Archive for the ‘Libya’ Category
Libya salloum to Benghazi
4AM
It’s four am. I’m surprisingly awake, apparently Louis hardly slept, but I was like a rock, dead to the world for a mere 150 minutes give or take. Our colleague Salah had arrived in the interim. He was patient, we were groggy.
Louis is right when he says Salah is by far the friendliest, most generous person we’ve met thus far. Asking for no money, he’s driven from Benghazi to Alexandria to reach us and bring us back, all because his friend Sami asked. Why did Sami do it? Because his brother in law told him we needed a ride and were coming to help the Libyan people.
I know almost nothing of Libya, but if the generosity we’ve experienced thus far is a good indication, I may have a new second home after this trip.
Once the car was loaded and a minor crisis of a missing cellphone was averted we were on our way, driving again. So far in 3 days we’ve not stayed the night in any one place twice.
Salah pulled away from our friends house and I pulled away from reality, again sound asleep in the back of a microbus.
BARANI
The parking of the van jolted me awake. Another dusty west Egyptian town, just like resting places on the roads of Syrian and Jordan, this locale is no different. I lean over to comment on the similarity to Louis, perhaps like the American east coast corridor up I-95, rest stops are the same from the Maghreb to southeast Turkey.
Salah ordered up breakfast, plates of beans, salad, some type of meat-most likely lamb or beef, but I didn’t ask-and a chickpea/lentil style soup. It was hearty and filling eaten with our hands and the ubiquitous bread-as-utensil style of Arabian cuisine all over the region.
The restaurant was quite busy for such a remote location, full of locals, as well we noticed a hip Arab female reporter with fancy glasses, wing tipped and translucent, she was accompanied by a stocky guy with his head wrapped, looking for all the world like a prototypical cameraman.
The first white person I’ve seen since leaving Cairo wanders in, looking about, seeming lost. We try to discern whether she’s an aid worker or journalist, could even be a war tourist-though it can be hard to tell between the three. An Arab wearing a UNHCR vest walks in at this moment, further confusing the issue.
Our attention is suddenly drawn away from the interpersonal dynamics of the characters populating the breakfast tables. Abstract images from a news channel flicker across the screen of a television on the far side of the room. Best we can tell there appears to have been a massive earthquake and pictures of a tsunami, or is it only a predicted/expect tsunami? It’s unclear, but definitely alarming. Lucky for us the only nearby coast is in the natural shelter of the Mediterranean. A tsunami of natural causes is the least of our worries at the moment.
Finishing breakfast, we have a spoke and prepare to leave. Salah is talking with a local man who is sitting with the white lady. It turns out she’s a journalist from Austria. She was headed to Benghazi until the man she is with decided it was too dangerous for him and he wasn’t willing to go. After a brief discussion with Louis and Salah we decide more company would be nice and invite her along.
SALLOUM AND THE BORDER
An hour out of Barani we arrive at the small dusty town of Salloum. Most of the town is shuttered but it’s impossible to determine whether that’s on account of it being Friday or related in some part to the events of recent days, or something else altogether. After the briefest of stops here its full speed to the border.
The first check at the border is a breeze, a hello, a glance at our passports, and we are waved on. The generally opaque bureaucracy of customs/passport control in the region is fairly unnoteworthy all told. More interesting is our stop at a police station between the entrance to the exit region of Egypt, before we make it to the entrance point for Libya.
A long line of young men of various nationalities has formed behind a microbus slightly larger than ours. At a distance of a few hundred meters it’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening. The microbus appears to be quite full, but now the line has at least doubled, no tripled. I’m nearly unable to keep from laughing due to the stark absurdity of the image in front of me.
A smile cracks my tired face when I see one of the young men pass out from the front of the vehicle clutching a worn pair of jeans and the mystery is revealed. Migrant laborers, stuck in the border area, are receiving clothing donations from somewhere.
Rather than crammed with bodies yearning to get home, the van is filled with clothing and supplies in response to their impossible situation. Past the police station the scale of the situation becomes even more clear. The hundred or two hundred milling about the station and standing in commendable patience at the clothing bus give way to hundreds more beyond the station.
Occupying whatever space they might find for themselves, men from as far as Bangladesh to as near as west africa sit about in groups, wrapped in blankets, or solitary figures in front of makeshift tents. The luckiest have found space in the exit buiilding where travelers leaving Egypt go for their exit visa and passport processing, the next luckiest have occupied the sheltered car park just outside, leaving at least hundreds of others, if not more, casting about for whatever shade from the bright sun and shelter from the cool wind is available.
Finally passing through the last stop in Egypt we arrive to the Libyan side and repeat the process, though with distinctly less heart being put into the over officious procedure. After we pass the last point we are implored by a man in camo fatigues and hat to step down and take a picture with him and a display of the old Libyan flag.
ONWARD TO BENGHAZI
The Libyan landscape is stark, but nearly empty of people and vehicles. I’m left remembering my recent trip across southwest Texas, driving cross-country on our move to Portland Oregon. The towns are just as empty and tired, with similar numbers of old rusting trucks and jeeps.scattering the landscape.
We meet more friendly faces the further we go into Libya. The people are intensely welcoming, excited and happy to see us. Then, just as sudden as the appearance of a border post in the middle of a forbidding, dusty landscape, that landscape falls away.
Green fields and orchards appear along the roadside. It’s beautiful and comforting, it’s a relief to see the greenery after hours of stark browns disturbed only by the occasional scrubby greens and flat grey rocks. Of course I shouldn’t overlook the brilliant blues of the Mediterranean in the distance, or pulling up just to the road in Salloum and Tobruk, but as we speed down the highway it mocks as much as befriends.