Dog-faced creatures and creatures without heads

An adapted version of this article, written by Culturissima's managing director, Dr David Winter, was first published in History Today Magazine.

He bites

Few countries have had such a profound impact on anyone at Culturissima as Libya.  Tripoli, where I'm sipping a mint tea in a semi-derelict café just off Green Square, isn't a particular favourite - too many cars, too many bureaucrats, too many nondescript blocks of offices - but the rest of the country... it's just fabulous.

Swimming in the Sahara

The most striking aspect of Libya, besides its vastness (it takes nearly a whole day, for example, simply to drive along the Mediterranean across the Gulf of Sirte), is the friendliness and openness of the people, their kindness and their readiness to smile and engage in conversation. “Dog-faced” they’re not.

I find myself here for three reasons: first, since I was a child I have loved North Africa, and Algeria in particular.  Trouble is, it’s a bit too dangerous to go to Algeria at the moment (at the time this article was written, May 2008) , so Libya – in spite of its reputation! – seemed a good second choice.  I guess that’s another one of the reasons why I’m here: no one has a good word to say about the country… so why not come and see for myself? 

And finally, as a lapsed Classicist who spent nearly half of his life studying Greek and Latin, how could I refuse the offer to accompany a handful of historians to the sites of ancient Libya, in particular those magna opera, Sabratha and Leptis Magna? 

He doesn't bite

Ask yourself this: can you think of any country that has been as insidiously daemonised as Libya over the past few decades? In the modern era, Libyans have learnt that, courtesy of Mr Bush's government, they inhabit a land “beyond the Axis of Evil”. Going further back into the annals, most histories of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya begin with Herodotus’ 5th century BC account of a land of “dog-faced creatures and creatures without heads, their eyes in their breasts”.  

"Get your head around this", suggests Beni, my London-educated, Tripoli-born colleague: "You wake up one morning, just like any other morning, you're having a fag, you turn the radio on - and wham! - you're informed by the BBC that you're part of the 'axis of evil'. That's worse than learning the tube is on strike as you're munching your bowl of Frosties, I can tell you." 

Beni, like his parents and his parents’ parents, has seen it all before, though. From 1922 onwards Mussolini, driven partly by a nostalgia for Italy’s Classical inheritance and partly by a need to house the peninsula's expanding population, embarked on a “civilising” mission to make Libya Italy’s “fourth shore”.  Anything ancient Rome could do, Mussolini could do better: a dozen years later a new country with a new name had emerged under Italian rule - “Libya”, an amalgam of the traditionally disparate regions of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan.

Giacometti in the Sahara?

Even though a late entrant in the North African colonial race, Italy managed to leave its mark on Beni's homeland.  As the self-styled "protector of Islam", Mussolini let Italian aircraft loose on Libyan horsemen; when that failed, Il Duce savaged the territory with deliberate starvation, sowed the country with concentration camps, deported families en masse, and erected a barbed-wire fence stretching 200 miles along the border with Egypt.

"So you see", suggested Beni, "We Libyans look on your - the West's - mistrust of all things Libyan with a little bit of irony.  American and UN sanctions? No worse than the Italians starving my brothers to death. Trying to murder Colonel Gaddafi?  The hero of our revolution - Omar al Mukhtar - he was hanged in public in front of 20,000 of loyal followers".

"Does President Reagan really think that we Libyan savages are quivering in our sandals when he rants ‘You can run but you can't hide'?  Your friends the Americans can bomb the buggery out of Benghazi if they want - when the Italians were here, they killed one in four of my brothers and sisters".

And he's right, is Beni. When Libya finally came of age as an independent nation in 1951, it was a country on its knees, with an infant mortality rate of 40 per cent and an illiteracy rate of over 90 per cent.  The very act of autonomy was riddled with Western caprice: an independent Libya was a way of ensuring that British and American troops could be installed on Libyan territory - although for most Libyans this was preferable to one of the alternatives proposed: that France be granted stewardship of Fezzan and Britain be awarded Cyrenaica. Most astonishingly in view of her history of barbarity, Italy was initially granted Tripolitania.

