Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (32 page)

I could have cried. I did cry. I threw things. I took the first
plane to Paris.

Paris had the nearest Libyan Embassy or People's Bureau or
whatever they're calling them. It looked like military school the
way I'd pictured it when my parents used to threaten to send me
there. I made four trips to this forbidding crib before somebody
there told me the only way I could get a visa to go to Tripoli was to
go to Tripoli.

I went back to my hotel and got on the worthless, static-filled
French telephone. Air France wasn't flying to Libya just then.
British Airways definitely wasn't. Swissair was coy. Maybe they
were, and maybe they weren't. I finally got a reservation on
Lufthansa, rushed to their office and handed over a thousand
dollars worth of funny-colored French bumwad. The ticket agent
said, "You have a visa?"

"My visa is waiting for me in Tripoli."

"We cannot take you to Tripoli without a visa."

"I can't get a visa without going to Tripoli."

"You can get a visa in Tripoli?"

"Right."

"But we cannot take you there."

"Why not?"

"You don't have a visa."

You can always reason with a German. You can always reason
with a barnyard animal, too, for all the good it does.

I didn't figure an American would be very welcome on the
Libyan flag carrier at the moment, unless he wanted to travel naked
and in a muzzle. But it was worth a try. I went to the Libyan Arab
Airlines office on the Champs-Elysees. There were half a dozen
Libyans inside. I picked out a young one behind the counter and
began explaining with many worried hand gestures how I had been
told by my editor, of a very important magazine, to go directly to
Libya no matter what and now I was stranded in this faraway
country among foreigners and could not seem to get to Libya by any
means, etc. "Oh, my goodness," said the young man, "and right
now there is this . . ." He paused and considered the delicacy of
my feelings. "... this difficult situation."

I'd hate to have to explain this to anyone who was on the
Achille Lauro, but Arabs are the sweetest-natured people on earth.
To meet an Arab is to gain a devoted friend. If you even make eye
contact with an Arab, you've got a pal for life. "Would you like
some coffee?" said the young man. The other Libyans pulled up
their chairs and offered cigarettes. But there was one, with sharp
clothes and an equally sharp face, who eyed me narrowly. He said,
"What kind of journalistic story is it that you wish to do?"

Well, he had me there. I'd never given it a thought. I just
figured, what with guns going off and things blowing up, there'd be
plenty of deep truths and penetrating insights. Tragedy and strife
produce these things in boxcar lots, as any good reporter knows.
Also, I wanted a chance to wear my new safari jacket. You really look like a twink if it isn't adequately dirty and sweat-stained.
"Uh," I said, "I'd like to do a cultural piece. ("Cultural piece" is a
key phrase for foreign correspondents. It means you aren't going to
poke into any political leader's Luxembourg bank account or try to
find out if his wife has ten thousand pairs of Maud Frizon pumps in
the palace basement.)

"There is a great lack of understanding between the Arab
world and the United States just now," said the young man behind
the counter.

"There sure is," I said.

"Why do you think this is?" said the sharp dresser.

The truthful answer would have been, "Because one by one
and man to man Arabs are the salt of the earth-generous, hospitable, brave, wise, and so forth. But get you in a pack and shove a
Koran down your pants and you act like a footlocker full of gluesniffing civet cats." We're a frank people, we Americans. But not
quite that frank. I decided to blame it on Paul Newman.

"It's because of Exodus," I said. "Exodus was a very popular
movie in the United States. Ever since this movie all Americans
think everyone in Israel is kind and good and looks like Paul
Newman."

"Hmmmmm," said the Libyans. It made sense to them.

"I will call my uncle," said the sharp dresser. "He is an
important man at the embassy in Rome."

"I will call the embassy here," said someone else.

"I will book a flight," said the young man behind the counter,
and he got me more coffee (The only decent coffee I'd had since I
left New York, by the way).

The Libyan Arab Air people squared everything with the
Ministry of Information in Tripoli, got me a ticket for that Friday,
and told their airport manager at Orly to take me under his wing.
All to no avail, however. Come Friday, the French government
decided to expel four Libyan diplomats, and I was bumped off the
plane.

