In the mid-Seventies, Unilever was a heavy advertiser in Libya, as well as in other Arab markets. Cinemas were a preferred advertising medium that they widely used. In Libya, the cinemas were controlled by a company owned by Ahmad Al Jaouni, the brother-in-law of our advertising colleague, Burhan Baidas, in partnership with a Libyan by the name of Mohammad Al Gaed. The international marketing office of this company was in Dubai, where I was introduced to the owners by my Unilever client, Phil Cooper, soon after I had settled in the UAE.
During my first year of managing Intermarkets UAE, Unilever had a plan to launch Lux soap in Libya and the client asked me to travel to the country to ensure that all the 35mm advertising commercials were safely transported, cleared through customs and the censorship authorities, then distributed to theaters in Tripoli, Benghazi, Misrata, Sirte and Tobruk in time for the launch.
Mohammad Al Gaed met me at Benghazi’s Benina International Airport, which we had agreed to make my first port of call. Although Benghazi was Libya’s second most important city, it was normal to stop over at Benina, as it was the normal first stop of all airlines flying into Libya. While driving into the city, I became conscious of the fact that Mohammad Al Gaed kept taking his eyes off the crowded motorway to look at me. He was driving fast, which scared me to the extent that I asked him in an irritated tone if he saw anything wrong with my face. He instantly responded, saying that he wanted to first ask about the sheepish smile I’d had on my face since I got into the front seat of his car.
Our verbal fencing was followed by a spontaneous giggle from both of us, followed by two long minutes of silence. Then Mohammad burst out with a Libyan version of “Eureka”, announcing that he had unveiled the secret of my smile. His philosophical diagnosis assumed that after being born and raised amongst the greenery of Lebanon, my move to Dubai represented a sudden drought of green surroundings, since I had only seen sand in the past eight months. This nostalgia for green was stirred by the lines of olive trees that engulfed us on the drive to Benghazi. We cleared customs and got the films past the censors in no time, as Mohammad had contacts all over the place. The same applied to getting the films to all the cinemas.
My next visit to Libya was also initiated by Unilever, which had been complaining about the accuracy of the cinema screening certificates that formed the basis of the media invoices it had been receiving. At the peak of the Lux soap launch campaign, we all realized that any shadow of a doubt could jeopardize our relationship with this key client, not only for Intermarkets, but for Lintas, Unilever’s global agency, which we were representing in the Middle East as well.
I travelled discreetly from Dubai to Tripoli with a plan to visit as many cinemas as I could before the news of my visit became public. The main theatres I went to first had the Lux commercial running perfectly, to the extent that I began thinking that my trip had been a complete waste of time and effort. Then on the fifth day I went to inspect the cinemas on the outskirts of Tripoli. The unruly crowd that was waiting for the theatre door to open made me realize that I, a decently dressed and strange looking alien in their area, had made a grave mistake. When I was finally seated and the lights of the theatre were switched off, I took out a very small notebook and pen from my pocket to write down the advertising commercials that were being screened. This was the discipline that I had begun on my first day in Tripoli, as I wanted to present to Unilever a full report that showed all the international brands using this advertising medium, and not only Lux soap. As I was busy writing, I sensed a heavy hand on my shoulder, which was not simply a tap, but more like the paw of a savage lion pulling me up from my seat. I jerked in fear and turned around to see the silhouette of a giant wrestler wearing a vest that showed his bulging muscles. Behind him were two thugs who looked like his twins. They roughly pulled me out of my seat and pushed me into the projection room at the extreme end of the theatre. There, the interrogation started, with them wanting to know what I was secretly writing in the darkness and why. With the sound of the noisy projector and our distinctly different Arabic dialects, my explanation went down the drain. So, I opened my palm-sized notepad and showed them what I had written in the past four days at the main theatres in the capital. Even this did not soften their aggressive and threatening tone, to the extent that it made me feel like I would soon wake up to find myself lying in a pool of blood. The fast-approaching danger made me snap and challenge them to call Mohammad El Gaed and verify my identity. The moment I mentioned El Gaed’s name, the situation changed instantly, and their dangerous hostile behavior turned into apologetic and welcoming hospitality. I was offered very sweet tea and was shown the spool of advertising commercials that had Unilever’s Lux soap film. I returned to Dubai with my detailed report, which led client and agency to agree that there was no need to doubt Libya’s cinemas screen certificates anymore.
After several years, my Ceylon Tea client, Ranjan Perera, asked me to accompany him on a tour amongst the tea trade in Libya. He even insisted on the flights we had to take and the hotel I needed to book. On the flight to Tripoli, Perera explained that he had rushed this visit at the insistence of his head office in Colombo, which wanted their man in the Middle East to get to Tripoli to try and help one of Sri Lanka’s diplomats, who had been in the Libyan capital for some time and might need assistance.
A new Sri Lankan ambassador had been appointed to Egypt and Libya, with a base in Cairo. After he presented his credentials to the Egyptian president, he flew over to Tripoli to do the same with President Muammar al-Gaddafi, but since his arrival three weeks earlier he had been made to wait, together with five other ambassadors, for a meeting with the president, which was never confirmed.
On arrival, we met with the Sri Lankan ambassador, who explained that since his arrival he had received only one contact from the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs telling him to expect another call confirming the appointment. He had been waiting since then and he wanted me to call the ministry and enquire with them – in Arabic – when the meeting with President Gaddafi could be confirmed. I did, but the respondent was not able to shed any additional light.
We stayed on for a week, meeting with tea importers and retiring to the hotel early every evening to sit with the ambassadors whose waiting had become unbearable and incomprehensible. During the long wait, the ambassadors had each gone ahead with their own activity to kill time. The Sri Lankan ambassador had been dedicating his time to sports. He spent the mornings swimming and after lunch he went jogging around the hotel grounds. On the last day of our visit – while we were continuing our round of tea importers and the Sri Lankan ambassador had just stepped out for his daily walk – the Indian front desk executive, who had become the ambassador’s only buddy in Tripoli, went running until he finally caught up with him. President Gaddafi’s chief of protocol had just called to announce that the president would be receiving the six ambassadors at seven o’clock that same evening, which allowed them barely two hours to get ready.
Finally, the ambassador returned around nine at night to find me and Ranjan Perera waiting at the coffee shop attached to the hotel’s swimming pool. The ambassador seemed to still be under the spell of his recent experience, where he and his colleagues had had to quickly put on their tuxedos and national dress and had been shuttled in a minibus with the sign of the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a camp on the outskirts of Tripoli. There they were ushered in one-by-one to present their diplomatic credentials to President Gaddafi, who was straddling a chair and wearing only khaki-colored trousers and a white undergarment vest. His hand was outstretched while a blonde-haired nurse was in the process of injecting a needle with medicine into his vein as he listened to the ambassadors reciting their credentials.
Libya continues to surprise me – and the entire Middle East ad industry – up until this day.