Anyway, I’m on my way to the south, to the Akakus, where I can forget about Europe's colonial past.  The Akakus is a Saharan landscape of soaring dunes and colossal rock formations – rough arches, steep gorges and buttressed mountains.  This remote terrain, ineffably beautiful, is studded with thousands of lonely rock carvings - alligators and elephants, giraffes and buffalos (see photos) - that date back as far as 12,000 B.C.  Arid and ancient, the Akakus was once the dwelling place of Herodotus’ Garamantes, whilst today the nomadic, indigo-veiled Tuareg still wander across the vast expanses close to the frontier with Algeria and Niger. 

So you see, these mythical concoctions mask a tragic reality: Libya is a land whose ineffable beauty - from Leptis to the Sahara - has no need of mythologising.

Turkey eats dirt

Café Babel, "the first multilingual European current affairs magazine", has just published a translation by Culturissima's David Winter (written by Tania Gisselbrecht) that draws worldwide attention to the rigging of football matches in Turkey.

What on earth has stung Turkey into action? For more than a month now a new broom has been sweeping clean not just the streets of Istanbul but also the country's football and armed forces. But who’s wielding the broom? And what "rubbish" are they trying to get rid of? Worthwhile questions to ask because it’s clear the idea did not come from "Mr Clean".

On July 3 the Turkish judicial authorities disclosed that they are investigating a series of rigged matches involving Turkey's most prestigious football clubs. Official phone tapping has led to search warrants being issued and a succession of highly publicised arrests, police interrogations and detentions. The tally to date, based on 19 matches that have allegedly been rigged, stands at almost 80 arrests with 31 people held in custody. 

With football being a veritable religion for Turks, it is not hard to imagine the shock waves that the announcement has set off. There are even rumours that the government stalled before deciding to reveal the details of a scandal that could have had an influence on June's general election. Although the league winners Fenerbahçe - whose chairman, Aziz Yıldırım, was arrested on the very day that the investigation officially opened - seem to be at the heart of the storm, the zealous authorities have not spared other big clubs, including Beşiktaş, fifth in the league and winners of the national cup competition, and Trabzonspor. 

Fenerbahçe have not been slow in seeing the hand of the "police state" behind the highly unusual investigations – an overtly political accusation levelled by the club's chairman that has generated contradictory and often far-fetched rumours amongst supporters: it is a campaign to replace the chairman with an ally of the government or the real target of the affair is prime minister Erdoğan, a well-known supporter of the Canaries and a member of the club's governing body. It is worth remarking, though, that Erdoğan has welcomed the current "purification process". 

So, is it political manoeuvring or a genuine attempt to clean up a sport that only last year was shaken by a murky illegal betting affair? The baffling wait-and-see approach adopted by the Turkish Football Association does not bode well. Apart from deciding to postpone the start of the league season by a month, the association has not taken any action against any of the individuals who have been charged or any of the clubs cited in the dossier. Indeed, several websites specialising in sports news are suggesting that, if it ends up being proven that the association has deliberately dragged its feet, the national team could be excluded from Euro 2012.

In a communiqué released on July 12, UEFA did not rule out the possibility of excluding Turkish clubs from European competition if the Turkish authorities end up by confirming the facts. There was a new twist on August 24 when, to everyone's surprise, the Turkish Football Association announced that it was excluding Fenerbahçe from the Champions League. This decision, which amounted to a tacit acknowledgement of the club's guilt, left many observers feeling sceptical: how could the association, which up till then had used the alleged lack of evidence as an excuse to justify their inaction, suddenly take such a radical measure? 

Everything points to the hand of UEFA. After the chief legal counsel for integrity and regulatory affairs made a surprise visit to Istanbul, UEFA laid down a clear ultimatum: if Fenerbahçe did not withdraw from the European competition or if the Turkish Football Association failed to exclude them, then UEFA would mount a disciplinary investigation and sanction the association. 

The question to be asked now is: will the other clubs that have been tainted by the scandal also pay the price for UEFA's zero tolerance policy regarding match rigging? Given the scale of the investigations, which are based on a recent law that targets organised crime, supporters are in no doubt that convictions will follow. It remains to be seen whether legal sanctions will only be taken against the individuals charged or whether they will include the clubs as well. If it is only the former, as many football lovers fear, then the show of force will miss its stated object: to wipe out the corruption that is endemic in Turkish football. There again, sweeping things under the carpet always has been an art.

Libya after Gaddafi: Europe’s Iraq?

Café Babel, "the first multilingual European current affairs magazine", has just published a translation by Culturissima's David Winter that draws timely comparisons between post-Gaddafi Libya and post-Saddam Iraq.

