News from Ted
Here’s a portion of the Michelin map I used at the time:
Against the odds I’ve got through to Egypt, and in Alexandria put myself though a crash course in engine repairs. But there were papers I wanted, still coming to Benghazi from the Sunday Times. The owner of the garage was going to Benghazi and said he would get them for me.
Tuesday, 13th
I give my message to the Libyan at the garage. He refuses my Egyptian pound. Says he will pay. Shames my earlier opinion of him. (Although he certainly sought to impress me with his Mercedes). He lives in Barce. Take pix of garage men. Put in new roll of Kodachrome. In my tourist suit I sauntered forth, bristling with Pentax. The feeling was dismal. Suspicion, dislike. Was taken to task for photographing a lady with two children begging across the street. The man followed me for a block, until an older man interceded. “Portez-vous bien,” he said. “Vous pouvez photographier les hommes s’ils acceptent.”
Onto the promenade to take pic of front. Iron grip on my right arm, shouting, instantly surrounded by people. Man in T-shirt, pullover, brown trousers and sort of fez-cum-cap. Face distorted with anger, suspicion, certainty that he had the enemy in his grasp. Shouted for police. “From where you come?” London, I said. “No, no,” he screamed. Soldiers arrive from Navy post right next to me. He insists that they pin my arms behind my back. There is obviously some difference of opinion about the gravity of the matter, but I am marched off to the barracks. Once inside everyone is at great pains to make me feel safe. Captains, majors, and a colonel smile at me and ask me not to let this change my opinion of Egypt. Eventually I am carried off to the general. He sits dignified, dyspeptic, myopic, behind desk loaded with (among other things) medicines. (Parendravite, in pack, other bottles of nameless draughts or lotions). Slowly he peruses my passport, my paper of permission, my ST cutting. Remarks on telephoto lense. I unload the camera and give him the film. Can’t say I mind. The pictures were not dear to me. The major copies down all the details. Then next door, tea with an army brigadier. Asks friendly questions about my journey. Both brigadier and general saw the publicity value to Triumph. He lived in Knightsbridge for two years, next to Harrods. Drive back in blue jeep.
Headquarters spacious, but nothing remarkable. Offices all have army beds made up for the night. Some sense of discipline. Not a bad impression. Walked away looking for my citizen-captor but he had moved on.
Wish I could say I was frightened, but not so. The first moments surrounded by small mob shouting in Arabic, I simply thought, “Well you meant to provoke something, so now we’ll see what happens.” My concern was mainly that it might embarrass the Sunday Times in Cairo, or the old lady at the Pension Normandie. Still hope nothing follows from the incident.
Return to hotel to shed my embarrassing emblems of spy/tourist – the jacket and the Pentax plus lenses. Pull on sweater and walk off to find an older area of the town “quartier populaire.” Not far away I plunged into a narrow street blocked by a lorry. Men passed by grunting under the weight of sacks full of empty cordial bottles. They were being stacked in a “cave” There were may have been up to sixty sacks full. Street level, the houses have doorways and separate lockup areas suitable for small shops open to air, or workshops. In one, two men worked on a great heap of straw or reed, making brooms. Outside another, looking like the debris of a vanished civilisation, stood a number of gilt chair frames as used for public receptions and fashion shows, and a number of people were more or less busy stuffing the seats. A boy passed with a tattered basket of leather straps. A small boy was counting his small hoard of piastres and little notes on the pavement. Fruit, grain merchants. One had a display including corn, whole, broken and ground, dried beans of various kinds including one that swarmed with weevils. I pointed them out and the shopkeeper seemed quite pleased with them. “Sousse,” he kept saying. The beans were for making “fool” as it’s pronounced, a delicious imitation of spiced minced meat, rolled and cooked in sausage shape. Sunflower and sesame seeds also. Then some young people gathered about me. Up to then no-one had approached, and although I was probably being observed, had not realised it. They asked something and I replied as usual that I was English. Then a man with dark blue jacket with leather elbows and mourning strip on lapel asked me for my papers. [They lay the left arm across their upturned right fore-arm and display the right hand. This means “papers.”] but in changing my jacket I had left my passport at the hotel. A certain amount of excitement was noticeable, and I was conveyed through several hands along the street, each one looking more disreputable, although obviously of higher rank. All unshaven, nicotine-stained, coughing. Chain-smoking in Egypt is endemic from the age of seven. Crowd gathered. Several called out “Yehudi”, but as question rather than a menace. Put down in chair outside café. Do I want coffee? Tea? But not so friendly. Just formality. Crowd again. Proprietor throws water at them. They scattered and reformed, everyone coming to look at the Jewish spy. Eventually the chief takes me to his “secret” office. Worthy of any exotic spy film – a hutch buried inside a building, airless, windowless, ceiling barely eight ft. whitewashed, 8ft square, Desk. Pictures on wall of groups of soldiers. One group certainly of British officers in tropical shorts, etc. On desk a montage of magazine cuttings of girls, like soldier’s locker door. Made to sit facing door with my coffee brought to me. Faces kept coming and staring straight at me, long and without expression. By now I felt the crisis was over, but when I was first hustled in there I was ready to expect anything. Nothing is so unnerving as to be propelled into a small space by a noisy crowd you can’t speak to. At last I was ushered out again into a shabby sedan and sandwiched in rear seat between two police in very plain clothes. Three young men in front seat turned out to be chief’s sons. To Police HQ. Made to stand before young, moustachio’d detective who failed to get the Normandie by phone. So off to the hotel to get my papers, although by this time it was clear they had caught no big Jewish fish, but a British boot, which might nevertheless be booby trapped. Even then, having examined my papers (of which the Sunday Times cutting was by far the most persuasive) I was returned yet again to HQ to be formally dismissed with an apology and returned once more to my hotel and the genial M.Pacaud whose appetite was now thoroughly aroused, and equaled the one I had found for a delicious lunch of fish mayonnaise and moussaka.
M.Pacaud’s version, delivered with gusto to the others, was that I had set out in the morning, determined to provoke an incident, with cameras and an obviously sinister wardrobe, and having failed to arouse any interest had climbed onto a pedestal and pointed a telephoto lense at a Russian submarine in the harbour. However my arrest by the Navy having been disappointingly civilised and apologetic, I had returned to the hotel, changed my jacket for an Israeli sweater and, deliberately leaving my papers behind, had sauntered off to the toughest neighbourhood available and behaved as much like a spy as possible while also drawing a merchant’s attention to his infested wares. All of which provoked much laughter and had a grain of truth to it. But Pacaud’s story of the Italian journalist who was sentenced to ten years’ hard for taking a photograph from much the same place suggests that I may have got away lightly.
This curious cave was shown to me by Sa’ad, near his house in Benghazi. The inscription carved into the rock above the entrance, he said, identifies it as a refuge for Jews, but he couldn’t say in what period. Does anyone know?
[As all these events and meetings followed hard on each other I was struggling to make sense of them, trying to find words that fit.]
If and when my fate allows me to complete this singular excursion, what will I have to tell my fellow men. What knowledge will I have that is not already theirs. Or if not theirs, ignored deliberately. I shall say that you may meet any man in the world face to face, one to another, and if you take care to stand on level ground you will meet sympathy, goodwill and generosity. But if you set yourself apart, or above, or allow yourself to be one against many, fear may intervene and produce alarming distortions.
Like any growing thing, a meeting between men flowers from a seed that must be delicately sown and nourished. There is no crash programme, for though the stages and seasons may succeed each other in the space of a moment, each one must have its space and be given its time.
Next week: To Cairo and the Pyramids
Despite all warnings and expectations I came through the frontier from Libya with ease. Far from being shot on sight, I was treated like royalty. A valuable lesson. When it comes to borders you never know until you get there. But now I was in Egypt, at night, totally unprepared. My Michelin map has little to offer. Sidi Barrani, Mersa Matruh, El Alamein, Alexandria – just names from World War II. Rommel vs. Montgomery. Here’s what I noted, word for word.
November 7th
In the dark. With only polaroid glasses. What has happened to the visors? Both gone, in Benghazi with Kerim? Drive slowly through Salloum. Cows, several, in the street. Then on to Sidi Barrani. Petrol. Then police post 18 km from Matruh. By now I’m high on the certainty that I really am in Egypt. I’ve saved £55 and several days. Only problem is getting the letters from Benghazi.
