On the Current Troubles: Libya

The Great SPLAJ – the ‘Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’ is a very different country from Egypt. It is twice the size but has one eighth as many people, and the presence of oil has ensured that those people are, on average, four or five times wealthier their Egyptian cousins. The Egyptians are almost all Arabs, while the Libyans are a much intermarried mix of Arabs and Berbers - along with a few Tuaregs and minority groups.

The Waterfront, Tripoli

We visited Libya in 2006, flying to Tripoli and on to Benghazi before driving back to Tripoli along the coast, then south to the oasis town of Ghadames. Ghadames is 300 km south of Tripoli; another 1000 km of desert lie beyond. Most of Libya is uninhabited and uninhabitable, with the vast majority of Libyans living in cities along the coastal strip.

Cyrene

Our trip concentrated not on politics but on the remarkable remains of the Greek cities near Benghazi, - Ptolomais, Apollonia and Cyrene - on the Roman remains near Tripoli - Leptis Magna and Sabratha – the Berber towns of the Jebel Nafousa and the oasis of Ghadames. But politics can never be completely ignored.

Migrant workers await employement while the Colonel looks away, Derj

Libya’s relative wealth drags in migrant workers, few of them legal. In 2010, on the Egyptian coastal road through Mersa Matrouh and on to Alexandria, we saw many packed minibuses, their height doubled by a precarious stack of newly acquired household goods, bringing Egyptian workers home from Libya. In Zliten, a distinctly edgy town 200 km east of Tripoli, we sat discreetly on a park bench beside a roundabout and watched a hundred or more migrant workers, mainly from south of the Sahara, squatting on the pavement, the tools of their trade before them. Occasionally a Honda pick-up would drive round the circle, blowing its horn. Men ran towards the truck, a lucky few would be selected and taken away for a few hours much needed work. Libya has no minimum wage and these were desperate men willing to work for almost nothing; unemployment among Libyans is high.

Looking up the Colonel's nose, Al-Kabir Hotel, Tripoli

Unlike Hosni Mubarak, Colonel Gaddafi set out to generate a personality cult. He intended to make his little green book as ubiquitous in Libya as Mao’s little red book once was in China. He failed, but every Libyan city has its quota of banners bearing his image draped down the sides of buildings. His stance is invariably ramrod straight with his head held back and his nostril flared, reminiscent of Mussolini (Libya was ruled by Italy from 1911 to 1943). No doubt, he believes the pose exemplifies nobility and power, I merely wonder why he wants me to look up his nose.

Gaddafi is unstable and erratic, which is perhaps why his personality cult never took off. The people fear him, with good reason, but we saw plenty of evidence that they do not respect him. When we started joking about the images of Gaddafi, 'A' (our much travelled Berber guide whose experiences included a spell cooking pizzas on Tyneside) was quick to join in. T-shirts bearing the colonel’s image are widely available, but I never saw anybody wearing one. When I bought one the stallholder was well aware that the purchase was made in a spirit of irony rather than awe, and made no effort to hide his contempt for Gaddafi. One floor of the otherwise excellent Jamahiriya Museum in Tripoli is dedicated to Gaddafi memorabilia; his green book translated into many languages (and unread in most), his 1957 Volkswagen, and more photos than even his mother could bear to look at. M, who showed us round Tripoli, sneered as he told us about it. When we got there, the gallery was closed. The museum official charged with conveying that information seemed embarrassed that it existed at all.

The Berber town of Kabaw in the Jebel Nafousa

The Libyan people are largely good-natured and philosophical. They have never had much say in who their rulers are, so they merely shrug their shoulders and get on with it. Many laugh at Gaddafi behind his back, but opposition is neither easy nor safe, so they have tended to work round the problem; that was until last week.

Hosni Mubarak was a bureaucrat whose regime became old and sclerotic, Muammar al-Gaddafi is much more of a classical tyrant. He will fight back harder than Mubarak, and with fewer scruples but, as we have already seen, he cannot rely on personal loyalty. It is time for the Libyan people to consign this monster to the dustbin of history. As A might say, Haway the Berbers.

