Things went wrong from the beginning, at the airport. The 60 Euros needed for the visa had to be in Libyan dinars and at that hour, past midnight, the currency exchange office was closed. All five ATM machines were out of order and some bearded men had started to stare… Well, this was my first lesson: in Libya, never give up hope. There is always a solution, and usually someone to help; just like that, just because you need help.
The two guys who came to pick me up from the airport forked the money over and since they had not enough, Hussein, a co-traveler whom I had just met, a Libyan doctor living in Greece, contributed the rest.
Things would soon get more interesting, though. The car driver had his arm in cast but was driving like Schumacher. At some point he lights a hash cigarette and then his cell phone rings. With one hand broken he was smoking, talking to the phone and driving like crazy.
Second lesson, which I learnt too well in the days that followed: The most dangerous thing in Libya is not bullets; it is driving. One year has passed since Gaddafi’s arrest and mysterious death in the hands of his persecutors and Libyans can feel what it means to speak freely. This, at least, they have earned. And even the most guarded ones –whom the Libyans label as "gaddafists"- will admit that in conversations.
Very often, though, the opposite happens, as a journalist, an executive in a TV station, will confide to me. “The journalist, for example, is today stepping on a landmine field. He doesn’t know when a mine will explode. At first you knew where the landmines were, where your limits were. You could speak or you could shut up. Now everything is allowed and everything is forbidden..."

Chaos in the streets
Tripoli’s streets are dirty and full of garbage. Cleaning services are slow, if they work at all. "Who would go collect garbage if not under the threat of the lash?" the locals admit. Only African immigrants do such work and generally all the dirty jobs. The racism towards black non-Libyans is very intense in the Libyan society. During the revolution, black people had disappeared from the streets. They were considered either defectors, former mercenaries of those brought by Gaddafi –and were executed as such- or just “the weaker”, “the immigrant”, against whom people vented their wrath, as is often the case when the oppressed suddenly attain power.
Garbage, as we said, is a real problem. But not for long, says a Libyan who lived in Greece for years and now has returned and become deeply involved with the state.
Foreign companies may still be reluctant to start investing as security has not yet been restored, but they already were assigned the garbage management, as it is obvious that there is a lot of money there... "A Greek tried to cut in to get hold of a piece of the job but didn’t make it".

Security
Contrary to what happens in Egypt, the “Arab Spring” looks like taking its course smoothly in Libya. Let us not have illusions of the revolution being over, though. The country is lucky, it has oil, and this makes things a lot easier since the rationale behind the phrase "there is money" is not just empty talk, as happened in Greece; it is a reality which helps compromise and awareness that the quick restoration of security is in everyone’s interest, for everyone to be able to exploit the benefits of oil. For the observer trying to approach today’s Libya and understand the Libyan society a little better, what is more interesting than the political game of power and oil distribution, more interesting even than how the West will in the medium term attempt to make the country follow it slavishly so that it makes way for doing business, is how the society itself conceives freedom. How it envisages its future and how it experiences this first post-revolutionary period.
The answer is that Libyans, with few exceptions, have absolutely no idea of what free market and competition are about. Collaboration with them at professional level is a tragedy. They are untrustworthy, they never come in time and when they do they are unprepared. Everything runs on autopilot and with the certainty that, in the crucial moment when something goes wrong… well, Allah will provide.
Until now, in economy, things have been easy. The country had –and still does- trade surpluses which were sponsoring the welfare state, the public sector, the army, and subsidizing a range of consumer products. Nothing is missing from the supermarket shelves. So why work from dawn to dusk?
Several Libyans are worried that there are serious possibilities of losing all these privileges. The surpluses will keep sponsoring the state for as long as they exist; but then again, for how long will there still be surpluses? The oil regime is not yet clear, privatizations have not yet begun and the country urgently needs infrastructure works, since the last ones took place 20 years ago. There is one thing people are sure for, though: that ΝΑΤΟ and the West have not come to Libya to overthrow Gaddafi out of kind-heartedness. Sooner or later, someone will have to pay the bill.

Social Islam
It is important to point out that Libya is a country with a powerful "social Islam". It is impressive how, after 42 years under Gaddafi, who had closed the madrasas (Islamic colleges) and set severe restrictions to the mullahs, Libya remains a deeply Islamic country.
"It is a matter of tradition", I would hear from almost everyone. Even young people, if asked, will say that "Quran uber alles", as they strongly believe that religion, in the wake of Gaddafi’s fall, is the last stronghold for the country not to yield to "the evils of westernization".
"This government will give its utmost best to the nation based on the rule of law, human rights, democracy, and the belief in God, his Prophet and a state based on Islam", said in his celebratory speech Ali Zidan, the new prime minister who within next year will have to submit the new constitution to the Parliament. The constitution will be based on the Quran. This is nonnegotiable and was particularly pointed out by almost everyone I spoke with, including Suleiman al-Sahli, former Education minister, and several officers of high military rank.
That, of course, is not only a matter of tradition, since seeing the balance of power in the Constituent Assembly and the General National Council, you conclude that no one can proceed alone, without backing by the Islamic political parties.
It is easy, nonetheless, to see the contradiction entrapping the youth, who on the one hand admire Turkey and Dubai as models of countries with moderate Islam, but on the other hand they would never accept seeing bars in their neighborhood; or, in the case of men, seeing their sisters go out at night.
Unescorted women can hardly be seen in the streets, alcohol is banned, Ramadan traditions are kept faithfully, Friday is a sacred day and so on. Of course, everything can be done and everything is allowed… in secret.