In the meantime, I was stuck in Paris. A lot of people get all
moist and runny at the mention of this place. I don't get it. It's just
a big city, no dirtier than most. It does have nice architecture
because the French chickened out of World War II. But it's sur rounded by the most depressing ring of lower-middle-class suburbs
this side of Smolensk. In fact, one of these suburbs is actually
named Stalingrad, which goes to show that the French have learned
nothing about politics since they guillotined all the smart people in
1793.

French women, whether pretty or not, all walk around with
their noses in the air (and pretty big noses they usually are). I guess
this is what's meant by their "sense of style." Where did this sense
of style thing get started? The French are a smallish, monkeylooking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the
citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink
little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside
and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know

I was exhausted the night I arrived and couldn't think of any
place to go except Harry's New York Bar. Harry's is a 1930s
hangout left over from the days when Hemingway used to stop in
while taking a break from pestering large animals, such as his
drunk friend F Scott Fitzgerald. At least the drinks at Harry's
aren't microscopic. I had three and called for the "carte de menu."
I'd forgotten that Harry's doesn't serve food.

"We do not serve food," said the waiter, cocking a snook.
There was a ferocious pause, "except hot dogs." Thus, on my first
night in this capital of international gastronomy, I dined on two hot
dogs and five Scotches.

The next night I called my girlfriend who was back in the
States and, no doubt, happily contemplating the sterling silver Elsa
Peretti refrigerator magnet I'd bought her to make up for Christmas.
She's spent a lot of time in Paris. "Where's a good place for
dinner?" I asked.

"There's the Brasserie Lipp on the Avenue St. Germaine," she
said, "or La Coupole in Montmartre."

"Not La Coupole," I said. "I've been there before. That's the
place that's crowded and noisy and smells bad and everybody's
rude as hell, isn't it?"

"I think you just described France," she said.

Actually, it was Brasserie Lipp I'd been to before. I remembered the minute they stuffed me behind a hankie-size table
between the pissoir and a trolley full of sheep cheese. I ordered
steak, and they brought me sauerkraut.

Nobody's French is that bad, not even mine. But Parisians
never deign to understand a word you say in their own language, no
matter how loud or often you pronounce it. They insist on speaking
English until you wonder if the whole thing is a put-up job. Maybe
they just take a couple of years of Frog Talk in high school like the
rest of us and can no more speak French themselves than they can
make ice cubes.

I also went to the Louvre. Big deal. The "Winged Victory" of
Samothrace looks like somebody dropped it. And the "Mona Lisa"
has a sheet of bulletproof glass in front of it, covered with smudgy
nose prints. Besides, I think if something is going to be as famous
as the "Mona Lisa," it ought to be bigger. Do not, however, miss the
Peter-Paul Rubens Unabashed Sell-Out and Philistine Sycophant
Room on floor two. In 1622 Queen Marie de Medici commissioned
Rubens to paint about two dozen Greyhound bus-sized canvases
celebrating every moment of her worthless life. The series runs
from Queen Marie's birth, attended by all the hosts of heaven, to
her marriage to the King of France when they invited every figure
in ancient mythology including lo the cow. These paintings take
win, place and show in the international hilarious fat girl derby.

At least the French weren't rioting about American imperialism. In fact, it was hard to tell what the French thought about our
little experiment in Libyan bomb tag. (You're "it," Muammar, and
no taps back.) The French official position was all over the map. It
was "a question of national sovereignty" one day and "we weren't
consulted in advance" the next. Then it was "we don't approve of
such methods' followed by a hint that they would have approved of
such methods after all if we'd only used bigger bombs. The French
are masters of "the dog ate my homework" school of diplomatic
relations.

French unofficial position, that is, the opinion of taxi drivers,
bartenders, the concierge at the hotel and those old women they
keep in the bathrooms, was no easier to figure out. I'd ask and get a
nudge, a smirk, pursed lips, shrugged shoulders, knowing rolls of
the eyes, waved hands, knit brows-the whole panoply of Froggy
visual ticks.