Police stop me. Five minutes, they promise me, shuffling through all my papers. They keep passport then suddenly say I must drive, to Matruh behind that car, to the control. The car sets off fast. I put away papers, zip up bag, etc, and go. He drives at 70. Halfway there I reach for the rt hand pannier. Yes, lid has gone. Wallet has gone. Shocked numb, I stop, turn. And drive slowly on the wrong side back to the police post. Nothing. Yes. Two Peugeots have stopped, going each way. The drivers are out and looking at the ground. One waves me on. Incredibly, I go on. Why? I knew they must have found something. What else should it be but my stuff? But I obeyed his signal. Writing this is very painful. I can hardly admit that my nature is so feeble as to surrender so easily to an imperative wave of a hand. It bodes ill, I feel. Later I found the pannier top. Then further on, the truck driver who was helping saw first glove. Further on I found the second. Obviously the wallet should have been between them. Nothing. Demoralised I went on to Matruh. There I was given my passport. I went back to the road, determined not to let go.
Vaccination certificates, driving licenses, Amex card, cable card, picture of Jo, of mother and Bill, of me for visas. And money: Zambian, Ethiopian, Australian, Brazilian, American, – £30 in all. I have marked the distance from the place where we stopped looking. I drive back on the clock and set up a pile of stones. Drive on a mile, then work slowly back and forth. Nothing. Could the wallet have fallen first? Maybe, with lid only locked at the rear end it flew up and stuck, letting the wallet fall.
I drive back to the police post. The fat young Arab is not pleased, but he lets me look. Then I begin to search the verge from that point. Within fifty yards I see a bundle of papers against a shrub. Wallet broken. No money. No address section. No credit cards. Half of one license. No passport pics. Rest intact. Clearly the Arab found it, threw it away again before the police. If I had been able to speak Arabic he would have been caught at the police post. But it was a sad reverse after my triumphant assault on Egypt from the West. And ironic, after all the stories about Egyptian dishonesty. It is now 2 am, too late for a hotel. I am received by police patrol at Matruh and so flattered by their interest and sympathy that my morale is restored. A glass of tea, handful of huge dates, corned beef and bread. Then I’m offered a bedroom. The pock-faced Arab stays with me and engages me with Arabic lessons. Breakfast – Fetarr; Lunch – Redden; Dinner – Ashair. Week, month, year. It’s 4 am now, and the others have put on fatigues and built me a bedroom roofed by soft-board panels.
November 8th
I sleep well. Happy, all’s good and bad equally. So it goes on. Next morning I go back and find, where wallet originally fell, address pages and pics blowing in the desert. But no credit cards. A ten cruzeiro note and half a Tunisian pound. Halva for breakfast, the police on the road to Alex say “Where’s your special permission?” All crumbles before my eyes. Entry to Egypt is just a comedy. It’s the road to Alex that counts. Now they will send me back. The policeman says, No. In Matruh they will give you permission. I don’t believe it. Up to now all such official predictions have proved false. Why should I believe this one, because it’s convenient.
Well, they would have given me permission – if I hadn’t already got it. [I must have found it stuffed inside the carnet] That first meaningless scribble, performed by an illiterate, was the only paper that really mattered, the paper to carry me, as a foreigner, through the radar country between Matruh and Alex.
NOTES
Saved £55 – lost £35: Net gain £20 and three days.
A World War II relic in the desert: Not much, perhaps, but it affected me.
Alex is a labyrinth. Alamein has War II tanks but got little chance to see them. Good lunch + pint of beer costs 75p (English). Petrol about 25p a gallon. Pipeline under construction along the road. Ends halfway. Resumes outside Alex. Dia about 10”. Water, I suppose. Some asbestos pipe, some steel. Little military to see. Donkeys and camels to plough. Turn over top 3” of sandy soil. Plots here and there. Sea is a miracle of blue. Beach white. Cemeteries for everyone – German, Greek, British. Italian. “Manqua fortuna – non valore.” Many police controls – always friendly. Impressed by my newspaper cutting. Can’t gauge whether I’m first foreigner to come through.
Women now graceful. Poised. Balance tin cans of water on their heads, makes them seem precious as any pottery. On to Pension Normandie.
[I arrived in the centre of Alex. A tout directed me to a hotel on the top floor of one of the graceful buildings near the port. Called Pension Normandie, run by elderly Frenchwoman. Noticed smoke pouring from an exhaust pipe. Obviously there was work to be done.]
Monday November 10th, Alexandria
[I found a garage where I could work on the bike. I had never removed a cylinder head and pistons before, but I had a workshop manual. The two garagemen were no help with it but kept me in sandwiches and cigarettes for two days.]
Two days working on motor. Changed a piston. Sculpted the other. Garage life. Consider the number of old Citroens running around Alexandria. Compared with the European view that Arabs have no idea about maintenance. Obviously the truth lies elsewhere. Consider also the things that have not happened to me. I have not been robbed, solicited, harassed or treated as a Martian. On the contrary, from Tunis to Alex I have been fêted. Why? Clearly I stand in a different relationship to them. Monsieur Pacaud [a distinguished Frenchman also staying at the Normandie] would have it that the Egyptian makes no connection between his financial and personal relationships.
My helpers at the garage; near the railway station in Alexandria
Thus, at the garage we haggled over 5 piastres, yet I received much more than that in value. Sandwiches, tea and coffee were brought in impressive quantities. Cigarettes, which are a piastre each, donated freely. The first garage man says he has ten children, earns £E 7.50 a month (well, even if it’s more than that ten times the amount leaves him poor.)
Next week: My arrests
We left our hero (that’s me) stewing in Benghazi, hoping to get help. My visa forbids me to enter Egypt overland. Egypt is at war with Israel. After waiting uselessly for some news from the Sunday Times, my sponsor, I decide I might as well try anyway. Meanwhile I know that between Benghazi and the frontier are famous Roman ruins, not to be missed. These are the notes exactly as I wrote them.
November 5th, leaving Benghazi for the frontier
Kerim’s counsel – visit Cyrene and Appolonius on the way back.
Egyptian consul: “It is absolutely impossible for you to go through to Cairo.” Everybody else more or less emphatically agrees, although when they see I’m determined they say “maybe since you’re journalist”, and so on.
For myself I treat my visit to the frontier as an excursion and set out convinced that I shall return in four or five days to collect the papers now on their way from London, and to put myself and my bike on the plane to Cairo for about $60. I have found this cheaper than road transport for the bike (lowest quote £53) and although a boat would be cheaper there is none till the 20th – in two weeks’ time.
So off to Derna at 2pm. Lose my way slightly and detour by airport, emerging onto main road where the police checkpoint has massive queue of travellers in taxis. But I slip past unnoticed. Travelling East the fez gives way to turban, the women’s white cloak to the check pattern blue and red. Road good but uneventful. Even Michelin green bit is only an average road in the hills of Provence, but rising inland the air becomes quite cold. (although only 1000ft up, at most) and land much richer in vegetation and farming. Building projects, new houses the ‘new town’ with the mosque and grain silo
Realise I must have missed Derna road – and now on the road to El Beida, which means taking the antiquities in now rather than on the way back. But first nightfall intervenes. Find shallow dip between scrub wooded hills, where patch of grass has been cleared and levelled for my particular use by an ally.
Set up tent. Build fire. Cook Bulgarian mixed veg and peppers with corned beef. Coffee. Very good. Use battery/recorder device. Works well. 8.30 pm. No more distractions. Go to bed. Hear distant male voice, wandering past, coming to me from all directions, talking to dog, which yelps obediently. Can’t help a mounting sense of anxiety. And when the voice breaks into a lusty song I scramble into my trousers, shirt, sweater, jacket, boots and light a cigarette, and advance to confront the enemy. Amazed to find a flock of about fifty sheep gathered by roadside, (hundred yards away). In the middle, two cloaked, turbaned figures; Bright moon gives their clothes a rich appearance. (Next day I see it is only sacking.) We exchange greetings – try to converse but fail. I return to tent and sleep calmly, like one of their sheep. Awake to find them gathered about me. Gazing at the paraphernalia assembled (and am now packing) to pass a night which they endured with such simplicity.
