Roads to Excess
The Gargarish Road stretches four miles from the compound where I live down to the Medina. It slumbers for a while after the rush hour and then after the sunset last call to prayers it returns, with its traffic like water in a sea of glass and metal. Every space is filled as quickly as it was created, sometimes overflowing onto the pavement, threatening somtimes to engulf the hapless pedestrian, already contending with the rubbish plies and the sticky sifting sands. It a road of a thousand chancers a minute and a hundred near misses a second. The horn is wielded mercilessly as a psyhcological tool, designed to break the other driver's nerve, to bend his will. When the moment of impact inevitably comes the drivers emerge, often surprisingly calm, to negotiate and survey the damage. To try and stare it away before settling, shrugging and taking solace in the fact that they had a dent on that side anyway. In effect it is a dent to a bump. Or else it creates a certain pleasing symmetry when you consider the dent to the bump on the other side.
Now I have lived in places where people take a certain pride in how badly they drive. All along the Mediterranean shores there seem to be contenders for the worst drivers in the world accolade. And bad, very bad, as many are, this must be the place where the debate is settled. The Italians are reckless rather than careless and step on the accelerator at the sight of a pedestrian crossing at a pedestrian crossing. The Turks are keen to join the same European school as the Italians but too often woeful town planning has not left them with the room to maneouvere and truly express themselves in all their badness. The Maltese often lay claim to be able to outdo the Italians on the grounds that while the Italians are merely ignoring the rules, they don't know even them. Anyone who has been stuck behind a tractor hogging the fast lane on the Tal-Barrani road can morosely testify that there is some truth to this.
The thing is that it is not that the Libyans don't know the rules. They don't even know that the rules exist. There is one question to the Libyan driving test that needs to be answered correctly. How much do you bribe the examiner?
In Libya it is nothing to reverse back down the motorway towards incoming traffic if you have missed your turning. It is nothing to undertake someone who is already undertaking someone else. Less than nothing. It is nothing at all to drive on the wrong side of the road while the person travelling towards you is also travelling on the wrong side of the road because you are trying to avoid a manhole which is gaping because someone has stolen the cover to make a barbecue out of while he is trying to avoid a collapsed piece of street lighting that has been lying there in the sun for seven years, but to reach an understanding that as long as you are both in the wrong then that's all right because sometimes two wrongs do make a right, even when you are both on the left. It is less than nothing. It is a way of life.
And when you are sitting in a taxi and the driver is slalom-ing past other cars which are themselves driving at 100 miles an hour and the fear outweighs the exhiliration you finally realise that you are no longer young it teaches you something about life. That driving fast is just not funny any more.
But then there is a cult figure in Libya who goes by the name of NaFouzi and CD-Vs of his exploits excite the masses so starved for living local heroes. NaFouzi is a skilled driver, there is no doubt about it. But he also has cheap circus tricks to thank for his following, like putting one leg out of the window while he tearing up the airport road. The word on the street is that the police, appreciative of his talents, asked him to join the force, as a sort of poacher turned game-keeeper, assisting them with their high-speed chases. NaFouzi agreed to join, but only if they could catch him over prearranged route. An unorthodox approach to police recruitment, it could be argued. And not a successful one however, if of course the rumour is to be believed, as they just couldn't catch him.
Perhaps Libyans drive the way they do because it is the one area where they are allowed to do whatever they want. It is a simple truth that they are born into hundreds of rules governing every aspect of their behaviour and by and large they abide by them, because the punishments are real and they are harsh.
I think there is definitely some truth to this. Driving is be a fiercely individualistic pursuit in a society where the individual is constantly coereced to subsume to the greater power of God or people or country. Maybe some just think that if you can't live in freedom then maybe you can die with it. But then perhaps it goes deeper. Maybe the wider sense of civic discipline required to drive with so many strangers jars with the small community bedouin ethos that the Arab people evolved from. Then again, I suppose there is never one neat explanation as to how people behave.
An Iraqi Armenian friend, Jamal, told me about an incident he had back in Baghdad, many years before the present crisis. He had stopped at a red light when someone went into the back of him. Stepping out, he was surprised to find him being the one berated by the other driver. "Why did you stop?", the driver demanded. "Because there was a red light!" Jamal retorted. "Yes", the man replied. "But there was no traffic coming, was there?"
