244. Tripoli December Letter

Now I think I’ll read you the last pages of this first volume of my logbook. I’ll start on Saturday, 18th of December. 

Tripoli: cold and rainy. I run out of the house to buy some gasoline for my ailing stove and some food. (My little camp stove was not working very well and now it doesn’t work at all.) I dash back to the mosque and spend some time finishing Abdullah’s portrait and some other pen and ink doodling.

The day is short. I’m so cold I spend most of the day on the mat wrapped in blankets. Not complaining; just stating a fact.

Sunday 29th: Lightning, thunder and lots of rain raised the temperature. I think I’ll hike over to Mina, that’s the little port, and check my film and also stop by the post office. Nothing is open. The movie theater is doing a lively little-kid business with karate movies. By nightfall it is very cold.

(I wonder if you can hear the “call to prayer” in the background? That means its noon. They say: “Allah u akbar”, “God is Great”. That calls all the good Moslem men to the mosque to pray or to pray wherever they are if they can’t go to the mosque. At first it was very strange, but you get used to it like you get used to church bells some places. You hear these calls to prayer five times a day: once in the morning—about four in the morning I guess; you can barely wake up to hear the call—then through the day four more times—at noon and the early afternoon, at sunset and a little after sunset.)

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