The plastic bubble
Peter Ackroyd
Tripoli And so what is this nonsense about Bashevis Singer and the Nobel Prize? You are a literary man; why give it to him? His books are worth nothing, they are like watching a Western movie. And what is this Israel in the Eurovision song contest? There are political problems at work here.' Pressures, I thought, you mean pressures rather than problems although here, Perhaps , the words aren't to be distinguished. I was talking to a Libyan novelist in 'people's hotel'. A picture of the Middle East flashes on to the colour television screen; the area of Egypt has been Painted in black. On a map in the hotel foyer Israel has been replaced by Palestine. On the radio news in English an announcer, With a pronounced London accent, speaks of the 'heroic struggle' in Namibia. The Whole of Libya resembles one of those large Plastic bubbles in which certain unfortunate Children are destined to spend their lives, since their resistance to contagion is so low. People ask stupid questions of Libyans. A man asked me in Belfast, "is there a sky in Libyar, Of course there is a sky here. But You must find these things out for yourself. Yon are a writer. I am a writer. I will not Paint my picture for you. Would I come to England without knowing Queen Elizabeth .,aud Prince Philip? You cannot come to !...thya without reading The Green Book. You must read it two or three times. It is Very deep and wise.'
* * * The Green Book is Muammar al Gaddafi's social and economic gospel for the people of IL:IbYa; the maw square in Tripoli, looking tke some vast deserted car-park, has been ludicrously renamed Green Square; it may nave been coincidence, but all the school children were wearing green ties and green ribbons. Gaddafi, the son of a small farmer ,and largely self-educated, has taken a few _lashionable slogans 'Partners Not Wage Workers', 'Representation is Falsification' and pressed them into feasible shape with a. combination of religious fervour and Inspired common sense. It is difficult, for example, not to agree with his comments on Western democracy : 'A party's aim is to achieve power under the pretext of carrYing out its programme. The people stan d sil ntly in the in long queues to cast their votes ballot boxes in the same way as they throw other Papers into the dustbin. . Plebiscites _are a fraud against democracy. Those who :aY "yes" and those who say "no" do not M lact, express their will. They have been silc,ticed through the contraption of modern netnocracy. They have been allowed., to Utter only one word : either "yes" or no • These insights, Solzhenitsyn-like in tlkir simplicity, are strung across plastic banners at the airport, repeated over loudspeakers to children in their classrooms, written on innumerable wall posters. Gaddafi's image, also, looms everywhere sometimes he is the religious prophet, swathed in white robes and looking like Lawrence of Arabia as played by Peter O'Toole; and here he is as the visionary, with khaki open-necked shirt, looking into the distance, eyes like jewels; and then again as the stern paternalist, in profile. There is said to be a picture of Gaddafi standing in Piccadilly Circus, in the full dress of a Libyan army officer. The Colonel is clearly devoted to appearances.
When he entered the People's Hall, he strode with purposeful humility to the back; while he listened modestly to• everyone's speeches, everybody else was looking at him. This technique of prominent invisibility is an entertaining one, but it also suits the paradoxical nature of Gaddafi's role. He remains a colonel and promotes other soldiers above his own rank; while laying down the Green Law, he holds no government post; he is, you might say, merely the capital P in People. And only after much coaxing, it seems, can he be dragged on to the platform. Once there he speaks perfectly calmly at first; the only curious thing is that he appears to be sitting on his hands, as though they belonged to somebody else. But when his speech begins to accelerate 'President Carter is an international terrorist. Nuclear power is terrorism. The Fifth Fleet is terrorism' the hands seem to rise of their own accord, and begin punching and chopping the air in front of his face. 'These remarks,' he admits, 'are on my mind' and then the hands cover the face. Later on, in mid-sentence, Gaddafi stops and bows his head. Is he reading his notes? Has he forgotten what he is supposed to be saying? Rumours sweep among the Western businessmen in Tripoli that Gaddafi has a blood clot travelling around his body, that he has throat cancer, that he attends a West German hospital for nervous diseases.
But here his precipitate silence is taken as a cue, and the Libyans begin a monotonous handclapping which seems to jerk him awake as though he had been injected with amphetamines. The denunciations of Zionism and imperialism continue 'We want to be free under the sun and above the land'. There's a certain implacability about Arab rhetoric, like the ritual handclapping itself and the insistent momentum of Arab music. 'You are hearing from me, who is a madman and terrorist'. Gaddafi laughs at his own joke and then suddenly he is walking off the platform, the hands clenching themselves above his head like those of a boxer after a prize fight. This is the man who tells Libyan school children that they can storm and capture America if they wish to. Didn't he order a Russian submarine to sink the Queen Elizabeth? And didn't he suggest that his tiny army should march through Egypt and invade Israel on its own?
