Around the World in 50 Years (6 page)

The
ghibli
is so much the bane of Libya that it's mainly to blame for the desert that covers 98 percent of it. Irrigation and fertilizers can make the sands bloom, but they can't beat the
ghibli
. Flourishing fields have been wiped out in a day, farmers ruined in hours. Only the hardiest olive trees and date palms survive. Because of the
ghibli,
Libya couldn't be considered a developing nation: “She's as developed as she's ever going to be,” one old-timer opined, “as long as she has the
ghibli
. Once that wind hits, there's nothing left to develop.”

Half the Libyans were still nomads, and we saw more of them as we left the desert floor and slowly climbed toward the hills of the Jabal Al Akhdar, where scrawny goats, sheep, and camels hungrily chewed tufts of grass and stubble into something digestible. The sun beat down without mercy, and there was no shade, not a bush or a tree anywhere. I felt sorry for the animals, and for the people who had never sheltered under a tree, lain in a flower-filled meadow, or basked in a cool brook. I thought of my parents' courageous migrations from their shtetls that had enabled me to be born in the most prosperous of lands, while these less fortunate people had been born in the most wretched. What if we, like them, had been born never to know a full belly, a day without fear of illness and uncertainty, a carefree love, a rewarding life? I had believed that people could be masters of their fates, that with ambition and perseverance they could rise and achieve, but I realized then that it was not true for all, and that for many—indeed, perhaps for most of humanity's billions—there were no grand opportunities, no high hopes, no worry-free days, no comforts but an early grave.

I soon felt sorry for us. We suffered another major breakdown of the camper-trailer (which we belatedly realized was unsuited for these rough roads), and labored all day to remove the axle. By nightfall our food and water were gone, except for the box of matzos, which I insisted we had an obligation to save for our photo op at the pyramids. We'd been traveling light on rations because of the exorbitant prices in Benghazi, planning to stock up in Egypt, and we'd drunk our water cans dry in a couple of hours from our exertions. Only one car passed all day. They had no water to spare.

We were preparing to settle down for a parched and hungry night when a military 4
×
4 pulled up beside us, and out jumped a trim Libyan army lieutenant who offered us his canteen. No genie leaping out of a lamp could have materialized at a better time.

The lieutenant, who told us to call him Ihab, was an instructor at a remote camp near the Egyptian border, about 50 miles east, where he taught guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency tactics, demolition, traps, and sabotage to a company of commandos. He'd been to Benghazi on leave to visit his wife and was returning to his camp when he saw us.

I asked if he had any food. He thought for a moment, then pointed south. “We will get food from the nomads. They are passing through here on their way to summer pasture in the hills. I visited their encampment a few days ago.”

“But aren't the nomads dangerous?” Woodrow asked. “Don't they beat up strangers and rob them?”

“Only the nomads with the five-sided tents. Even I stay away from them. But these are different. There will be no trouble if I am with you.”

“You mean they're afraid of the army?” I asked.

“Not at all. We have no control over them. When we got our independence, the king promised the nomads they could come and go as they pleased, and we let them keep all their guns. They have no passports. They cross the borders as they wish. Our country is trying to persuade them to settle down and become farmers, but it will take years. It is difficult to build a nation when half its people are never in the same place from one month to the next. But they are too proud to be told what to do. It was their great-great-ancestors who destroyed the towns along the coast after the Romans left, and it was their sheep and camels, a thousand years ago, that pastured on the farms and ate all the grasses and pulled down the forests and caused this desert.

“Our legends tell us that once a man could walk all the way from Tripoli to Tangier in the shade of trees and gardens. But these nomads destroyed them all. They want to stay with their old ways. Every year more of them die. When there is no rain and no grass, you see everywhere the bones of their baby sheep and goats. The herds get smaller every year. Many of the families have only enough left to keep alive.”

“Then how will they be able to help us?” Manu asked.

“The Bedouins here do well. They are near Cyrene and the hills, where there is always some rain and grass. Their goats and sheep survive.”

