A FAST FEW WEEKS IN THE SUMMERTIME
One of the good things about travel is reminiscing about it later. One tends to remember the excitement of new places and experiences and to forget the difficult parts. I am reminded of this when I look back to 1969, which was a very busy year. Jim and I spent part of the winter on the Yucatan coast in Mexico. For me it was a trip to Portugal, Spain and Libya in the spring. Then we went back to Mexico in the fall. The big spring adventure started in April when Dorothy Payer telephoned and said she was planning a trip to Portugal and Spain to revisit some of the historical places she had studied in the past. She asked me if I would like to go along. Would I, indeed? What an opportunity for me to visit and hear about these places from an authority. Now retired, Dorothy Shepherd Payer was Curator of Textiles and Near Eastern Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Over lunch one day she gave me a rundown on the proposed itinerary: Lisbon for two days and then a loop through Faro, Portugal to the famous triangle of Spanish cities, Seville, Granada, and Cordoba. It all sounded wonderful to me, so we made our plans. When we ordered tickets, Dorothy got a round trip from Cleveland to Lisbon. I ordered Cleveland-Lisbon-Benghazi, Libya with the idea of visiting our children after the European leg of the trip. This seemed a perfectly reasonable idea at the time. Peter and Royse were serving in the Peace Corps in Libya where they taught English. Their village, Qaminis, is south of Benghazi, one of the large cities in the country. As soon as our plans were made, I wrote to them saying I was planning to visit and giving my expected day of arrival. The date happened to coincide with the beginning of one of their school vacations so it seemed a perfect plan. Promising to confirm the date later, I went ahead with the other arrangements. I was used to traveling and the world looked small to me at that time. There was no way to foresee the trouble I would have getting there.
Dorothy and I left Cleveland May 27th for Lisbon via Boston. It was a night flight – a very short night as we were flying east. After that sleepless trip, we actually picked up our rental car at the airport and drove, red-eyed, through unfamiliar Lisbon to our hotel. Doing it the hard way was Dorothy’s idea as she is used to traveling all over the world and is quite self reliant. The Principe Reale turned out to be a pleasant, small hotel, not far off the main drag, which I vaguely remembered from a brief 1960 visit. We flopped down for a rest before venturing out in the late afternoon for a look at the town. The next day we went to the Museo De Arte Antigua and met some of the staff whom Dorothy had known from previous trips. After looking at some of the museum collection, we all went to the York House for lunch. It is a pensione in downtown Lisbon that is popular with English-speaking visitors. We also went to the National Coach Museum which has an astonishing collection of old carriages. Some of them are really huge.
Leaving Lisbon, our destination was Faro on the south coast of Portugal. On the way we had lunch at the pousada Santiago Do Cacem, where I would have lunch again five years later when Jim and I were on the way to Sagres and Albufeira on the Algarve coast. The drive south was through beautiful country, most of it in agriculture. The work force was mainly women dressed in black. They wore scarves on their heads and made a trouser effect with their skirts by pinning the long hem of their long skirts to the waist in front. Not much stays in my mind about Faro, just that it is a port up the river from the Gulf of Cadiz and that they had wonderful coffee at the hotel. Somewhere on the way to Spain, we crossed a wide river on a ferry boat. It might have been near Faro. We traveled from Lisbon without reservations but had no trouble getting rooms wherever we went. Arriving in Seville, we found the Hotel Inglaterra on the Plaza Nueva in the central part of town. We saw a lot of the town in the time we had allowed. The Juderia and the Barrio Santa Cruz were especially interesting as they are the ancient sections of the town. Narrow, winding cobbled streets lend a charm found only in old cities. These sections have become a popular residential area in modern times. The buildings which have common walls throughout are painted white with the doors opening directly on the street. There was a profusion of bright flowers on every window sill. The Roman ruins of Italica were another fascinating stop but we didn’t have time to really learn about them. The last night in Seville we had dinner at a large outdoor restaurant called the Rio Grande, overlooking the Rio Guadalquivir. It must have been Sunday as a large crowd of bullfight fans in a festive mood were pouring in. It made me think of football crowds in the U.S.A.
