Driving with Camels

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Driving in Libya was a tricky business. Even Libyans said so. They had two sayings about it. One was, “In England you drive on the left. In America you drive on the right. In Libya we drive in the shade.” The other was, “In Libya you can drive for hundreds of kilometers without seeing another vehicle. But if you see one, you will probably hit it.”

By the way, I can vouch for the truth underlying the latter saying. Once when driving on a road in the middle of nowhere, I saw a truck coming the other way. As the road was absolutely flat and straight and visibility was perfect, I was able to watch the truck for miles as it got closer and closer. It was driving right in the middle of the road. I got nervous and blew my horn. This seemed to wake up the other driver, who swerved back onto his side of the road at the very last moment, just missing my car.   

The problem wasn’t just that Libyans were undisciplined drivers, although that certainly contributed to the chaos. It was also that the roads were not well maintained. So you constantly had to swerve to avoid huge potholes. And potholes weren’t the only dangers. At some point before we got to Libya the military had moved large numbers of tank transporters and other very heavy vehicles east from Tripoli to the Egyptian border. This had left deep ruts in the tarmac on the main coast road. Some of these ruts were so deep that, if you got your wheels into them, you could be stuck in them for miles.

There was another problem with roads and the military. Whenever the latter were in a hurry - which was often - they would drive in the fast lane on the main roads, but going against the traffic. It could be very disconcerting to zoom along in the fast lane and suddenly see a convoy of military vehicles heading straight towards you.

Anyway, thinking about Libyan roads has reminded me that the worst driving experience of my entire life occurred in Libya, and it happened the very first time that I drove in that country. I had just bought a Beetle and had to drive it home from the dealer. (Perhaps I should mention here that I was a very inexperienced driver and had never driven on the right before. Also, I had failed the only driving test I had ever taken, which was in the UK.)

I managed the first couple of miles all right. Then we came to a large roundabout, which was a seething, disorganized mass of cars, trucks, buses, bikes, donkey carts and pedestrians. I stopped and waited for a space to open up so I could enter the roundabout. After several minutes I realized a space was never going to open up. So I said a quick prayer and drove into the chaos. Remarkably, we didn’t crash. I was elated.

But then I couldn’t get off the roundabout. We went around it again and again. Every time I tried to get off, I would have to swerve back onto it to avoid running into another car or a cyclist or a bus. Once, my way was blocked by a donkey pulling a cart filled with toilets. Another time, I almost escaped only to be thwarted at the last second by a line of camels, each with its tongue connected by a piece of wire to the tail of camel in front of it.

I don’t know how many times we went around. I’m guessing at least twenty but it could well have been more. I do know that when I finally broke free, I pulled over to the side of the road, put my head on the steering wheel and wept.

Libya could do that to you.

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Papers, Bloody Papers

As I have mentioned before, the amount of bureaucracy we had to deal with in Libya was horrific. As a result, episodes like the one described below were not uncommon.

I needed to get an exit visa so that I could travel to the UK for a meeting of International House school directors. As usual, it took hours for me to complete all of the necessary forms, because this had to be done in Arabic and I didn’t really read or write Arabic.

Once the forms were done I went down to the Ministry of Immigration with Mansour, the school “fixer,” and handed in the bundle of papers. The counter clerk looked only at the top sheet and handed the bundle back to me. I looked inquiringly at Mansour and he explained that the top form was an old one and that we needed the new version.

We rushed over to one of the kiosks that sold government forms and asked for the new version of the form that had been replaced. The man there told us that the new form wasn’t available yet. God willing, it would be available the next day.

Apparently God wasn’t willing, because the following day the new form still hadn’t arrived.

Three days later we finally got a copy of the new form. I completed it. Mansour and I went back to the Ministry and I handed in the stack of papers again. The clerk shook his head sadly, handed back the papers and said something to Mansour. The latter explained that the form was not valid because it didn’t have the government’s motto of the day stamped on it. 

