We went on a trip to Derna, a small city about a six hour drive away from Benghazi. I was shoved into the makeshift back seat that car manufacturers add almost as an afterthought. The whole ride there was filled with the really cheasy traditional Arabic music that they play so loud that your eardrums actually hurt and the incessant clapping that everyone in the car decides to start and then stop abruptly every 52 seconds. The
songs with lyrics like
" oh tall one,
oh tall one,
show me your house so that I can go to it"
(it rhymes in Arabic)
My cousin does not like the air condition because it makes him sick so we rolled the windows down which let in a hazy mist of desert topsoil along with the wind to irritate my eyes. We finally stopped, after what seemed like two hours but was actually 45 minutes, at a little park and restaurant area made of stone. It looked nice and I was looking at an area of stone when I saw something crawling out of a crack in the stone wall, followed by two more similar things crawling out. They were rats.
My dad got me bitter soda telling me that I would love it. I tasted it and it just tasted like sugar water which had a really strange aftertaste that made the back of my throat feel like it needed to be aired out. As I am quoting from the bottle, the ingredients are:
Carbonated water, sugar, acidfying agent: citric acid, E123, and natural flavoring
really appetizing
So we went back into the car after I reluctantly ate a hamburger that was more dry bun that it was meat and I was yet again stuck in the far most back seat sandwiched in between my two sisters.When my dad and cousin pulled out their collective twentieth cigarette into the fourth hour of our trip, the sickly sweet smell of the tobacco gave me a bad headache.Throughout the trip, my aunt constantly turned around from her spacious middle seat to ask in broken English, "You see beach?" pointing to a long coastline of water. We'd be passing the coastline for another couple of minutes when she'd repeat the same question.
"Now you see beach?"
Still hungry, we got fresh flat bread that my family spread with half liquidated laughing cow cheese triangles, and my dad telling everyone in the car that it was honestly the best meal anyone could every have, half whispering like it was a secret recipe. My dad has a history of this, trying to make out simple, cheap things to be the best when you know he'd trade it in for a porterhouse steak in a heartbeat. On this same trip, my cousin told my dad that there would be only one bed in our hotel room so my sisters and I would share the bed and that he would have to sleep on the couch. My dad then proceeded to say that the floor is better, that sleeping on the floor "is even better than sleeping on a king size bed. I swear now I sleep on my big bed at home and I find myself wishing I were sleeping on the floor."
We stopped at a few places, for a walk around the beach and for some ancient roman ruins. Each time, our phones made more sound then we did. The shutter of the camera was constantly clicking away against a backdrop of blue skies and worrying teenage girls adjusting their hijabs.
We got to some areas that were owned by Islamists and Al Qaeda leaders. The only radio station in the area hummed, "God the great, there is only one God". Those were the only words and they were constantly repeated.We passed by huge mountains that had large caves in them, probably inhabited by the same people that ran that radio station.
Once we got to the hotel, we ate reheated french fries and kebab sandwiches at the hotel restaurant. We went to sleep in the comfortable beds and the cool air condition drying up the sweat above our eyebrows and on the back of our necks.
Early in the morning, we went down to the buffet and ate omelettes that resembled pancakes and crepes that were drenched in the chocolate sauce that is always available on top of ice cream sundaes that you get at elementary school birthday parties. After swims in the beach, we took showers that rid our skin of the braised salt and the clumps of sand in our tangled hair. On our way back, I got to switch cars. My cousin was learning how to drive so we had to be quiet. There was no loud music, plenty of foot room, and air condition. It wasn't horrible.
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| Just on the way, a lot of nothingness |
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| "the most green I've seen since the revolution!" (sorry) |
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| more nothingness |
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| After Eid-Adha, the skins that were on the sheep after butchering them are strewn in front of a mosque to make into coats or rugs, the smell is coming out of this photo for me |
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| my cousins mid-clap |
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| the stone restaurant/park thing |
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| up in the mountains |
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| Cyrene, the ancient ruins |
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| half of the roadtrip clan |
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| taking a panorama of my sister taking a panorama |
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| the view from a little hill |
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| that little house up there is supposedly where Gadaffi's wife used to live |
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| the view of the beach |
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| you see beach? |
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| I like my tissues like I like my women, virginal and full of pulp (sorry again) |
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| Al Qaeda flag |
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| view from the hotel balcony |