The next morning it was on to Granada, which turned out to be my favorite of all the Spanish cities. It is the site of the Alhambra Palace and the Generalife Palace, both Moorish structures from the 14th century. The Alhambra is exquisite with intricate filigree stone carvings forming the ceilings and arches. The lion court is the focal point of all this beauty. Stylized lions face out around the center fountain. High walls cast a welcome shade around the long reflecting pool in another part of the palace. The windows of what had been the women’s quarter on the second floor look out on this lovely sight. The Arabs knew how to design buildings to find relief from the sun. In Granada we stayed at the Parador Alhambra Palace which is on the grounds. Also on the grounds is the Parador San Francisco in what had been an old monastery. We tried to stay there but they have only fifteen or sixteen rooms and they were full. Granada was hard to leave and I still have my Tarjeta Roja good for several days in June, 1969.
At Cordoba we checked into a downtown hotel but found it too noisy, so we inquired about a parador and were directed to a lovely modern inn at the edge of town called the Arruzafa. It was also a lot cheaper as it government-run. Cordoba, like most cities in southern Spain, has a mixture of Spanish and Moorish architecture. There is a large mosque that seems to go on for several city blocks. It is supported by hundreds of columns of intricate design. It is said that they were brought from North Africa hurriedly at the time of the Arab conquest. The columns are of many different designs and a constant treat to the eye. The Spanish church has made a chapel in one end of the mosque, adding to the confusion of design. Moorish buildings are prevalent in southern Spain and heavily influenced Spanish architecture there and in the new world. In one intimate square, we saw a statue of Maimonides, a 12th century rabbi who was a philosopher and a scholar. In Cordoba, we also visited Azahra, an old Arab town that was being restored at that time. On the way back to Portugal we stopped overnight in Merida where we found the parador was in a lovely old monastery. The building was white inside and out and had the usual center courtyard blazing with color in the flower gardens. After we got to our room, which was furnished with wonderful old Spanish pieces, we heard a strange clacking noise. Looking out the window, we saw two storks standing on a huge stick nest that was built on a chimney just a few feet away. Late that afternoon we saw a bullfighter being escorted by his dressers from his room to a car waiting to take him to the corrida. He looked a little old and a little weary for the job. Merida certainly must be the minor leagues of bullfighting. Back in Portugal, we stopped at Tomar to see an enormous Gothic Templar church built in the 12th century. We saw other Gothic monuments (14th century) at Batalha and Alcabaza.
When we got back to the Principe Real in Lisbon, my thoughts turned to Peter and Royse and my plans to see them. I had sent them a cable when we first arrived in Portugal confirming my arrival in Libya and expected to find a reply when we returned. There was no word waiting for me. I gave the concierge another cable to send, thinking the first one had been lost. An hour or so later he told me he had learned that cables couldn’t be sent to Libya as the two countries did not have diplomatic relations. I had been a little too casual about getting a Libyan visa while still in the U.S. It would have been easy to get one by mail from their embassy in Washington. I had counted on getting the visa in Lisbon. Since there was no Libyan legation there, that was impossible. I was advised to try the Italian consul, as Italy had strong ties in that country. The only person I could find there was a woman hanging out laundry and she didn’t speak English. Finally, Dorothy and I went to the U.S. embassy and laid out the whole problem. They were very nice and told me the place to get a visa was in Rome. With this advice, I made reservations on Alitalia to Rome and Benghazi with a 24 hour layover in Rome. I left the next morning after saying goodbye to Dorothy at the hotel. She still had another day before flying home. At the Rome airport I telephoned the Inghilterra Hotel where we had stayed with the children in 1960. They had no vacancies which was a disappointment as it is a charming, small hotel located not far from the Spanish Steps in the central part of Rome. It is just off Via Condotti on Boca Di Leone. Another phone call got me a room at the Hassler Villa Medici, which was a relief as I had visions of spending the night in the Rome airport. Built as a palazzo, the Hassler is truly a grand hotel. Situated at the top of the Spanish Steps, it looks out over the Piazza Di Espagna. I found to my surprise that it had been turned into a pensione catering mostly to English people. After settling in my room, I walked around the neighborhood trying to recall places from our 1960 trip. That evening I looked forward to a good Italian meal in the hotel dining room as I was on the pensione plan. To my dismay, the food turned out to be flat English fare! What a disappointment. On the way out of the hotel in the morning, I asked the concierge if he could