There may not be enough pages left in this notebook for me to describe what happened to us today. We were lucky – incredibly lucky – Joe lucky to be alive. We are both horribly sunburned from an entire day in the desert. Me worse than Joe. He is darker complected and has a mop of thick, curly, brown–black hair. The backs of my hands look like underdone barbecue: red and raw, with fingernails black with oil, grease, and desert dirt.
The hotel shower let down a few squirts. I took the thing apart and with the awl of my Swiss knife reamed the limescale from the little holes, and we had a hearty flow. No way to describe the relief.
It was a bad day from the start. We set out from Djerba at 5 a.m. but ran out of gas. We pushed the machine a mile into Medenine, where we tanked up, breakfasted, and headed south. It was noon before we reached the Tunisian border post at Ben Gardane. The heat was intense, with mirages everywhere, the horizon jumping. Like a wall of mirrors, the mirages house you in on all sides except from windward, where a sneaky little breeze leaking in opens the door a crack.
The friendly Tunisian customs official stamped our passports and asked if we had a Carnet de Passage for Libya. This document guarantees you will not sell your vehicle in the country you are entering. We said no: in Tunis it was impossible to obtain this document for the motorcycle with its special oval German “Z” export plate. At the Libyan embassy, where we got our visas, we were assured that we could enter the country without it.
The Tunisian guard said no. They won’t let you in.
We had no choice but to press on into the desolation that is Libya. In Tunisia we had passed palm trees and animals; but in Libya there is nothing. The flat, pebbly plain stretched to the horizon, with crescent-shaped dunes perched here and there, oddly soft-looking, like pillows. Ideal terrain for tank battles; not much else.
I wonder now if that desert sun didn’t addle our brains. The risks we were about to take. The recklessness of our decisions, with never a thought for the peril we were putting ourselves in. We both could have been killed—not once but twice.
Mirages and the choking heat: we hoped we were doing the right thing. We hadn’t passed another vehicle for miles. We prayed our faithful machine would see us through.
A strip of no-man’s-land separates the Tunisian and Libyan frontier posts, about 20 miles apart. At the Libyan side we approached a bar across the road, like a RR crossing. We eased up, got off the machine, and propped her on the side stand as a soldier carrying a rifle ambled from a shack.
We handed over our passports with the Libyan visas. The language of communication switched from French to Italian. He examined the passports and asked for the Carnet de Passage. We said we didn’t have one. He shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn’t let us in without it. All this in the shimmering desert and about 120º heat. We told him the people at his embassy in Tunis said we didn’t need it. No, he said. We must go back and get it. Back. Five hundred miles back to Tunis in that heat for a piece of paper. To show his goodwill he gave us each a glass of water.
We drove back two or three miles, got off the machine and unfolded the map. It looked as though the road we were on was about five miles from the sea. In Djerba we had noticed that the tide went far out, leaving a wide, flat, hard-packed beach that kids rode their bikes on. If we could reach that beach, maybe we could drive along it a few miles, than duck back to the hard road behind the police post and head toward Tripoli. We had our visas, but the machine did not. There was no way we were going back to Tunis. Not in that heat.
The main problem was sand: big dunes north of the road between us and the sea. We would have to find a way through. We had already learned what an effort it takes to push a two-wheeled machine through sand. Rommel knew better: his Afrika Korps brought three-wheeled BMWs to Africa.
We started out. It was hell. To get over a dune was impossible; we had to go around. The basins enclosed by the twin horns of those crescent-shaped dunes collected the heat. They were like ovens. The heat was burning through the soles of our boots. The beautiful dunes became the enemy. You soon lost your sense of direction. After a mile or so we realized we didn’t know if we were going north, south, east, or west. Weaving among dunes too high to see over, we became disoriented. All we had was our track back, which that evil little wind was quietly erasing. But this particular anxiety was replaced by a worse, much worse menace.
We were suddenly surrounded by armed men who had materialized from nowhere among the dunes. Gray-beards and tough-looking leathery individuals in ragged djellabas. About eight of them. They were carrying an assortment of primitive weapons: an antique rifle, a revolver, curved swords, clubs, and, most charming of all, a pickax. A posse of vigilantes, apparently, their hatred of foreigners fired by the atrocities at Bizerte. We both immediately realized that we were in an extremely dangerous situation. One false word or move and they could kill us, bury us in the sand, and nobody would ever know what happened. Our families would never learn the truth. Disappeared. Covered by the sands of Africa. Lost and gone, forever, without a trace. No witnesses. The machine would survive. They wouldn’t bury that. That was their prize. And the only clue.