Perhaps his nervousness, excitability and child-like energy have drained the Libyans of any similar qualities they might once have possessed; they seem unnaturally calm, and there is something distinctly odd in the sight of seven men sitting outside a café, each of them sipping from a bottle of 'Kitty Cola' or still orangeade. The city itself is placid and undemonstrative, lying sprawled beside the Mediterranean as if someone had dropped it and then forgotten to pick it up. The motorists hardly bother to hoot; there are very few policemen about, but there is no sign that anyone would have enough energy or ambition to commit a crime. The only violence comes from the Palestinians, who occasionally shoot each other for obscure reasons. The streets and shops of the place have a ragged, unindividual air as though they merely existed for the purpose of carrying people along from day to day. There is a marked absence of display. Even the modern apartment blocks seem unfinished and bedraggled (in fact many of them are just that, after the exodus of cheap Egyptian labour), plants and foliage draped over their balconies like dirty laundry.
In a worker's flat in Tripoli, the walls were cracked and already stained although the building had only recently been constructed. Much smiling, offering of Kitty Cola and orange juice. Three small tapestries were draped around the room two of Mecca and one of snow and deer among the Scottish Highlands. 'It has not snowed in Libya for more than a hundred years,' my guide informed me (erroneously, I think). And perhaps my host hadn't been to Mecca, either. More smiling, nodding, and offering of soft drink. Polite interest in the fact that I was English. Ah yes, England. Complete incomprehension when I point to Scotland's winter scene. Nearby? Ah yes, England. Nobody gave a damn. All foreigners are, to them, much the same. They are not Libyan. But this awareness of national identity is neither arrogant nor chauvinistic; it takes rather more off-putting forms, and is manifested in a kind of distant courtesy. Having ordered a Kitty Cola, now my favourite drink, in a café, it turned out that my bank notes were too high to be easily changed. The proprietor waved away my apologies, gave me my drink and disappeared inside. This was done without any affability or good humour — he just didn't want to be bothered with me or my money. A Westerner moves through Tripoli like a ghost; nobody begs, asks you to buy; in fact, nobody actually looks at you. The citizens will answer a question if asked, sell you something if you want it, but with the kind of courtesy that makes you feel invisible.
Three English secretaries, working in Tripoli, complained to the police that certain local boys were pestering them outside their apartment building. Three weeks later, the English girls were asked to leave the country. An English contractor said some unkind things about Libya's economic revolution at a party; the next day he was deported. His belongings arrived in England, intact, one month later. A rather bed raggled English nurse was standing in a people's garage, waiting hopelessly for her small car to be fixed. 'I'm afraid you'll have to wait around a bit if you want anything seen to,' she said helpfully, 'we're third class citizens here and there's nothing we can do about it. They just treat us as indented labour'.
I had been invited by the Libyan government to observe a conference between Arabs and Americans on their mutual 'relations' — the pursuit of trade, in other words, disguised as politics. Platitude speaks to Platitude here, although each is of a different kind. The Americans conceive of politics as rational, complex but essentially mechanistic; the Arabs are fatalistic, determinist, historical. And so the Americans are uneasy with their generalisations, opting relentlessly for the cliché: 'two great peoples . . new horizons . . . opening a door which has been closed. . . the pursuits of normalisation' and so on. The Arabs, in contrast, take to abstraction like a camel takes to water : 'ancient images have been destroyed and, in one of providence's fate ful moments, the darkness of ages has been dispersed'. It is impossible to write or hear this kind of thing without sensing that rhetoric here stands in the enviable position of being the arbiter of reality. It is the strength and purity of the stance adopted, rather than the logic or rational argument used to support it, which matter. There is nn measurable distance between polemic and policy, between wish and reality. And, in a country where the oil revenues now amount to £6,000 per head of population each year, the little distance that does remain can be easily bridged. The Green Book declares that each Libyan deserves his own home; now each Libyan family is housed free of charge. The Colonel tells us that medicine and education are natural rights; now schools and hospitals are being erected all over the country (although it has been said that most of the hospital beds are reserved for soldiers with facial wounds, since they tend to fall asleep over their drawn bayonets). The Libyan people are 'partners, not wage workers'; now ever)' factory, office and hotel is administered hY 'people's committees' — although the potent mixture of strict Islam and Marxist poptil• ism seems only to have led to a peculiarlY self-righteous incompetence. National administration, too, is handled by 'people's congresses'; fortunately, this novel concept of Government By Boredom leaves most of the power in Gaddafi's handsEverY Libyan must have his own gun, the Colonel tells us, and now guns are being provided — but no bullets. The bloodless revolution of 1969 has been succeeded bY the spiritless revolution.
I had met, I was told later, one of the 'old Arabs'. Although he was actually middle-aged: `Ah you are an Englishman. How are you, Peter? You look like an advertisement for beer. I would like you to see my store.' His shop, by the bus station in the middle of the city, was packed with rubbishy Western goods — Head and Shoulders shamPo°' second hand electrical equipment, Heinz ketchup, Go-Kat — most of which had acquired a thin layer of dust. `Ah Peter, how do you like it here? I love Englishmen. I love you from my heart and not my lips. I would like to take your photograph'. 'How nice of you. Is this your son?' 'No I am a white man and this is a black man. How can he be my son? Do you like fishramndafcrhaiipdsn?' not, actually'. 'I have many English friends, and I love them very much. How many bedrooms ill Thyour nhao desperate el ?' believe the hotel has many bedrooms. conversational gambit: 'Are you happy here with Colonel Gaddafir `Ah Peter, everything is better now.' b. And, with the colour television sets Oct": ering in the alleys of the old martke" perhaps everything is.
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