What an appalling scene it is that is unfolding in Libya.

There is a particular poignancy to these outrages as Libya was a place of sanctuary for me (from the British public school system) when I spent a year there in 1959/60.

That year was also the longest period of time I ever spent with my parents.
My father 'worked abroad', as the saying went in those days, for all of his working life: first for the British Colonial Service, then for the Allied British Government in Trieste before joining the United Nations very shortly after its formation.
Consequently, I spent most of my time in boarding-schools and was lucky to get one visit a year to wherever it was he was working.

Libya, formerly an Italian colony, was an allied war spoil before it was granted independence in the early 1950's. It was the first country to be so created by the recently formed United Nations, for whom my father worked as an economic adviser, in Pakistan, Libya and subsequently numerous South American countries.

At the time the massive Wheelus US air base and a significant British military presence were clear reminders of Libya's recent history.
I attended the British military school.
And, that it been an Italian colony was still palpable, especially in Tripoli's downtown urban architecture, but my memories are mostly of encounters and experiences with Libyan Arabs: this because, wherever he went, my father made it his habit to live amongst the people with whom - or as he would have expressed it 'for' whom - he was to work. My father was, or certainly saw himself as, an (international) public servant, a species that has today - I guess - been almost entirely replaced by consultants who are parachuted in to deliver 'one size fits all' solutions devised in the west.

As I remember it, we were the only ex-pats to live in the community, all others - including the first of the international oil men who were beginning to sniff around - lived in American-style suburbs and compounds wherein they socialised amongst themselves.
And it fascinated me that while we boiled our drinking water they flew their's in from America!

We had an apartment in an old house overlooking Tripoli harbour. I remember that it was owned by an Italian, Signor Rossi, who was (or had been) a soft drinks magnate.

I would go, on many a morning, into the souk just behind our apartment, to buy fresh bread that was cooked in open ovens and sold by small boys, running through the streets and alleys, off trays held high above their heads.

These were, of course, pre-Gadaffi days.

King Idris was monarch at the time and, while I was there, the British monarch, (the very same Queen Elizabeth 2 who threatens a visit us here later this year, I gather) paid a visit.
It wasn't a 'state visit' - quick searches indicate - and the Queen didn't stay with King Idris but slept on the royal yacht, moored in the harbour: this because it was widely reported that King Idris was riddled with syphilis and, under the circumstances, ma'am didn't fancy his guest bedroom.
Just the sort of detail that would stick in an adolescent's mind - I guess!

These memories were prompted by a radio report this morning: an Irish teacher working in Tripoli had managed, with great difficulty we were told, to make his escape from what is fast becoming a (civil) war zone to the safety of Turkey. The first obstacle he had to overcome, he explained, was that the Libyan authorities were holding his passport.

Some things don't change, it seems....

During my stay in Tripoli I became seriously ill with pleurisy and the Canadian doctor whom my father found said that I should be admitted, urgently, to hospital. The Brits and the Americans, in their respective military camps, declined to assist so it was decided that I should be evacuated to Malta (where, incidentally, my father had served as a government administrator during the war - but that's another story...).
But, guess what, the Libyan authorities were holding my passport and, in my case, refused to release it, so I was treated by my Canadian doctor with penicillin - to which, it transpired, I was allergic - but that's yet another story......

And, before these violent incidents in the region blew-up over recent weeks I had, from time to time, pondered, when holiday plans were under discussion, whether a trip back to Libya would be an idea, because, apart from the 'memory lane' aspect of such a visit, Libya has the most wonderful Roman remains - it was, after all a part of the Roman Empire, not far, indeed, from its centre.

Maybe I will tell more of this tale some day as writing this has provoked many more memories..........