Lynne at the mudbrick fortified granary of Qasr al-Haj

Cairo Before the Revolution (which might as well have never hapened)

Explanatory Note

This post was written during the 'Arab Spring' about a visit in August the previous year (before I started blogging). Nobody yet knew that the revolution would remove President Mubarak and there would be free and fair elections and a new regime. And that would be where the good news stopped.

Most demonstrators were (I think) hoping for a new liberal, secular Egypt, but that view made little impression at the ballot-box and they got Mohamed Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi never stood a chance, the levers of power remained in the hands of the military and the Americans wanted another 'strong man' they could deal with. He was deposed in July 2013 in a military coup. General Abdel Fatah el-Sisi became president and regularised his position with the usual fraudulent election. The Revolution was over; everything had changed, and nothing had changed.

Return to Cairo - First Impressions

We spent a week in Cairo last July. It was hot, dusty and crowded, but there was no sign of a revolution. Not since 1980 have we spent more than a day or two in the city, so we saw many changes, some expected, others more surprising.

The 6th of October Bridge

The Cairo of 2010 is a much tidier and neater city. It has far to go before it gleams like Seattle or Guilin, and you still need to watch your feet to avoid falling into holes or tripping over protruding cables, but at least it no longer resembles a building site after a typhoon. The traffic is calmer too, though a first time visitor might find that hard to believe. The standard of driving has improved little, but modern road systems impose their own discipline, and the donkey carts that roamed the streets following a set of rules entirely of their own, have (almost) all gone. You no longer see the foul-smelling heavy green rubbish carts, pulled by tired horses and driven by boys as tired as their horses and malodorous as their cargo. I do not know how modern Cairo deals with its waste, but I hope the sons and daughters of these rubbish boys are now at school, where they ought to be. Dress has changed, too. In 1980, my memory claims that only a minority of woman wore headscarves and there were no veiled faces. Now headscarves are almost universal, while veils are not uncommon. Men, on the other hand, have overwhelmingly taken to western dress, while thirty years ago about a quarter wore Arab costume.

Our room in the Ramses Hilton faced the Nile, but the other side of the building overlooks the 6th of October flyover and the bus station beneath. Although the main action in the last few weeks has been in Tahrir Square, two blocks south, we have seen many television pictures of crowds milling, or charging, under the flyover, and of tanks creating barriers from overturned vehicles. Never have rooms on the ‘wrong’ side of this hotel been so popular.

Ours was an unusual visit to Cairo as we made no attempt to visit the pyramids. We saw them in 2009 and 1980 (and in 1965, in my case) so this time we looked at some of Cairo’s less ancient – though still old - monuments. We could not, though, resist the lure of the Egyptian museum, just beyond the bus station, and prominent in recent TV pictures. The collection is disorganised but magnificent. Building work has started on a new the museum and after the move I hope it will still be magnificent but better organised.

The Cairo Citadel

Cairo’s citadel sits on a rocky outcrop some 3 km southwest of Tahrir Square. The fortified complex was begun by Salah al-Din (Saladin) in the twelfth century, though its crowning glory, the Mohammed Ali Mosque, was built between 1824 and 1848.

The Mohammed Ali Mosque, Cairo Citadel

The huge interior was filled with tourists, not all appropriately dressed, and has become a secular space.

Inside the Mohammed Ali Mosque, Cairo Citadel

The nearby medieval mosque of Sultan al-Nasir....

Mosque of Sultan al-Nasir, Cairo citadel

....still feels like a religious building and features a magnificent gold and marble mihrab.

The Mihrab and Minbar in the Sultan al-Nasir Mosque,Cairo Citadel

From outside the mosque there is a fine view over Cairo to the pyramids beyond - at least there was on a clear day in 1980, last August the pyramids had disappeared into a smoggy haze, but the view looking down was still good.

Looking down from the citadel at the Sultan Hassan and Al Rifa'i mosques, Cairo

After coffee, where the waiter attempted to pass off an obsolete 25 piastre note (worth 3p) as a 25 Egyptian Pound note (worth £3, if there was such a thing) we inspected the police museum. We saw the cells where the British had once incarcerated Anwar Sadat, and a model of the ‘battle’ of Ismailiya Police Station in 1952, in which Lynne’s father played a small role as a national service squaddie.