Libya after Gaddafi: Europe’s Iraq?

The post-Gaddafi era is taking shape around the National Transition Council, which is currently in control of Tripoli. Uncertainty about the future is already taking hold though, with fears that Libya could become a new Iraq. This time it is up to Europe to avoid repeating the post-Saddam disaster.

The Iraq experience has left its mark. The triumphalism which was the order of the day amongst US hawks immediately after Saddam Hussein’s fall has this time round been replaced with caution: there is no question of repeating the mistakes of Mesopotamia in the southern Mediterranean. Barack Obama, anxious to avoid being seen as the "worthy" successor to Bush Junior, has hammered home a clear reminder in all his speeches that "Libya is no Iraq".

It is difficult to disagree. Whereas eight years ago the Americans intervened (almost) unilaterally in their rush towards Baghdad, their intervention in Libya has been much more subtle. This time an international coalition - originally European and American and later with the gradual and grudging support of Arab countries, Russia and China - has come into play under the mandate of the United Nations... the same UN that in 2003 could only watch US military action helplessly from the side-lines.

Exit the crudely assembled case about weapons of mass destruction. Exit the arrogance and ignorance of an international community largely opposed to the intervention. Eight years later, Obama has abandoned the Bush way of doing things and the United States has kept a fairly low profile, accounting for "only" 27% of all NATO’s air-strikes. Instead, "old Europe" has more or less taken over.

Their war, their victory

In particular, Great Britain, France and Italy have assumed the burden of intervening and assisting the rebels in order to protect the civilian population in accordance with resolution 1973 of the UN security council. Their operations have been on a larger scale than expected, particularly as concerns aerial intervention and the supply of weapons, to the extent that they have at times been in danger of going beyond the UN framework. Nevertheless, the overall idea has not changed: NATO should not be on the front line.

The determining factor in the fall of Gaddafi was the successive rebellions of tribes

In an article for Slate.fr, Fred Kaplan, former war correspondent of the Boston Globe, writes of the Libyan rebels: "It was their war, and it will soon be their victory, not ours". While the West has supplied the drones, missiles and automatic weapons and has almost certainly trained part of the rebel forces, the determining factor in the fall of the Gaddafi regime was actually the successive rebellions of various tribes. According to Patrick Haimzadeh, a former French diplomat stationed in Libya, it was the actions of the Zintan clan (named after the eponymous town) that brought about Gaddafi’s overthrow.

Libya: a failure in European political policy?

However, France, Great Britain and Italy, having served as a particularly substantial auxiliary force, have run the risk of seeing Tripoli take on the appearance of a second Baghdad. This is not just because Libya is an economic wasteland, but also because the national transition council is an unknown political force. The European countries are going to be obliged to take on the leadership that they have assumed for seven months and avoid making the same mistakes as the United States in Iraq. In particular, they will have to take into account the importance of Libyan tribalism and local realities.

Yet is Europe really ready to meet the political challenge of Libya? Nothing could be less certain. While it is true that London, Paris and Rome have been the most active participants in Libya, the old continent remains divided. Half of NATO's members, including countries such as Poland and Germany, refused to take part in the intervention. "The sad reality", AFP quotes one former European diplomat as saying, "is that the idea of Europe as a political and strategic concept has been entirely missing". Although bitter, this is not necessarily a final assessment. The European union clearly has the chance to bring hoped-for multilateral success that will be based, we can hope, on the interests of the Libyan people rather than multi-national oil companies, as was too often the case in the Iraqi desert. The stakes are high – both for Libya and, beyond her shores, for Europe.

Gabon's growing its own timber

A report last year estimated that foreign workers held 1,893 of the 8,590 posts in the Gabonese oil industry, with nationals occupying just 17 percent of available executive positions. If Gabon wants to secure its future as one of Africa's leading oil producing nations, then it needs to start “growing its own timber” before it is too late. 

More than a generation after oil was first discovered in Gabon in the early 1970s, one issue unites the industry's major players more than any other: the raw materials are just not up to scratch.

But it is not Gabon’s vast supplies of black gold that have been found wanting. Rather, it is a lack of local expertise that is causing concern as the Gabonese government faces up to the fact that there is a national skills shortage at all levels of the oil industry.

In October 2010 President Ali Bongo, responding to pressure from vocal unions such as the ONEP, announced plans to impose a 10 percent cap on foreign oil sector workers and to prioritise local job-seekers over their foreign counterparts.

