4th Chapter (corrected version)
Women in Libya lead a very restricted life! Some changed their lives. There was a time when it was already bold to have a short haircut as a woman. You should be proud to have LONG hair. Please, it is so hot in Libya… To be honest, sometimes I wished for a bald head… (no joke), but doing that would have been fatal to the mood of my husband… He already had a lot to bear with a woman like me…
There was a time we did not have a ventilator fan in our bedroom. At the very beginning of my stay we were sweating so much that I had to change the pillow case twice a night… At that time we bought two fans– one for the salon and one for our bedroom then it was a little bit better.
The weather during that summer was great; every day we had sunshine. The only rain we had lasted abt 10 minutes. Imagine, In Libya there is a phenomenon, which is called Virga. That is rain which evaporates before reaching the ground; i.e. NO water!
These 10 minutes of rain during that summer was a thunderstorm. For 10 minutes it poured rain as if someone had emptied buckets of water. I have never again seen my husband’s youngest brother, Mohamed, running so fast. Normally he was the laziest of the family, including his brother Nurheddin – the doctor of the family. Nurheddin had studied in Poland and became a liver surgeon. Mohamed studied PCs and had the intention to go to Norway. Yet, since I had been working with DEC and Compaq, he asked me abt the market. I only said: Do you know Linux, Unix, or other huge systems? He replied: No, what is that? Then I was tough with him: Look, Mohamed, if you are not into a special field regarding computers and languages, then you better forget it. Because in Europe it is not enough to “only” know abt PCs. There are enough people taking care of that… He listened to my tip. I was very impressed. One of the men who listened to a woman and especially in AFRICA, in a third world country!! I was so shocked.

Mohamed preferred being half „naked“ he liked to run around in shorts, no shirt, no shoes only his shorts… Salah was then very upset. Ummi and Mufida (Salah’s youngest sister) then said: he is our baby and can do anything… Well, it was not my problem… Mohamed never helped with anything actually. Kitchen, laundry, not even bringing his empty plates, glasses, cups etc. back to the kitchen. He’d leave everything outside the house, even in the street, when having had a coffee with his friends.
It was a pity that Ummi and Mufida would clean up after him. Well, we have a saying in Swiss German: the way they are brought up, the way they will always behave. And that is true! Anyway, Mohamed finally was with IT and it was still a long way to get there! First he wanted to study Economics, then Aviation, and finally he “grabbed” monitor and was there… During his studies in IT he performed best. He was best in class, also. At least that’s something…

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