The Prison Cells, Police Museum, Cairo Citadel

The Ibn Tulun Mosque

We spent more time haggling over the fare to the Ibn Tulun mosque than we did in the taxi. Built in the ninth and tenth centuries, this massive mosque has an unusual spiral staircase around the outside of its stumpy minaret. The huge central courtyard, open to the sky, is impressive in its simplicity, and also in its quietness – we had the place to ourselves. (For more about the Ibn Tulun Mosque, click here).

Minaret, Ibn Tulun Mosque, Cairo

The Gayer-Anderson House

Built against the outer wall of the mosque, the Gayer-Anderson House is actually two old houses knocked together by Major Gayer-Anderson, a retired British soldier who lived there from 1935 to 1942. He filled the houses with antiques, including several ornate harem screens, and with a little imagination you can convince yourself you are really in seventeenth century Cairo. The roof terrace, which served as a set in the Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, affords a fine view of the Mohammed Ali mosque.

The Citadel from the Gayer-Anderson Roof Terrace

Cairo's Coptic Quarter

Cairo’s metro is cheap, clean and efficient. The lines were designed to link Cairenes with their places of work and are generally of less use to those heading for tourist sites, but four stops south from Tahrir Square is Mari Girgis (St George’s), the gateway to Cairo’s Coptic quarter.

Mari Girgis

Some 10% of Egypt’s population are Coptic Christians. Pope Shenouda III* has led the church since 1971 and overseen a revival while keeping good relations with the country’s Islamic leaders. The bomb that killed twenty-one worshippers in an Alexandrian church on New Year’s Eve showed that extremists do exist, but the vast majority of Egyptians, Christian and Muslim, favour peaceful coexistence.

St George's Church in Cairo's Coptic Quarter

In 1980 the Coptic quarter was a warren of narrow streets and high walls, with hidden entrances into ornate churches. Now the visitor is greeted by the extensive grounds of the Coptic Museum and the remains of the Roman castle. The excellent museum covers the long history of the Copts in Egypt, while more literally covering the ground that was home to many thousands of Copts for several hundreds of years.

The Coptic Quarter, Cairo

A small area of narrow streets remain and there you can visit the church in whose undercroft the Holy Family stayed after the flight to Egypt. The Nile now runs 300m away, but used to wash the walls of the castle and, by a happy coincidence, the very spot where the original Moses basket was plucked from the bulrushes lies just behind the church of the Holy Family. You may believe all this, if you wish.

Where Moses was found in the bullrushes (allegedly)

It is sad to see the whole quarter becoming museumised, but it was inevitable. The Copts have chosen to move out of their medieval ghetto - and who can blame them?

Eating in Cairo - Dining with the Expats and Egyptian Middle Classes

Central Cairo offers few eating options, but nobody visits Egypt for the cuisine. Ignoring the overpriced international food at the major hotels, we followed the Rough Guide’s recommendations.

The dimly-lit Estoril, down an equally dingy alley, provided good food at modest prices. The other customers seemed to be expatriate Europeans, while at the brighter Felfela just north of Tahrir Square there was a more mixed crowd of younger middle class Egyptians and foreigners. I can recommend the stuffed vine leaves, spiced meatballs and several variations on the theme of pigeon.

The nearby haven of peace that is the Café Riche serves an older clientele. The future president, Gamal Nasser, plotted the overthrow of King Farouk here in 1952, while last weekend Robert Fisk, the Independent’s Middle East correspondent, retreated to the café from the mayhem outside. Lynne and I used it more than once as a refuge from the midday sun. A waiter in a long blue robe would produce a satisfying bowl of lentil soup and a cold beer, and serve them with a smile.

