HIGH WIND IN CYRENIACA  

I was visiting an oil terminal on the Libyan shore of the Gulf of Sirte. The wind was fierce and coming from the east. It was not a Ghibli – the wind Libyans call what Egyptian’s call the Khamsin.  That would have been coming from the south and would have been uncomfortably hot and carrying fine sand from the Libyan desert. This wind was cold and coming from the east and carried grains of local sand which stung when they hit exposed parts of humans. It was the windblown sand which erodes soft rocks and strips paint jobs off motor cars.

As I watched, the wind blew a large ship from its moorings out in the Gulf of Sirte where it had been filling its copious tanks with crude oil. It was drifting helplessly toward the shore.  An anchor cable had entangled itself in its propellers. The great vessel was pulled away from danger by the Dutch ocean-going tug which was always on standby near the oil terminal.

I finished my work and headed home in my car along the coast road. I was driving into the wind. It was blowing sand which was blasting against the car and abrading it. Camels walked towards me with their legs immersed in the blown sand and their rider perched in clear air. An empty and anomalous cardboard box flew past me a meter or so above the ground. It remained elevated by the wind as I watched it come towards me and as it vanished behind me. Here and there, Libyan men sat wrapped in their Jards with their backs hunched against the wind. These Jards were Toga like woollen blankets draped about the body in traditional fashion. They could also be used as a tent, a blanket, or a windshield.

The road turned northeast at Ajdabiya and crossed the White Plain and the Red Plain and in both the terrain changed. The main hazard here was the tumbleweed rolling across the plains and across the road. There were very few settlements along the road and no water wells. If sand had seized up my car engine, I would have been in troubled. I recall my growing anxiety.  

I got home to our villa in a sheltering olive grove in a suburb of Benghazi. The sump of my car had been polished to a high shine by the sand blast. I took it to the garage the next day. The engineers found sand in the engine. I was lucky.