Libya – memories updated and images……2006

Leptus Magna is east of Tripoli and perhaps the greatest intact Roman archeological intact site. Situated on the ruins of a 7th century BC settlement, it reached its peak under the Romans when it was their food bowl and probably the shipping of lions and other exotics to amuse them.  The extent of the ruins is extraordinary, the market with its weights and measures stone, the empale and theatre, the forum and the goths. I was overwhelmed by the Great Colonnaded Street, the remains of statues and mostly by sitting on the high wall separating the almost intact amphitheatre and the Hippodrome, gazing out to sea.

I was tweaked to realise that 2000 years ago the Romans had expensive holiday homes by the sea. The Villa Sireen is a grand isolated estate replete with fine mosaics and a private bathhouse that must have wowed the guests. I could see the fine ladies in draped robes and fine jewels sitting where I propped on the seawall contemplating life.

We stayed in Misrata, the scene of recent particularly bloody battles and I remember cheerfully catching a taxi to a cyber cafe where young men earnestly sought the wider world. Then on to Sirte halfway between Tripoli and Benghazi in the area where Gaddafi came from and where his tribe is based. It was the modern centre of his administration (his Canberra?) where he had his famed Congress tent. I am glad the photos I had taken before his huge portrait there are too dark to reproduce, ditto me speaking at the lectern from where he lectured the world.

It is a long bleak drive to Benghazi broken by local pit stops where local families pass, by the odd Berber warrior, by roadside stalls  and by a caravan of camels. The empty new resort apartments strike an odd note.

A break in the journey comes with the viewing of the Great Manmade River, one of most ambitious and expensive projects in the world and part of the Colonel’s grand vision(like Nasser’s Aswan Damn). Gaddafi called it “the eighth wonder of the world”. This huge reservoir is fed from deep wells deep in the Sahara and then piped 100s of kilometres to the coast. The plan was to extend these wells right through the desert and devil take the consequences of the impact on the groundwater not to mention the cost. Also, there is an evaporation issue.

Further along, in a field by the side of the highway is a sight to recall the “vast and trunkless legs of stone” and “shattered visage” of Shelley’s Ozymandias that lies in another desert somewhere else. Here are the bronze outstretched torsos of the Philaeni brothers. The Italian brothers once stood more than 5 metres tall above the arch which marked the provincial border. Other stone reliefs decorated the arch including one of Mussolini being saluted. Given the horror Italian colonisation wrought on the Libyan people, rubble in a remote field seems appropriate.

Benghazi I remember the dozens of African workers fringing a large roundabout, shovels at hand waiting for the bosses to come along and pick those they would employ as day labourers. Life in the Mahreb was their cargo cult. Watching them, I thought about how many lives are so tenuous, beholden to the will of others. My grandfathers, wharf labourers in Sydney would have been subject to the same whimsies when they stood on the Hungry Mile at the docks waiting to be picked, families depending on the day’s money for food.

After Benghazi, we stay at Appollonia to see the Graeco-Roman ruins at Cyrene. Since Sicily, I have been of the view that the Greeks chose the best sites in the world.

But then we make a dash to Tobruk. We drive through industrial wasteland to the harbour, the deep port so important in WW2 for the landing of reinforcements and supplies. it changed hand between Rommel and the Allies four times during the war. About 7ks inland on the road to Alexandria, stands the Allied war cemetery.  On the 11^th of the 11^th 2006 at 11am I stood with 22 others for two minutes and remembered the war dead. Many more to remember now. Besides the 11 people I went with, there were some Canadians in that simple rectangular Allied cemetery of white- crossed rows. Young men too young to die whose inscriptions made me cry. “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die”. “He dies a dinkum hero to keep Australia free”. “We can always remember you smiling, my boy”. Buried here are 3194 Australians, 507 British, 28 Indians and 107 from Poland. There is a simple room at the entrance with an index. I signed the Visitors’ Book there. Next to this simple open memorial, the monumental German memorial stands. Two stories high and made of imposing stone its top battlement afforded a view of the sand coloured town and arid landscape Around the harbour petrochemical plants and oil refineries were silhouetted. Rommel’s bunker is a dilapidated, rubbish strewn, neglected outbuilding surrounded by rubble.

Back to Tripoli and after the others leave, I have some time to wander this city of a million and three quarters. I still do not feel comfortable. There is no laughing or chattering in the street. I noticed this once before, in Iran. Groups of schoolchildren are a breath of air and here are the only girls I see. It is not the dust and sub-optimal infrastructure that worries me, more it is the protective coating weighing down the souls around. This arid land has been subjected to waves of rulers most recently the Italians and then the Colonel. Now the tribes have taken over.

At the airport I see a young woman in a chador with red hair and very pale skin. She is with a man and a small child and is crying. We go through customs; she is alone and we start to talk. An Irish/ South African Moslem convert married to a Libyan, she is going to a family wedding down south and he has not allowed her son to accompany her. Problems are wider, cross-cultural probably. She works; has no freedom; he studies; her money goes to his family; he wants her to sell her  flat in another country. If this goes on I will die she says. We exchange emails. She is happier with a better job now in Tripoli. Then the correspondence drifts off as these things do.

During the civil war, I thought about her a great deal. I sent an email. It was returned – undeliverable!