Sharia Talaat Harb near the Café Riche. Cairo

Eating in Cairo - Kushari and Fuul

All these places serve alcohol but, as Cairo is largely an Islamic city, they are the exception rather than the rule. The restaurants used by most Egyptians are cheap, often crowded, but can be good. At Gad, on 26th of July Street, we walked through the busy take-away and up the stairs to the packed restaurant. I had a long wait for my chilli dusted Alexandrian style liver. It was excellent, but Lynne had finished her fish before I could take my first forkful.

Abou Tarek, which claims to be Cairo’s best kushari restaurant, is also crowded and you expect to share a table. Kushari is a mixture of noodles, lentils and rice topped with caramelised onions. Served with a spicy tomato sauce, the combination of sweetness and carbohydrates makes it the ultimate Egyptian comfort food.

Kushari and fuul are two dishes which should be eaten by every visitor to Egypt, but are often missed. Fuul beans are similar to dried broad beans. Boiled until they start disintegrating they are the breakfast of choice for all Egyptians, whatever their status. Fuul is also popular in Sudan, where for many poorer people it is not just breakfast but lunch and dinner too. In the morning it is eaten with a hard boiled egg or fermented cheese. I like fuul best lightly crushed, mixed with raw onion and cheese and sprinkled with sesame oil and chilli, though perhaps not at breakfast.

Egyptian coffee is always a delight

Words Written Without the Benefit if Hindsight

Hot and noisy, with the continuous blare of car horns, Cairo seemed frenetic but not rebellious, though Egypt is, obviously, a police state. Travelling outside the city involves negotiating regular police roadblocks. Every crossroads has an armed guard with at least one man kneeling behind a heavy metal shield. Parts of Alexandria seem to have more policemen than ordinary citizens. The government is not particularly corrupt, by the standards of its continent, but low-level corruption is endemic. Repression is felt most by the politically aware and Egyptian democracy is not about getting out the vote but controlling the count. With healthy economic growth discontent was muted, but Egypt is not immune to the world’s problems, and people have started to notice what they are missing.

Mubarak will go, he is after all, 82, but that may not happen before September. Egypt may contrive an orderly transition to democracy, or the army may impose their man in the usual fraudulent election.

Harem Screens, Coutyard of the Gayer-Anderson House, Cairo

It is not up to foreigners, or their governments, to tell the Egyptian people what to do, but we should be quietly cheerleading for democracy. The Americans, having bankrolled Mubarak for years, are wavering, reluctant to see the back of a man who brought stability and a pro-American foreign policy. They seem worried by the thought of democracy and in particular by the Muslim Brotherhood; it must be the name, everything the Brotherhood have said over the last few weeks has been a model of moderation. Some American commentators even appear to judge the merit of any potential new government on how good it will be for Israel, not on how good it will be for Egypt.

To support another son-of-a-bitch just because he is ‘our son-of-a-bitch’ would be deeply hypocritical and morally wrong. I think it would also be politically shortsighted.

I hope that when this is over Egypt will emerge with a robust liberal democracy, it is what the people deserve. Whether or not that happens only time will tell. [Yeah, it told.]

*Shenouda III died in March 2012 at the age of 88. He was succeeded by Tawadros II, the 118th man to hold the office which stretches back in an unbroken line to (allegedly) the apostle Mark in the year 33.

A Shark in the Red Sea - my brush with mortality

Last month a German tourist was killed snorkelling off one of Egypt’s Red Sea resorts. Nothing that follows is intended to make light of that terrible event.

I should also apologise to those who have heard me tell this story in a school assembly or on one of several other stages. I would justify my repetition merely by claiming that it is a good story – and a true one, to boot.

  

In the course of this blog I have occasionally had a bitch about the tourist industry. I’ve done it here, here and here. Nothing winds me up more than the ‘all-inclusive resort’. There is something intrinsically wrong about resorts designed to minimise holidaymakers’ contact with the host country. I understand people wanting a rest and a complete break while on vacation, but to visit somebody else’s country and to treat the local people, language and customs as an ignorable inconvenience seems to me downright rude.

I am thus no great fan of the resorts the Egyptians have built on their Red Sea coast, but my complaint is not that it has been developed – opening up some of the world’s best diving is, surely, a plus - but how it has been developed.

