Not-so-secret Police

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

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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

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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?

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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.