[Although I am not religious, I was aware that this part of the world, called Cyrenaica, had an important part to play in the bible story, and I was powerfully affected by the biblical imagery conjured up in moonlight by noble-seeming shepherds in shining raiment ”watching their flocks by night.” Even more so next morning when, without the trick of moonlight their “raiment” was reduced to sackcloth, their turbans to rags, and they to poor, shivering peasants.]
It is freezing. Dew turned to ice. Fingers numb. Tent soaking wet. Pack and leave.
To Shahat, which is Cyrene. Ruins. Pictures.
[I was totally unprepared for what I found. A huge city of Roman ruins, totally deserted but for one Englishman, a French commercial traveller, and a minimal hotel staff.]
Frenchman at Tourist Hotel. Again, that curious French logic which somehow devalues the Arab quality while paying lip service to it. But good company.
(Jacques Puistienne, African Sales Director, Rhone-Poulenc-Textile, 5 Avenue Percier, 75. Paris 8e. 256 75 75)
Also, English ex-soldier, now wireless/radar installation engineer, living in chalet at hotel. Plastic on horns [???] British bring in brew-it-yourself beer. Says Libyans can’t cope with their technology. Mental age of fourteen.
Party of [Libyan] Air Force bigwigs arrive on guided tour accompanied by Air Force photographer with flash. Very American. After lunch they sweep in and out of Cyrene in ten minutes.
Englishman: “Border is military zone. Itchy trigger fingers. They shoot first then ask. One more Sunday Times man gone.”
All the world loves a lurid tale.
[I leave in the afternoon for Tobruk]
On past Apollonius, and the rugged coast road (the old Italian road) where again the sun catches me. Tent. Mosquitoes this time. Net works well – one bite. Stay up longer this time. Night warm. Sleep well. Morning dry. No condensation. Leave at 8 am. Derna. Tobruk. Hot sun. Meet Noel Moloney in road. Teaches at Oil (‘Isle’) Institute. Invited to tea. Stay for lunch. Wine. Wife Italian. Giuseppina. She hates Arabs. He says they’re childish. Earns £500 a month. 60% take abroad. Buying flat in Ancona. Another in Rome, and farmhouse in Ireland. Says the Libyans regard foreigners as “exploiters.” Has little affection for them. Remarks that after a while the students and staff at institute seem to have fondness for him.
Small children can’t play with Arabs because of skin diseases. [says the wife]
I become increasingly impressed by the difference between my experiences and those of other Europeans. “It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t treat us like Martians in the street.” Says Libyans under-use him. Works less than six months in the year (but paid full time.)
They invite me to sleep on my way back. [I am totally convinced they won’t let me into Egypt.]
At 3pm I set off for the frontier. 75 miles. 65 minutes. Convinced I can’t hope to pass but can’t resist the fantasy that I might. Arrive before sunset at Libyan police post. They take my currency exchange form. Why? They show no surprise at my passport. Obviously, they are indulging me in my little escapade. I humour their indulgence. I drive on, waiting for the man who says “No.” Have rehearsed all sorts of speeches about the meaning of war, the importance of adventure, the Arab cause, etc. Come to row of mobile site offices and barricade. More Libyans, but this time they stamp my passport. Now it’s serious because I’m not 100% sure that when Egypt sends me back, Libya will take me. Ridiculous. They wave me through. What, all the way? Yes. I drive into the main customs area, and with delightful innocence plough past the massed taxis, turbans, and mountains of carpet in plastic bags. Eventually I’m hauled back to the “Captain” who presides at a desk on a rostrum.
There, a roly-poly man, unshaven, moustache, takes me personally under his wing. Jumps all queues, gives me a glass of tea. Then:
(1) Man reads my UAR visa, several times looks at “No Entry” qualification. “Access to the UAR via the coast of N.Africa and Salloum is not permitted.” But seems to see nothing there of interest. Takes me to –
(2) Where, with a semi-literate they fill in a Roneo’d form. Great problem with XRW964M. Then give me the paper. I stuff it in with the carnet. Then –
(3) And (4) is another flurry of papers, given and exchanged. I no longer have any idea which are Egyptian, which Libyan, but keeping track is full time as Roly-poly beckons me on. At one point I lose sight of the first paper, something to do with police. “Is it important,” asks Roly-poly. “It isn’t. Never mind.” I give way, knowing I shouldn’t. Change money at (5), pay for licensing bike at (6). Back to (3) for argument about carnet. Then at (7) Libyans discharge it. to (8) where a police officer behind a row of ledgers so thumbed as to be eroded like old stone bannisters, says he’ll give me three months and hands me two heavy steel number plates. Bemused, I totter off with my load.
“That’s all,” says Roly-Poly. “Now, can I help you in any other way?” I don’t know what to do. Fumble towards my pocket, then decide against it. He looks corrupt, but that’s as likely to be my prejudice. Why assume it? He seems happy enough when I thank him and turn away.
Earlier, he asked, urgently, “Did you thank him?” referring to the captain. Puzzled, I replied “I always thank everyone.” He laughs loudly, but I’m no wiser. Did he mean bribe, reward? Meanwhile I’ve found that first cryptic form again, and stuff it away with all the others. There is no room for passport and wallet in the tank bag. I lay them over big gloves in the rt-hand pannier. Lock up and leave. The impossible has happened. I’m in Egypt.
Next week: The rocky road to Alexandria.
A missing chapter. For those of you bothering to follow this series of notes chronologically I have to confess that I mistakenly left out a section of notes about the ferry from Palermo to Tunis. Because I think it was significant and reads rather well, I’m going to interrupt the story and tell it here:
On the ship between Palermo and Tunis, the second class lounge was dominated by two personalities: the Italian barman and an itinerant Tunisian visiting home from the great casual labour markets of Northern Europe. They were at opposite poles of human conduct.
The boat left at 9.30 – a fine looking, modern boat, with drive on facilities, called “Pascoli.” On the deck I met, briefly, two somewhat effete Englishmen with a Renault, driving back to their home in Tangier. I still seemed a long way from the kind of Africa I was expecting. Then I saw the Tunisian Hassen from the market yesterday, and with him was the man who became the pivot of the ship’s life for most of the morning.
He was chubby, Castro-bearded in a green tunic (US style). Shock of black hair at the top, pale skin wrinkled by much facial work. Coconut shaped head. About 30 years old. Started by being merely noisy.
“Ah you, vous, wass machen, sprechen Deutsch. Ich auch. Scheisse.” Burst of Arabic. “Ich bin Hamburg. . . . “ and so on. Then he started singing. I just thought he was a disagreeable oaf, and went down to the lounge for a beer, where the Italian barman held sway. He represented all that was petty and corrupt. He treated the lounge and its occupants, mostly Tunisian Arabs, as his private colony. His strutting and posturing were unforgettable. The bar was his seat of administration where he granted or withheld service as capriciously as any despot. No, withheld is too mild. Refused, volubly, rudely, with accompanying gestures. Every now and again he would fly into a tantrum about the television set tuned, naturally enough, to a Tunisian program and insist on switching to an Italian football match, although the picture was scarcely visible, the sound was no more than a roar of static, and he himself never once looked at the screen. When his bumptious little body, with its prematurely pregnant belly slung over the Italian sailor’s sash, came round on a tour of inspection, passengers dozing iin their seats with outstretched legs had their feet roughly kicked out of the way, while his equally offensive sport was to fling empty bottles into a large container where they fell with a regular shattering crash. It was truly breath-taking to see one man seize upon his environment which theoretically belonged not to him but his customers, and make of it an instrument for the complete expression of his selfish nature while the rest of us submitted in our various ways, resigned, resentful, or merely numbed.
He represented in my eyes all that is brutal, greedy and corrupt in human behavior, and he was a powerful influence in stimulating my sympathy for the Arabs. Short of violence it was obvious that the man could not be stopped.
The poet is waving a paper in front of Mohamed’s face
The singing buffoon came in a little later, when it started to rain outside. He sat at the far end of the lounge still chanting and smiling as though at some Sufi vision. In the confined space the songs were much clearer. Hassen said they were nonsense about girls and love, and he was apparently making them up as he went, but at least he offered an alternative kind of vitality to the terrible malignant power of the barman.
