"can you come back to libya? (welcome to libya)..."

...is what my students wrote on the scrolling marquee of the classroom pc on my last day there. I blogged about that here and got two rather irksome and thoroughly ignorant comments: people will read what they want into almost any text, for better or worse. I thought that post reflected the ambiguities of the country, and my own equally ambiguous feelings towards it. The first commentator was clearly unable to detect ambiguity and decided to take umbrage: if it's not unstinting praise, it must be fearsome criticism. The cunt probably prowls the blogosphere searching for things to take umbrage with.

Anyway, for various reasons, I'm taking an interest in matters Libyan again. Foreign interest continues in the oil. Of course. And the regime is keeping a high diplomatic profile.

This is the chair I used to sit in, in the garden at the house I shared in Zawiyah. It's empty, you'll notice, for now.

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