direct me to a good Italian restaurant. He was delighted to recommend Ranieri’s on the Via Condotti straight ahead from the Spanish Steps. The first thing in the morning I took a taxi to the Libyan embassy to apply for a visa and to fill out the required forms. That was readily accomplished and I joined the other people in the waiting room, which was fairly full. After a while it was announced that everyone should come back at three o’clock. That really made me nervous as I had confirmed reservations on the six o’clock Alitalia flight to Benghazi. There was nothing to do but go back to the hotel and then have a terrific lunch at Ranieri’s. It was really good and confirmed my belief that Italian cuisine is one of the best in the world. I was able to recommend the restaurant to Jane Hardy when she went to Italy and Libya two months later. After lunch I sent a cable to Jim saying I had the visa and was going on to see Peter and Royse. He had been waiting to hear my plans. I assumed the visa would be forthcoming when I returned to the embassy. After checking out of the hotel, I put my bags in a taxi and arrived at the Libyan embassy at three o’clock, and told the taxi to wait. The small waiting room was full, mostly with Arab men. As I stood there with my fingers crossed, the clerk called off the names on the passports. The group around me got smaller and smaller as each man answered “ecco” when his name was called. My passport was on the bottom of the pile and by that time I had learned the right word. I promptly answered “ecco”, picked up my passport and went out to the waiting taxi. The flight from Rome to Benghazi was uneventful. I felt sure the kids would be there to meet me as I arrived at the date given in my first letter. I stepped off the 9 o’clock flight to a blast of heat that was like an oven. There was not a familiar face to be seen. They told me later that they had come from Qaminis and waited all day for the Rome flights, all except the last one as they had to get their ride back to the village. Since they didn’t receive my cables, they didn’t know the flight time. In Rome I had made a hotel reservation just in case we missed connections. So my next target was the Continental Hotel in downtown Benghazi. I carried my two small bags to the airport bus and found a seat. I certainly stood out in the crowd being the only woman traveling alone. At one time Libya was colonized by Italy and many Italian people still live there. Luckily one was sitting next to me on the bus and, as it turned out, he did me a favor. He evidently had looked me over and decided I was out of my milieu. He turned to me and asked me politely in English if I had a place to stay that night, and I answered confidently that I had a reservation at the Continental Hotel. He looked surprised and said that the hotel had been closed for repairs for more than a year but he would ask the bus driver to be sure. He did so and came back to our seat and said that it was indeed closed. At this point, a burly, youngish American man seated in front of us turned around and said that he too had a reservation there but was going on into town to check it out. My new found advisor said we would soon be passing a newer hotel, the Benghazi Palace, and he would ask the bus driver to stop there. The bus let me off on the road and I walked up the driveway with my bags. Some Arab boys were sitting on the ground next to the hotel wall. As I approached, I motioned for one of them to take my bags. He looked surprised but picked them up and carried them to the hotel door. He scuttled off before I could tip him. It seems they were just watching the passing scene and not looking for work. In the lobby of the Benghazi Palace, a crowd, mostly English people, were stirring around and talking in a festive manner. They were waiting for a dance to start at midnight. The man at the desk looked at me doubtfully but said he could give me a room. While I was registering, the burly, young Texas oil mechanic who had been sitting in front of me on the bus came in the door and said the man on the bus was right, the Continental Hotel was really closed. He invited me to have a beer in the hotel bar, but I politely declined , as it was bad enough for me to be out on the streets alone. Sitting in a bar with a man would confirm the Arabs’ opinion that all western women are loose women. I stood there in the lobby and thought that over for about one minute and decided the heck with it. I walked into the bar and climbed onto the next bar stool. The mechanic showed me snapshots of his family while we had a cold one. Later I was shown to my room by a white gowned male servant. At that time there were no female servants in public places. The room surprised me as the hotel was obviously modern, yet the room was small and primitive. It was about 10′ X 12′ with a concrete floor and one small window high on the wall. The bathroom had no door or shower enclosure so the water sprayed all over the fixtures. Still, I was grateful for a bed and time to figure out what I was going to do next. I was too far into the adventure to back out. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, the music of the Englishmen’s dance came drifting through the open window. Air conditioning had not come to Benghazi at that time.
