First-hand look at a revolution

The revolutionaries were all young men my age, early 20s

I was probably one of the first non-Arab, non-Muslim to get into Libya after the Gaddafi coup d’état.

My ticket in was that I wanted to see what a revolution was like, and was on a freighter delivering horses to Benghazi. I had boarded in Izmir, Turkey.

Benghazi was ground zero for the Libyan Revolution of September 1969 led by Muammar Gaddafi and fellow officers.

By travelling with the horses, I was able to slip into Libya twice, and I was also, understandably,  escorted out by the authorities on both occasions.

For the past week or so, the Gaddafi Revolution had been the talk of the Middle East. My friend Ilsa and I had been hitchhiking in Lebanon and Syria. The word was on the street but there was nothing to read as the papers of the Western World had been banned by the new regime.

We crossed the border to Turkey (which was confusing in itself because at the time Syria and Turkey were disputing its location) and headed for the Adriatic Coast. At the port town of Izmir, I signed on to the boat to Libya. Ilsa was to go to Greece, definitely not to Libya; and we planned to meet again in Italy.

It was smooth sailing across the Eastern Mediterranean: we were detained briefly by an Israeli submarine, and tied up at the Port of Benghazi.

What impressed me the most, walking the streets of the city was the enthusiasm, the exhilaration, of the revolutionaries: all young men my age, early 20s. The new President of the Republic was just a couple of years older than me.

Throughout the city, all the signs in Italian and English and any other appearance of westernization were being painted over. I saw no evidence of violence or destruction; just a complete erasure of anything that was seen as colonial.

I was ignored for the most part but word was getting out, and toward the end of the day I was playing cat and mouse with men loudly objecting to my presence in the country.

Finally, a group of young guys and two soldiers caught up with me. They explained to me how important it was for them to overthrow all western influence and having me walking around was bad optics.

I was not Arab; I was not Muslim; and I represented what they were eliminating. They appreciated my interest, but I had to go. Over lengthy discussion everyone agreed, including me, that I should be deported.

So back to the horse boat and the next morning the captain cast off for Tripoli.

The revolution in Tripoli was more subdued, and again, was largely preoccupied with painting over anything that wasn’t Arabic.

Predictably, I was detained again, escorted to the ship, and deported.

The captain was bemused by all this and said he could get me up to Tunis in Tunisia.

Tunis was a city of French cafes, a comfortable contrast to Benghazi and Tripoli.

I slept in the desert, but with one eye open and a rock in my hand. There were very few times on the road when would I have to do this and this area was one of them, being on the outskirts of the city.

From Tunis I caught a ferry to Palermo in Sicily. It was essentially a one-week holiday; I had had enough of the Middle East! Now, each day was drinking wine at a new found friend’s family villa; eating his mom’s cooking at noon at their city residence; and driving around yelling “Cicogna” at priests.

From Palermo, I hitched through Italy to Bari to meet up with Isla. For a week I would go down to meet the ferry from Greece, but no Ilsa.

She had taken ill and had flown home to Germany … where we thankfully later reunited!

Our time together in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey convinced us that much, but not all, of Islamic culture was anathema to our European and North American way of life.

We benefited from their welcome to travellers and were intrigued by the families we stayed with comprised of two wives.

But the aggressive treatment of Ilsa by some, albeit on the street or on the road, was disgusting. It resulted in a number of verbal and physical confrontations;  I broke a guy’s nose one night in Egypt.

By the same token, when I stole a kiss one day on the bridge over the Nile in Cairo, people complained and we were arrested.

My broader travels in the Muslim World, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Malaysia and Indonesia and many other countries and neighborhoods, also taught me that the Islamic ideology was to expand and conquer.

That ideology may have in part been driving the Libyan Revolution. We’re seeing the backlash in Iran today. I wonder if this is a factor in places like Dearborn and Minneapolis.

The world does go on and history repeats!