The Escape Artist

The armed police guard sitting behind me was burning a hole in the back of my head.

I shifted a little uncomfortably. In my home country the presence of a policeman would have been reassuring. In Libya, tales of corruption had made me uneasy.

We had been traveling through the relentless desert for three hours. The parched orange landscape stretched to the horizon, dotted with low lying scrub, wooden power poles and the occasional squatters tent.

The sun was hot in the rainless sky, heating my face through the curtain-less bus window. Our guide assured us, as he had for the past hour, that our destination was just around the next precarious bend in the mountain road.

Then finally, with one last flat-footed shove from our fearless driver, we were at the top of the plateau that our expired bus had been so desperately protesting.

We reached the ancient site of Qasr Al-Haj in a cloud of kicked up dust. The small group of travelers disappeared into the circular structure as I hung back watching an elderly man in a white robe.

“He is a Berber man.” Came a voice from behind me. It was the policeman from the bus. In the cool shade of Qasr Al-Haj he’d taken off his sunglasses. His eyes were blue.

“We don’t get many tourists here.” The policeman continued. “People do not want to see Libya. People think it is unsafe.” He said it was sad; he wanted to share his Libya.

I realised he was far younger than I had originally thought. I wasn’t sure if it was his ‘tough guy’ demeanor that had carefully masked his youthfulness, or whether it was my privileged western perception.

I let any previously prepared notions I had of Libya blow away with the next gust of arid desert wind.

“I think Libya is one of the best places I have ever seen.” I told him. I wasn’t sure if I was just trying to placate him, but once I had said it, I knew it was more truthful than I had originally realised.

High on the plateau the wind had picked up, taking with it the willing desert floor. A sandstorm was threatening.

“My name is Nader.” He said smiling. I shook his hand.

On the three-hour bus ride back to Tripoli, we sat side-by-side, backs sticking to the hot leather upholstery. Nader admitted to me his dream to travel the world, the same dream as my own, and he listened intently to the stories I had from my journey.

Around us, other travelers joined in our conversation, sharing wild stories in the warm, sunset-lit bus.