Libyan Diary - Part One

Libyan diary- Part One

Hello friend...

I am writing this mail to tell you about my life in Libya. This is just a sharing exercise. I felt that you should know about this land and the people who live here. More important than that is my life in this land. I never imagined that I will leave all my friends and come here to teach and to live my life. I thank God for giving me this opportunity to explore a land which is away from my homeland.

After purchasing my laptop I wrote the following words –

Libya the land of opportunities welcomed me with open arms….life here is yet to be known…new places….new faces…and new challenges…let me wait and watch…removed from native town and familiar faces…maybe this is want God intends for me…no complaints…need to adjust and live here…after all my life had been a lonely one….so I am on familiar terrain….let me convert my loneliness into something….creative…and make my life worthy of living….as the Libyan student whom I met this morning told me…in our life we have a purpose to fulfill and the whole life we are engaged in finding out what the purpose...IS…

So thus I began my life here. It’s only after I came here that I started having nostalgic thoughts about my home and my friends. I am thankful to you for supporting me and giving me companionship for watching movies at Satyam, visiting British council, drinking KF strong beer and doing all sorts of things. When I look back at my life in India I only have gratitude and happiness. First I thank God for providing friends like you and then thank you for being there with me.

Libya is little difficult place to make friends. The first problem is language and then the religion. Libyans are conservative. An average Libyan’s life is nothing when compared to the gizmo-friendly, cosmopolitan life of an Indian.
Somehow I feel that these people are happy without movies, alcohol, music and freedom. They are religiously restricted but still they are free. It may sound strange to you but that’s what I have discovered. The men are as usual dominating here. Women are engrossed in keeping themselves beautiful- something which you can find even in India. In Libya a women’s life is divided into two stages – in the first stage she spends lots of time decorating her body with mehandi and other foreign cosmetics. In the next stage you can see her with her family. By this time she would have reduced herself to the status of a child producing machine. Her social status is based on the number of children she has created. A man enjoys all the freedom and is interested in getting pleasure from his wife. Interestingly the Arabian cultural treatise on sex called the Perfumed Garden deals with sexual positions that give more pleasure to men than the women.

As a foreigner I don’t have any direct contact with the Libyan society. I am just an observer and what is said above is just a personal observation. My immediate contacts are my students. Young boys and girls who come to kulia (‘college’ in Arabic) to learn something. Girls see this as a means of getting out of their homes to breathe some free fresh air. Not all of them belong to this category there are some of them that are really interested in taking up a job and has got some thoughts about a career. Maybe out of a class of seventy, thirty are interested are pursuing their higher studies. They want to take up their Master degree and do it in a foreign university. Let us see what happens to the other group. They are the real people who add spice to my class and life. The first thing is that they are beautiful and because of that they are not interested in learning anything. They are too conscious of their beauty. To be frank (with due respect to Miss World and Miss Universe contests...) the real Arabian beauty is not yet discovered. Their untouched and virgin beauty is something that needs to be recognized. When I talk about beauty – I mean nothing about their nakedness or voyeuristic appeal... but their eyes... they are so appealing that one day I almost stopped teaching socio-linguistics just because one girl was giving me an interesting unsocialistic glance. Their eyes are blue in color and they have a magical power to tantalize you. My friend the only regret I have is that, I don’t have a snap to exemplify my point. As a teacher I am not supposed to tell you about all these things. It is a crime against this country and culture. As I said in the beginning of this letter it is just my ‘passion to share’ that is making me to write all these things. I always maintain my distance from these icons of beauty......

The letter will continue....
You will receive the second part of the letter depending on the interest you are showing and the feedback you provide.

In the next part you will hear about Libyan Marriage and Food, Music, and spicier stuff......

So expecting to hear from you very soon.

This is Prem saying masalama (‘goodbye’ in Arabic)