“Then why don't more Bedouins come here?”

“It is forbidden. It would be war. Each tribe grazes where it has grazed for a thousand years. Each tribe has a boundary. If they find another tribe on their grazing land, they kill them.”

“That doesn't sound like a very charitable attitude,” Woodrow remarked.

“The Bedouins are not known for their charity.”

“Then what makes you think they'll give us food?” Steve asked.

“You will give them a present, of course. Some clothing is always good, or jewelry. Also bring your rifles: We must show the nomads you are armed so they won't come back and rob you when you sleep.”

“The only extra clothes we have are shoes, and we don't have rifles, just bows and arrows,” I explained.

“That will do. The nomads wear shoes. And they will respect you as warriors if you bring bows and arrows, for their fathers used them before the British gave them guns in the war.”

Steve and I left the others to guard the trailer. We drove four miles due south into the desert before Ihab stopped us: “We will walk the rest of the way,” he said, “so that we don't disturb their animals.”

I saw black tents outlined against the blackness of the desert night. What seemed like open space between the tents was crisscrossed with guy ropes, and by the time we'd stumbled our way through them, the whole camp was aware of our presence. Sheep and goats shied away, chickens and children scurried in front of us, and tethered camels snorted beside the large hide tents. The night air was fragrant with the scent of tea and baking bread.

Ihab led the way to the sharif's tent, at whose threshold we laid our bows to show we came in peace, and bowed to the smiling old man who bade us enter. We left our shoes outside, except for the pair we brought to barter. After a round of Arabic courtesies and formalities, the lieutenant explained the purpose of our visit, pointing to our gift. The sharif pointed to our bows on the threshold, whereupon they went into a long palaver before seeming to reach an agreement.

I inspected the surprisingly comfortable tent. It was about 40 feet in diameter and 15 feet high, with an earthen floor covered by thick carpets atop straw mats. The peak, which had wide holes at the seams, where air and light could enter, wasn't rainproof, but in a land where it sometimes doesn't rain for a year, that was not a major concern. As we'd entered, someone had drawn a curtain across the rear sections of the tent, which were the women's quarters and the kitchen. When strangers arrive, the women are hidden so as not to see or be seen.

The most remarkable aspect of the tent was its treasures: Stacked against half the length of the wall to a height of three feet were dozens of neatly folded carpets, each exquisitely woven, each worth a fortune. The chief proudly spread them before us. I saw something protruding from one of the rugs that looked like a rifle butt. The chief caught my gaze and pulled out an ancient Italian rifle wrapped in rags. He pointed up to the center post, which was crisscrossed with cords from which hung other rifles. I detected the front sight of a rifle peeking out from under the chief's cushion. Four or five chests stood beside the stacked rugs, each a sturdy trunk studded with decorative nail heads. I could only imagine what was in them.

The sharif opened a smaller chest to pull out a box, inside of which I glimpsed a sparkle and shine and heard the clinking of coins. From the box he withdrew four small glasses with ornate rims. One of his wives entered from behind the curtain, bringing an old British army canteen filled with steaming water. She only partly hid her face from us, too curious to hide completely. She was close to 16, dressed in a scarlet skirt and white blouse, with gold bracelets on her slim wrists and ankles. She was full of life and energy, and I found her very attractive except for some bluish tattoo marks on her chin and between her eyes. It was hard to hide my admiration from her husband—and my envy of him. I found something overwhelmingly compelling about this old man and his nomadic life. This was the other side of that existential coin, a life with no bonds and no borders, no bosses and no time clocks, no meetings and no conference calls. It was moving with the sun, blowing with the wind, making passionate love in a great airy tent on a cooling desert beneath a canopy of brilliant stars.

The chief performed an elaborate ritual of pouring the tea back and forth from several feet above the glass with obvious love for his labors. When he finally considered the brew suitable for serving, it was as sweet as honey, thick as liqueur, and hot as fire. He drank his without cooling it, and Ihab bid us to do the same. It scorched the lips, melted the teeth, and warmed the soul. The chief pressed another glass on us, then another. Refusal was not an option.

