Libyan Yarns

Full Circle

2011-02-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

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According to modern Libyan folklore, Ghadaffi decision to mount the 1969 coup to overthrow the Idris monarchy was prompted by his seeing one of the royal family losing millions of dollars in a London gambling club.

How ironic that 40 years later many Libyans are outraged by the way Ghadaffi's sons have been equally guilty of squandering large sums of money overseas. Two years ago his son Muattesem paid $1 million for Mariah Carey to perform at his New Year's Eve party. Last year another son, Hannibal, went even more overboard and paid $2 million for Beyonce to sing at his New Year's Eve party.

Given the recent unrest in Libya, it seems that the wheel of Libyan politics has come full circle. Lord Acton might have been looking ahead to Ghadaffi's rule when he wrote: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely".
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Democracy Takes Work

2010-02-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

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Given that 99% of Libya is desert, you’d think that it would have been easy to get right away from people. But it really wasn’t that easy because the desert rarely seemed to be … deserted.

When we were out exploring, we would often stop for a tea break in the middle of nowhere. In every direction the land would be totally flat and featureless as far as the horizon. No people, no animals, no vegetation, nothing. So we’d set up our stove and start boiling water for tea. The water would boil. And then an old man would appear.

It wasn’t always the same old man who turned up, of course. But, with the exception of one boy on a donkey, it was always an old man.

I remember one of these old men particularly well.

We were having elevenses in the desert south of Mizda, when an old man popped up from nowhere. With the help of a wooden staff, he was shuffling along carrying a sack containing his supplies. He looked so old, frail and generally decrepit that we thought he couldn’t have come very far.

As was expected in these situations, we invited him to join us and he sat down to share our tea and sandwiches.

He told us he was heading for Mizda to vote in the upcoming elections that Ghadaffi had recently announced. He had been walking for two days and had another day’s walk ahead of him. So much for being old and decrepit!

He looked a little disappointed when we broke the bad news: The elections had been postponed for a month. He wasn’t downcast for long though. “Malesh. Never mind. I’ll just walk back home now and then walk to Mizda next month,” he told us. He picked up his walking staff, threw his sack over his shoulder, and shuffled off back into the desert.

Now that's what I call a sense of civic responsibility.

Welcome to Libya

2010-02-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

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A week after arriving in Libya to run the International House school in Tripoli, I was summoned to the Ministry of Education to meet the Director of Private Schools.

The Director, who spoke very good English, was a charming man and he welcomed me warmly. In normal Arab fashion, we had tea and exchanged pleasantries for a while. Then became more serious and told me that he would be keeping a very close eye on my work and that he hoped I would run the school better than the previous director had.

"Oh," I said. "Have there been problems with the school?"

He reached up and took a 3-inch-thick binder from a shelf and opened it on his desk.

"These are recent reports and complaints about the school. Let me read you some examples." He flipped through the pages, stopping now and then to read out headings: "Alcohol being sold in the coffee bar... Many teachers using drugs... Women teachers operating a brothel on the top floor... Teachers making openly anti-Libyan and pro-Zionist remarks in class..."

I was stunned. "But you don't believe any of those things, do you?" I asked.

"Of course not." He paused. "But maybe one day I will have to believe them. And you are the director, so it will be you we hang."

"Hang?" I queried weakly.

He smiled and shrugged. "Hang. Shoot. Same same."

It was not the most auspicious start to what turned out to be four good years in one of the most interesting and friendly countries I've ever visited!
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A Very Wet Day

2010-01-23T05:09:00.000-08:00

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Talking with Sue on the phone the other day, she reminded me of an amusing (in hindsight) incident that happened to her in Tripoli when Emma was a toddler.

When she came home one afternoon, she had a little trouble parking because there was some minor construction work going on near our villa. As it was raining, she didn't go out again that day.

The next morning she got ready to leave for work. She and Emma walked down the front steps and opened the front gate. The rain had caused a big puddle to form right outside the gate. A nuisance but not at all unusual. So she tucked Emma under one arm, held her car keys in the other hand, and stepped out into the puddle.

Unfortunately, the puddle wasn't really a puddle. It was a seven-foot-deep hole full of muddy water. While Sue had been at home the previous afternoon, the construction crew had dug a huge trench all along one side of our street and this trench had filled up with water overnight.

Sue struggled to stay afloat and to keep Emma's head above the water. She shouted for help but the street was empty. Sue's clothes and Emma got heavier and heavier. She started to tire.

At this moment, a car drew up alongside. The Libyan driver opened his window and looked down at Sue. "What are you doing?" he asked. A reasonable question in the circumstances.

Sue didn't bother answering. Instead, she pushed Emma up and into the man's arms.

Then she started diving down to the bottom of the hole looking for her car keys. She couldn't find them. This meant there was no way she could get back into our house.

The only solution was for the man to drive her to his house so that she could use his phone to call a friend for help.

According to Sue, the man's wife was not pleased and was more than a little suspicious when he arrived home with a very wet European woman and blond child.

It all turned out well in the end, though. Sue called a German friend who was married to a Libyan man. He drove over, confirmed Sue's rescuer's story to the man's wife, and took Sue and Emma back to his house.
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A Ferocious Dog

2010-01-15T05:02:00.000-08:00

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Our dog, Dopey, could be very ferocious. She was well aware that it was her job to protect us and our property from all threats, and she took her job extremely seriously. However, sometimes her conscientiousness got her into trouble.

Dopey Deals with Geese

We were living in a villa on a farm outside Tripoli. I was sitting on the front porch having tea. Dopey was sitting in her usual position at our garden gate, just waiting for intruders to appear so that she could tear them to pieces.

And intruders did appear, in the form of a dozen geese that waddled past our gate. Dopey hesitated for a moment and the geese disappeared around the side of our house. Then Dopey decided they were up to no good and raced after them. I couldn't see what happened when she met up with them but there was the most awful racket for a minute or two.

"Oh, no," I thought. "She's killed some of the bloody geese. Our landlord is going to be furious."

Then Dopey reappeared. She limped into our garden, staggered up the front steps and lay down under my legs.

After that, whenever the geese appeared, Dopey would immediately leave her position by the front gate and find some urgent matter to attend to inside the house.

Dopey Meets a Mother Cat

Our third house in Libya was a modern villa surrounded by a seven-foot-high wall. Whenever we went away on an overseas trip, we would take Dopey around to a friend's house and would pick her up when we got back.

After one trip, we picked Dopey up and drove to our house. I opened the gate. There right in the front garden was a small cat with three newly-born kittens. Dopey couldn't believe her eyes. The ultimate enemy had moved in while she hadn't been there to protect our property. She made a blood-curdling snarl and hurtled over to the cat.

