COLONEL    GHADAFFI   and   BARBARA   CARTLAND by Perkin Warbeck

The current scandal involving a lady called Penelope in Paris (presidential hopeful Francois Fillon’s Welsh wife who was being paid beaucoup dosh for a phantom job) and its coincidence with the US travel ban imposed on Libyans brought one back to an early morning in early 1977.

One had just entered the girls’ secondary school on Shara Omar El- Mukhtar in downtown Tripoli for another day at the chalk-talk-and-walk-face where one was employed at the time as a teacher of the German Queen’s English. One’s almost perfectly chiseled nostrils told one immediately that something was up.

And in the air – specifically the aromatic scent of kus-kus: a delicious dish of Berber origin, consisting of steamed balls of semolina , served with a lamb stew slopped on top. The scent intensified as one climbed the stairs, and as one turned at the first landing over which was located a wall-niche containing a bust of a chimpanzee with the name of Darwin underneath, one encountered a colleague from Egpyt.

-Comrade Warbeck: he’s on his way.

There was a twinkle in the eye of Harsaf, a teacher of mathematics, not unlike, one imagines, the twinkle in the eye of the anonymous sculptor who had shaped the above-mentioned bust.

The ‘he’ could only mean Muammar Ghadaffi, and his imminent visit to the school came as a sort of shock, at least to the staff and students. This explained the unexpected aroma of kus-kus. the culinary sine qua non of Something Being Afoot.

And as the staff members later stood in a line on the top step of the school entrance , one wondered how faithfully  the physog of the man in the flesh would coincide with the face in the posters.

To say said posters were ubiquitous would be an exercise in restraint. Each classroom in the large school had one on the backwall. Nor would he be the first Ghadaffi to visit the school: his first wife (who had divorced him after he had fallen for a nurse when he’d spent a spell in hospital and whom he had expressed a wish to make her his wife number 2, concurrently as distinct from consecutively) had been there a short time previously.

Then, she had been positioned in a desk directly under one of these posters when she’d come in to sit an English exam as an external student.

The waiting staff, being ovewhelmingly Egyptian, exchanged banter. While this chat was conducted in Arabic it wasn’t difficult to detect an undercurrent of cynicism. For Egyptians view Libyans in much the same disparaging way as, say, the way the chocolate coated biscuits in a Jacob’s USA Assortment Tin look down upon the unfortunate thin, pink rectangle. (At Christmas time in Warbeck Towers this orphan flake was always the last unclaimed morsel).

Suddenly, all fell silent as the military cortege roared through the school gates (open) and screeched to a halt in the forecourt. One wondered out of which of the eight jeeps the Big G would emerge. (As it happened, it was the third).

Ignoring the Libyan headmistress’s attempt to guide him up the steps to meet and greet the staff on the top step, instead the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Great Revolutionary Socialists Libyan Arab Jamarahiriya marched briskly in a parade ground step in the direction of the assembled domestic staff attached to the school, all of whom were native Libyans.

They were gathered at the foot of the far end of the front entrance. There Ghadaffi, in the full canonicals of a Colonel, shook hands with each individual and chatted with the more voluble among them.

Mission accomplished, Colonel Gadaffi turned smartly on his heel and, smacking his baton sharply on his left gloved palm marched straight back to his vehicle. Almost as quickly as he had arrived he was whisked away in a vroom of point-scoring spume.

It had all happened so quickly The Perkin scarcely had time to mutter beneath his breath:

-Nice shades, dude.

(Political context: having been recently snubbed on a number of occasions by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, in his efforts to forge closer ties with Libya’s more powerful and prestigious neighbour, and with his inner camel muttering the Arabic equivalent of ‘Tiocfaidh mo Straw’, Ghadaffi was in the mood for a little retaliatory nose thumbing, albeit at a slightly lower level).

That afternoon, feeling pleasantly bloated after a feed of kus-kuss, one took a taxi to Colina Verde, an upscale suburb in the South of Tripoli. And whose name was a reminder of whom Omar El-Mukthar once rebelled against: Gli Azzurri..

(Von Trip Adviser: avoid taking a taxi during Ramadam, when visiting Libya, especially in the hour before sundown. After a day’s fasting the local taxi drivers tend to take the modh díreach, taking neither passengers nor prisoners on their shortest way home).

One’s destination was a spacious walled villa to which entrance was effected by the pressing of a security bell, followed by the recitation into the intercom of one’s name, business and password. There were two groves at the villa: an orange grove in the front garden, an olive grove in the back.

The villa was the residence of a youthful heart surgeon whose wife was keen to brush up her spoken English. The husband had recently been appointed a visiting professor at an American University, and she was due to accompany him there.

Sumaira was a lady with a pair of dates for eyes and it wasn’t too difficult to imagine how her husband-to-be had lost his coronary organ ( all four chambers of same, including the upper left and right atria, and not excluding the lower left and right ventricles) to her.

She was also a lady whose favorite authoress was Barbara Cartland. Thus, The Perkin found himself using a prescribed novel by the Goddess of ripping good bodice yarns as the text for the course. The lesson plan was simple: the student with the brown-surrounded pupils would read a chapter in preparation for the next class, during which the chapter would be discussed.

-The Innocent Imposter.

That was the title of the novel and the name of the central female character was (gulp) Ursa.

An early extract:

‘She walked down the corridor and met Dawson, the manservant, who had been with them ever since she had been born.

-‘Who is it, Dawson?’, she asked before he reached her.

-It’s her ladyship, Miss Ursa,’, Dawson replied.

Ursa looked at him questioningly.

He realised that she did not understand and added,

-‘Miss Penelope – Lady Brackley’.

End of early extract.

And this was the first stumbling block. No matter how often that essence of pedagogic patience, The Perkin, tried to coax Sumaira into pronouncing ‘Penelope’ as ‘Pen-el-o-pee’ rather than ‘Pen-el-ope’ his efforts came to naught. The date-eyed Sumaira was not for turning:

-Pen-el-ope. See, it say here, Pen-el-ope.

Eventually, for two reasons, the teacher threw in the towel: while ‘Pen-el-o-pee’ might well be the way the name was pronounced in Warbeck Towers, in the Land of Bob Hope and Old Glory where the student was bound, the prevailing pronunciation might well be – and probably was – ‘Pen-el-ope’.

The other reason was more immediate (and in retrospect, it is not to The Perkin’s professional credit): the teacher was not impatient to find out just how would Ursa’s romantic dreams play out: would she be lucky in l., and doomed to an unrequited hell. Fast forward to :

A late extract.

‘The Marquis had arranged that they were to be married at ten o’clock, which was not too early for his grandmother.

He had chosen for Ursa a very beautiful white chiffon gown.

It clung to her body until it reached to her waist.

Then it swung out into a very full skirt with frill upon frill tailing behind her.

It was simple and yet it made her look translucent. At the same time she looked spiritual as if she had just stepped down from the clouds’.

End of late extract.

No, no way. No spoiler alert required here. It is not just the Warbeckian way to let the bag out of the cat.

To conclude: one cannot help wondering just what it was and is about Paris and Barbara Cartland? It proved the City of Darkness for her step-grandaughter, the Princess of Wales and now the Welsh-born Penelope Fillon is currently feeling a little less than delighted in the City of Light.

One also wonders how Sumaira made out in the Land of Aunty Samantha and also, did the bust of the chimpanzee called Darwin in the wall niche on the first landing of the girls’ school on Shara Omar El-Mukhtar survive the various vicissitudes in Libya of late.

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