The Arabs nearest him began tapping and clapping along, and others drifted closer, but he continued for a while as though he were unaware of any of us, playing the fool for another audience that only he could see. The barman was noticeably annoyed and the tempo of his outrages increased, but although he still commanded two thirds of the saloon he did not meddle with the singer, whose territory was growing. I sat for a while on the border line of their two spheres of influence, and it was like looking out on two different worlds. To my left, shouting, hostility, the smashing of bottles and, from the TV, the gibbering howl of the ether. To my right, singing, laughter and a beat that was beginning to reach into me. Hassen and I moved across to the right.
The singer judged this the moment to come out of his private retreat and began to respond to his followers. I could not imagine how I had ever thought him distasteful. At worst he was a simple clown, but his power now seemed to grow as the barman’s dwindled. He interrupted his buffoonery with poetry, and Hassen told me it was original and good. The same thumb and forefinger placed the words in the air with a precision and meaning that I felt I could understand, though I spoke no Arabic. The songs also became longer, more lyrical. Slowly, over a period of several hours, the pitch of his performance built up. The barman by now was utterly effaced, the TV could no longer be heard. Everyone in the saloon was with the singer, his to a man, and yet he still seemed strangely detached from us, not feeding at all on our adulation in the manner of a Western “star.” Nor was there ever an attempt by anyone to compete with him. He remained the focus of energy for the rest of the crossing.
Towards the end he moved from songs and poetry to oratory. It was a long speech, and if the rhythms were anything to go by, it was in the Arab equivalent of blank verse. His voice now was very muscular and gritty. The harsh, hard-nosed syllables flew out in formation and beat on my ear. His audience replied with moans and cries of agreement. I imagined the voice amplified a thousand times, a hundred thousand times, from loudspeakers on all the minarets of Islam.
The sounds conjured up an atmosphere of great ferocity, yet the sense of the speech, it turned out, was moderate. It had to do with peace and war in the Middle East. It praised the moderate statesmanship of Bourguiba, and poured scorn on the troublemakers who would fight, like Qaddafi of Libya, to the last Egyptian. Hassen said it was good sense, realistic and very poetic.
The train driver from Sousse translated and gave his view.
“At first I thought he was a fool. But now what he says is really impressive. It is realistic and good sense and very poetic.”
It was well after dark when the ship arrived in Tunis. By then I had made another friend, Mohamad, a young Tunisian who was one of the singer’s most enthusiastic accompanists. He was more stylishly dressed than most, with a jazzy peaked cap on, which he never removed. His nickname, loosely translated from Arabic, meant “The Swell.” He asked me where I was going to stay in Tunis, and I said I had no idea.
“Then you will stay with me. My family will be very honored. You will have everything we can offer. We will be extremely proud to have such a famous man in our house and our friendship will last forever. I have a dark skin but my soul is white as a lily. You will be safe and well in my house.”
Before leaving the ship I happened to notice the barman. He seemed a rather insignificant person, cleaning up after us, hardly worth bothering with.
The poet is in the middle. Well, I never claimed to be a photographer.
On the road to Benghazi.
Wednesday, October 31st, Marsa Bregha
Oil refinery and tankers. Aircraft parked in the desert. No houses. Eerie. On to Benghazi. Run dry within sight of it. Fortuitous. Two good young men. Give me petrol. Take me into Benghazi. Buy me a tankful!! Take me for coffee. Help look for elusive Sabecol. [The Sunday Times had a point of contact in a business called Sabecol.] Help me find hotel. Offer to help with phone call – through brother in PTT. [Post office] Lend me a pound. Stupendous hospitality and generosity.
Meet man with garage in the same road. Freedom of the house. Eat beans, tripe, peppers. 10 piastres. Walk round Benghazi and fall in love with it. Squares with parks and fountains. Women in streets. Shops and arcades. Fascinating markets. Poles away from Tripoli. Shoes at six or seven pounds. Watches everywhere. Backscratcher for Jo. But insides are all ugly. Thought is beginning to form. Beauty at price of personal ugliness. Kindness flourishes on barren soil. Streets are paved with potholes. As though a tank regiment had just fought its way through.
Wednesday 31st
I am living in a community virtually created for me. The hotel. Opposite the small restaurant, white tiles, oil cloth, odd smell but you get used to it. Clean, cheap. Just 30 yards down, the motorcycle workshop, put entirely at my disposal by the owner, Kerim Ali.
Kerim Ali and his workshop. Tremendous help and enthusiasm.
And opposite him an amazing scrapyard come general engineering shop run by Mustafa, a skilled engineer where I can get anything made, welded, etc. But the mysterious Sabecol still eludes me. Kerim has been given six different telephone numbers. Every time he rings directory, another number. He grins disarmingly. Tomorrow, he says, we will drive there. Sa’ad passes by and starts working with me on the Triumph. I clean it, reset timing, tappets, clean out carb. Change chain, change oil, change plugs. Tomorrow grease and oiling.
Sa’ad worked on the bike with me, and invited me to his home.
Walk around with Sa’ad. Everything stops at 9pm. Except the café on the sea front. Veery pleasant though. Gold market. Fishing with dynamite. Another tedious banking scene. Dollar down to 2.50 to pound. Bad business. Surfeit of one dollar bills.
Thursday November 1st
Another day. But Sabecol has been penetrated. The omnipotent Kerim drives me out of city on Tripoli road where he says all big businesses have moved. There is very little “traffic” (business) in Libya these days, he says. The people have money, but they keep it. Afraid to invest. Sabecol is an empty space.. Used to do British cars and bikes – now only get spare parts. Letters there from ST. Another, to P.O.Box 217, has got away. Back to Kerim’s shop. Sa’ad arrives. More work on bike, fixing the recorder input lead. Talk to Mustafa the welder. Specialises in cast iron and aluminium alloy welding. Oldest welder in Cyrenaica. Amazing workshop – a jungle of scrap metal. Rusted corrugated iron overhead. He limps. Has a soft, fastidious expression.
On the way to Sa’ad’s home I disgraced myself in a pool of wet clay.
I drove Sa’ad to his house across a wasteland of rubbish, craters. Old World War II US airfield, with £25 million university rising out of it. Around it – then swoosh, squelch – into wet mud, clay – over we go. Come up like figures ready for firing. Pic of bike. And all that time spent cleaning it. Cameras encrusted. So Sa’ad drives while I palpitate on back. No harm. Very funny incident. But I hope I see it next time if I’m going faster.
Two pictures of Sa’ad’s home.
Is Sa’ad on his mobile phone?
Sa’ad’s home a long, square plot by the beach. Those ‘date’ palms, are either unripe dates or something similar. They have sheep in a pen built of old doors, planks, windows. Profusion of parts. Vegetables, onions, cabbage, tomatoes (on ground) Donkey. Dogs ( 3 ) Cat and kittens and endless brothers. Also pigeons, small turkeys – or guinea fowl? All within yards of the beach. A great stack of sandstone blocks (inhabited by a rabbit) waits to be added to the house (hewn from that same quarry). Sa’ad has two shacks of plank strewn with motorcycle parts and machines in rusty dilapidation. A Triumph Trophy, a Guzzi, a Yamaha. Advertisements for cars, motorcycles, and a British shower manufacturer from Birmingham contributes his two pennorth of titillation with banal lady under shower with nipples showing. The shack nearest the shore is on stilts and has a Cannery Row feeling about it.
You drive fifty miles of barren road and ee a triumphal arc across the road, usually sky blue and apparently made of plywood and plaster board. At the foot of the arch is usually a policeman or a soldier, and often they will stop you for your papers. After this the road generally deteriorates and widens out to be about three times the width with rough asphalt or mud. Theen, on either side a row of single-storey, open fronted spaces of brick and plaster, used variously as café, a general store, living rooms, a garage, etc. Because no particular style has evolved to differentiate between premises for, say, a builder or an ironmonger, my western eye has difficulty seeing through the general jumble. On either side a row of pumps, sometimes new, sometimes rusted. It’s hard to tell which are working. They all carry the sign of the government oil company although I gather they are serviced, as before, by different companies, Shell, Esso, etc. But you don’t know or care what you’re getting since its half the British price.
Parked by the pumps are likely to be: A Peugeot 404 estate taxi, nose and tail painted white, mid-section black with a group of sombre men packed inside wrapped in white shawls and topped with fezzes, often clasping cushions or pillows in plastic bags; a row of buses containing a mixed cargo of soldiers and civilians and driven by either; any sort of private car as long as it’s German, French, , Italian or Japanese; a Datsun or Toyota pick-up truck. Buses and most taxis have tarpaulin bundles of luggage on top. In October, November the area is a sea of mud.