It was a time, I suppose, when Jamal was more inclined to laugh at lawlessness. His brother was shot dead last year. It was nothing political. He was just a successful businessman who had somehow continued to thrive after the occupation. He had just bought a BMW. I remember Jamal telling me about it down by the beach on the compound. I really didn't know what to say to him, except "I don't know what to say", though I sensed that he wanted to speak about it. "I told him not to buy such a flashy car. That it would bring attention to him. But he wouldn't listen."
Now I have lived in places where people take a certain pride in how badly they drive. All along the Mediterranean shores there seem to be contenders for the worst drivers in the world accolade. And bad, very bad, as many are, this must be the place where the debate is settled. The Italians are reckless rather than careless and step on the accelerator at the sight of a pedestrian crossing at a pedestrian crossing. The Turks are keen to join the same European school as the Italians but too often woeful town planning has not left them with the room to maneouvere and truly express themselves in all their badness. The Maltese often lay claim to be able to outdo the Italians on the grounds that while the Italians are merely ignoring the rules, they don't know even them. Anyone who has been stuck behind a tractor hogging the fast lane on the Tal-Barrani road can morosely testify that there is some truth to this.
The thing is that it is not that the Libyans don't know the rules. They don't even know that the rules exist. There is one question to the Libyan driving test that needs to be answered correctly. How much do you bribe the examiner?
In Libya it is nothing to reverse back down the motorway towards incoming traffic if you have missed your turning. It is nothing to undertake someone who is already undertaking someone else. Less than nothing. It is nothing at all to drive on the wrong side of the road while the person travelling towards you is also travelling on the wrong side of the road because you are trying to avoid a manhole which is gaping because someone has stolen the cover to make a barbecue out of while he is trying to avoid a collapsed piece of street lighting that has been lying there in the sun for seven years, but to reach an understanding that as long as you are both in the wrong then that's all right because sometimes two wrongs do make a right, even when you are both on the left. It is less than nothing. It is a way of life.
And when you are sitting in a taxi and the driver is slalom-ing past other cars which are themselves driving at 100 miles an hour and the fear outweighs the exhiliration you finally realise that you are no longer young it teaches you something about life. That driving fast is just not funny any more.
But then there is a cult figure in Libya who goes by the name of NaFouzi and CD-Vs of his exploits excite the masses so starved for living local heroes. NaFouzi is a skilled driver, there is no doubt about it. But he also has cheap circus tricks to thank for his following, like putting one leg out of the window while he tearing up the airport road. The word on the street is that the police, appreciative of his talents, asked him to join the force, as a sort of poacher turned game-keeeper, assisting them with their high-speed chases. NaFouzi agreed to join, but only if they could catch him over prearranged route. An unorthodox approach to police recruitment, it could be argued. And not a successful one however, if of course the rumour is to be believed, as they just couldn't catch him.
Perhaps Libyans drive the way they do because it is the one area where they are allowed to do whatever they want. It is a simple truth that they are born into hundreds of rules governing every aspect of their behaviour and by and large they abide by them, because the punishments are real and they are harsh.
I think there is definitely some truth to this. Driving is be a fiercely individualistic pursuit in a society where the individual is constantly coereced to subsume to the greater power of God or people or country. Maybe some just think that if you can't live in freedom then maybe you can die with it. But then perhaps it goes deeper. Maybe the wider sense of civic discipline required to drive with so many strangers jars with the small community bedouin ethos that the Arab people evolved from. Then again, I suppose there is never one neat explanation as to how people behave.
An Iraqi Armenian friend, Jamal, told me about an incident he had back in Baghdad, many years before the present crisis. He had stopped at a red light when someone went into the back of him. Stepping out, he was surprised to find him being the one berated by the other driver. "Why did you stop?", the driver demanded. "Because there was a red light!" Jamal retorted. "Yes", the man replied. "But there was no traffic coming, was there?"
It was a time, I suppose, when Jamal was more inclined to laugh at lawlessness. His brother was shot dead last year. It was nothing political. He was just a successful businessman who had somehow continued to thrive after the occupation. He had just bought a BMW. I remember Jamal telling me about it down by the beach on the compound. I really didn't know what to say to him, except "I don't know what to say", though I sensed that he wanted to speak about it. "I told him not to buy such a flashy car. That it would bring attention to him. But he wouldn't listen."
Comments
I'm being sarcastic by the way.