Keep Right On to the End of the Road

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Driving in Libya was always interesting and often challenging. One reason for this was that Libyans frequently ignored driving laws and rules. So they would stop without warning in the middle of the road to greet a friend who was walking on the verge or who was driving in the opposite direction. They would also do irritating things like driving the wrong way down one-way streets. However, many of the roads were at least as much of a problem as the drivers. Let me give an example.

Marabouts are Muslim holy men and are greatly venerated. It has become customary to bury them in a square, stone or brick tomb situated at the exact spot where they passed away. 

These tombs can never be moved. Unfortunately, a surprising number of marabouts happen to have died right in the path of modern roads. “So what?” you are probably thinking. “All you have to do is bypass each tomb by routing the road around it.” This would be the logical solution – but it was one that was never employed in Libya. Instead, a modern, well-surfaced road would be built to within maybe 20-30 yards of a marabout’s tomb. Then the road would simply stop, to start again 20-30 yards on the other side of the tomb. So you would be hurtling along on a nice, fast road when suddenly – and without any warning - you were driving on dirt and heading straight for a rather solid-looking tomb. It wasn’t normally a major problem during the day but it could certainly give you a very nasty fright if you were driving at night.

Talking of nasty shocks at night reminds me of something that happened on one of our trips to the oasis town of Ghadames. 

We started off from Tripoli rather later than usual and so we were still maybe 50 miles from the oasis when night fell and we ran into a rainstorm. A huge rainstorm. The rain was absolutely pelting down and the wipers on my Volkswagen Beetle couldn’t cope. Although I was only able to catch occasional glimpses of the road through the rain and darkness, I knew it ran as straight as a die for miles and so I kept on driving. However, we eventually reached a place where I couldn’t see any sign of the road at all. I stopped. I got out and walked ahead of the car to check that we were still on the road. We were – but the road only extended perhaps five yards in front of the car before it came to a ragged edge overlooking a vertical fall. It seemed the storm had totally washed away the bridge over a “wadi” (river bed). If I’d kept driving for just a few more seconds, we would have plunged into the wadi and been swept away by what was now a raging river. As it was, we had no choice but to turn around and head back home.

That isn’t the end of the story, though. Back in Tripoli, I told a Libyan friend from Ghadames what had happened. I mentioned that I wished we had started the trip a few hours earlier, because then we would have crossed the bridge well before it was destroyed by the storm. “Oh no,” he laughed. “You would have had the same problem. That bridge was washed away two months ago.”

I didn’t ask him why nobody had thought of putting up barriers or signs to warn drivers using that road. I'd been in Libya long enough to know not to ask stupid questions like that.  

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