A Quest to find Home

Yesterday I decided to attend a Film Event organized by the Maltese Embassy showing a Maltese comedy. Most of my nights here have till now consisted in making myself comfortable on the sofa and watching the comedy channel, so I though it won't make much of a difference if instead of making myself comfortable on my sofa, I'd make myself comfortable at the Embassy.

So, thinking that the movie will be in English (as the invitation clearly stated that I could bring anyone with me, be it Libyan or any other nationality), I dragged one of my British colleagues with me......

Both of us being quite new in Tripoli, we equipped ourselves with maps and instructions from the guys in the office and headed off to the Maltese Embassy...... what was supposed to be a 30mins drive turned out to be a 1hr 30mins drive..... We somehow thought we were following the map, but the map somehow seemed to omit details such as flyovers and roundabouts... however towards the end we found out that we were on the completely opposite side of Tripoli and ended up paying a Taxi driver to lead us to the right round about which was our landmark for the Maltese Embassy... 30mins late..... Mark and Thea turned up at the embassy.... but luckily for Maltese timing the movie was about to start.

Unfortunately for Mark, the movie turned out to be in Maltese..... (in that invitation they should have clearly stated Libyan or any other nationality who speaks Maltese)...... and it was not exactly a movie, it was a Maltese play which turned out to be hilarious.... I ended up translating something here and there. The play was typical Maltese comedy, where the actors play around with words, make fun of each other and of other people...... so quite a laugh for the people who understand it..... it made me miss the Maltese plays we used to have in sixth form and university..... as well as the Christmas pantomime which i missed last year! :(

Luckily the play had an intermission where I got to have a chat with the Ambassador, his secretary (who turned out to be someone I know.... well actually she recognized me first..... and it turned out that we were in the girl guides together 12yrs ago and her aunt lives opposite me in Malta) and some other Maltese there, most of whom were either married to Libyans or where second generation Maltese.

We did not get to see the end of the comedy, as I got bored translating, and Mark got bored watching, so we decided to head off back to the camp. The map once again let us down and turned out to once again omit roundabouts, fly overs, bridges, intersections and have no sense of distance at all..... Needless to say we got terribly lost and kept on going round in circles in Tripoli..... when we though we were heading south towards the airport, we somehow ended up by the sea which is in the completely different direction..... we thought we recognized places but were not the places we thought. We tried finding our way to the Airport, as both of us knew how to get from the Airport to home quite easily.

We somehow ended up finding airport signs, which although in Arabic just like every other sign in Libya, had an aeroplane drawing...... however these signs seemed to end at a big roundabout and not knowing which road to take we ended up taking the one that looked most like a highway..... We stopped to stock up on chocolates and chips and continued our quest to find home......There were many roadblocks on that highway, and we somehow thought that we were on the right direction as one would think that it is justifiable to have roadblocks on the way to the airport..... after driving along that road for about 20mins we decided to stop and ask one of the police man. Needless to say that none of the policemen spoke English, so in broken Egyptian Arabic I tried asking directions for the airport...... the guy looked at us quite surprised and asked 'Tunisia? 120 Kilo Ala Tul'....... oooppppsss we somehow ended up going West instead of South and were about 2hrs away from the Tunisian Border!!!!

The policemen tried explaining to us which way we should go....... one of them started laughing at my Arabic and teasing me cause it was Egyptian Arabic and not Libyan..... also asked me if I was Egyptian!!!! I hope I didn't disappoint him too much by telling him I was infact Maltese........ theothers were trying to talk to Mark in the little English they could conjure up....... after 15mins we finally headed back into the car, with clear police instructions....... and a police man's phone number which I'm supposed to call on Wednesday...... I don't think so!!!!

Yeah.... 2 1/2 hours after leaving the Maltese Embassy (at 1am), we found ourselves on the right road home...... it was such a relieve to be in my nice cosy bed..... though I must say this has been the most interesting night I've had since I've been here, we had quite a few laughs on the road and none of us minded a little bit...... though be both would have loved a nice cold beer at
the end of this!!!!!!