Sahara (2002)

by Michael Palin

  It’s not quite the old communist-style cult of personality, but there is a lot of him about. The standard image is full face, aviator shades, pillbox-style chechia perched on thick black curly hair, skin creased by deep, but reassuring, Jagger-style grooves. None of the Soviet-style hard man here. He looks every inch the entertainer (and is almost the same age as Mick). On one rapidly fading billboard I saw, above the words ‘American aggression’, Gaddafi, fist raised, defying the bolts and arrows of missile attack (fifteen years ago his adopted daughter was killed in the American air attacks on Benghazi and Tripoli). Around this centrepiece were depictions of the caring Colonel, visiting children in schools and hospitals. On more recent posters he’s likely to be seen emerging from a map of Africa, shedding a halo of golden rays across the continent. The parallel that comes irresistibly to mind is with Cecil Rhodes and his dream of spreading the red of the British Empire from Cape to Cairo.

  The redirection of Gaddafi’s foreign policy towards Saharan Africa should not perhaps be a surprise. He has always identified with the nomads and still prefers to live in a tent rather than a palace. There are few leaders these days who care much about the Sahara and I would very much have liked to have met and talked to him about his policy.

  So far our advances have met with no success. The Libyan authorities remain deeply mistrustful of Western media and today we have to content ourselves with another closely guided tour.

  Abdul and Mohammed collect me in their car. Abdul is our chief minder from the Government Media Department, while Mohammed, slimmer, younger and already a father of five, is an air-traffic controller in Benghazi. This, apparently, is not a full-time job; he’s also a plumber and a painter.

  ‘One thousand, nine hundred kilometre beach begin here,’ announces Abdul, waving his arm at a flat milky-green wasteland studded with cones of freshly tipped rubbish. I’m taken to meet a friend of theirs who runs a tourist village. Photographs are taken. Along another meaningless swirl of motorway into the centre of the city. A number of Italian colonial buildings remain, including a Venetian-style governor’s residence, now the headquarters of the local committee. It’s a Friday and there aren’t many people in the streets. Those that are about seem to favour Western dress. There are more sharp, Italian-style suits than there are tarbooshes and djellabas.

  Lunch is long and formal. The tables are big enough for a peace conference, and conversation is in the polite international style, with bursts of animated misunderstanding punctuated by longer periods of silence. Afterwards we prowl around two good-looking mosques, and a small square dominated by a classical copperdomed cathedral, now also a mosque. I climb the wide stone steps that lead to the portico, only to find the massive west door bricked up. Perhaps anxious to correct any bad impression we might have got from the boarded-up cathedral, Abdul takes us to a Catholic church and mission run by Franciscans, closed in the early years of the revolution and reopened in 1976 after a Catholic - Islamic pact was signed in Tripoli. Seven priests and thirty-five nuns keep it open all week, and offer mass in five languages: Arabic, English, Italian, Polish and Korean.

  The bishop of Cyrenaica, a short, genial Maltese, explained this eclectic mix. Poles work on a lot of the urban construction projects and the Koreans on the Great Manmade River Project, Gaddafi’s epic scheme to bring fresh water from underground aquifers thousands of feet below the desert to irrigate the coast. At one time the project used Filipinos, very good Catholics.

  ‘There were thousands of them,’ sighed the bishop, wistfully.

  Our day in Benghazi may have lacked sparkle, but the night is memorable for one of the most dangerous journeys I’ve ever undertaken. Our hosts had organised a trip to a local restaurant, not by car or pink coach, but in horse-drawn buggies. Though a battle-hardened film crew are perhaps not the best people to take advantage of such romantic transport, it all started well enough, until we turned off the quiet street, up a slip road and onto an eight-lane motorway. At one point it seemed as if our driver, who obviously thought his place was in heaven, had panicked. The horse certainly had. He swung his head from side to side, eyeballs staring manically skywards, nostrils pumping away like pistons as the traffic roared by.

  Eventually, we found sanctuary in the crawler lane, and remained there for what seemed like hours, before we found our exit. The food was as good as anything we’ve had in Libya, but I did miss the alcohol that had been my only hope of surviving the journey home.

