Tripoli's old quarter displays rich cultural influences of past

Tripoli: The elderly Italian woman will know more. Her name is Maria, or Um Dani, the mother of Daniel.

She lives beyond the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, past the Gurgi Mosque, the one with the blue and gold tiles around the marble doorway. Then down an unpaved path, over by the 17th-century Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where she is a parishioner, somewhere in that jumble of alleyways. She has lived there forever.

The kids playing ball in the street will know exactly where. Her friend died 10 to 15 years ago. And so she's perhaps the only Italian left from that era, from before Muammar Gaddafi and his men took power four decades ago and hurried the Europeans out of the country, seizing their homes and property.

Strong, smart lady

She can tell many stories about Tripoli's old quarter, the medina, and its people. "Um Dani is a strong, smart lady," explains Hesham, a tall, thin man in his 30s, leading the way. "We will find her here"

Clouds drift past the mosque minarets that sprout from the old city. Donkeys loaded with bags of rice jostle past stands selling knockoff perfume and acid-washed designer jeans with dubious labels.

Wrinkled men sit in fraying suits in front of musty shops lifting small cups of thick Turkish coffee to their lips. Young women wrapped in colourful gowns, headdresses and plastic slippers spray water on potted plants that line alleyways.

Colonial era

There was little beyond the rectangular old city until 100 years ago. And there was little beyond the adjacent belle epoque and colonial-era quarter built by Italian architects in the first half of the 20th century until Gaddafi seized power in 1969.

The medina has long been a repository of Libya's history, and it remains the cosmopolitan heart of a capital city of 1.7 million virtually buried by Gaddafi's overbearing cultural and political vision.

Many cultures have laid claim to Tripoli, a vital Mediterranean gateway to the African continent. There were the Phoenicians from the eastern Mediterranean, who founded the city, followed by the Greeks and Romans and a succession of Muslim dynasties, including the Ottoman Turks, who took over in the 16th century and built the old city's distinctive mansions and courtyards.

Next were the Italians, who laid claim to Libya in 1911 and over the ensuing decades left a mixed legacy of trauma and refinement that continues to haunt Libyans caught between duelling impulses to open their arms to the sea and lands beyond its coast, where 90 per cent of the population resides, or to draw inward, hermitlike, and shield themselves from the outside world's influences.

The people of the medina have long struck a balance.

Proud, happy

"I feel proud and I am happy that I am of these people," Kheir Baday, owner of a 132-year-old shoreline cafe that bears his family's name. His father owned the place before him. Baday used to tricycle on its fading tiled floor when he was a child.

"This is the front door to Libya. When the ships come, they approach here. The sailors used to come to this cafe from the sea, people from all over the world," he said as he served guests perfectly brewed Libyan espressos, one of the legacies of the Italian occupation.

"They would get off their boats and come here and take a coffee and walk around and spend the night. They would leave a little piece of themselves here and they would take a little piece of themselves from here. It's the history of Tripoli."

Treasures

The old city's labyrinthine streets are filled with treasures such as the Banco di Roma building, the gracious Ottoman-era mansions and courtyards with tiny pools, and the ancient Roman arch embedded with relief sculptures showing the 2nd-century Emperor Marcus Aurelius riding triumphantly in his chariot.

But the medina is no museum piece. The old city continues to pulsate. During Ramadan, young people fill its growing number of cafes late into the night.

Finally, Um Dani's house nears. It is a yellow building from the Ottoman era in a narrow alleyway whose crumbling stone edifices are held up by a network of wooden beams. Knocking yields no answer. The minutes pass. "She left yesterday," an approaching child says, holding both hands out to his sides as if he were burdened by two suitcases in each hand. "She is gone."