I have never seen an Arab manifest impatience or throw rank (except within the family).
Monday November 5th
And I have been here too long. Or rather I have been here long enough to feel time weigh on me. Clearly, I am impatient to get on, frustrated by the delays and still uncertain about a plan to get across, so I feel the time pass. But for the ordinary young man in Benghazi time is scarcely less of a burden. There seems to be little else to do here but work or speculate. The streets are crowded in the evenings by groups of men talking. There would seem to be literally nothing for them to do except go to the cinema. Some go every night. The arrival of a new film is a major event. Much of the audience is acquainted, and they react to breaks in the reel with esprit de corps – like an army audience.
Much lip service is paid to the evils of war but the only convincing sentiments are those deploring its economic effect. Kerim says the price of timber has gone up from £30 to £50 per cubic metre. I don’t think anyone actually wants to fight, but many are impressed by the idea of fighting. Violent films are popular, and there seems to be a karate craze on here. Twice I’ve seen a youth in the street play at a karate blow and it’s been mentioned casually several times. Benghazi itself was designed for more frivolous times. It has several squares with palm trees and fountains, formally laid out with pools geometrically pattered among tiled areas and flower beds. Sharia (road) Omar Mukhtar has arcades running its full length – modern, including the post office, giving way to 19th century. Virtually every ground floor opening onto most streets is a store of some kind. And invariably steel rolling shutters come clattering down at 9pm giving the town a bleak, dead look. Road works everywhere, pumps ins continuous operation provide Benghazi its characteristic background noise, like the cicadas in other places. Yet in spite of the bombed sites (are they really still from the war?) and the shattered roads, the city promises a sophistication and variety which it cannot deliver.
Undoubtedly the current regime has flushed out many babies with the bathwater, filthy as they may have been. With alcohol and tourism gone there are no clubs, no luxury restaurants. The West is represented only by its hardware. A parade of watches, transistors, cars, domestic appliances. No live music at all, except for religious festivals and marriages. Apparently, no theatre, and little demand for it. A ‘bloc’ mentality, faintly reminiscent of pre-war Germany, but without the economic hardship. Libyans have money. The State shares out its oil income with allowances. £5 a month for every child. A £40 pound allowance for married men. £20 for single men. Young people seem healthy, bursting with vitality. Slim. None of that Western obesity. But all heavy smokers. Older generation frequently bow-legged – some squints. Older women all seem stunted and prematurely aged under their red or blue checked burkas. [I don’t explain how I saw beneath them!]
Here at least (unlike Tripoli) girls in Western trouser suits are seen in the streets going to and from work (or school). The atmosphere is less repressive. There are skins of every shade, from pale Libyan through brown Egyptian, to coal black Sudanese. The Egyptians have been brought in as cheap labour and are becoming an embarrassment, I’m told.
As well as selling goodies, there is a disproportionate number of shops dealing in paint, tools and electrical fittings and materials indicating a great preoccupation with house renovation. Police and soldiers everywhere, but not in an intimidating way, except to the paranoid foreigner who feels suspicious eyes upon him. It is considered unwise to take photographs and nobody uses cameras. Arabs are said not to like having their pictures taken. I have always found the opposite to be true however and I think the camera-shy Arab is a myth in the city.
All in all, I feel this society is off balance, and that much of what is wrong in the Middle East may be the consequence. The spiritual life of Islam has no answers for a restless new urban class, yet they cling to it. I can’t honestly say I wish them the benefits of a Western cultural life, or that they should cease to observe the customs of hospitality which I have enjoyed to a surfeit. But there is tension, and loose energy that the pursuit of technology can only exacerbate.
Sa’ad’s brothers did the clean-up.
Chased out of Tunis by the police, and heading for Libya.
Tuesday 23rd October
Drive through Tunisia. Wet. Confusions at Sousse. Wrong name for the train conductor. On to Gabes. Hotel de la Poste. Letter to Peter. Right or wrong? Frenchman at Atlantic. Was there in war to put up radar station. Germans no good at electronics – except Siemens. Italians did nothing for the Libyans.
The coliseum at El Djem
Floods. Road cut behind me. Sousse. The Alaba? Hotel. All hawking and spitting. Good restaurant by the roundabout. Room was I dinar (£1) Remember how I was cornered with the bike in small gateway at back and forced to bargain for parking. I didn’t even know there were people sleeping under all that plastic at the back until next morning. I wonder whose lodging was more profitable – the man or the motorcycle?
Remains of a Roman aqueduct
[There are some days here I can’t account for, but I arrive eventually at the frontier with Libya. It’s not long since Colonel Gadaffi (or Quadaffi) seized power.]
Libya, Sunday 28th
Police. Man with shotgun. Chief in his shiny Italian suit and suave grin, with carton of Marlborough under his arm. Customs man. Other man who came in to do police forms and passport.
“Helt?” he said. Oh, Health!
Sheets of Roneo’d forms in Arabic. No communication, but goodwill.
“Whisky?”
First taste of Libya, all Arabic. No alcohol. All fizzy water and Pepsi. Night on the dunes. Chakchowka [?] Coffee. Tent tied to bike. Lightening at sea. Then in morning, rain. Will bike fall through the tent? Will I be washed away? Frenzy of packing as huge black storm cloud piles up behind me. More sand than tent in the bag. But bike travels well over wet sand. Hooray for Avon tyres. But what hard work. And what did I lose in the process? Nothing, as it turns out.
On to Tripoli. Totally at sea with Arabic signs. Can’t distinguish one sign from another. Ask a driver for “hotel?”
“Follow me. I have time for you because I see you are lost.”
Customs took half my Libyan money. Hotel costs two and a half Libyan pounds – that’s over £3. Money is going at a rate. Meet Yorkshire engineer. Walk to the esplanade. Port full of ships.
“Been there for weeks. Port is too small. Can’t turn them round.”
Hotel full of roughneck Italians. Pipelaying gang reading comics. Not a woman in sight. In the street occasionally see bulky objects swathed in ‘Barka’, one eye showing. Mustn’t look at them. Who would want to? City looks full of bomb sites. Arrived at 11am. Spent most of the day sorting out mess from the night before. Into the shower with the tent, washing sand out. Dry it on balcony. Boots sodden.
Don’t dry till next morning. But dubbin goes in well. Market is full of transistor gear. All looks like rubbish. In fact it’s all very rubbishy. Not a pretty object in sight.
Amin [Uganda president] is in Tripoli. Appears on television, like an ape-man.
In the morning, the bank. Soldier, shabby, hairy, with gun. Stout Arab is at the cashier. Behind cracked glass three men are all engaged in counting his money. He has brought a stack of notes over a foot high. And all in fives, tens and twenties. They count them again, and again. Holding bundle with one hand, flipping notes sideways with the other, looking around and smiling at friends, losing count and starting again. Twenty minutes goes by. Rain still bursts down sporadically.
Off at last. After eleven. The road to Benghazi. First, olive groves. Small trees. Then thousands of date palms. Dates light brown clusters at centre of palm – like dead leaves. Occasional camel. Settlements, earth confined by mud dykes. Wells of curious shape. Why the steps? Tried to ask the man here at hotel. Yes, he said, it’s like this. The road from here is good for 250km. Then there’s a very bad stretch of 250km !!!!???? Indeed. And what happened to my bed at 75 piastres? One Dinar it costs me for an army bed. But I digress. This is no tourist country. Why should I complain about it? That’s how it is.
The desert. Wow! Really desert. Out for ever. Cloud. Sun. Rain. Blue sky. All at once. For hundreds of miles around. I’ve never seen so much weather. Part of it’s dry. Groups of camels gather by the road. Frightened by noise, but shrubs grow greener at roadside. Pictures. Camels in haze of sand. On and on. Sand drifting across tarmac makes patterns like flames in fire.
First mechanical trouble. Throttle is stuck. Can hardly move it up. Won’t slide back. Have to cut off to slow down. Get to Ben-Gren way station.
First signs of trouble. Air filter inadequate.
