Different Country, Different Customs

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      There were a lot of things you couldn’t buy in Libya. Sometimes this was because the items were banned: Alcohol fell under the heading of banned goods, as did bacon and all other pork products. Also banned were any magazines or books that included photos of women with bare arms or legs, or wearing clothes with low necklines. Some other items weren’t banned but were simply unavailable. Avocados, for example, weren’t grown there or imported, and individuals were forbidden from bringing them or other fresh fruit or vegetables into the country. 

      Inevitably, the unavailability of these items meant that expatriates living in Libya spent a lot of time and effort trying to smuggle them into the country. Every time a flight arrived at Tripoli from a western country, several of the passengers would try to sneak in some forbidden goods, usually including a bottle or two of whisky.

      The Libyan customs officers were wise to the situation. They would search every passenger’s luggage with great care and they would confiscate any illegal items that they found. While you were waiting in line to go through customs, you would hear and see different reactions from the customs officers depending on which items they found in people’s luggage. The discovery of fresh fruit or vegetables would bring merely disapproving looks and comments. The discovery of a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label or a copy of “Cosmopolitan” would be celebrated with shouts of glee. (Sometimes the officers who found whisky would disappear into a back office with the whisky and reappear a few minutes later looking even more gleeful.) The discovery of bacon would generally elicit a more hostile reaction. I have even seen customs officers who found packets of bacon in a suitcase throw the packets to the ground and literally jump up and down on them, all the while shouting abuse at the offending traveler.

      I myself never tried to smuggle alcohol into Libya. As the director of a school, I knew that being caught smuggling alcohol would have reflected badly on the school and might even have resulted in its closure. However, I missed avocados, bacon and ham so much that I spent time developing a technique for getting them through customs.

      I would travel with the forbidden food in two plastic shopping bags, together with a bottle of whisky. When I reached the customs desk at Tripoli airport, I would put the shopping bags on the counter, open them to show the contents and hand over the bottle. I would say I realized the goods were banned and would apologize profusely and abjectly for having brought them with me. The reaction was always the same. The officer would immediately confiscate the whisky and put the bottle under the counter. He would then give me a stern lecture about the ban on alcohol. After that, he would hand me the two bags of banned foods and tell me to go through. 

      I guess this shows that honesty really is the best policy.

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