  Day Eighty-Three

  BENGHAZI TO SIRTE

  No sign of the horses this morning, which is a relief, as we have the best part of 400 miles to cover. The pink coach is once more at our disposal and Farsi, the video cameraman, is back in action, recording our walk from the lobby to the door and the door to the coach, whilst Abdul photographs him photographing us.

  In the middle of a roundabout on the outskirts of Benghazi is a huge installation commemorating the Great Manmade River Project. Its centrepiece is a circular stack of pipes embedded in concrete looking like a giant metal cake. Around it, the cardinal points of the compass are marked by 30-foot-long pipe sections. I climb inside one of them.

  About 13 feet in diameter, it feels more like a small Underground station than a water pipe. A quarter of a million of these sections were used in the first phase of the project alone, and apparently the number laid now would stretch from the southern tip of Italy to the Orkney Islands. There have been unforeseen problems, however, one of which is the high saline content of the underground water, which is causing corrosion and leakage that is either very serious or little more than expected, according to who you talk to. Abdul, not surprisingly, is of the latter opinion. A group of passing schoolboys sees us filming and pandemonium and excitement break out. They point, shout, laugh, until their enthusiasm is cut short by our driver, Faraj, who climbs down and gives them a terrific scolding. Their faces fall and I can see momentary fear in their eyes. It’s a pity, as this is the first time we’ve seen any reaction from Libyans on the street and I was rather enjoying it. We’re herded back onto the pink coach, sedated with Richard Clayderman and driven south, into increasingly dry, hot, stony desert.

  Instead of trees, there are electricity pylons and instead of wheat fields, there is scrub grass interspersed with pipeline, the occasional flaming head of an oil well, trailing a dirty black slick along the horizon. Near Brayqah, concrete holding-tanks, into which the Manmade River disgorges, nestle in the gritty sand, each one as big as two football pitches. A little further on, a metal arch with Gaddafi’s likeness painted on it marks the entrance to a massive dusty white complex, where the giant pipes are made. By now the Clayderman tape has reached ‘Tulips From Amsterdam’ for the fifth time, and cries for a lunch stop, or even an engine failure, are increasing. Thirty miles later, Abdul and Faraj spot three trees, close enough together to qualify as a picnic spot.

  The picnic lunch is a big disappointment. And I mean big. Jumbo-sized white boxes reveal salad, chicken and cold chips. And it looks as if we might be here for some time. Whilst attempting a tricky and not strictly necessary three-point turn, Faraj has run the back wheels into soft sand and the coach is spread across half the carriageway like a beached whale. Various passing vehicles are flagged down to help, including a lorry with twenty kneeling camels in the back, all nodding away gently like toys on the back shelf of a car, but none has any towing equipment. The police arrive with a chain. It snaps. By now we have an expectant audience of fourteen people, twenty camels and a small car park of vehicles. Faraj looks as whipped and chastened as the little boys he screamed at this morning.

  Eventually, a low-loader with a bulldozer on board, heaves us out and we carry on our way.

  Mile after mile of salt scrub numbs the senses, but Mohammed has a treat in store for us. An in-coach movie. It turns out to be Lion Of The Desert, a Hollywood biopic of the great national hero, Umar al-Mukhtar. The irony of the Libyan national hero being celebrated by the Great Satan doesn’t seem to worry them, and
we settle back to a truly blood-drenched couple of hours. If the Libyans are happy to have Anthony Quinn portray their hero, then presumably the Italians would have been relieved that the villain of the piece, Colonel Graziani, is played by Oliver Reed, and Mussolini by a stratospherically over-the-top Rod Steiger.

  By these standards, the casting of Sir John Gielgud as a Bedouin was pretty obvious. The Lion Of The Desert brings us safely to the birthplace of The Guide Of The Revolution. Besides being Gaddafi’s birthplace, Sirte is a potential new capital of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Republic. Modest outskirts of low mud and brick houses give way to a complex of hotels and government offices. Landscaped towers of white stone and black glass could be a corporate HQ in California, until you get inside and find the decorative style is pure Arabian Nights, festooned with spangly curtains, brass lamps and throne-size chairs which take three people to move. A Pan-African conference is to be held here soon, but at the moment, as with so much of ‘official’ Libya, this grand and expensive campus is deserted. Abdul finds us some food, though once more it’s Western rather than local, but at least there is a bowl of harissa, the hot pepper paste, to breathe life into our hamburger and chips.