Two Egyptian labourers help to move bike into shelter where I clean sand out of carburetor. This is going to happen again. Get a plate of spaghetti – young fellow, son of owner, speaks English. He gives me the food. Take pictures again. Also took pic earlier of – Septis Magna – was it?
Police stop me once. Go through my papers. No question of insurance, though. Drive on as sun dies behind me. Into the gates of hell. Huge storm blackens sky ahead. Seem to be always driving into the worst weather. Altogether this journey feels like that. Sort of apocalyptic. Like Frodo going to the dark country.
After the storm, road suddenly barred. Diversion points out into the desert. Can’t see a road. Decide to ignore sign. Tarmac continues, very broad, almost like an airstrip. Is it? Nearly at the end, car full of soldiers comes weaving past and stops me. Examine my passport upside down, very earnestly. But always with good humour. Police and soldiers shake your hand afterwards. Wish you well. On into the night. Feel good, alert. Ready to drive all night, but stop for petrol at Sirte, and soldier says I must go to police. Evidently, they don’t like people out at night. Have to stay at this hotel. Rambling building. Group of Arabs in fez and pyjamas sitting in one corner smoking and drinking tea. Those famous pyjamas. Desert dogs look white and handsome. Ground in Libya looks as though it’s had the top ripped off – like bottom of a disused quarry.
Sirte is a sea of wet sand. But everywhere among the broken buildings, the rubbish, the peasant shacks, are new cars gleaming. Black and white taxis drive up to the poorest buildings, rush up and down the highway – big Peugeots, Mercedes, Datsun trucks, Toyota rovers. And everyone seems to have a stack of those big banknotes, to make me feel poor, underprivileged like a newly arrived Pakistani.
In this weather the tent is almost impossible to use. Hotels break me. Only petrol is cheap, thank God.
Oh yes. Big tents in the desert, usually near a village. Like marquees.
Lousy desert picture, but it’s all I’ve got.
Tuesday, October 30th
Left Sirte at dawn. Clerk sleeping in his clothes by the door, wrapped in a sheet with light on, his white fez by his couch. Arabs by the car-load continuing their journey. Rain goes on. Very heavy for three hours. Can’t believe the bike won’t stop. God bless Triumph, and Avon – and Lucas. Stop for petrol at small place before Sidr. Cup of mint tea, packet of sweet rolls. Bartender takes 10 p. Must have cost more. Had two shaky moments on mud ridges dried hard and then wetted down. Was into the second before I realised what the first had been.
Absolutely soaked. Boots squelching. Crutch sopping. Then, at 10am, after 150 miles head down on tank, like a bullet at 70mph through downpour comes the light. This desert is not the desert of BOP, of Khartoum and Lawrence. This is a primaeval swamp and camels look like prehistoric monsters. Rivers gushing along the side of the road. More permanently garnished with shredded tyres and cautionary wrecks – road safety sculptures of cars frozen and rusting in the posture of collision. A deliberate warning? Or simply neglect.
The sky clears as I drive out from under the roof of raincloud. Stop. Walk in the desert. Picture of bike draped in clothing. Then on in sunshine. 100 miles from Benghazi, make coffee, eat sardines within 100 yards of tented encampment. But nobody approaches.
Next week: To Benghazi
I took the ferry from Palermo to Tunis.
Sunday, October 20th
For some days I’ve been travelling on the brink of Africa. From London, perhaps, Tunisia seems no great distance, just a package flight away. For myself I can only tell you that after 2000 miles travelling towards this immense continent, speculating on what lies ahead, I feel a very long way from home and, in quiet moments, alone as though I were about to step off the edge of the world.
Goodbye Palermo
The boat left at 9.30 – a fine looking, modern boat, with drive on facilities, called “Pascoli.” On the deck met two somewhat effete Englishmen with a Renault, driving back to their home in Tangier. I still seemed a long way from the kind of Africa I was expecting. On the boat, in the plastic lounge, was robbed for a beer. I met the Tunisian from the market yesterday, but he failed to make much impression because with him was the man who became the pivot of the ship’s life for most of the morning.
He was chubby, Castro-bearded in a green tunic (US style). Shock of black hair at the top, pale skin wrinkled by much facial work. Coconut shaped head. About 30 years old. Started by being merely noisy.
The poet is waving a paper in front of Mohamed’s face
“Ah you, vous, wass machen, sprechen Deutsch. Ich auch. Scheisse.” Burst of Arabic. “Ich bin Hamburg. . . . “ and so on. Then he started singing. Gradually he drew his audience around him. Singing and clapping. Soon he began to formalise his act. And from buffoonery he moved to love poetry and then an extraordinary declaration on behalf of Bourguiba. Much of this I have on tape. The train driver from Sousse translated and gave his view.
“At first I thought he was a fool. But now what he says is really impressive. It is realistic and good sense and very poetic.” Much of this is on tape and performer’s address is in the book. Took B&W pics but quite dark and will need pushing through.
[I was still planning to send tapes back to the London radio station.]
Singing along was a young handsome Arab with a peaked cap and smart jacket. He also was very friendly and although his French was worse than the other’s he persisted and invited me to his house. I followed the taxi round Tunis and then through an open dark area [night was already falling] to the Cité Nouvelle el Kabbaria. Blocks of plastered brick, 1 storey high. No window. Set down in rectangular arrangement on stony ground.
Mohamed (left) and friends
In No27 Rue 10083 lived Mohamed’s family. There are 9 altogether but only five of them live here. Two small kids and parents. Father, red fez, trousers and shirt, runs a tabac. So he has a room opens onto street, with a counter. His tabac is lit by a Japanese paraffin lamp. Mother smaller, and similar to Algerian ladies in Lodève [my nearest market town in France]. Five children. One other daughter married and pregnant. One youngest girl and three boys. The two small ones are barefoot, very appealing, curious, active. At night, with light and shade so mixed, it’s hard to see the building as a whole but in the morning I see.
In the back room, which is Mohamad’s, a sumptuous looking bed draped with a cotton pile rug in shiny floral pattern. This seems to be the only bed in the house and is offered to me. I am not quite able to subdue my imagination which still suggests that I have fallen into a cunning trap, partly because I’m set down on a chair in the bedroom while whispered conference in Arabic outside. But commonsense tells me this isn’t so. Shortly, I get up and walk into the courtyard, but some residue of suspicion must have shown in my movement or expression. Mohamed said I could come and watch the motorbike if I wanted, but it was all right. Slightly shamed I returned into the room (which was never more than a few feet away) to find that a dish had been laid there with bread. Two small lamb chops in heavily spiced hot sauce with peas and a pepper. No cutlery. Got my hands messy trying to scoop up the sauce and peas. Couldn’t finish it – too hot. Felt bad about that too.
Wanted to let M sleep in his bed. “Whether you sleep in it or I it’s the same thing. If you sleep in it, it is as if I were sleeping in it.” The Arab formula was not florid lip service to some tradition. It was real and meant. No doubt. Although the bed was a doubtful privilege. Couldn’t sleep for ages, with tickles, particularly on my hand. Lay on the rug with a sheet to wrap around. In morning enormous numb swellings on my left face, neck and right hand. All out of the sheet. Felt as though some fearful African leprosy had struck me down already. Of course they must be bed bugs. But WHAT bugs!
In the night someone processed in the street beating a soft drum at slow march, missing an occasional beat. He was announcing the time to eat for Ramadan – before the light at 4.35 am. For these are the last five days of Ramadan. And Tunis has an Italian fairground to celebrate it. No eating, drinking during daylight.
Remark by Mohamed, “Mon coeur est blanc” – “My heart is white.”
How I looked then
Monday October 22nd
Went to the ‘forest’ – a sparsely wooded slope leading to a beach where “all of Kabaria” sits in the summer “to admire the view and the trees and the flowers” with Mohamed’s friends and brother. We took pictures of all of them sitting on the bike in turn. These I hope still to have, including a “Magnificent Seven” pic of them coming up over a hill.
No question, M is impatient with pix in which he doesn’t figure and has a star’s attitude to photography presenting his best profile (one cheek is scarred by eczema or acne). In a sultry mood.
In the evening, I took him to Tunis with some clothes for another sister, and her husband who mends watches. More appealing children.
We’re invited to lunch by M’s brother-in-law. He has a job, and has a prosperous look, confident, etc. Newly married, wife is pregnant. Sweet in pink gown, tight round her belly and behind. She has cooked some of the food that M bought at the market. Olives, pickled vegetables, salad – crinkly kind – grenades. No plastic. Thick paper wrapping.