The cat stood up and arched her back. Dopey stopped a foot away from her. The cat hissed. Dopey backed up. The cat hissed again. Dopey moved behind me and Sue.

To cut a long story short, Dopey decided that the only decent thing to do was to let the cat raise her kittens in peace. So she kindly volunteered to spend the next couple of weeks living in the back garden.

A Surprise Visit

2010-01-15T04:22:00.000-08:00

It was a Friday and we got up early because Sue's mum, Connie, was flying in from London to visit us and our newly-born daughter in Tripoli. She would be arriving in the afternoon and we wanted to tidy up the house.

We had just started on the housework when someone rang the doorbell. Probably Mustafa popping in for breakfast, I thought.

I opened the front gate - and there was Connie, complete with suitcases! A Libyan man I didn't know was sitting in his car nearby. When he saw me greet Connie, he waved to us and drove off.

Once we'd brought her in and made her a nice cup of tea, she told us what had happened.

Somehow - and I still can't think how - we had got confused about the dates and so she had actually arrived the previous day. She waited for us at the airport but we never turned up. After an hour of two, she started to get worried.

She couldn't phone us because we didn't have a phone. The waiting period for residential phones in Libya at that time was about 11 years and it was in the era before cellphones.

She couldn't take a taxi either, since she didn't have our address. There were no residential postal deliveries in Tripoli and so, whenever she wrote to us, she sent her letters to a post office box.

Evening fell and still there was no sign of us at the airport. Now she was really worried.

She needn't have worried, though. This was Libya. As she sat waiting with her luggage, a Libyan couple approached her and the man asked her, in English, what she was doing. She explained. The man conferred with his wife and they both agreed that the only thing to do was for them to take Connie to their home for the night and then to bring her to our house the next morning.

And that's exactly what they did.

Of course, it wasn't quite as straightforward as that, because none of them had any idea where our house was. Connie didn't even know which district of Tripoli we lived in. However, she did remember that we'd once mentioned that there was a hospital nearby.

So in the morning the man loaded Connie and her bags into his car and started driving around the areas of the city that had hospitals. In each area, he went into the local corner stores and asked if anyone knew an English couple who had just had a baby. It didn't take long. The third or fourth store he visited was our local shop. The people there knew us and had a rough idea of where we lived. So they directed him to our area and he knocked on a few doors until he found someone who pointed him to our house.

Libya was a difficult place in many ways but the people were certainly nice.

A Border Incident

2010-01-09T06:50:00.000-08:00

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On one of our visits to the oasis village of Ghadames, two of our friends from the village wanted to show us some nearby ruins. They knew I had trained as an archaeologists and they thought the ruins might interest me.

We set off across the desert in one of their trucks. Sue, myself and Saleh squeezed into the front. Mustafa and Abdusalem sat in the back, with Dopey, our dog.

Mustafa had strict instructions to keep tight hold of Dopey's lead. Inevitably, though, as we hit a particularly large bump, Mustafa let go of the lead and Dopey leaped over the side. We stopped. Dopey stood and grinned at us. Then she took off across the desert. We chased her. She stopped. We stopped. She grinned at us. And then she took off again.

We played this game for quite a while.

Dopey Playing the Game

However, the game stopped when we almost ran headfirst into an army truck. An Algerian army truck!

Three extremely scruffy soldiers in Algerian Army uniforms got out of the truck and walked over to our truck. They had big guns. We were all under arrest, they told us. For illegally crossing into Algeria.

Saleh and Abdusalem were outraged. We were in Libya, they told the soldiers. And they said it was the Algerians who had crossed the border illegally and who were now under arrest.

Oh, no, said the soldiers. We were in Algeria and were under arrest.

Not at all, shouted Saleh and Abdusalem. It was the Algerians who were under arrest.

The arresting and counter-arresting went on for a while.

Dopey, a staunch patriot, played her part by crouching down and snarling ferociously at the Algerians every time our Libyan friends arrested them.

Eventually, everyone calmed down. We all shook hands. We all said goodbye. The Algerians got back into their truck and drove away.

"So was that an Algerian border patrol?" I asked Saleh. "Have we accidentally crossed into Algeria?"

"No, I'm sure we're in Libya. Well, pretty sure," he replied. "In any case, that wasn't an official patrol. They were smugglers."

"Smugglers?"

"Yes. Their truck was full of cases of whisky. They were smuggling whisky into our country. Algerian soldiers do it all the time."

I had long wondered how, in a country where alcohol was strictly prohibited, our Libyan friends' houses always seemed to be well stocked with bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label. Now I knew how they got their supplies.

BTW, as soon as the Algerians left, Dopey jumped back into our truck and sat there grinning, as if to say, "Now, wasn't that fun?"
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Atheists Need Not Apply

2010-01-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

When I went to the Libyan Embassy in London to get my first residence visa for Libya, I ran into a problem. I could not get a visa without producing my baptism certificate, because atheists were not permitted to enter the country. You could only get a visa if you could prove you were a member of an organized religion. Christians, Muslims or Jews - yes, Jews - were welcome but not atheists.

I was pretty sure that I had been baptised but I had no record of it. I called my mum. She was pretty sure I had been baptised but had no record of it.

So I popped into a local church and asked the vicar if he could give me a baptism certificate. "Have you been baptised?" he asked. "I think so," I told him. "Into which church?" he followed up. "Not a clue but probably Church of England," I answered.

It seemed that this information was not enough to justify his issuing me with a baptism certificate. The only way to do this, he told me, was for him to baptise me. I explained that I didn't want to be baptised; I just wanted a certificate. He wouldn't give me one. Very inflexible, some of these religious people.

I tried the Libyan Embassy again but they were still adamant that I needed to produce a document showing I was a member of a church or temple or something similar.

So I had to improvise. I went to Woolworth's and bought a John Bull printing set. These were wonderful little toys, consisting of wooden trays, little rubber letters and numbers, a pair of tweezers and an ink pad. You made words by assembling rubber letters on the wooden trays. You inked the letters and then printed them onto paper. Pretty much the same technique that they used to print the Gutenberg Bible, except I'm not sure they used tweezers for that.

I typed up a letter confirming that I had been baptised into the Church of England at St. Ollie's and St. Stan's Church on December 25th 1945, and I signed it with the name of one of my high school friends. (His dad worked at Carlisle Cathedral, so I thought this added an authentic touch.) I then made up a nice stamp for St. Ollie's and St. Stan's with an arbitrary address in Carlisle, my hometown. I stamped the letter and took it along to the Libyan Embassy.

I got my visa.

I think Ollie and Stan would have approved.

