Missed Chances and Minor Miracles in Libya

When my second Libyan transit visa was ready, I bid adieu to Abdul-Jabbar and his family, thanking them for their kindness, and headed again southward towards Libya.

At the border I filled out Libya's detailed currency declaration forms. Later the realization came that whenever a country demands currency declarations, it means that they have passed laws to legally cheat you by artificially inflating the value of their own currency. Crossing the border successfully after dark, I was given a free ride in a really packed dolmush (local share taxis, mostly Citroens) to the Libyan capital city of Tripoli, still several high-speed hours away. Also riding that dolmush was a nice young Tunisian guy who took me with him to the nasty tin shack lodging which he shared with five other Tunisian guest workers. They very kindly fed me and gave me the best bed in the crowded little dirt-floored slum. These guys all turned out to be Boy Scouts, so the Tunisian chapter of Baden Powell's international organization had welcomed me warmly into both Tunisia and Libya. In the morning, as I prepared to push on eastward towards Egypt, my hosts took up a collection, and gave me five dinars, since they assumed I must be destitute. This was really a lot of money at the time, both to them and to me, and I tried and tried to refuse it, but finally accepted when they convinced me that to turn it away would be a big insult to them. The 5 dinars (about $20 US) turned out to be more than I could spend in my four days in transit of Libya.

Tripoli itself was extremely boring. It was new and slick, and garish, and already crumbling around the edges. The whole place reeked of newly acquired oil-money vulgarity. Most if not all of the shops were tackily beautified by too many strings of multicolored Christmas tree lights, imported from Europe. I left Tripoli as quickly as I could. Once out of the city, I soon learned that hitch-hiking in Libya is easier than anywhere else on the planet.

There is really only one main road in Libya, of one lane in each direction, so all of the traffic in the country passes along it. I hitched easily across Libya from Tunisia into Egypt in four days, and never had to wait for a ride. As a matter of fact, after the first day, if I saw a truck coming towards me, I would hide from it, because I knew it would stop, and it was a slower ride than the next passenger car which would also stop and pick me up. I even had cars going the OTHER way stop and see if I had changed my mind and wanted to go back the way I had come. Everyone who picked me up compelled me to have a meal with them, so one day I had four lunches.

Libya's newfound wealth was everywhere apparent, and especially in the attitudes of some of the men who gave me lifts. They were very proud of their new automobiles, and usually also wanted me to admire their new fancy wristwatches. One guy riding in his friend's car when they picked me up proudly displayed the wallet photo of HIS car, just to demonstrate that he, too, was rich and important enough to own an auto. My first ride out of Tripoli was with a Libyan truck driver named Abduraman who spoke some English, having worked with American oil companies before they were thrown out of the country. It was a comfortable ride, proceeding all day long, at a slow but steady pace. I spent the time imagining that we were part of the supply system for the Afrika Korps back in 1941, bringing needed food from Tripoli to the axis front lines. What a horrible, tenuous, long supply line it was !

When night descended we camped beside the road next to the truck, and cooked up a little communal dinner on my portable stove. After the food had been stowed, and Abduraman's prayers towards Mecca had been accomplished, he opened the truck window and turned on the radio softly to a whining middle-eastern music station. He then produced a double-barreled reeded flute, and sat outside on the ground, wrapping himself head to foot in a blanket. With a million stars gleaming overhead, he began to play, his own ethereal, floating, lonesome flute compositions accompanied by the equally strange Arabic music on the radio. It was a wonderful, other-worldly experience, the exotic music sounding somehow strangely familiar and comforting.

The effect was somewhat spoiled later in the evening when Abduraman made a pass at me, but he seemed to take rejection well. So I missed out on a night of wild starlit passion among the romantic sand dunes. Late the next morning Abduraman turned off on a dirt side road to deliver his cargo, and I hitched on eastward along the main highway.