[They took me to visit the brother-in-law’s father, a traditional country “paysan.”]
The oven where they bake their unleavened bread
The brother-in-law’s father’s homestead. The bread oven, cow and calf. Beehive. Cactus hedges. Story of Jewess who has children by the man who killed her husband. “Beschwaya, beschwaya, wait and see.” [Slowly, slowly. She teaches her children to kill him.]
“Jews smell,” he says. Clean area. Charcoal brazier. Couscous with chicken. Powerful tea. Old man’s feet. Face. On bed smoking. Wife always behind me. Crouching over fire. Bread and honey. Leave after dark.
The day at Libyan embassy. The “jailor” in fez. People all living in one room. The desk clerk at Hotel Africa. “Arabs don’t know how to make politics. Here’s the round table. Here’s a general, a king, a dictator, a democratic president. They never agree. So they can never bring force to bear. Always arguing.”
Tuesday 23rd Leaving El Kabaria
The final incident. Pied piper leads huge hoard of children and people. M swinging the camera. Police. Film exposed. Humiliation. Departure. What did the police tell him?
[I had no choice but to leave in style, with half the village trailing behind me, but two ugly-looking plain-clothes policemen came to break it up – threaten the people, seize my camera and open it to expose the film, then accuse me of whipping up a mob for my own dastardly purposes. Tell me to get lost. The following picture of Mohamed’s father in his courtyard just survived.]
If you read last week’s notes about Zanfini, you would probably like to know what became of him and his project. I returned to Roggiano in 2001 and wrote about it in Dreaming of Jupiter. I have reproduced some of that at the end of this week’s notes. For more you might like to buy the book.
Friday October 19th , Leaving Roggiano
Now just a matter of making distance to get to Palermo. Have only a sketchy idea of distances in Sicily. Think it’s pretty small. Partly the effect of Mercator’s projection, but mainly through insular whim concerning islands.
Ferry crossed from Reggio to Messina at 3 –3.30 pm. Cost 700 Lire (150 for person) Carries trains and cars. Rails on wood warped into barrel-shaped sections between rails. At other end, straight on to promising Autostrada missing Messina altogether. In the event it was 150 miles of which perhaps 25 were motorway, the rest sinuous coast road with patches of “original” Italian road surfaces. One and a half hours of daylight driving, three hours in dark following a car or a truck. Into Palermo itself, a half mile of cobbles. Arrive at 8pm, very far gone.
Mentally, when I get off the bike after a long ride, although capable of thought, I feel almost incapable of initiative. I want to reach immediately for the nearest source of rest, food and security. And this is where the act of motorcycling can impose an unusual perspective on life. Can make a prince feel like a peasant.
First of all, it is almost impossible to ride hundreds of miles with traffic without getting filthy and feeling it. Second, and I speak now about cities, you can’t leave the bike. Assembled on it is your universe, a natural target for thievery. Like a Christmas tree it glitters attractively and has presents tied all over it. You and it must be inseparable. You can’t lock up your car and melt into the crowd. You must attract the crowd, and the crowd becomes your enemy and your salvation. Because somewhere among the curious children and adults is someone who will help. But who to trust? How to convey your meaning with few words in common? All these things require patience, reserves of goodwill and imagination, which are precisely the qualities you’re least able to call upon. In summoning them up you dig into your own personality and painfully a sort of truth emerges which represents you, not as you would like to be seen, not as you think you ought to be seen, but as you are.
October 20th, Palermo
Yesterday I arrived in Palermo slack of face, filthy of garb, and reached immediately for a telephone to call the friend of a friend. Then sat in a bar and waited. Why did the large, fat man sitting outside playing cards warn me to keep my eye constantly on the bike? Why did he want to help me find my friend? What about the Israeli who came up and said he was trying to find out whether he would be jailed if he went back to Israel now? What about the German-speaking waiter? Wouldn’t any of them have helped me towards food, bed and stable? I was glad to have my friends, to be taken to a grand restaurant, fine pasta and grilled fish. What did I miss?
Today I can view Palermo as a tourist – but last night, on the via Torremuzzo, I saw it as a film by Visconti or Fellini – a set piece of villains, freaks, saints and brawlers in the night.
Priorities
1. Ferry booking, Peter Harland, LBC, ST Notes and film, Triumph diagnosis.
This is a coded inventory of anxieties. I am obviously destined to live with them for a long time, but it contradicts the habit of a lifetime. Somehow I will have to learn to enjoy what my senses can grasp and not draw them in like a frightened snail until I’m sure it’s safe outside. Is this possible at the age of 42? I’m definitely up against time now – time spent and time to come.
2. Will the Tunisians let me in?
How will I recover my deposit from the piratical Tirrenhia [The shipping company] if they don’t? What on earth will I do if they don’t?
3. Why is the Sunday Times telex number wrong? UK MOTNE LONDON indeed!!! Cost me 500 lire for a nonsensical waste of time.
4. Will I ever get through to Harland?
5. Is there something very wrong with the bike if it does three pints in a thousand miles? Obviously.
6. Can I cure it alone? So on and on.
Each problem solved opens doors to new ones. I must find it in me to go on solving them and still say – To hell with them! Obviously though if I’m to keep going on the money I have, I must keep out of big cities most of the time.
[A week or so before leaving England, Harry Evans, the Editor of the Sunday Times who also rode a bike, arranged for us both to get schooled by the motorcycle police. In those days it was still a rule to give hand signals.]
Sergeants Farmer, Fittal, and Easthaugh, I’ve been thinking of you. Every time I take the wrong line on a bend or find myself hopelessly confused between wanting to twist the throttle and signal with my right hand; I feel your eyes heavy but benign on my neck.
“He’s a good lad,” they say. “He’s trying, but he’ll never be one of us.”
Who are those three dashing sergeants? They are all at the police driving school at Hendon, and I was privileged to spend two days with them before leaving England, to see what motorcycle policemen are made of. The experience had a profound effect on me, which extended far beyond mere motorcycle matters. I learned for the first time in fifteen years of miscellaneous driving what that boring old highway code was really about; what it feels like to be safe on the road. As a motorcyclist I feel much more competent to stay out of trouble, but if only car drivers could get just a glimpse of the dangers of the road as a motorcyclist sees them, I would be elated. I include myself. Three months before leaving on this marathon I was an ordinary driver on four wheels. What I did then makes me shudder.
For one thing, car drivers fondly imagine that a motorcyclist can always squeeze by somehow. In fact, on two wheels you take your life in your hands on many roads going to the edge to avoid a road hog. On country roads particularly where there is often loose grit or gravel at the edge. I’ve fallen twice in this way, fortunately at slow speeds. Once at high speed and face-to-face with a four-wheeled assassin filling my side of the road I was just lucky.
Then car drivers suppose that other drivers trust them to do the right thing. On a motorcycle you dare not trust anyone. If you see a car rushing up towards you on a side road, you can’t afford to assume he’s going to brake at the last moment. And the avoiding action you take, whether you brake, swerve, or accelerate, is likely to carry its own risks. Car drivers who signal badly, or not at all are a hazard to all traffic, but to motorcyclists they are positively lethal. And so on and on. . . . . .
[Well, here endeth the lesson. I don’t think even police riders do hand signals anymore, and my feeling is that car drivers are generally more controlled today than they were then, more by regulation than by themselves. But you still dare not take your eyes off them.]
I wanted to reproduce here what I discovered in Roggiano in 2001, but to my surprise and disgust Adobe has locked me out of the pdf files of my own book, and I have no time now to sort this out. Suffice to say, when I arrived Zanfini had been dead just a few years. A school in Roggiano had been named after him. His widow was curiously reticent to talk about their history. I formed an opinion, quite unfounded, that there had been some strain on their relationship, and that it might have had to do with the young woman dressed in black, who had so impressed me when I first arrived. At any rate, Zanfini appears to have succeeded with his program, and was well remembered, but the buildings so ardently created, were now obsolete and derelict.
Cheers, everyone, until we meet again.
Ted
On October 18th I was still making my way down Italy to Sicily, and the ferry that would take me to North Africa. With my eyes firmly fixed on the unknown world ahead of me I wasn’t expecting to experience anything much worth recording, but in Roggiano, Calabria, I was reminded that the adventure can begin anywhere, when Giuseppe Zanfini made his operatic appearance in my life.