The Three Wise Men

2010-01-02T04:57:00.000-08:00

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Every few months I would have to drive out to Tripoli International Airport to collect books or other school supplies I had ordered from the UK. As often as not, I would return from these trips empty-handed. This was not usually because the goods hadn't arrived. It was not usually even because I didn't have all the correct paperwork. It was almost always because of problems with what I called the Three Wise Men.

Who were the Three Wise Men? They were three old men who worked in the customs office at the airport. Dressed in traditional Libyan clothes, they sat at a long table and they were responsible for one part of the processing procedure for imported goods. Anyone bringing goods into the country had to start the customs approval process by taking their completed import forms to the old men's table.

The first old man's job was to take the papers and shuffle them until they were in a tidy pile. Then he passed the pile along the table.

The second old man would carefully - and very very slowly - count the papers to make sure you had given in the correct number. He would then pass them along.

The third man was probably the oldest because he had the most important job. He would staple the papers together and then stamp them with the date before handing them back to you.

This all sounds like a well-oiled system. And it was - unless one of the old men was sick. If any one of the Three Wise Men was absent, your papers could not be processed, because neither of the two remaining old men was authorized to stand in for the missing official. So you had to drive back to town and return the following day, hoping that the absent member of the team had recovered and was now at work again. Sometimes he would be there the next day, and sometimes he would still be absent. I remember I once had to make five trips before the team was back up and running smoothly.

Towards the end of my time in Libya, I had a student who was fairly high up in the Libyan Customs Service. In the nicest possible way, I mentioned the Three Wise Men and hinted that it might perhaps be more efficient to replace them with one younger person. A younger man, I suggested, could probably handle the whole process himself - and he would be less likely to be ill and therefore absent.

My student looked puzzled. "But what would we do with the three old men?" he asked.

"You could give them a pension and they could stay home with their families," I said.

"But think of how they would feel," my student replied. "They would feel useless because they would not have a job. If men don't have a job, who respects them? These are very old men and they deserve respect. So we must give them jobs."

"Okay," I answered. "Maybe there is another solution. They could keep their jobs but someone else could step in if one of them was sick."

My student thought about this for a moment.

"No, that would not work," he said. "It would make the old men feel their jobs are not really important and so they are not important."

"But it would make the system much more efficient," I argued. "People like me wouldn't have to keep driving back and forward to the airport."

"True," said my student. "But which is more important - efficiency and your convenience or the feelings of those three old men?"

Maybe I had been in Libya too long by this stage, because I have to admit I was convinced by his argument.

Proud to Be British!

2009-12-26T07:45:00.000-08:00

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When I first travelled around North Africa and the Middle East, I was always rather wary of telling people that I was British. Given Britain's imperial history, I was never sure of how people would react to learning my nationality. I needn't have worried, though, because most Arabs seemed to harbour remarkably friendly feelings towards Britain in spite of its past actions in the area. Here are two anecdotes that illustrate this.

Cairo, Egypt
I was standing on the steps of a government building in Tahrir Square in Cairo. As usual, the square was a swirling and totally chaotic mass of thousands of people and cars. While I was deciding where to go next, I noticed a middle-aged Egyptian man in European clothes walking smartly through the crowd. He seemed to be looking straight at me. He climbed the steps, his eyes still focused sharply on me. Perhaps he was someone I'd met while visiting the ILI school in Cairo? But, no, I was sure I'd never seen him before. He walked right up to me and stopped.

"Excuse me. Are you British?" he asked in English.

A little warily, I told him I was.

"Well, I would just like to thank you for Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Dickens."

He shook my hand warmly, turned around and headed back down into the chaos of Tahrir Square.

Fernaj, Libya
We lived in a small village called Fernaj, a few miles outside Tripoli. I was shopping in the village one day when an elderly Libyan man struck up a conversation with me. When I discovered I was British, he seemed pleased. According to him, British troops used to be garrisoned in the area. I asked him how they had behaved.

"They were very nice," he said. "Much better than the Italians. When the Italians ruled Libya, they treated us badly. They wouldn't even let us walk on the sidewalks. We had to walk in the street."

"And when the British were here?" I asked.

"Oh, they were much better. They were not like the Italians."

He paused, obviously lost in nostalgia. Then he continued.

"The only problem we had with the British was on weekends. The soldiers would get drunk. Then they would drive their jeeps through the village and run over our children. But, apart from that, they were nice. Much better than the Italians."
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One Law for All

2009-12-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

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I drove out to Tripoli Airport with a Libyan friend to pick up a new teacher who was arriving from England. As soon as I walked into the terminal, I knew something unusual was happening: It was packed with people and there were heavily armed soldiers everywhere.

My friend asked someone what was going on and we were told that Ghadaffi was there to welcome the Foreign Secretary of some other Arab state. I think it was Syria but it could have Iraq or Jordan.

My friend insisted that we squeeze through to the front of the crowd to watch the welcoming ceremony. It was impressive. Ghadaffi was out on the tarmac flanked by a brass band and an honour guard of very smartly dressed soldiers.

The foreign dignitary came down the steps of the plane and he and Ghadaffi embraced. After reviewing the honour guard, the two men walked hand in hand to the terminal, chatting as they walked.

They strolled past the immigration desk, which was manned by an immigration officer who looked about 18 years old.

To everyone's amazement, the immigration officer suddenly stood up and shouted out, "Hey, you! Stop!" Ghadaffi and the visiting dignitary stopped and turned around.

My friend translated the dialogue that followed.

Ghadaffi: Do you mean us?
Officer: Yes. (He pointed to the dignitary.) I need to see his entry visa.

Ghadaffi gave his guest an apologetic look and walked back to the immigration desk.

Ghadaffi: You know who I am?

Officer: Of course I know who you are, Muammar. But I need to see your friend's visa.

Ghadaffi: You don't understand. He's the Syrian Foreign Minister. I've invited him here.

Officer: That's very nice. But I need to see his visa.

Ghadaffi: He doesn't have a visa. He's here at my invitation on an official visit.

Officer: I'm sorry but if he doesn't have a visa, I can't let him through. Everyone who comes to Libya has to have an entry visa.

Ghadaffi: Well, yes, I know that's the law but he's my guest. I'll vouch for him. You can let him through.

Officer: The law says every visitor must have a valid entry visa.

Ghadaffi: But you can make an exception in this case. He's my friend.

Officer (visibly exasperated): Look. I'm just trying to do my job. You say I should let this man through without a visa. Fine, if that's what you want, I'll let him through. But then somebody else will turn up tomorrow and say that his friend is arriving without a visa and I'll have to let him through. Then the same thing will happen the next day. And the day after that. Personally, I don't care. It's up to you. Do I let people through without visas or not?