But for a more sustainable future Gabon has to find a way to grow its own timber. And it is here that foreign oil companies are playing a significant role, their plans to increase the number of skilled local workers based on a simple formula: training, training and more training - not just for new recruits to the sector but also, crucially, for senior management. 

Shell Gabon, which first started operating in the country in the 1960s, has been promoting overseas bursaries for Gabonese students for several decades. And in 2010 ENI Gabon, part of the Italian ENI group, launched its "Citizen Programme", in which Masuku University will become a training hub for final-year geology graduates. There is more good news, too: experienced executives from the state oil ministry will soon be able to pursue their professional development at the renowned ENI Corporate University in Milan.

Total has resolved to take training a stage further. Earlier this year the French multinational signed a public-private agreement that will lead to the construction of a National Institute of Petrol and Gas at Port-Gentil. With courses in everything from oil exploration to the commercialisation of hydrocarbons, hopes are high that the institute will generate Gabon's very own oil elite, local men and women who will pass their technical and managerial skills on to the next generation of young Gabonese.

In Paris? Forget haute cuisine - head for le Petit Bleu!

If you're American and you're on holiday in Paris, you're going to want to sample some of the capital's finest French cuisine, right? Preferably washed down with a bottle of Bordeaux? Maybe in one of those literary cafés that line the Boulevard St German or somewhere along "the most beautiful avenue in the world", the Champs Elysées?

Montmartre, Paris

On the other hand, you could have the best meal you've ever had - and perhaps the cheapest, too - at the tiniest Tunisian restaurant in town, where you're welcomed as a long-lost stranger - and asked to nip across the road to fetch a couple of baguettes before you sit down.

Le Petit Bleu is the kind of place where a first-time tourist wouldn't dream of eating (it's not on the main drag), where a more seasoned visitor would like to eat (but it's a little intimidating), and where the old timer keeps coming back time and again.

The Cruise of the Vanadis

From the snowy mountains of Massachusetts to the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, Culturissma has always been fascinated by the life and times of the Amercian authoress Edith Wharton. 

For many years Culturissima organised cultural tours to the Berkshire Hills, not so very far from Boston, that included visits not only to Wharton's former home, The Mount, but also to Melville's Arrowhead and Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables.

Wharton, America's first woman of letters and a Pulitzer Prize winner to boot, was also an adventurer. In the following abridged extract from The Cruise of the Vanadis, which details Wharton's travels across the Mediterranean, we read about her impressions of Algeria, a country we frequently visit on behalf of www.expertalgeria.com.

On the 17th of February after two weeks of icy fog in Paris, we left Marseilles for Algiers, in the steamer Ville de Madrid. The Gulf of Lions was in its usual disturbed condition, and it was after a very rough passage that we reached Algiers on the following night. The steam-yacht Vanadis, which we had chartered in England for our Mediterranean cruise, lay awaiting us in the harbour, and the gig came alongside the steamer as soon as we anchored.

We had to row ashore first, to pass through the Custom House, in common with all the other passengers; and on setting foot in the sea of mud which covered the landing-place, we were surrounded by the first Arabs we had ever seen - startlingly picturesque in the flashes of lanternlight, with their white burnouses and long white cloaks. A few minutes later we were again in the gig, being rapidly rowed across the wide harbour, under a sky glittering with stars, and our first view of Algiers, stretching its illuminated curve high above the dark waters of the bay, was extremely fine. We were soon alongside the yacht, and presently found ourselves peacefully seated at supper in the brightly lighted saloon, which had been filled with roses and violets in honour of our coming.

Never was town more nobly placed. Backed by the green slopes of the Sahel, the tiers of white houses follow the long curve of the bay, above which they are raised by the high arches of the terrace - like Boulevard de la République, and over the denser roofs of the city lie the scattered villas of Mustapha Supérieur, their horse-shoe windows glancing seaward through groves of orange and palm, their white walls tapestried with crimson bougainvillea. The harbour, crowded with shipping, is bounded on one side by a mole of modern construction, on the other by the jetty which 30,000 Christian captives toiled to build less than 400 years ago. But the reality of Christian slavery in Africa is brought much closer to us by Goethe's description of Prince Palagonia whom he saw, hardly more than 100 years ago, clad in black small-clothes, with silk stockings and silver buckles, begging in the streets of Palermo for money to ransom the Christian captives of Algeria. Even in 1816, 3,000 still remained to be released by Lord Exmouth when he destroyed the fleet of the Algerine pirates.