The next morning as I left my room, the doors of the other rooms were open for cleaning and I could see the large and luxurious quarters that had been occupied by the Alitalia crews and the oil people. They had given me a servants room because the hotel was full. At breakfast in the open-sided hotel dining room, a waiter approached my table with a coffee pot and what appeared to be raisin buns. As he put the plate down, the raisins flew away, so I just had coffee. Right after breakfast, I started my search for the Peace Corps office. Peter had written in response to my original letter, giving me the office address, the director’s name (Bob Pearson) and, luckily, a map of their village. I took a taxi to the office in the central part of Benghazi but it was closed. After returning to the hotel, I called Pearson’s home. He was certainly surprised to hear Peter’s mother was in town. So was I! I told him my plan to rent a car and drive to Qaminis, which is about 35 miles south of town on the African coast road. There was no way for me to get in touch with the kids as the only telephone in the village was in the police station. About noon, Pearson picked me up at the hotel and took me to his home so we could figure out what to do. There I met his wife and small son. Mrs. Pearson brought me a plate of home-made bread which was very welcome. While waiting for Bob to call about a rental car, the conversation got around to the weather and I learned that the hot desert wind is called a ghibli. It blows for days at a time and had just died down when I got there. The temperature the day before had been 130 degrees. No wonder it was hot at the airport! Bob came back with the information that a Peace Corps doctor was due in that afternoon at the A.L.T.A. car rental agency with a Volkswagen he had been driving for two weeks through the desert. After I said goodbye to Mrs. Pearson, he drove me to the agency. The car was turned over to me without any kind of a checkup. After looking at the tires, Bob decided that one looked really bad so he put on the spare. When I told Peter and Royse about this later they burst into laughter as he wasn’t known to do much physical work. After loading up with Fina gas and saying goodbye, I set out on the coast road at five o’clock. Before leaving, I asked what I should do if the car broke down. Bob said the standard practice was to stop a truck. Drivers helped each other that way as there were few buildings along that road and no gas stations between towns at that time. My personal plan in case of a breakdown was to lock the car doors and wait in the car until morning. With no problems at all, I arrived in the village in less than an hour and drove up to the right house, thanks to the map they had sent. I honked the horn and Peter stuck his head out the door and yelled, “It’s Mom!” They were as surprised to see me as I was to be there after all the stops and starts. They took me into the house quickly so the neighbors couldn’t see me driving my own car. We had a good dinner that Royse prepared. The salad had a faint taste of iodine as they were required to soak all fresh vegetables in iodine solution if they were to be eaten raw. They also were required to boil their drinking water after letting it settle for two days.
After dinner, I had a chance to look around their house which had been described to us in letters. It was one of four concrete block houses built in Qaminis for teachers, part of a government move to bring education to rural areas. It had a long central hallway that went through to a walled courtyard. There were two living rooms at the front of the house, one on each side of the hall. The one on the left was the women’s living room which Royse used as a sewing room and the other one was intended as a room for the men. That was the one they used for a sitting room. Next on the left was a bathroom and kitchen. On the right was the bedroom. The house didn’t really have running water although it had all the fixtures. A few days before I arrived, a Yugoslavian road crew had filled the tank on top of the house, so in honor of my visit, Peter and Royse had filled the bathtub with water. There was a pail under the washbowl, which had no drainpipe. The toilet worked if the tank was filled with a pail of water. The fundamentals were there, although a little more primitive than they were used to having. The tub of cool water looked good as the weather was still hot. I threw my green dress into it and then got in myself. We both needed a rest. That night the kids gave me the bedroom and they slept on the floor in the living room. The concrete house was like an oven so we sat out in the courtyard for a while trying to cool off. That was no better, as the floor and walls were concrete too. Finally we all went inside. I stretched out in the bedroom with about six little wet towelettes spread around on my arms and legs to help cool off.