One of them spoke a little French, which meant they were Tunisian, not Libyan. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad: probably bad. Their blood was hot; they were in the hunt for the European killers of their children.
“Who are you and where are you going?”
I did the talking.
“We’re American, and we’re going to the beach.”
That response, in retrospect, had to be one of the most frivolous in history. Guns cocked and pointed at us, swords and clubs raised and poised to strike, and all we’re doing is going to the beach.
But there was a magic word: “Mirikani, mirikani,” was whispered among them. The weapons dropped a few inches.
We dug out our passports and handed them over. I pointed out the words “The United States of America” to the one who seemed able to read. The passports were handed from one to the other. Everyone had to have a look.
“Mirikani, mirikani.”
I believe now, and will for the rest of my life, that had we been French and had French passports, that band of vigilantes would have murdered us on the spot, and with perfect justification. Tunisian soldiers and civilians are being gunned down by the Foreign Legion in Bizerte. All over the country people are grieving for young men dead. This would be one small act of revenge.
“Mirikani, mirikani.” As though we were men from Mars.
The passports were handed back.
“Go back to the road.”
Which we did. That evil little breeze, whose sole intention seemed to be to lose us in the middle of nowhere, had left few tracks for us to retrace our route. We didn’t have a clue where we were. The Tunisians showed the way. In the end it might be said that they saved our lives.
We were mighty relieved to get back to the tar. It was cooler than those superheated basins among the dunes. But the heat was no longer a problem; we were almost used to it. It was now 3 p.m. and still about 120º.
What were we going to do?
“Let’s run it.”
My Confederate compadre is absolutely fearless. If he needs to do something, he does it, whatever the difficulties; if he wants to go somewhere, he goes, whatever the obstacles. He just charges through.
We had both noticed, on our brief visit to the Libyan border post, that the bar across the road left a gap on the left, about a yard wide, for walkers and their animals to pass. I figured we could squeeze through, but with one proviso.
“I’m driving. If there’s any lead in the air, you can soak it up.”
“Get going! I’m burning up. Let’s run the border!”
So we eased up to the Libyan control post once more, 10 mph, like we were going to get off and talk it all over again. The soldier and his gun came out of the shack. I had the thought: why the hell don’t we just bribe the guy? $10 and we’d be in Tripoli by now.
But the die was cast. Our fate was already sealed. I maneuvered the machine through the gap and hit the gas.
To our absolute horror, at that very instant a Libyan patrol vehicle, bristling with guns and soldiers, steamed out of the desert. With a war cry they took off after us.
“Gun it!”
I didn’t need to be told. We were already in fourth and accelerating through 80 on another smooth, flat road, this one made by Rommel and/or Montgomery. We heard a few pops from behind. We both lay low over the machine to reduce our target profile.
Within a minute or so I thought we had outpaced the Libyan vehicle with so much smoke pouring out of the radiator it looked like it was steam-driven. We sat up as the machine purred across the desert. This was more like it. God bless German engineers! We had left hell behind and were headed toward heaven. But our euphoria didn’t last long.
Joe grunted and slumped heavily against my back. “Oh, shit!”
I yelled, “What’s wrong?”
“Keep going!”
After about 30 miles we had to stop at the town of Zuwarah. Boulders had been rolled across the road. Palm logs. And dozens of people. More running every minute. Soldiers with guns. The patrol vehicle had radioed ahead: a roadblock had been set up.
We stopped the machine and got off. To my astonishment, Joe and I were stuck together. By his blood. We didn’t say a word; we just pulled apart. My T-shirt ripped from his. The patrol vehicle roared up to applause and shouts. The soldiers jumped down and pointed their rifles. If we hadn’t been so scared, we could have been celebrities, such was the excitement in the crowd.
Joe was bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound that creased his right shoulder near the base of his neck. Had it been an inch to the left he would have been a dead man.
Nuns were summoned. They came with hats like seagulls sailing. They took Joe away and sewed him up. No anesthetic. He joined me in the cell. Zuwarah was a prison town. Out the window I monitored the urchins milling around the machine. I had the key in my pocket.