That day I got a ride for 400 km in a Landrover with four passengers who proved to be policemen going to a conference. The highest-ranking official spoke good English, and they were all friendly to me, and easy to get along with. They stopped at a local police station and compelled the staff chef to fix us all a very nice lunch. I had an experience during that ride, which still makes me smile when I think of it. The land rover in which we were traveling was brand-new, and still had the "new car" smell. Motoring down the highway, the engine would occasionally sputter and miss, and I noticed that the dashboard lights flickered in sympathy with the engine. There seemed to be some sort of an intermittent electrical short, and the problem became more frequent and more extreme as we progressed. Finally the engine cut out and died, started itself again for a few seconds, then again went dark and silent. The vehicle drifted to the shoulder of the road, a sandy plateau covered with small rocks. The four policemen got out and propped up the hood, peering inside with strangely incurious expressions on their faces. Then they all looked very expectantly at me, still standing at my place beside the rear door. Their faces eloquently said - "Well, Americans know everything there is to know about automobiles, so, what are you going to do about the problem?"

Yowee, that was a stumper, for I have never been a motor-head. However, I do understand electrical systems in a general sort of way, and this was an electrical problem. But intermitent glitches are notoriously difficult to diagnose, and are often impossible to locate. So I walked forward towards the engine compartment, my brain furiously going through the cognitive process, all the while struggling to appear calm. "Well", I could hear myself thinking, "where should I start looking for an electrical problem which could be anywhere? I'll start at the battery." As I reached the front of the car, all the while observed closely by four pairs of eyes, I reached out and grasped the "hot" terminal of the battery. I was astonished to hear and feel a slight crackling pop !! Exactly there, just under my fingers, where the positive cable curved over the air cleaner bracket, the insulation had been worn away by the vibration of the engine !! I spent a moment hunting along the side of the road until I discovered a discarded plastic bag which I wound around the cable to re-insulate it from the metal bracket. The Rover started right up and ran perfectly for the remainder of the trip !! Talk about luck !!

I didn't make any acknowledgment of success, not even a smile, but I could tell that the now-quiet Libyan police inspectors were impressed. They hadn't heard any of the discord which had been going on inside my head. They had only seen the longhaired foreign freak walk confidently up to the engine compartment, place his hand immediately on the problem, and repair it promptly with a piece of roadside garbage.

The policemen reached Benghazi, where I got down and rented one bed in a simple shoddy hotel room. Nothing much of interest in Benghazi, but I was quite a curiosity at the public baths that evening.

The next morning I hiked out to the eastern edge of Benghasi town and again put up my thumb.

That day one of my four short rides was in an auto full of expatriate Palestinians. Two of them spoke French, and they were all very anti-American. Our interesting discussion centered around their question "Why does America Help the Jews". It didn't seem to be a rhetorical question, they appeared to be genuinely puzzled. Well, I had my own answer to that one, and explained it to them so it made sense.

For starters I told them that lots of the media in the United States is owned by Jews. Yep, they had heard that, and it made sense to them that this would help to lead public opinion. But they grew uneasy and resisted the course of my logic as I explained the more compelling reason.

"If America didn't help the Jews," I said, "the Arabs would overrun them, don't you agree?"

Yes, yes, they all agreed emphatically.

"And, Israel has nuclear weapons ("le bombe atomique"), don't you agree?"

No, they didn't agree at all with that, but after I pointed out that Israel had the scientists and the money and the technology and plenty of time to develop the Bomb, they finally grudgingly agreed that yes, probably there were nukes in Israel, but so what?

"So, my friends, if America does not help Israel, and the Arabs overrun Israel, what happens when the first Iraqi tank clatters into Tel Aviv?"

"Cairo, phhht !
Damascus, phhht !
Tripoli, phhht !
Baghdad, phhht !
Amman, phhht ! "

"To prevent this is the reason America supports Israel."

There was a deep, contemplative silence in the car for many seconds. Finally one of the Palestinians said, softly, more to himself than to me, "Yes, that would be just like the Jews."

As we parted company they exhorted me to "Remember the people of Palestine".

Next time: I almost escape Libya