The next morning, I got a better look around the house and neighborhood. Peter and Royse shared their courtyard well with Arab neighbors. Several times a day a child or two would knock on the front door and ask to come in for a pail of water. That meant a trip through the center hallway with little eyes darting every way to see what the Americans were doing. Royse thought they made more trips than necessary but she always made them welcome. After breakfast, I had an introduction to local customs and behavior. All the time they had lived in Qaminis, Royse had never seen the marketplace. The men did the shopping. The market was where they met to talk and have coffee. Peter made friends with several of the merchants as he passed time that way. All the Peace Corps volunteers in Libya were hired with a two year contract to teach English. When Peter told the headmaster of his school that his mother had come to visit, he asked if Peter’s father had brought her. He was very surprised to learn that she had come by herself. The first morning, Royse took me to the girl’s school where she taught English to the 5th grade. We walked through the side streets, stopping occasionally to greet a woman at her kitchen door. They all seemed to know who I was. We both wore long-sleeved dresses and headscarves to conform to the custom of the village. Peter and Royse followed the native rules of dress and behavior. Men and women in Arab cultures are sharply divided into two groups socially, the men and women having separate gatherings. When we got to the girl’s school, which was not in session, a small group of maintenance women were sitting cross-legged in the shade of the courtyard wall. They were wearing their native garb: veils, flowing robes and lots of jewelry. Their ears were pierced at least three times for large gold hoops. They had heard I was coming and that could account for the finery they were wearing. I greeted them in English and Royse interpreted their greetings to me as we all shook hands. They were very friendly and full of smiles. The school was in an old building that had probably been a home at one time. I believe that education for females in rural areas was a fairly recent development when I was there. King Idris was still in power and it was just two months before he was deposed and Gaddafi took over the country. Peter and Royse had a school vacation in August that summer and they, along with Royse’s mother Jane Hardy and her sister Marisa, went to Greece for their holiday. They were there when they heard the news about the fall of the government. The airports in Libya were closed because of the coup. There was total confusion about getting back to the country. Many Peace Corps volunteers were in Greece at that time as they had been advised earlier in the year not to go back to the States for their vacation, but to visit countries nearby. Jane and Marisa left Athens for home as scheduled, but it was a week or more before the kids could get passage on a private boat back to Libya. A few days before, while they were waiting to get passage on the boat, they were riding a motor scooter which fell over on Royse’s leg. She limped on it for a few days until they got it x-rayed in Benghazi. A small bone was broken so she wore a cast until they got back to Ohio. When they finally got back to their house in Qaminis, they found all their government-issued furniture had disappeared. Their personal belongings were untouched. They also found out the new government had cancelled the teaching contracts but was paying them for the second year. The Peace Corps was expected to leave the country as soon as possible, but Peter and Royse couldn’t leave until they tracked down the furniture. Peter spent two weeks on his motorbike, also government-issued and their only transportation, following tips and leads on the whereabouts of the furniture. He finally found it all and they were able to get exit visas.
One afternoon, while I was in Qaminis, we went to the beach near their village. It was the Mediterranean shore and perfectly beautiful. It was only five miles away but they hadn’t seen it before as it was too far for the motorbike to go over rough roads. Royse had made herself an Arab-type bathing suit just in case they had a chance to go there. It was very stylish, with below-the-knee pants and a blouse with short sleeves. We decided to take advantage of the rented car and spend several days at Shahat (Cirene) and Susah (Apollonia) which are ruins of Greek cities on the Mediterranean coast east of Benghazi. We found a government-run motel at the site which was quite comfortable. We toured Shahat and Susah for two days. There are some impressive remains of the Greek cities of ancient times. The area was probably a source of food as well as supporting a school of philosophy. Royse always wore flowing skirts and scarves much like an Arab, but of course not a Libyan as her face was uncovered. The clerk at the motel asked me if she was Algerian. When it was time to leave, we drove back to Benghazi, passing on the way through several small villages. In one of the market places, I saw a teenage girl with blue face tattoos. I think she must have been a Berber or Tuareg. They are desert tribes of North Africa. We saw camels wandering loose as well as truck drivers taking naps under their parked vehicles, there being no other shade. We arrived in town the night before I was to leave. Peter and Royse had arranged for me to spend the night with some single Peace Corps girls who had a spacious apartment in the central part of town. It was upstairs over a branch of Barclays bank. They were known as the Barclay girls. One of them gave up her bedroom so I could have a space to myself. And I was very grateful. Peter and Royse bunked in with other friends. They arrived early the next morning to take me to the airport. We drove the tired little Volkswagen which had held up so well.
Finally, on the plane for Rome and eventually home, I realized what an intense few weeks it had been. I was running on empty but it all had been a glorious adventure.
Summer, Fall 1990