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Showing posts from May, 2007

Leaving Libya

It is three years to the day since I arrived in Tripoli and one year to the day since I left. Twelve more hours and I will be three years since I landed in the baking hair-dryer heat of Tripoli airport and was taken by company mini-van to the Baab Al-Bahar Hotel, where I gazed out of my lonely hotel room on the eighth floor. The view was a familiar one - the dull blue expanse of the Mediterranean Sea, tufted and ruffled slightly by balmy winds. I would have preferred a city view. In truth, the sight of the Mediterranean Sea bored me, though I was not that bothered. And so I looked out at a familiar sight from my past as I thought about my future in Libya. What was on my mind that day? Certainly, there was trepidation. I really did not know what I was getting myself into. There is a lot in the guidebooks about Leptis Magna, Ghadames, the Sahara, the Medina, the history of Libya but as to day- to-day life, what my life was actually going to be like, what my job would be like for the next