Ghadaffi thought for a moment. Then he turned around to his guest and told him that he would have to get back on the plane and go home to get a visa.

The young immigration officer sat down at his desk again and all of us in the crowd applauded.
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Libyan Rage

2009-12-12T05:47:00.000-08:00

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One of the great things about living in Libya was that Libyans were very laid back. Unlike in most Arab countries, it was rare to hear any very heated arguments. Whenever people got into an argument and seemed to be heading for a real confrontation, one or other of the participants would somehow defuse the situation and all would end well.

This would happen at the school where I worked. From time to time, an unhappy student would come into my office with a complaint. Perhaps he thought he should be in a higher class, for example, or maybe the teacher had said something to upset him. It was usually easy to solve the problem but very occasionally a student would reject my offered solution and would escalate matters. These cases always ended the same way. The student would threaten me with "I will take you to Muammar Ghadaffi!" I would hit back with "Oh, no, you won't. I will take you to Muammar Ghadaffi!" Then we would both burst out laughing at the absurdity of the situation, we would shake hands, and the student would leave.

In my four years in Libya, there was only one occasion when I ran into a Libyan who refused to be mollified. It happened when I was driving home after a bad day at work.

I passed a car and, distracted by work problems, I pulled back in a little too quickly. There was no danger of an accident but my action caused the car I passed to brake. This infuriated the driver. Perhaps he'd had a bad day at work, too.

Seconds later, the other car pulled up alongside me and forced me off the road. It stopped and the driver got out.

Before he could say anything, I apologized in Arabic. This didn't help. He was really angry. He told me, in English, that I had been very naughty. (All Libyans who knew any English seemed to know and use the word "naughty," usually in very inappropriate contexts.)

I apologized again but this made him even more angry. He was so angry that he called me a donkey, the ultimate insult throughout the Arab world.

I couldn't help but laugh at this. There is just something ridiculous about being called a donkey.

This totally infuriated him. He was speechless with rage and literally hopping mad. He started to approach me but then stopped. From the look on his face, I could see that he had made some kind of decision. Oh, oh. Perhaps this wasn't going to end well.

He walked back to his car, got in, and revved up the engine. He opened his window.

"Surely he doesn't have a gun," I thought to myself, getting ready to dive behind my car.

He played his ace. "I don't like your queen," he shouted. "I don't like your queen." Then, clearly fearing that he'd gone too far, he raced off down the road.

"I don't like her either," I yelled back.

I could hardly get back into my car for laughing.

A Problem with Stereotyping

2009-12-12T05:06:00.000-08:00

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Egypt is a very poor country. By definition, any foreigner who can afford to visit the country is comparatively rich. The result is that visitors are constantly approached by Egyptians who want to sell them something or to do something for them that will merit the payment of a tip. So, as a foreign visitor, you soon learn to brush aside offers of help from local people. However, sometimes can sometimes lead to problems.

On one trip to Cairo, I had to take a train to another city. I took a taxi to the main railroad station and carried my bag inside. Like most large public buildings in Cairo, it was a chaotic scene, with thousands of people milling around and making an incredible amount of noise.

I fought my way over to the timetable board and stood there trying to work out the time of the next train for my destination.

Within seconds I was approached by a small man wearing a European-style suit. To my surprise, he addressed me in excellent English. "Good morning, sir. Are you British?" I told him that I was. "And where do you want to go?" I told him.

"That is no problem," he said. "I am the station manager. Come up to my office and I will arrange everything for you."

"Here we go again," I thought. "Someone else who wants to supplement his pathetic government salary with a tip from a foreigner."

However, I wasn't in the mood to deal with the chaos of the station on my own and so I decided it would be worth going with him.

He took me upstairs to his office, which overlooked the chaos of the main concourse.

He told me the price of the ticket and I gave him the cash. (Surprisingly, the price he quoted was the price I had been told it would cost; he hadn't added a "commission".)

Then he sent a minion to buy my ticket and another minion to bring me a Kitty-Kola.

We sat and chatted, and he told me how he had started working for the railroad back in the days when it was operated by the British.

A few minutes before the scheduled departure time of my train, he called in another minion to carry my bag and then personally walked me to the train.

He led me to my seat, had his minion stow my bag in the luggage rack, and then had a porter dust down my seat.

"It has been a pleasure talking with you," he said. "And I hope you have a pleasant journey."

He stood and waited.

Well, he had been very helpful. I pulled out a 5 pound note, which was probably as much as he earned a week. I handed him the note.

He was visibly appalled. He handed the note back and drew himself up to his full 5' 3".

"I do not want your money, sir. I did not help you for money. I am the station master. You are British. I wanted you to see that I operate this station exactly the same way you British used to operate it when you were here in Egypt."

With that, he turned on his heel and stalked away.

I felt about 6" tall.

So much for creating or perpetuating stereotypes of other nationalities and cultures!

The Last Time I was Arrested

2009-12-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

September 5, 1977. My penultimate day in Libya.

Sue, Mustafa and I were taking a final drive together in the countryside. I spotted some charcoal heaps in a roadside field and pulled over to take a photo of this rural scene.

The Charcoal Heaps

Another car came up and stopped in front of us. A man in plainclothes got out and rushed up to me. “You are under arrest,” he yelled. “You are under arrest for taking photos of an agricultural project.”

Like most of our teachers, we’d been stopped and/or arrested many times before, but I really hadn’t anticipated this happening on my last full day in Libya.

Still, the policeman had the law on his side: In Libya as in most other less-developed countries it is illegal to photograph government buildings, bridges, airports, military installations and agricultural projects. Mustafa tried to argue that a charcoal heap is hardly an agricultural project but the secret policeman was having none of it.

So off we all went to the police station.

The station sergeant was rather nasty and he went on and on about our being Israeli spies.

We listened patiently for a while and then Mustafa gave him a business card. Not his own card but a card of one of our friends, a colonel and the deputy head of the Libyan police.

The sergeant looked at it. He was clearly impressed. “You know this man?”

“Yes, he’s a good friend of ours,” said Mustafa. “He gestured to me. “He’s a student in my British friend’s school.”

“I will phone him now.” And he did.

Now, I couldn’t understand the phone conversation but Mustafa whispered a translation to Sue and me. Basically the colonel told the sergeant to stop being such an idiot and ordered him to let us go immediately.

The sergeant hung up. We waited expectantly. “Well, he says that I must write a report and then it is up to me whether or not we keep you here.”

We could have pointed out that this was not at all what our friend had said. But then the sergeant would have lost face. And he might have reacted badly. So we kept quiet.

He went to the filing cabinet to get some paper for his report. The top drawer was empty. The second drawer was empty, too. The third drawer contained a very cute little kitten.