As neither Mansour nor I had never heard of this motto of the day, we went to the bank where our friend Mustafa worked to see if he knew about it. He did. He explained that the government now issued a new motto every day and this had to be written or stamped on all forms. That day’s motto was the Arabic equivalent of “If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well”.

Since Mansour was illiterate, Mustafa wrote the motto on the immigration forms, and Mansour and I rushed back to the Ministry. Too late! It was an hour from closing time and there was a huge line of people waiting. Okay, we would go back the next morning and would get there really early.

The following morning Mansour and I were first in line when the counter opened. I handed over the papers. The clerk glanced at them, shook his head and handed them back. “What is it this time?” I asked Mansour. “This is yesterday’s motto,” he said.

A quick trip to Mustafa’s bank revealed that the current motto was, “If you help a friend, he will stab you in the back”. (This was no doubt inspired by some recent action by the Egyptian government.) Mustafa crossed out the old motto on each form and replaced it with the new one. 

Back at the Ministry, we waited in line for two hours before we reached the counter. The clerk took the bundle of papers. Mansour and I held our breath. The clerk looked at us, shook his head and said something I didn’t catch. Mansour translated, “The motto is an Islamic motto. So it must be written in green ink. You wrote it in black ink.”

Back at the bank Mustafa found a green pen and rewrote the motto on each form.

Back at the Ministry we waited in line and finally reached the counter again. The clerk took the papers. He looked at the top sheet and he smiled. “Quies (Good),” he said approvingly. Mansour and I grinned at each other. The clerk turned to the next sheet. Another smile and another “Quies”. We worked through the stack of forms, nodding approvingly at each one. Mansour and I were almost hugging each other by now.

 The clerk reached the final page. No smile this time. He pointed to where I had written my name, in block capitals as specified on the form. To my surprise, he explained the problem in English this time.

“This name no good.”

“Why?” I asked.

“All letters same size.”

Obviously they were all the same size, because my name was in block capitals. Trying to stay calm, I asked him to explain.

“You are English teacher. You should know this.”

“Know what?” I asked.

“In English first letter in every name must be big letter.”

I had been in Libya long enough to know how to react to this type of idiocy. So I didn't try to put the clerk right about capitalization in English. And I didn't do what I wanted to do, which was to grab the clerk's head and smash it repeatedly down on the counter. Instead, I meekly apologized, took the form and rewrote the first letter of each of names in even bigger capitals.
  

The clerk nodded approvingly. He stamped the papers and gave me a receipt.

“Come back tomorrow with your passport and you will have your visa”.

“Shukran (Thank you),” Mansour and I said in unison.

“La shukran. Allah wajib,” the clerk responded. “Thanks are not necessary. I’m just doing God’s work”.

No doubt.

Murderers' Home

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.
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Making Compromises

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A westerner who wants to live in a Middle Eastern country has to be willing to make compromises. Some of these compromises are about fitting in with local customs but others are about fitting in with your fellow expatriates. As I learned on my first stint in the region, in Beirut, it sometimes takes considerable ingenuity to devise a suitable compromise.


When Sue and I arrived in Beirut, we quickly rented a small apartment in the city center.

The next day our employer asked us when he should tell our maid to come to start work. The maid in question had worked for our predecessors at the school and he assured us that she was totally reliable. (I can’t remember the woman’s name now but I’ll call her Khadija.)

Sue and I were both from working-class backgrounds and had political views that did not encompass the hiring of maids! So we told our boss that we weren’t going to have a maid. But all expatriates have a maid, he told us. They don’t cost much and they make life much more pleasant. We repeated that we were not going to employ one and that that was that.

The next day our boss approached us again. He said he had explained the situation to Khadija and that she was very upset. She had a young daughter and she worked as a maid in order to pay for her daughter’s education. If we didn’t employ her, her daughter would have to stop attending school.

