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.