Thursday, October 29, 2009

Friends in High Places

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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.

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

A Sign from Above

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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

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The Libyan Revolution took place on September 1st 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.



Thursday, October 15, 2009

No Man's Land

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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.