As you can imagine, Sue and I felt terrible when we heard this and, after a little soul-searching, we agreed to hire Khadija. However, we weren’t willing to totally abandon our principles. So we decided to hire her for half-a-day a week and to pay her the same hourly rate that we were being paid as teachers.

Khadija started work. As she did a great job and was a very nice person, everything seemed to have worked out well.

No such luck! After a few days the director asked to see us again. The other teachers were unhappy with us, he said, because we were paying Khadija double the going rate. Our colleagues’ maids would soon hear about this and it was bound to cause ill feeling. We had to cut her pay to match what everyone else paid. No way, we replied. You really have to do this, he countered. We were adamant.

In the end we worked out an ingenious solution. We would pay Khadija for a full day’s work every week at the going rate. However, we would always let her go home after working only half-a-day. So her official rate of pay was the same as that of the other maids but in reality she received the same hourly rate as we were paid.

It was the first of many compromises that we had to make in Beirut and, later, in Libya. I think it was one of the better ones, though.
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Driving a Hard Bargain

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Bargaining is an inescapable part of life in the Arab World, where very few shops and no markets have fixed prices. I was never very good at it, as was brought home to me when a group of us teachers from International House Beirut traveled to Cairo for Christmas.


One day, after visiting the Pyramids, Sue and I went into the village that is located next to the Sphinx. We popped into a souvenir shop and we both fell in love with a wall-hanging of an Egyptian scene.

“How much is that hanging?” I asked.
“Six Egyptian pounds.”

Having watched how Beirutis bargain, I knew better than to accept this opening price.
“I’ll give you three pounds for it.”
“No, the price is six pounds.”

Hmm. He was supposed to bring the price down but he hadn’t.
“Okay,” I said. “Four pounds. Agreed?”
He just looked at me and repeated, “Six pounds.”

He was clearly a tough bargainer.
“All right, five pounds. And that’s my final offer.”
“The price is six pounds,” he said.

Refusing to give in and pay such an outrageous price, we left the shop and went back into Cairo.

When we got to our hotel room, we realized that we were being ridiculous. The hanging was one of the best we’d ever seen and even at six pounds it was a real bargain. Luckily, one of our friends was going to the Pyramids and Sphinx the following day and so we asked her to buy the hanging for us. I carefully explained where the shop was and exactly where the hanging was inside the shop.

“He’ll ask for six pounds,” I told her. “That’s fine. Just pay what he asks.”

That evening she came to our room with the hanging.

“I suppose he asked for six pounds,” I said.
“Oh, no,” she told us. “He started by asking for four pounds but I quickly bargained him down to three.”

Go figure!
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Father and Son ( or Morning Has Broken)

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Yahya was the brother of one of our Lebanese friends. He told us a rather touching story about him and his father.


When Yahya was a teenager, he liked to sleep late but his father was an early riser. So in the mornings his father would burst noisily into Yahya’s bedroom. “Get up, you lazy boy,” he would shout, and he would drag Yahya out of bed. This went on day after day for years. And Yahya hated it.

Then one day, when he was a young adult, Yahya decided that he’d had enough of this treatment.

“Oh, my father,” he said. “Why is that that every morning you come into my room like the Israeli army? You shout and scream and you drag me out of bed. By Allah, it is a very cruel way to wake me. Couldn’t you wake me in a more gentle way?”

The next morning his father opened the bedroom door quietly and walked softly over to the bed. He put his hand on Yahya’s shoulder and gave him the gentlest of shakes.

“Oh, my son,” he crooned. “The night has ended and a new day is beginning. The silver moon has gone to rest and the golden orb of the sun has begun its journey across the azure sky. It is time for you to open your beautiful eyes.”

Yahya sat up.

“Oh, thank you, my father,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, my son.”

They embraced, and they cried tears of happiness and love.