  Day Eighty-Four

  SIRTE TO TRIPOLI

  As we set off for another long day’s drive up the coast I ask Abdul if there’s any serious alternative to driving or taking a camel. Wouldn’t a railway help? Indeed, he says, and Colonel Gaddafi is very keen on railways, but there aren’t any in Libya. The national airline has been badly hit by the continuing American embargo on aircraft spares. Motor car spares are equally hard to find, causing many unnecessary road deaths. The Colonel has tried to deal with this by ‘inspiring’ a new design of five-seater vehicle. With glare-free headlights, non-exploding tyres, high-impact bumpers and all round air-bag protection, it would be the world’s safest car. It’s to be called The Rocket of the Libyan Jamahiriya. Now that’s a proper name for a car. Well, better than Cherry anyway.

  Nigel is losing his patience with the camera. Not his, but the Libyan government’s. I actually heard him this morning going on about how he hates being followed by a camera. Well now he knows what it’s like. I ask Farsi, the cameraman, what they are going to do with all this footage of us entering and leaving hotels. He seems quite aggrieved by my question.

  ‘There’s only six hours.’

  A few miles short of Tripoli is Leptis Magna, the richest and most magnificent of all the Roman cities in Africa. We pile out and take the tour. It is indeed wonderful, much more grand than Cyrene and much bigger too. A paved street, the Via Colonnata, runs for almost half a mile, and to walk its well-worn slabs is to feel yourself in the heart of a great city. The smaller details stick in my mind, like the beautifully carved dolphins standing on their heads in the market, probably the sign of a Roman fishmongers’ stall, but the massive interior of the new Basilica at Leptis is hugely impressive.

  It was used as a law court and to stand in it, dwarfed by the mighty Aswan granite columns, is to experience an almost palpable sense of the brute force of Rome.

  Next to it, the 300-foot-long, 200-foot-wide Imperial Forum is like a vast mad monumental mason’s yard. Columns, capitals, decorated friezes, plinths, pendentives, bas-reliefs and massive heads with curls like eighteenth-century wigs lie around as if an earthquake had just struck.

  The sumptuousness of Leptis Magna may look very European, but it would not have been built without Saharan money. The bread which Libya so copiously supplied to Rome could not in itself have provided sufficient revenue for excess of this scale. The difference was made up of the wealth of gold, ivory and slaves, brought here on caravans from across the Sahara Desert.

  There is a parallel here with the wealth of present-day Libya, which also comes from the desert. Gaddafi’s oil, which is not only copious but also of very good quality, keeps the West going, the same way Libyan grain kept Rome going. Who needs who most?

  Day Eighty-Five

  TRIPOLI

  Our last day in Libya. From the balcony of a monstrous hotel I look out over the harbour. A ferry is loading, one of six or seven ships in port. It’s a hazy, warm day, and the wind that sends the green flags fluttering carries a faint tang of sulphur from the chain of chemical works and refineries that dot the coast. Below me is a green and white-domed mosque, squeezed in by the side of the surging highway that leads towards the skyscrapers of the city. The centre of Tripoli, a wide, open meeting place called Green Square, lies beside the castle, at the place where the old medina and the newer, largely Italian streets meet. The green louvered shutters of the houses remind me of Gibraltar. I still feel frustrated. Abdul, Mohammed and the others have treated us well, but I feel we’ve also been strong-boxed. It’s been hard to meet people beyond the pink coach.

  So I’m surprised when a youngish Libyan man approaches me in Green Square. He extends a hand and asks, in good English, what I think of the country. I murmur the usual praise and we shake.

  ‘I won’t tell you what I think,’ he says bitterly, and is gone.

  TUNISIA

  Day Eighty-Seven

  DJERBA

  Seventy-five miles across the Tunisian border is the island of Djerba. It claims to be the Land of the Lotus-Eaters, celebrated in Homer’s Odyssey. In one of history’s most famous examples of R and R, Odysseus and his crew put in here for a while and surrendered themselves to the soothingly narcotic fruits of the lotus.