Drugs, alcohol
Gargarish is a district of ill repute in downtown Tripoli with lousy narrow dirt roads, where police never set foot. Our car went in carefully and after one of the Libyans I was with made the necessary arrangements, it moved carefully to the center of the district.
A guy got out of a house and gave our driver five pieces of hashish for 30 dinars (a little less than 20 Euros). A little further down the road, another guy got out of another house and put a crate of beer in the car. Tunisian beer sold for about two Euros a 200ml can...
To satisfy the remaining… well… needs, things are also easy. With just a phone call, a car arrives outside your house and discretely provides for female company for a few hours. The prostitutes usually come from Sub-Saharan countries. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to “pickup” girls as well. You can do it in specific places and it has rules.
It goes like this: One of the gang goes in a restaurant, cafeteria or hotel where girls are gathering –and where everyone knows but they pretend they don’t- takes some girls with him and discretely drives them to a house outside the city. The other guys have provided for food, whisky etc, and the party goes on till dawn. Obviously, the girls get paid extra for their services.
The less privileged, mostly young men, do as described above, or gather at home for “men-only parties”, where they smoke hash and drink boha, the local variation of the Greek tsipouro, which is made illegally and smells like pesticide. These things usually take place on Thursdays and the next day the men, like good Muslims, go all together to the cami for the Friday prayer... Well, if you are “lucky” enough to get caught by some fanatic Muslim, then you will probably have a problem. The police come –or the army that still acts as police- and they arrest everyone. Indeed, we happened to be present in such an incident outside Tripoli, where three prostitutes and their procurers were arrested by the army and, after being excoriated, were driven to the police station climbed into the bed of a pickup truck.

It’s hard to be a woman
Gaddafi’s fall and the Islamists’ return in the forefront –even if they are moderate- is not good news for women. "You can drive your car on the road and, while waiting on the red light, some bearded man can stop you and drag you out saying you violate Sharia", Mawada from Benghazi will tell me. "This would never have happened in Gaddafi era".
"We have to admit that, after the revolution, woman’s freedoms were restricted because some ideologies prevailed, according to which a woman’s place is in the home only", Sumaya Tango, private employee, will tell me. "The problem is that our society is male dominated, it is based on religious tradition. I used to be an athlete and was forced to stop. It was not Gaddafi who stopped me; it was my parents... We don’t want to become Afghanistan and we don’t want the Islamists here", adds Hadiza Barka, journalist.

Army, police
We already said that one must not have illusions that the revolution is over. This is the truth and this will also define where things will go politically as well as socially in the next two years. People still possess arms. This means there is no organized army. This moment there are at least 200 Katibas (battalions, or maybe regiments) in Libya, which are self commanded. They do not take orders from a central leadership; they keep whole areas under control, whose security they are responsible for, and often act as the now dismantled police force.
Katibas enjoy people’s trust and have integrated many volunteers into their ranks after the revolution. How can you disarm an army like this, which is not controlled by anyone? Even at Zidan’s oath-taking ceremony, armed Katiba members burst into the Parliament protesting against people in the government who they labeled as "Gaddafists".
For the next two years, the Katibas will remain as such, and then former fighters will be able to either join the army or police forces or start new lives as civilians. This is the highest stake not only of the new political elite, but also of the Western countries which hurry to do business: to take under control not the fanatic Islamists, whose rates are single digit anyway, but the fully equipped militia who look like having taken their role seriously –until opposite is proved. As says Monahed Ali Mansur, commander of one of Tripoli’s Katibas, "the Libyan people have revolted at last and from that day no government will neither exploit them, nor deceive them». That remains to be seen.

This text was published in HOT DOC magazine in 12-27-2012

watch the video
 http://www.wide-angle.gr/kostas-pliakos/component/videoflow/?task=play&id=37&sl=cats&Itemid=110
for slideschow:
http://www.wide-angle.gr/kostas-pliakos/component/videoflow/?task=play&id=33&sl=cats&Itemid=110
for greek translation go:
Εικόνες από την μετεπαναστατική Λιβύη