The sergeant went to the other offices looking for paper but there wasn’t any anywhere.

So in the end he told us that he was letting us go with a warning this time but that we should be more careful in future.

Baby Snatchers

2009-12-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

It wasn’t long after Emma was born that I realized life with a child was going to be a lot easier in Libya than it would have been in the UK.

I think this realization came on the first day Sue and I went shopping with Emma in a stroller. Mustafa was with us and was pushing the stroller. When we decided to go into one of the shops, Mustafa parked the stroller outside and started to come into the store with us.

“You can’t leave the baby outside in the stroller,” Sue said.

Mustafa looked puzzled. “Why not?”

“Someone might steal her.”

Mustafa couldn't stop laughing. “Steal a baby? Who would steal a baby?”

We explained that people often steal babies in western countries.

Mustafa replied, “But this is Libya. Everyone has lots of children here. Too many children. So nobody is going to steal the baby. In fact, the only danger is that when we come out of the store, there will be two babies in the stroller.”

Not-so-secret Police

2009-11-27T06:46:00.000-08:00

One irritating thing about our time in Libya was that you had to be careful what you said to Libyans you didn't know well, because they might turn out to be be secret police. Nobody knew how many secret police there actually were in the country and I suspect that were many fewer than we all thought. However, there is no doubt that many Libyans supplemented their incomes by acting as informants for the authorities.

I operated by the rule-of-thumb that any Libyan who had long hair, dressed in groovy clothes, said he listened to rock music and made scathing remarks about the government was probably either in the secret police or was an informant.

Some members of the secret police didn't try to keep their jobs hidden: One of our friends at Ghadames told us he was secret police the first time we met him.

Others tried to conceal their identity but weren't very successful. A good example was a student in an elementary level class that I taught. One day we were practicing the names of jobs. Part of the lesson went like this.

Me: What's our job, Ali?
Ali: I'm an engineer.
Me: Really? What's your job, Mohamed?
Mohamed: I'm a waiter.
Me: Right. What's your job, Saleh?
Saleh: I cannot tell you.
Me: Oh. Why not?
Saleh: I cannot tell you my job, because I am secret police.
Me: Well, you'd better not tell us then.
Saleh: No, I cannot tell you.
Me: That's fine. So we don't know that you're secret police.
Saleh: Yes, because I cannot tell you my job.

Did he not realize what he was saying? Or did he want to warn us all that we should be careful about what we said in class? Or was he just joking? I never found out. But I noticed that the other students were never very friendly to him in later lessons.

Trying to Turn Back the Clock

2009-11-26T05:26:00.000-08:00

.
I love Egypt. It's a fascinating country, partly because the pace of change there is generally excruciatingly slow. This is particularly true in the countryside, where life for most peasants is pretty much the same as it was a hundred, or a thousand or three thousand years ago. However, as the following story shows, even Egypt isn't totally immune to "progress".

Sue and I first visited Egypt for Christmas 1970. The highlight of the trip was a couple of days spent in and around Luxor - and the highlight of these days was a visit to the Valley of the Kings. We crossed the Nile by ferry and then hired a horse-drawn carriage to take us to the Valley. It was a wonderful experience, especially as there were very few tourists in Egypt at that time.

Six years later, while we were living in Libya, we decided to visit Egypt again, this time with our daughter Emma and our friend Mustapha. Once more the highlight was to be a carriage ride to the Valley of the Kings. So you can imagine our disappointment when we arrived in Luxor to find out that it was no longer possible to tour the Valley by carriage. All the carriages now stayed on the Luxor side of the river and the only way to visit the Valley was in a coach full of other tourists. Not at all what we'd had in mind!

Those of you who know Sue will not be surprised to hear that she wasn't going to accept this state of affairs. We wanted to tour in a horse-drawn carriage and that was what we were going to do. The first step was obviously to find the man who had driven us around six years earlier. Undeterred by the fact that all we knew about him was that his name was Youssef and he used to drive a carriage, Sue told various people we met that we needed to see him as soon as possible. And, this being Egypt, Youssef appeared later that day at the restaurant where we were eating.

After greetings and handskaes all around, Sue explained that we wanted him to drive us around Valley of the Kings the next day. Youssef explained that this was impossible because he was now based on the Luxor side of the Nile and carriages were no longer allowed on the other side. Sue brushed his objections aside. She told Youssef to bring his horse and carriage to the jetty the next morning and we would find a way around the problem.

And we did. The next morning, we rented a felucca (one of those wonderful Nile sailboats) and hired a crew of workers to load the horse and carriage onto it. As you might imagine, this involved quite a few workers. It also involved scores of spectators, who stood on the bank shouting encouragement and (contradictory) advice to the workers. But it worked, although the poor horse looked totally bemused by what was happening.

Youssef crossed by felucca

Then, while Youssef accompanied his horse in the felucca, we took the normal ferry across the river.

Sue and Emma on the ferry

We met up on the other side and then proceeded to tour the Valley in style in Youssef's carriage. Progress be damned! Some things are just better the way they used to be.

Youssef introduces Emma to Hatshepsut's Temple

Being naive

2009-11-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

Most of us who worked in the Tripoli school were firmly on the Arab side in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and we were appalled by the way in which both the USA and the UK constantly backed the Israelis.

So it was not surprising that, when the Libyan government organized an anti-UK-government rally outside the British embassy, three of our British teachers participated. Holding signs denouncing British government actions, the three of them were interviewed on that evening’s news broadcast on Libyan TV. The next morning, the local newspaper (which was government-controlled) ran a quote from Ghadaffi himself praising the teachers’ participation in the rally. That evening at school, a lot of students walked up to the three teachers and praised them for their pro-Arab stance.

The following morning, I was working in my office when I got a call from the Ministry of Education and was ordered to report immediately to the Director of Private Schools.

When I sat down with the Director, he looked very serious and asked, “How long have you been in Libya?” I told him it had been almost three years. “And still you do not understand anything,” he said in an exasperated tone.

He went on, “I have had a complaint from the head of the security forces about three of your teachers who took part in a demonstration at the British embassy. He told me to warn you that you must never allow such a terrible thing to happen again. If it does happen, he will close down the school and deport you all.”

I was at a total loss. “But it was an official demonstration. And the government TV interviewed them. And Muammar Ghadaffi himself praised them. So where is the problem?”

“Oh, Jeffrey, you are so naïve! Everything you say is true but you are missing the most important point. It doesn’t matter what the teachers were protesting about. All that matters is that these were British people protesting against their country’s government. We cannot allow this to happen again, because we do not want any Libyans to start thinking that it is permissible for people to protest the actions of their own government. Now do you understand?”

