No letter in life

It was just before 1130pm that we arrived at the Central post office to check the post box before leaving for Khumas a city about 100KM from Tripoli along the Mediterranean where I was posted at the Army training center. To our dismay there was nothing in the mail, my wife got very upset since there have been no news from home for almost six weeks. We decided to send a telegram. We were told that the official form to write the telegram was with the clerk at the counter. The gentleman sitting behind the counter was sipping his coffee, on my asking him for the form he informed me that "telegrams are sent in emergency situations only", I told him that I am fully aware of that, he gave me the form telling me that he knew English and will read it and send the telegram only if he thought it was urgent.

I wrote the telegram," No letters received, wire welfare"and took it to the clerk ,who read it and said , what is so urgent about it , i told him that my wife and myself are very upset as we have not received any letters from our homes for almost two months. He laughed and said so what is the urgency I have not received any letter in my life and I am not upset, however i take pity on you and will send this telegram, we thanked him and paid the telegram charges.

Every evening one has to go to the post office to check his mail box for any letter, cause there is no home delivery of letters in Libya, in fact there are no postmen. To get hold of a post box is another big thing, all the post boxes are already allotted and there are non available, so you share it with someone who is prepared to do so. I was fortunate to share it with my landlord , who offered the facility himself. The only problem was that I had to take the key from his shop which was close to the post office and return it after checking the mail,no mails on Friday as the shop was closed. I got the key made without his knowledge but always checked the mail with his key,except on holidays.

The Central Post Office where i had my post box was centrally located in the downtown of Tripoli. Every evening majority of foreigners will come over to check their mails and have a get together making the post office like a social club and a gossip center, Libyans used to wonder as to why the foreigners go there so regularly. one also got the news of availability of accommodations ,furniture, jobs and other important news over there. One used to look forward to going to the post office in the evenings.

The other funny thing was no one knew the postal charges to his country,every time you wanted to post a letter you had to stand in a long queue and when your turn came the postal clerk will weigh the letter and say a figure u pay and get the stamps and then drop it in the letter box. the charges will never be the same,though you may have written one page letter each time, besides the difference will be more than double at times. I decided to find out the exact amount of postal charges to Pakistan, I wrote two letters on two pages of the same letter pad and the text was also the same and written by the same pen and ink, the two envelops were taken from the same lot and the address was also the same. At the post office the clerk threw the mail on the weighing machine and said 11 Garsh (cents) for one and 42 for the other, i told him it is not possible ,either charge 11 or 42 for both of them, the clerk got very angry on being challenged and said he is in charge and it his words which will be final, a chaos started and the supervisor came and after listing to both sides he came up with the solution and said ok it is neither 11 nor 42 it will be 20 for each one of them, i said i agree if i get a whole sheet of 20 garsh stamps, he gave me two sheets of 10 garsh.i pasted 10 garsh stamp on each of those letters and posted it and it reached its destination in due course of time. From then on I always posted my letters to Pakistan with 10 garsh stamps on it.