Maps of the Soul

Chapter 4

You had developed a mental image of life in the city as the opposite of life in the village, the opposite of its misery, silence, and emptiness. So you came to Tripoli a stranger, without knowing anyone, or what life had in store for you, or how to behave in such a city. All that you had was the image in your head that the villagers’ imaginations had created, brilliant lights that turned night into day, where everyone rode carriages and carts drawn by horses with saddles engraved in gold and silver. You imagined a city where scantily clad foreign women strolled down the streets, unveiled, baring their arms and legs, making a show of their feminine charms, wearing make-up and perfumes that wafted from their wrists and temples. Sometimes it went further than that, especially at the swimming pools or the seaside beaches where their bodies would be almost completely naked except for an area that could have been covered with something the size of a mulberry leaf.

The villagers’ imaginations drew a picture of a city where on holidays and special occasions the courtyards and streets hosted concerts and dances, where the government distributed food and drinks for free. There were also horse and motor races and countless other sporting events, not to mention promenades, gardens, theatres, the cinema, and markets and shops stocked with all the food, drinks and fruit a person could desire all year round, imported out of season from every corner of the earth. And there were rose gardens and fountains from which water trilled and sang, coming out in fanciful shapes and forms to entertain the people and evoke merriment in their hearts. This was a city of the wealthy: people who lived in castles, wore the finest silk and ate with golden spoons.

Yet the central myth behind Tripoli was the sea, that infinite vastness of water that dazzled everyone from your village who saw it. Normally they were fascinated to see a puddle of water left by the rain before the earth dried it up. Then they saw the swelling sea with its mighty waves, and the ships ploughing through its rising crests.

The sea surrounded Tripoli on three sides and was the subject of old wives’ tales that you had heard as a child from the women of your family before you slept. Promenades clustered all around the sea, and channels reserved for pleasure boats, and beaches reserved for swimming. Naturally, you arrived in the city with a burning desire to see such a sight.

Still, when you heard all the talk of the city, you were also able to distinguish imagination from reality. You knew that the city wasn’t all promenades, castles and diversions, that there was more than just dancing, and free food at festivals. You knew there was oppression, drudgery, poverty and misery, but you also knew that whoever possessed diligence, industriousness, and intelligence could achieve riches and success there.

You were prepared to exert as much effort as you could to achieve success in the city, realizing that as soon as you arrived, your first task would be to find a job during the day in order to secure some roots in the city, so that you would not be carried off by the first gust of wind. You would need a source of income and a place to live, and from there would you begin your ascent.

You didn’t have any relatives in the city, so you didn’t have anyone to be your guide and support in the first days. This meant that you would have to rely on your own faculties and energies to guide you.

All you knew about the city was that there was an agency that served as a way station and resting place for people who went back and forth between the city and the oases. It was called the Shushan Agency and was situated near the Tuesday Market. Therefore, this is where you chose to painfully stretch your numb, creaking, limbs off the truck and brush as much of the coal dust from your clothes and skin as you could. You looked around in startled awe, immediately transfixed and sensitive to the details of life in the metropolis.

The Shushan Agency consisted of a stretch of land surrounded by a wooden fence, which was used as a place to stop cars and load goods. They had built a hut out of tin sheets and wood planks where those without anywhere else to go could sleep. It was important that from the very first moment you arrived on the Shushan Agency’s doorstep, you were assured a place to rest your head over-night, free of charge.

The first thing that struck you as you began to acquaint yourself with the city of Tripoli, was how greatly the people here differed from the people of Awlad Al Sheikh. They wore clothes of multifarious foreign fashions rather than the uniform traditional garb that the people of your village wore. Their complexion didn’t resemble the swarthy faces you were used to. Instead, the people here were fair and ruddy. It wasn’t difficult for you to surmise even in the very first days of your arrival that Tripoli wasn’t, as you had thought, an Arab-Libyan city, but that it was actuallyan Arab-Italian city through and through. You had begun to compare the people here with the villagers of Awlad Al Sheikh thinking they were all of the same Libyan descent. But they weren’t Libyans, they were Italians, for there wasn’thing Libyan about the way they went about the wide streets, or sat in elegant cafés and restaurants, or went shopping in grand-looking stores, all the while speaking in their foreign language, and stamping life with an Italian air that hadn’thing to do with Arab origins.

Bewildered, you set out to find the Libyans of the city, crossing streets, searching the faces of people sitting at pavement cafés, circling through the markets, shops, and promenades without coming across one Arab street, café or restaurant, not even a shop with Arab customers. The few Libyans that were there, were lost in the midst of the Italian masses. You didn’t even hear the call to prayer until the day after you spent the night at the agency, after you discovered the surrounding alleyways whilst wandering through the back streets looking for a mosque. It was here, along these back streets that the Libyans got around town after the Italians took over the city and its broad, beautiful, lit streets.

You also discovered that the city had its own unique fragrance, which you had inhaled the moment you arrived. It was more distinct in the mornings, though you couldn’t pin it down to a single scent, for it was a cocktail of many different aromas. The fragrance of roses and flowers from the gardens was mixed with the smell of ovens baking sweets and cakes, with the tang of olives and soap factories, perfume shops and vegetable markets, the scent of fried food from the restaurants and cafés, and the herby smell of shops selling medicinal folk remedies.

That was the first breath of air that wafted your way when you woke and went out to greet life in the city. Distilled from every environment, that unique fragrance was the essence and aroma of life, for it sprang directly from life, from its diversity, its stench, its all-encompassing totality, just as the people, their markets, streets, houses, and squares sprang from the city. Even the trees wore the stamp of the city, giving them a different appearance from the palm trees that grew in your village. Trees that were more familiar to you looked nothing like they did in the country-side. Their leaves and branches looked as though they were made out of paper, like the fake trees adorning the window displays of the Italian shops. Even their trunks were stripped of that rough covering you thought was characteristic to all palm trees. There were no fibres or stubble, and probably no dates either, as the reason for their existence was merely to decorate the street, whereas in the village they were a source of sustenance and livelihood.