I did.

Did Kafka Live Here?

2009-11-17T06:37:00.000-08:00

As director of the IH school, I was responsible for obtaining exit visas for teachers who wanted to leave the country.

Arranging an exit visa for a teacher to leave for a weekend in Tunisia or Malta wasn’t too complicated. I simply had to fill out half-a-dozen forms and then supply proof that the teacher had paid all his income and social security taxes. Since teachers often went abroad for both short and long vacations, I quickly became expert at arranging holiday visas.

However, when the end of the year came and I had to obtain visas for four teachers who were finishing their contracts, I found that arranging final exit visits was much more complicated.

One complication was that I had to prove to the Immigration Ministry that each teacher had paid his or her phone bill. At first, I didn’t see this as a problem, because none of our teachers had phones. (The waiting period to get a phone line installed was something like 9 years.) Little did I know!

I went down to the Telecommunications Ministry and asked the clerk to issue letters stating that the teachers did not have any outstanding phone bills. He told me, very firmly, that the ministry did not have a policy authorizing this. I tried to talk him around. He was adamant.

So I went along to the Immigration Ministry and explained the situation. The officials were sympathetic but said there was nothing they could do without proof that the teachers didn’t owe phone bills. Without this, the teachers would just have to stay in Libya.

I headed back to the Telecommunications Ministry. I begged. I pleaded. I even started to show irritation, until I realized this would scupper any chance of cooperation from the clerk. It was all to no avail.

Almost physically shaking with frustration - don’t forget this was my first year in Libya - I went outside, had a cigarette and racked my brains for a solution.

I went back in and marched up to the counter. “My brother, what do I have to do to get a phone line?” I asked.

“Everyone knows this,” the clerk replied. “You fill out this application form. Then we look to see if you already have a phone. If you do, we stamp ‘Rejected’ on your form. If you don’t have a phone, we stamp ‘Accepted’ on it.”

I was jubilant. “Okay. Give me phone application forms for these four teachers.”

You can probably guess the rest. I submitted the applications. The clerk gave me copies of the applications, each one stamped ‘Accepted’. I took the letters to the Immigration Ministry as proof that the teacher did not have phones and therefore could not possibly have any outstanding phone bills. I think the immigration officials were impressed by my ingenuity.

Anyway, it worked and I got the teachers’ visas.

P.S.

Of my four years in Libya, I think there was only one business working day when I wasn't involved in some way or other with arranging visas for teachers. As you can imagine, it was the worst aspect of my job.

Friends in High Places

2009-10-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

The IH school that I directed had a contract to teach Libyan Arab Airline employees and the air traffic controllers at Tripoli airport. As having contacts in various organizations was often the only way to get things done in Libya, it was very useful that we had students at the airport.

For example, as a general rule it was virtually impossible to find out from the airport if a particular flight had arrived yet. It wasn’t at all difficult for me, however. I would just call up one of our ATC students and ask, “Has the British Caledonian flight arrived?” Since the airport had no radar, the student would usually say, “Just a minute, Mr. Jeff. I will look out of the window and see.”

Our students loved to show us that their English lessons were paying dividends. Unfortunately, this didn’t always work out too well.

One day I was waiting to meet some teachers arriving on a British Caledonian flight from Gatwick. As I was early, I went up to the tower to chat with the on-duty ATC, who was one of our students. He proudly introduced me to his colleagues and we all sat down to have tea.

The radio crackled and my student went over to answer. It was the British Caledonian pilot asking for permission to land.

My student was thrilled. What an opportunity to show his teacher how much he had learned! Looking across to see if I was watching and listening, he said carefully in his very best English, “British Caledonian, you may land immediately on runway number one.” (At this time the airport had only one runway.)

I was just about to congratulate my student when the pilot’s very British voice came dryly over the radio, “And the Alitalia plane?"

Unfortunately, my student hadn’t noticed that an Alitalia flight was already taxiing on runway one. He panicked and his beautiful English deserted him. “British. No land. No land. Go back. Go back. No land.”

My student was mortified at losing face so badly in front of his teacher. I felt terrible for him. It’s just as well that the pilot looked down before he landed, though.

Murderers' Home

2009-10-29T21:57:00.000-07:00

There was virtually no crime in Libya when we were there. Most people were comfortably off and, besides that, Libyans were basically very honest people. Two quick examples will illustrate this.

1. We sometimes ate in a cheap little workers café on Shara Mizran. A really cheap little café. After eating there one evening, we drove home and went to bed. The next morning I realized I had left the school cashbox in the café. The box had a broken lock and it contained about 3500 dinars ($10, 000 US – a LOT of money in 1975). I drove into town at 90 miles an hour. As I hurtled into the café, the waiter waved at me. “Good morning! You left your money last night. Here it is.” And there it was. All 3500 dinars. In a cashbox that didn’t lock.

2. People didn’t much like leaving their money in banks. (Since last year, I know why.) So they often carried around large amounts of cash. One day I saw an old man come out of our bank with wads of money in his arms. As he walked off down the street, he dropped one of the wads without noticing. Another Libyan picked up the wad of notes and ran after the old man, shouting, “Hey, stop. You’ve dropped some money. Here it is.”

So we were all shocked in 1977 when there was a murder in Tripoli. What happened was an immigrant worker from Tunisia tried to rob a jeweller’s on Shara Istiklal and ended up killing the shopkeeper.

The murderer was caught, put on trial and sentenced to death. Ghadaffi came on TV and praised the court for imposing the death penalty. He suggested that the execution be carried out in public and the man’s body then be hung from a lamppost on Istiklal Street as a warning to other potential murderers. Bloodthirsty stuff worthy of a Texas governor!

But this was Libya. A couple of days later, Ghadaffi came on TV again to announce that he had been thinking about the case and had revised his opinion. After all, the killer was a poor uneducated immigrant worker from a class-ridden neighbouring country. As a fellow Arab and Muslim, he surely deserved compassion.

So the murderer was granted amnesty, given a house and provided with a government job.

A Sign from Above

2009-10-22T06:15:00.000-07:00

I flew to Cairo to visit the new IH school that my friend Colin Davies had just opened in Heliopolis.

When I got into a taxi at Cairo airport, I realized that I had left the school’s address at home. I wasn’t too worried. I knew the school was called ILI and that it was in the suburb of Heliopolis. So how difficult could it be to find?

Cairo is quite big

It was difficult. Very difficult. We drove around Heliopolis for two and half hours without finding either the school or anyone who had even heard of the school.

I decided the best thing was to have the taxi driver take me to the British Embassy, way over on the other side of the city. Somebody there was sure to know about the school. Or so I hoped.

