conversation on the road to tripoli

A couple of my students drove me into Tripoli today to get the flight dates changed at the British Airways office in Borj Al Fatah. One of them had to go home first to get his mobile phone, and we drove through a Zawiya suburb they told me was called Hara. "Lived here many… in Arabic, 'yehud', Israel." Jews. And now? I asked. "No. Many years. All go."

After changing the tickets, we called at a shop at the arse end of Omar Mukhtar St. One of the lads went to get water, and the other pointed out the hospital, over the road, with it's big picture of Ghaddafi, punching the air; 'My father died there', he told me. And then added "It's a small people's hospital."

Other things, besides, but I'm getting out and those lads aren't, and this is a society maintained by sneaks.

Getting out! A dark cloud lifted once I saw the tickets had been altered, the flights brought forward a couple of weeks.

We had more drama at work yesterday when the Acting Project Manager threw an acky peevy in front of Padraig's class. I have a recurrent vision of him being loaded onto a flight to Blighty any day now, in a strait jacket. Hopefully not the same flight as Pad and me.

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