EXCERPTS FROM THE QUIET DISTANCE
Moments, encounters and reflections from fifteen years in Libya
CROSSING INTO THE UNKNOWN
"The fixer leaned across the centre console as we approached the border and spoke in a quiet deliberate voice. Follow my lead, he said. If anyone asks questions, say you're press."
He paused, watching the line of vehicles moving slowly towards the checkpoint. "Show your passport when they ask. Don't take photographs. Don't start conversations."
Outside the vehicle the landscape looked dry and empty but the road ahead was tightening into a cluster of barriers, armed men and waiting cars. The atmosphere was calm, yet it carried the unmistakable tension that settles over places where authority is uncertain and everyone is watching everyone else.
The fixer turned back towards me. "And above all," he said, "be respectful."
The instructions sounded routine. I did not realise then that the next few hours would change the course of my life.
I nodded, accepting every word without question. Coming from a commercial background with police experience largely limited to weekend drunks and street fights, I had no real understanding of what was about to unfold in front of me. I took the advice verbatim and followed it without hesitation. That was how my first proper journey into Libya began.
WHEN DANGER BECOMES ORDINARY
"On one occasion, a militia member casually swung his revolver around his finger until the weapon discharged, the round striking the ground inches from my feet."
There was no warning and no clear intent behind it. It was not a stand-off, not an arrest, not even a deliberate act of intimidation in the structured sense. It was simply reckless handling of a firearm in an environment where recklessness had become commonplace.
That was part of what made Libya so difficult to calibrate: not every risk emerged from ideology or confrontation. Some arose from boredom. Some from immaturity. Some from the simple fact that too many weapons were in the hands of men who carried them as status, habit or extension of self, rather than as disciplined tools governed by rules and consequence.
In another country incidents like that would have been treated as extraordinary. In Tripoli, they settled almost immediately into the surrounding atmosphere. Absorbed into the day with barely a pause.
CHECKPOINTS WITHOUT RULES
"My usual route back to Tripoli was longer but more predictable. It followed areas where relationships had been established and where the rhythm of checkpoints was familiar."
On this occasion I chose the Warshafana Road instead. The reasons were mundane, time pressure, fatigue, perhaps a misplaced confidence born of repetition. It was not a carefully weighed assessment. It was complacency disguised as efficiency.
By then I had crossed dozens of checkpoints without serious incident. Most followed a pattern, inspection, questions, delay, release. The absence of consequence in earlier encounters had quietly reshaped my expectations and I had begun to treat exposure as something that could be managed rather than something that needed to be avoided.
As we approached the checkpoint that afternoon, I noticed it but felt no immediate surge of alarm. That absence of instinctive caution was revealing. Road blocks had become part of the background of everyday, despite the risks they presented. On this occasion we were waved over.
Before the vehicle had come fully to a halt, my door was pulled open and I was ordered out. The shift from routine to aggression was immediate. There was no measured questioning, no attempt at formality. I was physically dragged several metres from the car while my driver was pulled in the opposite direction. It was in that moment of separation that the reality of our situation became unmistakably clear.
My driver was experienced. He understood the terrain and the factions far better than I did, and normally he acted as translator and intermediary, smoothing tension before it could take hold. As I glanced across at him, however, I saw something that I had not seen before: restraint edged with fear. He was speaking quickly to the man holding him, but he made no attempt to move towards me. He knew he could not. Any intervention would have escalated the situation beyond recovery. In that moment he had no more influence than I did.
THE HUMAN COST OF LIBYA'S CONFLICT
"My strongest memory of that day was not the gunfire itself, but the sight of civilians outside the compound walls trying to move away from the escalation, with no ability to influence it."
They were not participants in the dispute. They were residents, drivers, shopkeepers, people attempting to navigate an ordinary day in a city where routine could shift to armed confrontation with almost no warning.
Cars that had been moving steadily along the road outside the compound slowed abruptly and began turning away. Drivers reversed awkwardly or mounted pavements in an effort to escape the growing tension. Shopkeepers pulled down metal shutters with hurried efficiency. Pedestrians who had been walking along the roadside disappeared into side streets or doorways.
Within minutes, the atmosphere changed completely.
A relatively small number of armed men had managed to alter the behaviour of hundreds of people who had no connection to the grievance being contested.
THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE HEADLINES
"From a distance, Libya was usually defined by instability, conflict and political paralysis."
Those realities existed, but they were not the whole story. There was also warmth, humour and resilience. There were people who genuinely wanted their country to reconnect with the wider world and who believed that partnership, trade and openness still offered a way forward.
I tried to communicate that balance, although looking back I am not convinced everyone wanted to hear it.
Despite the effort, the dominant perception of Libya abroad remained stubbornly narrow. Instability travelled easily, the humanity behind it rarely did. The generosity I experienced personally, the hospitality, the willingness to engage and the openness of ordinary people, struggled to reach beyond those who had witnessed it themselves.
That realisation carried a quiet sense of frustration, because behind the politics were countless capable and decent people whose ambitions were repeatedly constrained by forces beyond their control.
THE COST OF BEING AWAY
"There is a cost to absence that does not reveal itself immediately."
For a long time, it is possible to believe that distance can be managed without lasting consequence, that time away can be structured and justified and, that what has been missed can somehow be recovered.
At the outset absence presented itself as something practical. Work requires travel, opportunity presents itself elsewhere, and decisions are made on the basis of responsibility, progression and what appears, to be a rational balance between professional commitment and personal life.
Time away becomes something scheduled and defined, something that can be explained not only to others but more importantly to yourself.
Underlying all of this is a quiet assumption that whatever is missed could be revised later, that presence can be restored, and that the overall structure of life remains intact even if you are not always physically within it.