About an hour later the bars opened and in stepped a Libyan officer, about our age, immaculate in starched khaki and green beret.
“Now, what’s it all about, boys?”
Perfect English.
We showed him our passports. The Egyptian, Sudanese, and B.E.A. visas must have convinced him we weren’t planning to spend the rest of our lives in Libya.
He ordered mint tea and pistachio sweets. The tea was served by prisoners who were wandering all over the place. Every time we looked at them they roared with laughter. Thus, we all ended up laughing our heads off. It was a crazy experience, and I’m sure the border patrol will tell their children about it.
It’s hard to describe the lift their tea gives. The requisite three glasses. A pure sugar high.
Since that glass of water at the Libyan post we hadn’t drunk or eaten anything all day. We chatted about the U.S. and Libya: how a poor Muslim state and a rich Christian one could learn from each other. How we could join forces and rule the world. No communists allowed. He had studied at an English university. He was correct, polite, and welcoming. It’s amazing how, in Africa, complete strangers can make you feel at home. Those warriors in the dunes included. They set out to murder us but ended up saving our lives. In Africa you feel you are learning something new every day. About people, especially poor people; humanity, not humanities. Something that got left off the curriculum at Princeton.
He stamped our passports, giving us 14 days to cross the country.
Heck, we can handle that: it is only about 1,000 miles to Egypt, with about 20 historic sites to visit along the way.
We changed into clean shirts. The men from Mars boarded the gleaming machine. Thankfully, the urchins had left it alone. The whole town gave us a rapturous send-off. Best time they’d had in their lives. Ours too, in a way. The soldiers who had pointed their rifles at us a few hours earlier now fired them into the air. We shook hands all around. All friends now, united to rule the world. Two hours later we were in Tripoli.
The voice of Mel Allen, of the N.Y. Yankees, was broadcast over the radio via Wheelus (Strategic Air Command) Air Force Base (the largest in the world) outside Tripoli:
“Going… going… gone!” Mickey Mantle had just hit another home run. He was going for Babe Ruth’s record. Now came the ad for White Owl cigars… surreal.
Our shirts are soaking in a sink full of pink water. Another casualty is my face, which was almost destroyed by the sun and wind off the desert. It is now undergoing treatment with Johnson’s First Aid Cream. Joe is chewing aspirins to kill the pain.
When I think now of what very nearly happened… why didn’t we just bribe the guy?
We spent a magical two days and even more magical two nights in that ancient Roman seaport, birthplace of Septimius Severus, the first and only Africa-born emperor. He spoke the Latin tongue with a Punic accent and died in York in 211.
It was once a city of 60,000, but we had the place to ourselves. Miraculously preserved and wonderfully pure in form, the contrast of the marble theater, temples, baths, forum, and basilica against a sea of a thousand hues, ranging from the lightest blue to the deepest purple, is breathtaking. The architecture and city planning, with broad streets lined with marble benches and marble statues, blends harmoniously with sea and desert. The baths: ten pools of hot and cold waters. Gymnasiums, palestrae, toilets, and Turkish baths. The forum gigantic and the basilica almost perfectly preserved. They say the city is much looted, but you’d never know it. Those who watched performances in the huge theater must have been distracted by spectacular views of sea and sky. This pride of the Empire inspired many emperors to embellish.
The fishing port is silted in, but on the marble counters along its rim you can make out the grooves where the fishmongers sharpened their knives. The old lighthouse still sits out on the tip of the breakwater. One must not forget that in those times North Africa was not the desert it is today, but the chief granary for Rome. Elephants and other wild animals were captured and shipped north for the Games. The wild-animal business was huge, with tentacles stretching all over Africa.
I should have written that Joe, I, Ali and Fatimah, and their three girls had the place to ourselves. They lived in an improvised stone and palm-frond shack propped up against the theater wall. Aisha (seven), Kinza (five), and Batoul (two): three brown-skinned beauties. What a life they lead: their purity among the purity of the statues. Leptis is their playground. They had the whole city to themselves. Fatima grilled the sardines that Ali had caught in the morning. Tomato, pepper, and onion salad from their garden, the incredibly reviving green Libyan tea, and the fig eau de vie from Djerba. Fatima gave us sacks stuffed with straw to sleep on. Morning: eggs from their chickens, barley bread from a wood-fired oven. All for about $5. Including their welcoming cheerful selves. Lovely curious children whom we took for rides among the ruins.
