Sun, sea, sights
- and Colonel Gaddafi
Discovered by the
Phoenicians, developed by the Romans, adored by the Greeks - Libya
is a sensation you may never see. By Jeremy Atiyah
SUNDAY 24 MAY 1998
DON'T blame Colonel Gaddafi
for seeking attention. Stranded half- way between classy Tunis and monumental Cairo, who wouldn't feel insecure? Libya has a population less than a tenth that of Egypt, scattered over an area nearly twice as large. If any country
in North Africa was going to end up with a rock star for president, it had
to be this one.
But apart from Gaddafi, is there anything to
Libya? It calls itself
the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jumahiriya, which does not sound very
charming. It has joined Saudi Arabia and Iran in banning alcohol.
It operates a highly restrictive visa regime. And yet, with its Mediterranean
beaches, sunny climate and fabulous antiquities, it seems to offer unlimited
tourism.
On my visit a fortnight ago, I found no issue which excited the
Libyans more.
"Oh yes," they kept telling me. "We are going to
be a very big tourist country. But of course ... you must allow for the customs
of our people ..." In other words, I understood, no beer and no bonking.
Luckily I was there just for a tour of antiquities. This was
what Libya meant to me: it was
an Arab land, built on Phoenician and Greek roots, sitting on a vast area of
desert. And, since Lockerbie, you had to beat a UN air embargo to get there,
which meant driving across the border from the nearest Tunisian airport.
"May your day accrue more benefit!" shouted the
immigration police. The first thing that struck me on the Libyan side of the
border were the high school girls in white socks and trainers, walking with
their boyfriends. A hard-line Islamic state? Hardly. Anyway the scenery was far
too benign for that, with golden wheat fields dotted by endless rows of olives.
This was no dour, desert environment. In the restaurants and
hotels of Tripoli, I found everybody
drinking espressos and switching unflappably back and forth between English,
French, Arabic and Italian. But Tripoli did not feel like a
capital city. Palm trees stuck their heads above flat, dusty roofs. The centre
of town was overlooked by the cliff-like walls of the Crusader Castle. Container ships
stood mistily off-shore. And there was the new city: an Italian-built,
white-washed zone of balconies and green shutters, colonnaded walkways and
sleepy cafes, serving excellent coffee. But no grappa.
Never mind. I escaped into the old city. A gentleman with a
purple beret wobbled past on a bicycle; a youth in a gelabiyah held a mobile
phone to his ear. The heart of Tripoli's commercial life?
The boys manning stalls in the souk looked like stylish Inter Milan supporters.
This had the air of a souk-in-waiting: waiting for the end of the embargo,
waiting for tourists, waiting for history.
To be honest, some people looked as if they had landed here
unintentionally. And so in a way they had. Tripoli was originally founded
by Phoenician sailors 2,700 years ago as a staging post, somewhere to re-equip
their boats on the way to Spain.
A mistake? Of course not. In Roman times this part of north
Africa was destined to become one of the wealthiest in the world. Along with sister
cities Sabratha to the west and Leptis Magna to the east, modern
Tripoli became the centre of a province
which the Romans would call Tripolitania: the Land of Three
Cities.
Mussolini, when he barged into Libya 70 years ago, loved
his Roman ruins. The Libyans, equally naturally, were not so sure. They
preferred the Phoenician connection: Tripolitania may have been
developed by Romans but it was a Semitic people, the Phoenicians, who got there
first.
I arrived at Sabratha in a sand-storm, under a sky black with
dust. The wind blew hot, and raindrops fell with the consistency of quicksand.
Who cared? I saw a schoolgirl in a Leonardo Di Caprio T-shirt dancing beside a
ghetto-blaster. Children laughed together under the pine trees. The Phoenician
goddess Tanit (in whose temple ritualised orgies once took place) would not
have been entirely displeased.
The first building I saw in Sabratha was a profoundly un-Roman
looking mausoleum, a tall spire decorated by seated lions; but that was the
extent of the Phoenician remains. I turned away and saw suntanned rocks,
towering arches and tiers of columns filling half the sky. Like it or not, the
Romans had left their mark.
Clearly this part of north Africa had not always been a
backwater. Only the world's wealthiest cities could have afforded such theatres
or temples, or decorated (say) their public latrines with statues of naked
goddesses.
And the best was yet to come. The next day I was taken along a
quiet road beside avenues of eucalyptus (Libya's main highway) to Leptis Magna. I stepped out to
the smell of pine resin, the song of crickets and a warm wind in the grass.
Sixteen hundred years ago this had been a city to rival Rome.
The entrance to Leptis is still marked by a monumental arch of
Septimius Severus where winged goddesses high above the trees thrust out their
breasts in victory, and colossal cornices top florid vine tendrils carved in
stone. Open-jawed with amazement, I continued along the smooth paved street
into town.