We visited Hurghada in August 1990, taking a day trip from Luxor and driving across the Eastern desert. There was then just one major hotel, but the building was about to start in earnest, sites were marked off and ready for the bulldozers.

The nearest thing to a diving centre was a beach hut where a man rented out snorkelling equipment. Having enjoyed my lunch and the ensuing nap I wandered down there and hired a snorkel and a face mask. He wanted me to have flippers, too, but they were an extra 75p. There are times when I am astounded by the perversity of my own meanness, I find £500 easier to spend that £5, and as for 75p, well its good money and I didn’t really need the flippers, did I?

The coral reef starts barely twenty metres from the shore in water that is swimming-pool warm and no more than shoulder deep. Hanging face down in the water above the reef I was amazed by the huge variety of shapes, textures and hues in the coral. I looked down, like god surveying his creation, and watched the inhabitants, as varied and brightly coloured as the coral, going about their fishy business. Then I moved on, effortlessly gliding over a small shoal of sliver grey fish the length of my forearm but almost completely translucent. I hovered over another patch, watched that for a while and moved on again.

After an hour or so I realised I was developing a problem. Being sometimes above water level and sometimes below, my back had felt cool, but the August sun is ferocious and I slowly realised it had been exposed to powerful rays for longer than was good for it.

I set off in the direction of the shore, glancing back under me as I turned. What I saw froze my blood. There, in the deeper water beyond the coral was a menacing shape. It was a huge shape, it was a dark shape; it was, without a doubt, a shark.

Suppressing my panic, I struck out for the shore. After ten adrenalin powered strokes I risked another glance downwards and backwards, hoping to see a bored shark gliding gracefully off into the deep water. But it was still there, no nearer I noticed with relief, but no further away either.

I was swimming as quickly as I could, but trying hard not to splash, as splashing, I seemed to remember, would make me look like an injured fish and attract the shark.

The shark was still keeping station. I had nearly reached the edge of the reef and would soon be over the sand. The water would become shallower, but that brought no comfort - I was sure I had read about sharks attacking in less than a metre of water.

By the time I was over the sand, the shark had reached the reef. Safety was not far away but I knew that, however fast I swam, the shark could close the gap with one powerful flick of his tail.

I swam on, ignoring the tiredness in my arms and legs. If only I had hired the flippers I would be safe by now. One half of my brain panicked, while the other half ticked on coolly, even mundanely. Having reviewed my reading on the subject of shark attacks the cool half turned its attention to my meanness and considered the irony of dying for the sake of 75 pence. It was not, I thought, my whole life that was destined to flash before my eyes as the jaws closed, but a vision of 75 pence of loose change.

Another ten strokes and my chest would bump into the beach, surely then I would be safe. I risked one last look back. I could see the shark had now crossed the reef and was rippling over the sand, and I could see something else, too. The dark shape from which I had been swimming with barely suppressed panic was not a shark at all - it was my own shadow on the bottom of the sea.

I was momentarily stunned by a feeling of relief, then I started laughing. I am quite good at laughing at my own stupidity, even if I would rather others did not do it. I pulled myself together, walked up the beach as though nothing had happened and covered my reddening back with a towel

I am fortunate that the most frightening thing I have ever encountered (so far, anyway) turned out to be no more than my own shadow. That event confirmed something I had long suspected; if you ignore the imaginary fears, the real world is actually a surprisingly friendly and reassuring place.


PS The more I read that last line the more sanctimonious it becomes - but I can't quite bring myself to delete it.

March 2009 - A further thought. There is a well known (and possibly even true) factoid that more people are killed each year by falling coconuts than by sharks. I was recently relaxing outside our chalet (for want of a beter word) at Philip Kutty's Farm, on an island in the extraordinarily beautiful backwaters of Kerala. A ripe coconut launched itself from an adjacent tree and hit the ground less than two metres from where I sat. The earth, or at least Philip Kutty's Island, shook. Had Isaac Newton been from Kerala rather than Lincolnshire he would have invented the bomb shelter, not gravity. I was in more real danger from the coconut than from an imaginary shark - but it was all over before I knew it was happening, which made it a lot less frightening.