|
We
arrived in Derna by nightfall and the town illuminated in the
dark looked pretty, mounted and tiered on the steep hillsides
where a wadi (a dried up water course or river bed) lies in
the center. We
were famished and tired and went straight to a small hotel type
guest house which was less dingy and squalid than the others
available including the once elegant but now with only faded
splendor, Hotel Jabal Akdar where Mussolini used to stay.
I hit the streets looking for food convinced that surely
there must be somewhere open selling food even though it was
now the evening of the first day of Eid equivalent to Christmas
Day evening in The UK in the 1950s with nowhere open.
I was getting really sick of hearing the mantra everywhere is closed for Eid.
I did not believe it. And I was right.
I found a tiny, dirty, greasy, one pot on a ring; and
a bowl of burning grease; kind of place selling falafel to taxi
drivers. But when
I returned later it had closed.
In my exploratory walk about the town I bumped into a
man from the Admin building at the oil refinery in Brega.
He laughed out loud when I told him I was looking
for food and he informed me everywhere was closed for Eid.
I don't think I've been so hungry or depressed about
food prospects since I ran out of food in 1974 on the Silkacot
Glacier in Kashmir where I was reduced to eating grass soup
with weevil infested bread cooked by a local border guard.
And yes it did give me diarrhea if you're asking.
I continued my stroll and went to the old covered souk,
which was open but closed if you see what I mean:
A cavernous long archwayed hall with a maze of corridors
but no stalls selling anything but loads of kids letting off
fireworks of incredible volume and ferocity.
I don't know where the little buggers get these fireworks
from, not Standard or Brocks I'm sur probably a company called
ShocknAwe. With my head ringing and slightly deafened I returned
to the hotel.
We
drove to the corniche, a sea front parade, to look for an eating
place but nowhere was open.
However, we were not deterred by places being closed,
especially Richard who managed to get a card school at the back
of a restaurant to stop their game and cook us fish and chips.
Very nice guys, friendly and jolly, defrosted the fish,
whipped up a simple batter and told us to come back in half
an hour. I thought
Richard was pushing it when he demanded macaroni as well.
The food was good, the fish cooked whole in batter, good
quality chips because it is the potato season here now in Libya
and potatoes are much better quality than the UK: tastier fresher
and more potatoey. As
for the fish: What type they were I don't know.
The taxonomic classification of things like fish or beans
or anything that has more than one variety or species is an
absolute nightmare here.
I am driven nuts and have been told I drive people nuts
trying to simply establish
what something is.
It irritates me so much I am now typing through gritted
teeth so to speak. For
example it has taken over 18 months for me to establish for
sure, that which in fact I always suspected, that Mamoosh,
Hamour, Farooj and Groupa are all the same
fish! This
scant piece of information was as a result of me talking to
many Libyans and many expats about the subject; visiting the
zoology section of the Tripoli
Museum; talking to fishmongers and fishermen here in Libya;
visiting early morning wholesale
fish markets in Tripoli and asking about the subject; and
when in London, hanging around the Chinese fishmongers in Lyle
Court in Chinatown where they have an enormous 'Fishes of the
world wall chart' which has English and for some reason Arabic
names and descriptions.
I also wrote to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries
at The Saudi embassy in London but it was only last week having
a chat with an
Egyptian fisherman in Benghazi that I finally resolved the
problem of the fish with four names.
So back in the restaurant I did not question too hard
the nature of the fish, as I knew it would be pointless, time
consuming and too much hard work.
They might have been King fish or maybe Queen fish but
I had no heart for pursuing the matter further and I thought
to myself as Chandler would say in the American sit-com Friends:
"Don't go there!"
Our macaroni was Penne pasta done nicely with a very minimal meat and
tomato sauce. The
meal for the three of us with the bread, six fish, pasta, chips,
salad and tea cost eleven pounds in total.
We
returned to the hotel, which was a bit noisy actually.
After retiring, I could hear from my bedroom really really
loud shouting: almost like arguing but not, almost celebratory
but not. I just
couldn't figure it out. This
really loud, puzzling, inexplicable bellowing, extreme even
by Libyan standards, stopped about two am.
It started again about 6 am but the intervening four
hours were calm though interspersed with enormous shock and
awe firework explosions in the echoing courtyard outside and
the occasional noise like a large Canadian pine tree falling
from a great height in the rooms above.
In the morning I went to check out the breakfast situation,
which unsurprisingly was non-existent, and even if there had
been some cheese triangles and jam it wouldn't have been possible
to eat it as the eating room was next to the source of the yelling
madness. It was
a series of six telephone booths each with a Libyan guy screaming
down the phone. I
honestly believe they weren't aware that the telephone is an
amplifying device. They
know it puts them in contact with somebody miles away in Cairo
or Tripoli or somewhere but they think they have to shout proportionately
louder just as when they shout to somebody a distance away in
the fields or in the desert.
I tried to find a kettle to use my Sainsbury's coffee
bags but it was full of soggy stewed black tea and mint leaves.
I had to leave the hotel due to the noise but I could
still hear the din from thirty feet away.
I wandered half -heartedly, a forlorn figure, through
the deserted streets, clasping my coffee bag looking for boiling
water. I even had
my own sugar and coffee creamer: but zero luck.
Even those people who did understand could not help and
probably thought I was a bit strange. Even at the biggest
hotel in town everything was closed for Eid.n fact basically
Derna was shut for Eid but at least there were no shabab throwing
fireworks at me this morning. Things began to look up when I
remembered the grease pot taxi driver place from the night before
and indeed it was open and the guy was preparing his first batch
of fresh falafel. He had boiling water and didn't seem too phased
by the coffee bag.He was very helpful.We all had breakfast of
fresh golden falafel sandwiches, with fried egg and harissa
on fresh bread and salad. With tea and soft drinks the meal
for three cost two pounds in total. The
other food item he was selling was a bean
stew, which you may know of, called Fhoul
or Fhool or Madames or Foul Medames.
It is pronounced Fool Medam and is a soup rather
like Fasoulia though
the bean used is different.
The bean (the fhoul medam) is like a small butter bean
crossed with a blacked eyed bean and indeed maybe it is but
the taxonomy and classification of beans here in Libya can be
just as hair-raising as fish species so I tend to avoid the
subject. The soup
can be delicious but it was not ready.
The device used to cook fhoul
and maybe fasoulia and maybe chorba
in this part of Eastern Libya is very interesting. Imagine a typical round large kid's balloon but made from thick
aluminum.
The
ingredients are poured through the neck of the balloon
into the body of the pot where it rests at thirty-degree angle
on a flame and simmers away all day until the evening when it
is ready. I last
had good Fhoul in Kuwait.
The tinned variety I get here is not very nice.
(Since writing this I have now come to realize that the
bean in question is probably a Fava bean). After
breakfast we traveled out of town to the lower foothills of
Derna to see the Derna Waterfall.
Compared to other waterfalls I have seen such as The
Niagara Falls and The two hundred foot drop falls in the jungles
of Thailand the Derna water fall is small but it is sweet and
pretty, and any water, particularly a waterfall, is special
here in Libya. It
is however marred by litter, refuse and graffiti which Richard
skillfully managed to miss in his photographs.
|