Back in the third century AD Leptis had the luck to produce a
baby called Septimius Severus. Years later, as Roman Emperor, Severus would
channel prodigious wealth back to his native land. From today's perspective,
giganticism seems to be the theme: the public baths alone comprise dozens of 10-metre-high
archways, with superhuman door lintels and walls as wide as elephants.
But even now I had not quite seen it all. Nearby, through a
small back entrance down a sandy lane, I would step into the apocalypse itself.
Walking through the vast, dead square of the Severan Forum,
littered with upended columns, I found myself surrounded by monumental gateways
and loping arches. Staring faces of Medusa heads lay about amid the desolation.
Meanwhile, in the Severan Basilica next door, gigantic roof entablatures had
crashed to the ground, carrying their inscriptions with them, still awesomely
legible after 2,000 years. There were no tourists; the only sound was of
crashing waves on the beach outside.
Time for deep thoughts about the passage of time? Time for a visit
to the harbour. This had once been a perfect circular bay, surrounded by
breakwaters. Over the centuries the bay had silted up, until it became first
unusable, and then unrecognisable. Today, it is covered not by ships but by
long grass and rustling bamboo. Its entrance is a sandy beach.
After Leptis, it was hard to get up in the morning, let alone
continue with the tour. The strange thing was that I had still only seen half
of the country. The next stage was to drive across the great Gulf of Sirte, that hole in the
map where the coastal landscape deteriorates into sheer desert and camels
nibble by the roadside.
Not that the gulf was as empty as it used to be. This is now a
big area for petro-chemical complexes and for Gaddafi's Great Man-made River, which
passes through colossal pipes under the sand. One day, I was told, this land
would be green again. The historic desertification of north Africa, no less,
would be reversed.
East of here began that other Libya, the old Greek
colony of Cyrene. A wet, fertile
upland, its scenery is identical to Mediterranean Europe: a day later, I was
driving in verdant hillsides interspersed by vineyards and rich golden fields
of wheat. The wind blew fresh off the sea.
No wonder the Greeks liked it. The wonder is that more Libyans
have not discovered it. The land seems largely empty except for scattered
ancient cities, guarded by devoted old local archeologists who love their sea
and sandstone. The sites are miraculously picturesque, like dreams of
Provencale farmhouse gardens, with geraniums perched on Corinthian Capitols and
silver columns tumbling into blue waters.
In Cyrenaica, the old stones have never been
covered over by sand or forgotten. In fact, they have been picked over by
bemused Arab shepherds and their flocks for centuries. At Tolmeitha for example
- the ancient Ptolemis - I saw herds of goats under eucalyptus trees nibbling
on dry grass sprouting from the ancient theatre.
As for Cyrene itself, on a high
plateau overlooking the Cretan Sea, the great wonder
is the fresh water spring pouring out of the mountainside. The Greeks built
their temple of Apollo here;
two-and-a-half thousand years on, it is still flowing strongly, providing yet
another reason for the Libyans to feel good about themselves.
libya fact file
Getting there
The author's trip was arranged through the British Museum
Traveller (46 Bloomsbury St, London WC1B 3QQ, tel: 0171 323
8895/1234). Its next 10- day group tour of Libya runs from 4 to 13
October and it will run more trips next year. The price of pounds 1,840 per
person includes scheduled Tunis Air flights to Djerba, all transport,
full-board accommodation plus the constant attendance of a tour lecturer. This
autumn's tour will be with Susan Walker, deputy keeper in the Department of
Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum.
Operators
British Museum Tours makes its arrangements through a Libyan
tour operator, Wings Travel and Tours (Tripoli, PO Box 1736, Libya, Tel: 00 218 21 3331855 , fax: 00 218 21 3330881). It can authorise
visas for you on the basis of tour bookings. It arranges tailor-made trips to
any part of the country, including the desert, with pick-ups from Djerba or, if
you prefer, Cairo in Egypt.
Visas
If booking with British Museum Tours, it can arrange your visa
(pounds 20 + pounds 15 procurement fee). Otherwise contact the Libyan Interests
Section (0171 486 8387, or 486 8250 in the Saudi Arabian embassy). Note that
you will need authorisation from Libya (obtainable
through, for example, Wings Travel) before a visa can be granted. Visas for Tunisia are not required.
Further information
The author's flight to Djerba was arranged through Tunis Air
(0171 7347644), which flies direct from Heathrow once a week on Thursdays, and
via Tunis on any other day.
Price from pounds 263 + tax, or pounds 283 for the direct flights.
There is also useful material, especially on how to get into the
country, on the Sahara Travel Information website:
www.users.globalnet.co.uk/ckscott/libya.html.