Maybe it is fun to sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of
coffee. You can watch the French grimace and posture. And then
you can guess what they're saying to each other.

"I think, Antoinette, for me the croissant has the aspect
existential. It is bread, the staff of life, but no? And yet, there is
the paradox marvelous. Because the bread itself, it is a lifeless
thing. Is it not true? We must order croissants."

"No, no, no, no, Jacques. To think as this is is to make the
miscomprehension of the universe, its nature. To order the croissants would be an act inconceivable. An action of the most bourgeois type ..."

Who gives a shit what the French think.

After I was kicked off the plane to Libya, I went to visit my
friend in Brugge, the one who was under instructions from the
police to be ashamed. We spent the weekend looking for fun in
Belgium, which is an isometric exercise. That is, it's a strain and
you get nowhere.

A hotel desk clerk gave us the name of the one local hot spot.
It was called "The Korral" or "Sixes Gun" or some such bogus
American moniker like they put on everything over here when they
want you to think you're going to get something un-European, like a
good time. It was a crowded place where they played French rock
and roll (which sounds like somebody's chasing Edith Piaf around
the old Peppermint Lounge with an electric hedge trimmer).

My friend was trying to explain that you don't put sweet
vermouth in a martini when a little scene caught my eye. Standing
by the door was a Belgian greaser, a young hard guy with a modified
skinhead haircut, dressed all in black and carrying a motorcycle
helmet. He was running through all the usual teenage tough-kid
postures and checking out the room to make sure all the other kids
understood how unconcerned he was with their opinion. Perched
on a railing in front of him, with her legs wrapped around his butt,
was an adorable blonde girl about sixteen years old. She was
kissing and nuzzling her cool beau, who would peck her briefly
then swig his beer and check the room again.

In the breast pocket of her blouse the girl had a little toy
stuffed rabbit. After another offhand kiss from her boyfriend, she
took the rabbit out, held it in her hand and whispered in the boy's
ear. I couldn't hear what she said and they were speaking Flemish
anyway, but I could tell what was going on:

"I want a real kiss."

"Yeah, okay."

"Now the bunny wants a kiss."

"Knock it off."

"The bunny wants a kiss soooooooo bad."

"Come on, knock it off."

"If the bunny doesn't get a kiss, somebody's going to be very cross."

The greaser kid scoped the room with mean but panicked
eyes. Then he kissed the bunny.

On Monday I went to the U. K. to make one more attempt to
get to Libya before I started kissing toy bunnies myself. I got a
reservation on Lufthansa again. I figured I'd just lie, show them my
old Lebanese visa with a lot of Arabic squiggles on it. Germans
respond well to lies. At least, they always have historically.

Then I went to the ABC News bureau in London where they
had a phone line open to the Grand Hotel in Tripoli. I talked to my
old Lebanon buddy, ABC video editor George Moll.

"Get your ass down here!" said George. "This is great! And
bring some salami, okay? And cheese. And potato chips and
pretzels."

"And cigarettes!" said a voice in the background. "A carton of
Marlboros."

"Two cartons!" said another voice. "And a carton of Salems
and chocolate bars and Cokes!"

"And bring pita bread!" said George.

"Pita bread? What the hell do you want with pita bread?
You're surrounded by Arabs," I said. "You can't get pita bread?"

"You can't get anything," said George. "And for chrissake
bring booze!"

"How can I do that? They'll kill me."

"Naw," said George, "they'll just rough you up. Anyway, they
won't catch you. It's easy. Just get a six-pack of soda water, the little
bottles, the kind with the screw tops. And fill them up with vodka and screw the tops back on and put them back in that plastic collar
thing."

Are you sure you should be telling me this over the phone?"

"If they can't make pita bread, what the fuck do you think
their phone taps are like?" said George. "So, anyway, what's
happening?"

"Nothing much," I said. "It's raining. And everybody's yelling
at Margaret Thatcher about the F -Ills and...."

"Not up there," said George. "I mean, what's happening down
here? They won't let us out of the hotel."