Here is one experience which will stick, even without this record. Moonlit walks among stately columns whispering of a vanished empire. Joe was in his element: classical times, nourishing democracy and literature, esp. the theater, fine art, and architecture, an era when men loved men, without shame or guilt.
To have masters in village schools
To teach ’em classics not hogwash.
EZRA POUND
(With the sea, sand, and sky so big, the road so long, I’m not exactly sure where we are.)
Big sand. Treacherous tongues slither across the road. If you don’t hit the brakes in time, you could flip. All day on the machine—600 km—culminating in a relaxing and enjoyable tea with hooded Libyans at a road station where wind, sand, darkness, and contaminated gasoline detained us. And, yes, there were moments that can never be forgotten. We screamed into the wind our joy of being in Africa. The magnificent countryside whipping past: desert stretching to infinity on the right, the sea horizon (Gulf of Sirte) of a million blue hues to the left. When the heat became intolerable, we pulled her up, propped her up, got off, and ran into the sea.
N.B. This desert is not to be toyed with. Mile after mile, trashed by the armies of Rommel and Montgomery, thousands of oil drums, the occasional charred skeleton of a truck or armored car, a piece of plane wreckage. And the whole place is mined: every day, the locals say, half a dozen camels have their legs blown off.
Libya’s major industry used to be the recovery and sale of scrap metal left behind by the war.
However, when the road is long, the journey tedious, fatigue creeps in. My warmth for Joe, I fear, succumbs to impatience and selfishness. But my respect for him I never doubt. We sat on a sand dune by the side of the road and discussed what we were reading. Here, on the road to Alexandria, it is The Alexandria Quartet. And, of course, Cavafy:
When you set out for Ithaka,
Ask that your way be long,
Full of adventure, full of instruction.
The big question (among many others) is: how to use these experiences? Presumably they will strengthen convictions, beliefs, character, etc., but where is this adventure taking us? The State Dept.? (No.) A life in agriculture? (Out.) In or out of society? (Which society?) We have no clear idea where it is taking us. What is clear is that it isn’t taking us back home. I have no fixed address now, don’t want one, don’t need one. We are floating. The thought of returning to my former life in the U.S. seems an alien concept. Out of the question. Nostalgia for home has vamoosed.
We have tasted the lotus and we’re not going back.
Not that I love my family and friends any less—it is that I am no longer capable of rejoining that oh-so-familiar life. A life full and free is what Joe said he wants. Emphasis drained from preoccupation with occupation; the important thing is how, where, and why to live. Whatever, I feel a strong urge to create—God, I must! But how? Where are the answers? Perhaps, now, only the questions matter. If I miss the essence of that experience, or fail to perceive it, I feel that through this diary I am preserving some of it, which could be reviewed later. These pages add some form to the formless life we are leading; a bit of daily discipline to prop me up. The easy thing about a diary is that you don’t have to make anything up; you just record this piece of your life as you go along.
We were in another roadside police station—stopped by wind, sand, and reports of heavy sandstorms ahead—in the middle of nowhere, an old Italian rest house. Joe: Italian architecture in Libya is fascist crap; Mussolini’s Italy produced nothing but a RR timetable. Maybe not even that. But we were dead tired and thankful for Spanish rice and Libyan tea, which gave a heady lift.
As in Tunisia, the Libyan national drink is sugary mint tea, with the requisite three glasses served from the same pot. In Tunisia they call the first glass fort comme la mort (“strong as death”), the second douce comme la vie (“sweet like life”), and the third sucrée comme l’amour (“honeyed with love”).
I had a chat with an old Arab who spoke Italian. Elegant, graceful, old-fashioned hospitality. We took off our boots and sat on the mat. By custom, as guests, we ate before anyone else. We have learned to eat with the right hand only, reserving the left for ablutions. We spent the night on the same mat with our new-found friends and were off at dawn—straight into the blazing sunrise.
Benghazi: an oil town—only behind Caracas, Venezuela, in expense.