I’d just told the taxi driver to take me to the embassy when I noticed a sign on top of a building right in front of us. It was a huge sign, and it had a blue circle containing the letters ILI in white. I couldn’t imagine how we’d missed seeing it on our several drives along this and nearby streets.

We drove to the building, I paid the driver (a hefty sum, I may add), and I walked into the building. Colin was standing in the entrance way. “Hello, mate,” he said. “Excuse my dirty hands. I’ve been putting up a sign on the roof. Just finished.”

Revolutionary Friends

2009-10-22T06:10:00.000-07:00

The Libyan Revolution took place on September 1^st 1969, when Ghadaffi and eleven other young army officers overthrow the monarch in a bloodless coup.

One of the first actions of the RCC (Revolutionary Command Council) was to send a delegation to Beijing to establish relations with China. Mao-Tse Tung didn’t know much about Libya but he arranged for the delegation to meet with Premier Chou-En-Lai.

According to the friend of a friend of one of the delegates, the meeting went something like this.

Chou: Welcome to the People’s Republic of China.

Delegate: I bring greetings from the Libyan Revolutionary Council, your comrades who are now the government of Libya.

Chou: That’s very nice.

Delegate: We have come to ask for assistance from our Chinese revolutionary brothers.

Chou: Well, I don’t know. We might be able to give you a bit of a hand. For example, Chairman Mao has written a little red book that might give you some useful tips on being revolutionaries. So what do you need?

Delegate: We would like to buy an atom bomb.

Chou: Sorry?

Delegate: We would like to buy an atom bomb.

Chou: Sorry but no can do, I’m afraid, comrade. Our atom bombs are not for sale. We made them for our own use. Now we do export other things. We have a nice line in plastic toy animals, for example.

Delegate: No, no. We need an atom bomb. You have plenty of them. So please sell us one. Just one. Just a small one. We only want it to frighten the Israelis with.

The delegation left China, empty-handed, shortly afterwards.

You can’t make this stuff up!

Historical Note:

The motivation for the Libyan attempt to obtain an atom bomb was, of course, the fact that the Israelis already had a well-developed nuclear weapons programme. This programme, carried out with the help of the French, began in 1958 and resulted in the production of several atom bombs a year from 1967-68 onwards.

No Man's Land

2009-10-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

In the 1970s, it was against Libyan law to have any official signs written in languages other than Arabic. It was also illegal to broadcast any public announcements except in Arabic. These regulations were strictly enforced at Tripoli Airport, which made catching flights out of Libya a very stressful experience for foreigners who didn’t speak or read Arabic.

The worst example while we were there was that of a British publisher’s representative, who was heading home after hawking his wares around schools in Tripoli. I’ve forgotten his name, so I’ll call him Brian.

Brian got to the airport early, checked in, went through Immigration and waited in the departure lounge for his British Caledonian flight to Gatwick. Unfortunately, he didn’t understand any of the announcements and he missed his flight.

As he was a seasoned traveler, he wasn’t too worried. All he had to do was go back into the main concourse and change his ticket. Off he went back towards the concourse. But, of course, he had to go back through Immigration – and that’s where he hit a snag.

The Immigration official demanded to see his passport. When Alan produced it, the official saw that it contained an exit stamp. “You can’t come back now,” he said, “because you have left Libya.”

“But I haven’t left,” argued Brian. “I’m still here.”

“No, you have left,” replied the official. “As soon as you walked through here before and received an exit stamp in your passport, you left Libya.”

“Okay.” Brian knew that arguing wouldn’t get him anywhere. “So what can I do?”

The official explained that the only solution was for Brian to fly to another country, go to the local Libyan consulate, get an entry visa for Libya and fly back to Tripoli.

“But I can’t fly to another country unless you let me back into the concourse to change my ticket.”

“This is true,” agreed the official. “But I cannot let you back into Libya now you have left.”

Brian went back into the departure lounge. He could wait for the next British Caledonian flight and try to talk his way onto that using his old ticket. However, the next flight wasn’t for four days and no sane person would seriously consider spending four days in the airport’s tiny departure lounge.

So he did the only thing he could think of. He slipped through a side door onto the tarmac. Once outside, he walked from plane to plane on the runway, shouting up to the pilots and asking for a ride. The captain of a Swissair plane took pity on him and let him board.

Opinion Polls - Libyan Style

2009-10-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

Muammar Ghadaffi was a romantic at heart. There are still some signs of this: When he travels to other countries, he holds official meetings in a tent and is guarded by a troop of virgin female soldiers. However, his romantic side was even more obvious back when we lived in Libya. Here's one example of it.

Like most Arabs, Ghadaffi had read and was captivated by the stories Scheherezade told in the “Arabian Nights”. He was particularly struck by the story in which she tells how the Caliph of Baghdad used to travel around the city in disguise to find out what people were thinking and saying about him and his government.

So in the early 1970s Ghadaffi started appearing in cafes and restaurants, completely wrapped up in a cloak. He would sit quietly in a corner, listening to what people were saying. He thought he was incognito but, in reality, he was fooling nobody. This gave rise to lots of scenes that played out along these lines.

Ali: Salaam aleikum. I'll have a Kitty Cola. So what’s new then?

Barman: Aleikum salaam. Oh, nothing much.

Ali: Is that Muammar sitting over there in the corner?

Barman: Yes. Third time this week.

Ali: What does he want?”

Barman: The usual. Wants to know what people think about that new law he’s going to introduce.

Ali: The one saying all schoolchildren will have to wear only traditional Libyan clothes?

Barman: That’s the one.

Ali: Bloody stupid idea. (Raising his voice.) Bloody stupid idea, if you ask me.

The man in the cloak gets up and walks out, writing in a small notebook and mumbling, “So that’s 227 against and …”

The next day Ghadaffi would appear on TV. If his research showed that people liked the new law he was considering, he would say, "Hello, my brothers and sisters. As you've probably heard by now, I have decided to pass a law requiring all children to wear traditional Libyan clothes when they attend school."

Of course, if he had heard a lot of criticism of his proposal, he would give a very different speech. “Hello, my brothers and sisters. I have heard that some people are saying I want to make all of our schoolchildren wear traditional clothes. What a crazy idea! I would never do such a stupid thing. This is just another filthy lie spread by the Zionist warmongers and their imperialist masters in Washington and London ...”

A Very Naughty Man

2009-10-09T08:30:00.000-07:00

For most of our first two years in Tripoli, we lived in an old Italian villa on a farm in the village of Fernaj. It was a beautiful house with high ceilings and with stunning marble floors. The front porch was surrounded by oleander and jasmine bushes, and we could pick lemons for our tea from trees in the front garden.