The trunks of some of the trees had been painted white with a reflective substance for reasons having to do with the flow of traffic, so that when the street lights or car lights fell upon them at night, the tree trunks would shine.

As for the other trees, known as decorative trees, they were trimmed and pruned until their branches, leaves, and smooth trunks all seemed alike, matching each other with mechanical precision, exemplary models of order and craftsmanship. They stood in two parallel lines that defied the natural freedom and chaos of the countryside. Perhaps they even defied the dignity of trees themselves, for the trees in the wild were there to carry out the functions intended by their creation, namely to be of benefit to people and animals. Here, on the other hand, the trees were planted for mere show.

Workers were employed full-time to prune and trim the trees, leaving them perpetually neat, elegant, and beautiful, so that they could put decorative paper on their tops, and hang film advertisements and pictures of actors or singers on their trunks, or hang coloured lamps from their branches during holidays and festivals. That was all the city wanted of the trees.

Your arrival in the city coincided with an Italian holiday, perhaps it was some king’s birthday, or the anniversary of his ascension to the throne, so you rejoiced at the occasion to commemorate your own arrival to Tripoli and the commencement of a new phase in your life, bidding farewell to the life of a country boy and embracing the life of a city youth.

In the square by the Shushan Agency, you saw a crowd gathered around some games and entertainers, so you headed that way. One of the entertainers was standing on a tall platform beside the Wheel of Fortune, a large wheel with an arrow fixed to it. The arrow would spin over a display of numbers ranging from one to a hundred, and people bet on which number the arrow would stop at with a payout of one to one hundred for whomever fortune smiled upon. There were other people who were playing a game involving shooting arrows at targets, and at the edges of the square were swings and wooden horses, which could be ridden for a paltry fee. You rode the horses and the swings and put up half a lira for the Wheel of Fortune, then lost it without feeling any disappointment. You were enjoying the festive, celebratory atmosphere which had no equivalent in Awlad Al Sheikh.

Then you went to Pasha Mosque to see the ancient mosque, with its fine carpets, high domes, the splendid minbar, the beautiful engravings on the ceiling and walls, and the Quranic verses written inside the domes in gold lettering. You began to wonder in astonishment how the Italians, given their leaders’ reputation for foolishness and irreverence, left this imposing Islamic edifice standing. No sign or mark of disturbance or desecration marred the mosque, unlike what had happened to many other Islamic monuments, including the Sunni Mosque in Awlad Al Sheikh, whose walls the Italians had destroyed in a battle, and whose library they had burned.

Next you went to the Turkish Market, the Musheer Market, and the Rabba Market. Tripoli, meaning three cities, derived its name from these three markets, whose fame and prestige increased generation after generation. There you enjoyed the merry shapes and colours that the native calligraphers, masters of their trade, drew on plates, saddles, and plaques. You saw a new face of Arab-Islamic Tripoli, a beautiful face that shone through these traditional arts and crafts, one that was more authentic and vibrant than the dingy alleyways whose shabbiness was saddening.

Some of that splendour was also evident in the fine, surrounding architecture, and decorative fountains from which water shot high into the air, tracing curves that joined with other curves drawn by the blue veins of the fountains’ marble. You also saw public fountains in the squares erected by the municipality, open at all hours for men and women to drink their fill from the waters, which then slid downhill into cisterns that eventually came to the sea. Soon, you arrived at the sea.

You watched the sea crashing against the walls of the Red Castle, and you saw a tongue of stone parallel to the castle, jutting into the sea. You walked along it until you were also in the middle of the sea. The waves raced around you, spraying you with water, and you were brimming with excitement. You had heard much about the sea. With attentive ears you had picked up your mother’s stories about the seven seas that the hero of legend crossed to save the Sultan’s daughter. You memorized the Quranic verses that spoke about the sea that the pious man, Al-Khider, crossed in his boat. You had been bewildered by the story of Allah’s prophet Jonah, who was snatched up by the whale and lived in its stomach, neither dead nor alive. You listened with glee to the fate of the Pharaoh as he chased the prophet Moses, who split the sea before him to cross safely with his people, but then sent the waves down to drown and kill the Pharaoh and his soldiers.

But your imagination had never pictured the sea as you saw it before you now, and you said to yourself that the awe and wonder written on the faces of the villagers who had seen it wasn’t strange at all, for your feelings were no less of wonder and awe than theirs, having come from that desert of drought, thirst, and oppressive heat. You did know that the water was salty, unsuitable for drinking or watering plants, but nevertheless you felt intoxicated by the presence of so much water and by the roaring waves that washed over the headland of rocks that you stood upon. You felt the beauty of that intoxication overcome you whenever it used to rain and you would go out to the public square of Awlad Al Sheikh with your friends, dancing, letting the showers land on your faces, and singing:

O rain! O dear Aunt!

Pour over my braids of hair,

Anointed with oil from the olive tree.

O rain, pour, pour,

Pour over Al-Qubi’s house.

He has nothing to his name,

But a scrap of meat and a smoking pipe!

The people of the city had built promenades for themselves along the edge of the sea, a Corniche for strolling, and beside it Summer resorts whose grounds were covered in sand for people to recline upon after swimming to their hearts’ content. Aspects of the sea made it seem almost like a counterpart of the desert, that vast space of red sand contrasted with this range of blue curving waves crowned by white foam, both stretching on seemingly without end. Each of them was a frightening enigma, a maze, and as the well-known saying held, nothing compares to the treachery of the sea but the treachery of the desert.