his parents but this is not easy. They are in Tripoli. It may be dangerous for them if the government finds out," she said. "There is nothing to be done. I left another note saying I will see him when the revolution is won. Then my husband will return to me."
Fannoush is shopping in Benghazi's covered market. The clothes stalls are open but some of other stores have been shuttered for weeks. The jewellery shops have removed all the gold from display. People in the market say that those stores belong to Egyptians who have gone home.
There is no shortage of food. Prices are stable. The Libyan dinar has fallen a bit against the US dollar but it has not crashed. Cash is still available. The revolutionary administration has found the money to pay the high proportion of Libyans now within its jurisdiction who are on the government payroll.
But Fannoush is among those finding it difficult to get by. "Mohammed sold fruit. That was his job. I have a little cash but I must rely on other people to help me. People are very kind. Libyans are better people now because of the revolution," she said. "I have a room in a house with people I did not know. They didn't have to give me this room but when we arrived in Benghazi in the truck, there were a lot of people in a lot of trucks together, they were driving around asking who will take the people from Ajdabiya. Many people helped."
Fannoush accepts that with hundreds dead or missing – some having disappeared into Gaddafi's torture centre – there is a possibility her husband will not return. "I do not want to think about that but it is the price of freedom," is all she says.
It's a view widely shared among people for whom the changing fortunes of the uprising do not appear to have diminished support. For so many Libyans, the hardships of the struggle are more than outweighed by their newfound freedoms, and that can mean everything from political speech to identifying with a religious group.
"I cannot imagine how we lived like that with Gaddafi, how my parents lived like that," said Zenab Barsi, an engineering student. "It has only been a few weeks but it seems like another life. I have never left Libya. I have never been to the west. Not even Egypt where they were more free. This freedom will never leave me now. Always it is in me. My friends are the same. We will never accept what went before. We may have to fight. Some of us will have to die. But we will not go back."