Please read last week’s notes first if you haven’t already.
Here’s what I wrote in my notebook:
“When I was eighteen, I was a fascist from my eyes to my boots.” His hands described the very ample parts of himself that included, but his plumply energetic features indicated that he was far beyond making excuses.
“I volunteered for the army to go to war. I was in officer school. Then in Sicily, four years after, came my first real battle. I heard the toot toot of the bugle “ – he went toot toot – “that meant go to prepare arms. I was in the tent to pick up my gun and clean it and I thought, this time it is not for a paper cut-out figure. This time you will have to kill real men, and I knew then that I couldn’t. Not to kill men with mothers like mine, with children – men who come from homes like mine which will be in misery.”
Short of wringing tears from his eyes Signor Zanfini relived his moment of conversion in front of me, behind his office desk. In a measured hush he spoke of love and brotherhood, his face flitting between solemnity and ecstasy. As the battle progressed he wiped blood – the blood of other men – from his face. He represented graphically how other men had lost a hand, an eye, a leg.
“After the battle the Colonel wanted to give me a decoration because I had stayed on my feet through the battle, but I refused. I told him I would never bring myself to kill another man. He said he understood but asked me only to keep my sentiments to myself. Three months later was armistice and the colonel was able to sign my permission to go to university. There in the new democratic Italy I studied to become a teacher and came home to Roggiano to teach others that we must have peace not war.”
“Then I saw that our men were returning from the prison camps and talking to their families at the fireside about the war. And then soon the children in the square were rushing around saying ‘Bang, bang’ and ‘Boom, boom’ playing at war. And I saw that although we had already lost one war, we were in danger of losing an even bigger one around the hearth.”
Zanfini was determined that children should not grow up to worship war. He propagandised ceaselessly, in school and out. In 1949 he joined in with the illiteracy campaign to open a small cultural centre in Roggiano. Nearly fifteen years later his energy and imagination (supported by his undoubted dramatic ability) has had great influence. It has drawn visitors, expert and student alike, from 84 centres to watch signor Zanfini’s cultural program at work in a peasant community. Both Swansea University and Manchester (through Prof. Ross Waller) have a permanent connection with Roggiano and send many students from undeveloped countries who may see how to tackle similar problems in Asia and Africa.
Because Roggiano is in Calabria, the heart of the Mezzogiorno and, at the end of the war, still largely cut off from the mainstream of European thought and progress. Now Zanfini is at the point of seeing his last and most extensive project realised. After seven years of bargaining and persuasion he has brought the mayors of the fourteen communes of Esore – seven Christian Democrats, four Communists, three Socialists – together to agree on one school for the whole region. A school not just for children, but for adults too. A centre where the skills learned by the children can be put to use by the community, where chemistry students can tell the peasants what their soil needs, etc.
He unfolded his plan and pinned it to the wall.
“All this,” he said – and there was a lot of it; some thirty buildings or more, with sports stadium, pavilion, theatre, and so on – “all this will cost only an eighth of what must be spent if each of the communes were to build their own necessary schools.
“Yesterday I had the councilors of the Regional Government of Calabria here to make their own final decision. They have agreed that it must go ahead. Now all we are waiting for is Rome and the law. The principle of comprehensive education was already accepted by the previous minister of education. But even if the Government said no, the people of Calabria would be determined to go through with it somehow.”
“Another march on Rome?” I suggested jokingly.
“No,” he said. “Never. There must never be another march anywhere.” And that same ineffable sweetness flooded his face, which only in Italy could carry conviction. “Peace and love. Love and peace.”
Now that he’s fifty he’s ready to retire. Area involved about 60 Km X 35
All decisions on community centre are unanimous.
Friday October 19th
Took pictures of Zanfini on 28mm lens. Then usual hour to pack everything. Got away about 10.30. Changed money in Roggiano. Every time the rate gets worse. In Rapallo 600 lire per $, in Rome between 583 and 575, in Roggiano 565, a 6% drop in value. What will it be in Palermo?
The last ten days have been a fairly comfortable prelude to the adventure, through familiar country, although I oddly failed to note the night outside Florence where, refusing to go to a hotel and finding all the camp sites locked I spent the night sleeping triumphantly on the bike under my umbrella.
An audience in Florence, the night I slept on the bike under my umbrella
Tuesday November 16th
Left Rome. Stopped in Latina for coffee.
Too hot. Tied chaps round luggage and lost them.
Spent the most miserable afternoon I can remember looking in vain over 25 km of road and then cursing, whining, wishing and regretting everything I had ever done. Not helped by impossibility of finding anywhere to put tent.
At last, at Larga Patrici, just before Naples, a beachy site. Felt better in tent. Terrible condensation in morning. Stopped to dry out tent on autostrada to Regio just after Pollo. Tent filled like a sail. Took 200mm pix of caterpillar and mountains. Also frames, 28mm, 3,4,5,6,7 of bike against mountain and villages. A little further on, a town against a mountain.
Then came off A3 at 1.15 to find some hot food. Buonapiticola provided a ‘Pizzeria’ where I asked for spaghetti. Passed old lady, just like Lucy, gathering vegetables in garden. Spaghetti at 300 lira was too expensive, but I regret the noise I made. Northern male strikes again.
From the autostrada
This business of the chaps has provoked a great many notions. I suppose a journey of this sort is bound to search out one’s weaknesses as well as expose other underlying traits. While the solitude is not so apparent nor the strain so monotonous as in a wilderness or on the high seas, it may in in its own way be as telling.
Alone in a yacht or on polar expeditions I’ve heard it said that men are inclined to swing between much greater extremes of misery and ecstasy. My own reaction to the loss of the chaps was naturally profound, but it seemed to eat deeper into me in a bitter fashion as I rode along in the night, going nowhere, looking for somewhere, almost crying with vexation, longing, self-pity and love for Jo, whom I seemed to have abandoned just as stupidly as I did the garment her loving hands had made to protect me.
As I rode through the night, from one locked campsite to another, I composed endless letters to her expressing my feelings and simply couldn’t wait to find somewhere to get my pen to paper. Yet as soon as I got somewhere and was settled into the tent, my anguish seemed to entirely evaporate, and I was forced to observe my own apparent fickleness with some disgust while feeling far too relieved to be really unhappy even about that.
This was written while waiting for the spaghetti to cook.
Back on A3. Viaducts between mountains become ever more spectacular. Took 28mm pic of one being built. At 4pm decided to leave A3 in search of a place to pitch my tent. Night falls here at about 5pm. Came to town called Roggiano. Lads shouted, children rushed up. Found a group of men in the square, in carefully pressed suits. One spoke English. They were curious and he spoke to me. I wanted to buy coffee. He indicated the alimentari shop which opened at 4.30. Bought an orange soda then went back to talk to them. Point is, I had time on my hands. Result was that eventually he said there’s an international centre up the hill. UNESCO he said. They would give me a bed if I said I was a journalist.
A cavalcade of young boys (where do the young girls go?) escorted me for 500 metres whooping and shouting as I maneouvered the Triumph among them. A young man with renaissance features and facial hair to match received me kindly in halting French (I spoke no Italian worth speaking with). He described the basic idea of the centre , which consisted of a number of low, flat buildings, pastel pebble-dash, steel-frame windows, in gravel paths and thin grass. It started as a centre for UNLA – the national campaign against illiteracy in 1949. It has become a cultural centre for the region. It has a staff of four full-time, himself, his father, another teacher and a secretary.
All the buildings were erected by the people of the region in their spare time, including bedrooms for those who have to come a long way to Roggiano from one of the other 14 villages scattered around the river Esaro. In a great communal hall a grave young woman in black brought a tray of coffee and cups and stood by us patiently while we drank. Earlier I had watched her with a vast bundle of laundry at least as tall as herself balanced on her head, walking easily through a doorway without an inch to spare on either side.
I was received by the father, Guiseppe Zanfini, in his office. When he had finished his telephone call he beamed across at me with such concentrated benevolence and hospitality that I wanted immediately to vote him into office, any office. Then without preamble and scarcely a pleasantry he launched directly and astonishingly into his story.
Next week: Zanfini’s story.