However, once Sue was pregnant, we decided to move to a newer house in town. We loved the old house but it was a little remote. Plus it had some irritating quirks. For example, the wiring wasn’t perfect and so whenever you turned on a tap, your fingers tingled with 110 volts of electricity. While this didn’t bother us too much, we felt it wasn’t ideal for a baby.

The new house was owned by a Libyan who also owned dozens of other houses as well as some apartment blocks. Unlike Donald Trump, he didn’t flaunt his wealth. In fact, the first time he came to visit us, I thought he was a tramp. I think it was the way his pants were held up with a piece of dirty old string that confused me.

We happily paid the rent of 120 dinars a month (about $400 US) for the first year. Then Ghadaffi passed a law cutting all rents by 75%. So ours went down to 30 dinars. We were very pleased. The landlord was not and he came rushing around to see us.

Landlord: Did you hear? That madman Ghadaffi has cut all rents by 25%.

Me: Ridiculous, isn’t it? Actually, it’s 75%.

Landlord: This is very bad for me.

Me: I sympathize. But what can we do? It’s the law. So I’ll make out your cheque for 30 dinars.

Landlord: Well, there is a way around it. Every month you can write me the rent cheque for 30 dinars. Then you can give me 90 dinars in cash. Like a present.

Me: I’d really love to do that. Nothing would make me happier. Unfortunately, though, I’ll have to pass. You know how the government watches foreigners like me. I daren’t risk it. Sorry.

Landlord: Oh, that Ghadaffi! He only cares about the poor. He never thinks about the rich. He is a very naughty man.

God is Great

2009-10-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

Preface

To understand this story you have to know that, in Libya, women who marry keep their maiden name.

Sue and I got into our VW to drive home after work. The passenger side front door of our Beetle tended to stick and so I reached across Sue to pull the door shut. A policeman saw this and ran across the road to our car. “Stop,” he yelled. “Stop. You are under arrest.”

We weren’t very concerned, because we’d already been stopped or arrested by the police on dozens of occasions. However, we were curious about what we were supposed to have done wrong this time.

It turned out that the policeman had misinterpreted my reaching across Sue to close the door. He thought we were making out in the car and so he was arresting us for public immorality.

Luckily, it didn’t take very long for us to convince him that we were a respectable married couple. To prove our status, I handed him our ID cards. An interesting scene followed.

He looked at my ID. “So you are English. And your name is Mohamed.”

“That’s right,” I confirmed.

“You are Muslim.”

“Sorry. No. I’m Christian.”

He looked puzzled. “You are English and Christian but your name is Mohamed?”

“Yes.”

“An Englishman who is not Muslim but has a Muslim name. This is amazing. El hamdulillah! Praise be to God!”

He took Sue’s ID. “She is English but her name is Susan Mohamed. Ah, so she is Muslim.”

“No. She’s a Christian, too.”

He looked puzzled. Then the puzzled look changed to one of comprehension. “Ah. You are related. She is your sister.”

“No. We’re not related. She’s my wife.”

“Your wife?” He was totally stunned. “So you are both called Mohamed but you are both Christians. And you both lived in England, where you met each other and got married.”

“Yes.”

Faced with evidence of what seemed to him to be a supernatural string of coincidences, he responded with a reverent “El hamdullillah!" Then he handed back our IDs, saluted me and watched us drive away.

What a great story he would have to tell at the mosque on Friday!

Closing time, Egyptian style

2009-10-01T08:51:00.000-07:00

On one of my trips to Cairo, Colin Davies took me to a goodbye party that he had organized for David Lamb, the eight-time Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist. (How's that for name dropping?)

The party consisted of a few of us sitting around a fire and having a picnic in the desert outside Cairo. It was quite a dramatic setting, particularly as we watched night fall over the nearby Pyramids.

David was in good form, fueled by several glasses of Canadian Club whisky. His voice raspy as always from chainsmoking, he was well into one of his war stories. I think it was the one about how he came up with the name “Hamburger Hill” to describe a particularly vicious battle that he witnessed in Vietnam.

Suddenly, a truck appeared out of the darkness. Several Egyptian soldiers surrounded our little group. Their officer came up and asked what we were doing. Colin explained.

“I’m sorry,” said the officer, “but you must leave.”

Colin asked him why.

“Because the desert is closed. It’s after 10:00 p.m. and the desert closes at 10:00. You must all leave now.”

Who would ever have thought that they closed the Sahara Desert at 10:00 every night.

Things Aren't Always What They Seem

2009-09-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

You rarely saw Libyan women out in the street in Tripoli and the few that you did see all wore the barrakan. This is a white sheet that reveals only a part of a woman’s face or, if worn properly, only one eye.

Libyan women taking flights abroad generally wore the barrakan, too. Until they sat down in the plane. Then they would remove it, often to reveal much more daring western clothes, such as halter tops and hot pants.

So waiting on board a British Caledonian plane bound for Gatwick, I was not surprised when a white-clad Libyan woman sat down next to me and started to remove her barrakan.

I was surprised, however, when she spoke to me in a very west country English accent. In fact, she wasn’t Libyan at all; she was a young Englishwoman.

It turned out that she lived in Tajjoureh, a small village near where we lived and which we regularly drove through. When I expressed surprise at finding out that an English women was living there, she told me that five other young English women lived in the same small village. All of the women came from villages near a naval base in southwest England. Groups of Libyan naval cadets regularly came to live on the base in order to participate in naval training courses. Inevitably, some of the cadets met local women during their off-duty hours and some of the assignations led to romance and marriage.

I asked the woman whether she had known much about Libya before she married her husband and followed him over there. “I didn’t know a thing,” she told me. “My husband didn’t even mention about me having to wear the barrakan until we got here. It was the same with all the other English girls who live in Tajjoureh.”

I suggested that she and her friends had to be finding it really difficult to adjust to the limiting and subservient role of Libyan women, having to wear the barrakan, being ordered around by her husband, etc.

She was amused. It wasn’t at all difficult, she informed me. According to her, villages are villages, no matter which country they are in. When you’re a girl living at home in an English village, your father tells you what to wear, when you can go out, who you can see, and what you can and cannot do. When you are married and living in a Libyan village, she explained, the only difference is that it’s your husband rather than your father who controls your life.

She finished by pointing out that her new life was actually much better than her old one. Now she had money, plenty of money, and her husband let her fly back to England at least once a year to buy clothes and visit family and friends. And while she was in England, she could do exactly as she pleased!

P.S.

My father moved from a small village in Pakistan to Carlisle in northern England. He told me he felt very much at home in Cumbria. Not only did the countryside remind him of his native Kashmir but he also felt that people's attitudes were very similar.