A Short Visit

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Getting into Libya was always a hassle. It wasn’t unusual to spend 2 or 3 hours in lines at the Customs and the Immigration desks in Tripoli International Airport. The key to getting through reasonably smoothly was to be polite to all the officials and never to show any sign of impatience. Not everyone arriving realized this.


On one occasion I flew into Tripoli and got into the Immigration line. A few places ahead of me, I noticed a tall American man, who was wearing cowboy boots and a large Stetson hat. No doubt an employee of one of the oil companies.

As we waited, the oil company man kept looking at his watch and making sarcastic comments to the rest of us in the line. The comments gradually became louder and more disparaging, and they attracted the attention of the young Immigration official at the desk. He motioned for the next person in line to wait and, smiling, beckoned for the oilman to go to the desk.

The oilman approached the desk.

“Passport, please,” said the official.

“Here you are, boy,” said the oilman.

The official took the passport and thumbed through it until he found the page with the entry visa. Still smiling, he ripped the page out of the passport and called over two police officers.

The last I saw of the oilman he was being led to the departure lounge by the two policemen, preparatory to being put back on a plane out of the country.
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Creative Carpentry

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One day I noticed that the lock on the front door of the school was coming loose. I asked, Mansour, our fixer, if he knew a good locksmith and he said he did.

A little later that day Mansour appeared upstairs at my office with a man who bore a remarkable resemblance to him. He introduced him as his cousin the carpenter. 

"Why do we need a carpenter, Mansour?" I asked. He took me downstairs and showed me that the wood around the lock was rotten and would not hold a new lock. So we needed a carpenter to cut out the section of rotten wood and replace it with a new piece. As this seemed logical, I told them to go ahead with the repairs.

A couple of hours went by and then Mansour appeared and took me down to inspect the front door. His cousin the carpenter had done a very neat job. He had cut away a 2" by 6" section from the edge of the door and replaced it with new wood. He had then stained the new wood to match the rest of the door. It all looked very good to me and so I paid the carpenter and asked Mansour to find a locksmith. I wanted the lock fixed before we closed for the night.

Just before our closing time Mansour again appeared at my office, this time with a man he introduced as the locksmith. After exchanging the usual greetings, I asked the locksmith if he had replaced the lock. He looked rather uncomfortable. "There's a problem," Mansour said, looking down and shuffling his feet. 

They led me downstairs and showed me the problem. The locksmith had tried to attach the new lock to the section of new wood with screws. This hadn't worked. In fact, all that had happened was that the new wood had disintegrated. How strange! I looked more closely. No wonder the new wood had disintegrated. It wasn't wood at all. Rather it was a chunk of stale bread that had been cut to shape, sanded and varnished. 

I looked at Mansour. Mansour looked nervously at me and then at the locksmith. The locksmith looked at me. I couldn't help it: I started giggling. And it ended up with all three of us laughing and laughing and laughing.

That's how Libya was sometimes. You just had to laugh. 
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Waiting for the Moon

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We had quite a few religious holidays in Libya and their dates depended on the moon. I always wanted to post the dates in advance but this would upset the school’s assistant, Ali. So we used to have the following conversation a week or two before every holiday.

ME: Okay, Ali. I want you to put up a notice saying that the school is closed for the XXX holiday on Thursday next week.”

ALI: We can’t do that, Mr. Jeff.

ME: Why not?

ALI: Because the holiday doesn’t start until the day after the new moon appears.

ME: Right. And the new moon will appear on Wednesday.

ALI:  We don’t know that.

ME: We do know, Ali. I have an almanac here which shows me the date of every new moon for the next 50 years. And there will be a new moon next Wednesday.

I thought my argument was a winning one. Of course, I should have known better.

ALI: But what if there is no new moon this month? 

ME: There will be.

ALI:  We don’t know that. It depends on Allah. He might decide not to have a moon at all this month. So we have to wait until next Wednesday to see if the moon appears.

ME: Okay, Ali. Let’s wait until Wednesday.

This is the type of thing that made it difficult to run a school efficiently in Libya!  
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Driven to Despair

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A couple of weeks before leaving Libya, I bumped into a British friend, Les, who worked for an oil company. He looked terrible. I asked what was wrong and he told me the following story.

One morning he noticed a stray kitten near his house. Being British, he immediately tried to rescue the animal. It bit him on the hand, drawing blood. He washed the wound, stuck a band-aid on it, and went to work. Later in the day he mentioned to a colleague what had happened. His colleague was horrified and told Les that he should check right away that he hadn't got rabies from the bite. Some other colleagues overheard the conversation and all agreed that Les was at risk from rabies.

After work Les went to see his (Egyptian) doctor. The latter pointed out that the only way to tell if the kitten had rabies was to kill it and them do tests on its brain. Les set off immediately to look for the kitten - but, of course, he couldn't find it. So back he went to his doctor to see what else he could do. The doctor said that Les needed to get a series of fourteen rabies shots spread over two weeks. And this needed to happen before any symptoms appeared. Once any symptoms appear, full onset of the disease is inevitable - and it is usually fatal. The first symptom is a headache.

"Okay, you'd better give me the first shot now, " Les said.
"Sorry," said the doctor, "I don't keep the vaccine. In fact, you can't get it anywhere in Libya. I wouldn't worry too much, though. After all, God willing, you might not get rabies."

Not being a Muslim, Les wasn't willing to leave matters in the hands of fate. He spent the next day reading up on rabies and becoming more and more worried as he learned more about the disease. Cats, he read, often carried rabies. And a bite from a rabid cat was much more likely to result in infection than a bite from a rabid dog.

After two sleepless nights, he asked for leave from his job, booked a flight to England, flew to London and rushed over to a major teaching hospital. There he saw a specialist and immediately started receiving the series of rabies shots. A few days later, he got a cable from his employer telling him that he had to return to work right away or lose his job.  
"That's fine, " said the specialist. "I will give you the ampoules containing the rest of the vaccine and your doctor in Libya can complete the series of shots when you get there. Don't forget, though, that the vaccine needs to be kept cool. If the temperature goes over X degrees, the vaccine won't work"

Les flew back to Tripoli the next day, carrying the ampoules in a vacuum flask. 

All was well until he reached the customs desk at Tripoli airport. The customs officer opened the flask and saw the ampoules. 
"What's this?" he asked. 
Les explained. 
"Where is your permit?"
"What permit?" Les asked.
"Your permit to import medicines."
"I don't have one."
"Then I have to confiscate the medicines."

Les argued for an hour but to no avail. He rushed down to town and returned to the airport with a Libyan colleague. The Libyan colleague argued with the customs officer, and then with the officer's superior, and then with the superior's superior. They refused to budge. Worse yet, they were so offended by Les that they had an immigration officer seize his passport.

The following morning Les managed to put a call through to the specialist in London and explained what had happened. The specialist pointed out that Les had already missed one rabies shot and therefore would need to have a whole new series of shots right away. However, as Lee explained, this was not going to be possible because he was now unable to leave Libya. 

To cut a long story short, by the time I saw Les he had spent two weeks trying to get his passport back but hadn't succeeded. Now convinced that he was doomed to die from rabies, he had borrowed a gun from a Libyan friend and had decided to shoot himself at the first sign of a headache. 

I never saw Les again and I often wonder what happened to him.
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I never saw or heard from Les again, and I often wonder what happened to him.