It seems incredible that such things should have been within the memory of living man, when one walks today through the street of the French quarter, crowded with carriages and tourists, and lined with shops as inviting as those of Nice.

To see the Arab side of Algiers one must go to the market or the mosques, or better still, climb the steep lanes which lead upward from the Parisian arcades of the Rue Bab-Azoun. In these narrow streets, we saw veiled women hurrying along with the peculiar shuffling gait due to those loose slippers of the East, their painted eyes shining through the thin white yashmak; then there were dark doorways in which old Arabs sat squatting over their tailoring or shoe-making; and groups of stalking Bedouins in ragged garments which had once been white, and negroes and Jews and half-clothed children, and all the other fantastic figures which go to make up the pageantry of an eastern street scene. We hired a little phaeton one day, and drove out to Mustapha Supérieur, catching charming glimpses of walled gardens and Mauresque villas, and meeting omnibuses crowded with wild-looking figures, and driven at a headlong pace down the muddy suburban roads.

Mustapha, though quite as pretty as any of the suburbs near Cannes or Nice, lacks the neatness and garden-like look which we associate with the Riviera; but perhaps the general air of slovenliness is atoned for, to many eyes, by the picturesque populace filling the untidy streets. And nowhere in Europe could one see anything so Oriental as the little arcaded café at Mustapha, where white-robed Algerines sit crouched on the terrace, drinking their coffee under a group of plane-trees. We passed the summer palace of the Governor, getting a glimpse of well-kept gardens through the gateways, and then drove through the Vallon de la Femme Sauvage... This wild little ravine led us to the quarter called Mustapha Inférieur, lying near the sea on the lower slope of the Sahel; and here we found the Jardin d'Essail which I was particularly anxious to see.

We walked under avenues of India-rubber trees as large as oaks, and between trellises of tea-roses in bloom, and high clumps of Arundo donax, but a cold wind sweeping through the long alleys made the scene cheerless in spite of this southern vegetation. It was, however, a bad time to visit the Jardin d'Essai, for it had been very cold for some days in Europe, and we heard afterwards that there was snow at Avignon and skating near Marseilles, while we were shivering under the India-rubber trees of Algiers. Perhaps it may have been owing to the exceptional weather that all the more delicate palms such as Lantana borbonica, Phoenix, Cycas revoluta, etc, were sheltered by tents of matting.

On the 22nd of February, at about 3pm, we started for Tunis, but the wind was so high and the sea so rough, that on the following afternoon we put in at Bone. Never was tranquil harbour more welcome, and as soon as we could get pratique [formal permission] we were set ashore and took a walk through the town. It is charmingly situated on a bay surrounded by mountains, and close by lie the ruins of Hippone, the Bishopric of St Augustine. The town itself is clean and pretty, with an arcaded French quarter, as usual, and a square planted with palms, and beds of roses and violets. At the head of this square stands the modern Catholic cathedral, and a little further on a gate in the wall of the town leads into the country. In the Arab quarter we saw many striking figures - children in bright frocks, with broad gold bracelets, women in white burnouses, with black silk yashmaks over their faces, and strangest of all, the Jewesses with silk turbans over their plaited hair (like 17th-century pictures of Judith or Herodias), loose flowing sleeves of embroidered gauze or muslin, and flowered silk dresses with jackets braided with gold.

The afternoon of our arrival we went ashore in the steam-launch, and drove to Hippone. The road lies through a lane overshadowed by high hedges of prickly pear and aloes, behind which we caught glimpses of orange and lemon groves full of fruit. The ruins stand on a hill overgrown with olives and consist of the piers and vaulting of a very old church, covered with a climbing mass of green. Whether it is the church destroyed in the 7th century or a later one, I do not know. Higher up the hill, Catholic ardour is raising the walls and columns of a new cathedral, the crypt of which is already finished and used as a church. Here we met some Sisters of Charity, who showed us the French Orphanage nearby, and after lingering for some time to look at the beautiful view of mountains, plain and sea, we drove back to Bone. This time our road led through the valley behind the town, skirting a stream overhung with cactuses and blooming mimosa. All the trees were in full leaf, and the land was a blaze of young spring green.

Ithaca (In Response To "A Une Passante")

ITHACA

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon — do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine P. Cavafy