  These days it’s hard to find the lotus or its fruit, but there is a heady local preparation called boukha, made from fermented dates or figs, which seems to have pretty much the same effect. After Libya, where fermented anything was forbidden, the sudden proliferation of hotels offering every sort of inebriant from Baileys to Bloody Marys is a profound shock to us all and a lot of surrendering goes on.

  Nor is this the only shock. The sheer numbers of lotus-seekers thronging the north coast of Djerba is in bewildering contrast to where we’ve just been, and indeed with almost anywhere else on this journey. German, Dutch and Swedish seem to be the native languages here.

  This sudden return to a world of wine lists and multi-channel television produces an odd sinking feeling and an unexpected upsurge of nostalgia for those trips into the desert in the wee small hours, armed only with trowel and toilet roll.

  Day Eighty-Eight

  DJERBA

  The design of our hotel, a huge U-shaped wall facing out to sea, tries hard to create a feeling of all-embracing exclusiveness, an ample concrete bosom of pleasure, where all your needs will be attended to, where food, drink, recorded music and thalasso-therapy are always at hand.

  Try and get away from this fortress of fun and you will find twenty or thirty others, right next door, all offering similar versions of what you’ve got, and before long you realise that wherever you are is just like where you’ve come from.

  Somewhere outside the fortress walls is Djerba itself, an offshore island, 18 by 16 miles, flat, dry and agricultural. Compared with the desert we’ve come through, it looks almost lush, but the reality is that rainfall is low, only 8 inches a year, and the water saline. The dates from Djerba’s palm trees are only suitable for animal feed and the olive groves yield low returns. The island’s most productive pastures are the shallow waters that surround it. Fishing here is a traditional industry, carried on by traditional methods.

  On the dockside at Houmt Souk are stacked rows of turnip-shaped, terracotta pots. These elegant little amphorae, about 18 inches high, are not for tourists to take home; they’re for catching octopus. Each one has a rim at the top, around which a string is tied, attaching it to a long line of pots which are then dropped into the sea a few miles offshore. For some reason, octopuses are irresistibly drawn to the pots, curling up inside them and presenting a perfect gift for fishermen. It’s a technique that’s been used since the Phoenicians came this way 3000 years ago, and the octopuses still haven’t caught on.

  We’ve wangled ourselves aboard one of the b
rightly painted, low-tech fishing boats, which is setting out to check its lines.

  Once out of the harbour, we run into a lively sea, licked up by a freshening wind. The stubby, wooden-hulled boat bounces all over the place as we search for the line they put down a couple of days ago. So competitive is the fishing out here that they mark the line as discreetly as possible, and it’s only after a half-hour search that they detect the green plastic bottle to which the line is attached. By now the boats are bucking all over the place as the pots are hauled up from the sea bed no more than 12 feet below us. I’m hanging on for dear life as we hurtle up and plunge down the waves, but the fishermen are balanced only by knees against the rail as they inspect the pots. There are fifty on this line. One after another contains only sand and seaweed and is tossed back into the water. Not an octopus to be seen. It’s early in the season, they say.

  We head for another line. The wind is strengthening and the boat tossing ever more violently, but the third pot they pull out produces a great cry and the pink rubbery mass inside is tipped out unceremoniously onto the deck.

  Then another and another. All hands are at the pots and I’m given the job of keeping the catch in a large blue plastic tray. This isn’t easy. The octopuses are not at all keen to stay on the tray and once they get a leg outside it their suckers clamp onto the wooden deck. By the time I’ve loosened one leg, the other seven are stuck fast. Clinging to the octopuses with one hand and a piece of superstructure with the other, I succeed in wrenching them off, only to be flung across the boat, octopus in hand and fast latching onto my arm.

  Keeping the octopuses in the tray becomes like a routine invented for a Japanese game show, but it seems to cheer the fishermen up no end. Meanwhile, I’ve become quite an admirer of these tenacious creatures and am thinking of starting an Octopus Protection League.