Joe has been feeling under the weather with blood poisoning from his wound. This actually turned out to be a stroke of luck, because when we appeared at the Seventh Day Adventist Mission Hospital, they offered to put us both up, free of charge. Joe got an armful of antibiotics, while I enjoyed the clean sheets, the food (vegetarian), and hospital services.
The Seventh Day Adventists (despite their kindness and hospitality) give one a creepy feeling of individuals confined to a limited realm of prejudices and beliefs that allows little or no scope beyond the accepted ideological framework.
German med students—a good sort. No meandering through Libya looking for the truth. They have done a good and thorough job collecting bugs.
Catch of the day: the wolf spider. (Tarantula.) Scorpions, both orange and black (Princeton colors). The black ones smaller but more venomous. Plus every sort of ant, locust, beetle, fly, mosquito. But no bees. No bees? No bees because in the Sahara there are no flowers. Wasps yes. But no bees.
Heck, we’ve seen flowers—orange and yellow sand poppies, growing on the beach.
Here the beach is 2,000 miles wide and 1,000 miles deep.
And we’ve seen Montgomery’s Desert Rats—gerbils—hopping about.
In Cyrene the hillside ruins reminded Joe (and me somewhat) of Machu Picchu, with vistas stretching across plateaux–plains to the bluffs, the sea, the end of the earth. However, the Greek–Roman–Byzantine–Arab mishmash leaves no clear picture of what anything looked like. Cf. the architectural purity of Roman Leptis Magna.
My birthday. On its eve I feel, for the first time in my life, a kind of glory. Glory gained from this experience of living, and humility (another one of Joe’s trigger words, endlessly repeated) for our good fortune to be able to do what we are doing. This sense of wonder is telling me something. The stagnation of “observing Tunisia” has lifted. Now we are “in it.” There is no going back.
Cyrene (and its ancient port, Apollonia) is situated in the Libyan highlands, or “alps” as they are known. Here the air is relatively fresh and cool, a welcome change from the inferno that is the desert. This was once a large Greek colony, not unlike Paestum in southern Italy, not that far away across the water. The Greek city states expanded aggressively. The archaeological sites are impressive, but lack the architectural purity of Leptis. Layers of Greek, Roman, early Christian, and Byzantine civilizations, piled on top of one another, baffle the visitor.
When those entrepreneurial seafarers got blown off course, they simply started up a colony wherever they landed.
The view from the high plateau overlooking the sea: Joe and I sat among pillars at dusk, sipping cold beer and feeling we are in some sort of time warp, i.e. heaven.
Cyrene, wrote Herodotus, was named in honor of the mythological maiden Kurane, whose favorite sport was to throttle lions barehanded. Must have been quite a girl. Apollo was so impressed he carried her off to Libya (presumably to watch her strangle more lions).
Twenty-three today. A year ago I was at the Univ. of Madrid, boning up on Spanish. I wonder where I’ll be in another year—probably in a place not much different than this one.
This “inland sea” (med + terra) lay at the heart of the Roman Empire. It made the Empire possible. All the main countries front it, with Italy in the middle. Greece, Asia Minor, and Persia to the E; France and Spain to the W; and all of Africa, from Egypt to Morocco, to the S. Distances could be measured in hundreds, not thousands, of miles. We know about her legions and the roads they built, but Rome was fundamentally a naval power. Her fleet kept open the trade routes to the Empire, and the Empire made Rome rich.
Tobruk: not a bad town, pretty dull, noted primarily for its WWII cemeteries and battle monuments. Completely isolated by desert and sea, it makes you feel you are standing on the edge of the earth. A mystery why the British thought it so strategic. The harbor. Riding into town, we pulled up next to a Land Rover flying the Union Jack, where some soldiers were loading boxes. We said hello. They did not respond. They were speaking a language we did not understand.
The sergeant stepped forward.
“What can I do for you Yanks?”
“Nothing. We just wanted to say hello.”
“Well, hello. We’re busy here.”
They must have been soldiers from a Welsh or Scottish regiment. Amazing how they have preserved their Celtic tongue. And not at all friendly.
El Alamein:
Nothing but ugly (stony, bumpy) desert marked by massive gloomy German and Italian war monuments and a vast British cemetery. Thousands died fighting over a scrap of uninhabitable desert. It showed how close Rommel came to taking the Canal.
My blond hair. The machine. Maybe those Scots in Tobruk thought we were Krauts.