The following morning his father burst into the bedroom like the Israeli army again and dragged Yahya out of bed.
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God's Will

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A British friend, Fred, was visiting Sue and me in Beirut. He was thinking of buying a rug during his visit and so we gave him directions to a local store that sold carpets and rugs.

When the entered the store, he was surprised to see the owner was lying on the floor next to a pile of rolled up rugs. The owner explained that he was trying to reach a kitten that was hiding among the rugs. He’d been trying to coax it out for hours, he said, but with no success.

“Let me try,” said Fred. He got down on his hands and knees, made a couple of “pss” noises and out came a lovely little gray and white kitten.

The store owner grabbed the kitten, put it into a shoebox and tied up the box with string.

“Are you going to take it home?” asked Fred.

“Oh, no,” said the owner. “I don’t like cats.”

“You aren’t going to kill it, I hope, “ said Fred.

The owner looked shocked. “Oh, no, that would be haram (a sin).”

“So what are you going to do with it?”

“I’m going to put the box in the middle of the road”.

Fred didn’t like the sound of this. “But it will get run over. You will have killed the kitten.”

“Not at all,” the owner responded. “If it gets run over, it'll be nothing to do with me. It will be Allah's will. We are all in Allah's hands.”

Like most Brits, Fred had a less fatalistic view of life. So that evening Sue and I came home to find we had become the adoptive parents of a little white and gray kitten. We named her Habibi.

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Getting Worse

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We hear so much about Islamic extremism these days that I suspect most westerners think the Arabs have always been intolerant and fanatical. This isn’t at all the case, except perhaps in Saudi Arabia.

Take Libya. It was an Islamic country when I lived there and most Libyans were pretty devout Muslims. However, they were generally very tolerant when it came to other religions. For example, every Libyan fasted during Ramadan but nobody ever tried to impose fasting on westerners. In fact, people in villages would offer us Pepsis while they themselves were abstaining from drinking anything from 4:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. every day for a month.

Libyans would ask me and the other teachers at our school what our religion was. When we told them we were Christians, they would smile and say something like, “Christian, Muslim, Jew, same-same.” From what I see on the news, I very much doubt that the same attitude prevails today.

Even in Egypt, the most sophisticated Arab country, religion has gradually become more oppressive. When I first visited Cairo, in 1970, I don’t think I saw a single woman wearing a hijab or headscarf. By the mid 1980s the situation had changed and most women covered their heads when outside. From what I've been seeing on the news recently, it seems that that any Egyptian woman venturing onto the streets bareheaded nowadays risks being sexually assaulted or having acid thrown in her face.

I find it all terribly sad.
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The Perfect Teacher

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Almost all of the students in our school in Libya were happy with their teachers and their classes, but I did occasionally have to deal with complaints from Libyan and other Arab students. When these complaints were justified, I tried to find a solution to them. However, many of the complaints were ridiculous and I eventually hit on a good way to handle these by drawing on my (very limited) knowledge of Islam. My approach went like this.

Student: Director, you must give me a new class. My teacher is not good.
Me: Oh, really. What’s the problem?
Student: Today she was spelled a word wrong on the board.
Me: Well, you know, spelling in English is much more difficult than spelling in Arabic. Even teachers sometimes make mistakes.
Student: No, this is not good. Teachers cannot make mistakes. I want a teacher who does not make mistakes.
Me: So you want a perfect teacher?
Student: Yes.
Me: Are you not a Muslim, then?
Student: Of course I am a Muslim.
Me: I don’t think so.
Student: Why do you say this? I am a good Muslim.
Me: I don’t think so. Good Muslims respect the Holy Koran and you don’t.
Student: Of course I respect the Holy Koran.
Me: But the Holy Koran says that people are never perfect. Only Allah is perfect. So if you want a teacher who is perfect, you can’t be a good Muslim.

At this point the student would always decide to stay in the class. And I would go and remind the teacher concerned that she/he should be more careful when writing on the board.
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