When the tea was finished, the chief clapped his hands. Two of his other wives came from behind the curtain, laden with food, which they placed at our feet: a big porcelain pitcher of thick goat's milk, a pile of flat brown bread, and a metal bowl holding several dozen small eggs.

“That's a good haul for a pair of shoes,” I told the lieutenant when we were clear of the camp. “You're a great bargainer.”

After a minute of silence, Ihab confessed: “I'm afraid I had to promise him more than the shoes…”

“What?”

The nomads, he explained, wanted us to help them hunt a gazelle. They didn't like to kill their sheep or goats at that time of the year, but they wanted meat. They couldn't hunt the gazelles on foot: The game had grown wary and wouldn't let them get that close. Nor could they hunt from camels, because the gazelles were too fast. So the chief had told Ihab they wanted to hunt from our 4
×
4.

The lieutenant added: “You can't refuse, or the nomads will be angry. I have already told them you were both great hunters in America. The chief expects you back as soon as you give the food to your men. But don't worry; I'll go with you. I would let them use my Land Rover, but the top doesn't come off, and the chief wants to be able to shoot from the car. Besides, the army already warned me … uh … here, have some milk.”

We went back to the road with food for Manu, Willy, and Woodrow; unsnapped the canvas top from the Land Cruiser; removed the supplies; and left the others to guard the gear and the trailers. When we returned to the encampment, the nomads happily jumped up and down. In a twinkling, nine of them jammed into the car's now-open rear compartment, all standing upright, all chortling and joking and spitting. They smelled as if they'd had raw garlic for dinner and their last bath a year ago. They were all ready for action, their guns bristling in every direction. Our vehicle resembled a red porcupine.

They had a specimen of almost every firearm made in the century, and the chief toted a shiny new Magnum Express that could easily dispatch an elephant. One elderly nomad, whose long beard and red tunic reminded me of Grumpy, the Disney dwarf, came running up with an ancient blunderbuss that looked as if it had been last fired during the war—of 1812. Finding no room in back, he scooted over me and wedged himself behind the front seat, his powder horn swinging against my neck as we headed farther into the desert.

Steve drove, I scouted from the passenger side, and Ihab sat between us, pointing the way through a haze of cigar smoke.

When I complained to him that I didn't think it was ethical to shoot an animal from a moving car, all I got for my moral concerns was a lecture about the imperative of survival and the laws of the desert, that the wildlife belonged to the nomads, and that Americans couldn't possibly understand because they were all fat and well-fed.

I was about to reply that our nomad pals had far from empty bellies, and probably enough treasure stashed away to buy a controlling interest in IBM, when Ihab turned out the headlights. They could be seen for 15 to 20 miles in the clear desert air, he explained, and would spook any game around. He might as well have blindfolded us; the thin slice of fading moon gave so little light that Steve had to drive more by touch than by sight, and seemed to be touching every ditch, rock, mound, bump, and hole west of Egypt. He slowed to 15 miles an hour, but the results were still devastating. He was cinched in tight with his safety belt, but seemed to be steering with his stomach and shifting with his knees, while Grumpy was swaying back and forth over my head, spilling gunpowder down my back. The car groaned as if breaking apart, and I wondered if this were a technique the lieutenant taught in his demolition course.

After a shaken-up eternity, we spotted distant gazelles silhouetted against the night sky. Steve reluctantly increased speed toward them, our lights still out, wishing he'd installed radar on our bumper instead of a winch. When the nomads opened fire, it was as if a small volcano had erupted. Then Grumpy discharged his blunderbuss, sending smoke and fumes and pellets all over the place. It was Vesuvius.

The nomads urged us onward, but with the bouncing of the car in the dark, I don't know how they hoped to hit anything edible. Half their shots went winging off in the direction of Uranus, and some peppered the dirt in front of us. I couldn't see a thing through smoke and smell, but was certain the gazelles were a lot safer than I.