Randolph Hobler - 101 Arabian Tales: How We All Persevered in Peace Corps Libya

I have read dozens of Peace Corps memoirs and always find the impact of service on the individual writer to be profound. However, this memoir contains not just the memories and observations of one volunteer but of one hundred. It is therefore that much more authoritative.

Robert E. Gribbin, III

Ambassador to Rwanda and Central African Republic

Peace Corps VolunteerKenya

Randy Hobler has written the best memoir of a Peace Corps experience that I have ever read. His amazingly detailed book instantly grips the reader by putting Libya in its properly rich and unique historical perspective. Everyone should read this book, to enjoy its humor as well as its insights. Bravo to Randy Hobler for all the hard work and writing talent that has resulted in this unparalleled but eminently readable chronicle of a time and place lost forever.

Niels Marquardt

Former Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Madagascar and the Union of the Comoros

Peace Corps VolunteerZaire and Rwanda

Reading the book, I found myself laughing more times than I could count. Bravo for telling this story in a way that is accessible and entertaining!

Cameron Hume

Ambassador to South Africa, Indonesia and Algeria

Peace Corps VolunteerLibya

A magnum opus! I must remark that the level of detail in terms of time, places and people is remarkable. This book does remind one how living in utter simplicity has beauty and how uncluttered time leads to clarity.

Nicholas Craw

Peace Corps Director, 19731974

At its best, the story telling was fun and engagingly told with a fond memory that lacked rancor about the struggles of drinking water with colored worms and finding scorpions in their shoes. Telling the story nearly 50 years later gives this memoir the feel of a saga.

Paul Sully

Country Director, Peace Corps Jamaica

As the first American ambassador posted to Libya in 36 years, I found this epic tome by Randy Hobler to be a veritable and precious treasure trove of Libyan history, politics and culture, of the individual experiences of Peace Corps volunteers and an exciting piece of storytelling that rivals any academic enterprise. It is a book full of joy, tears and knowledge that could only be found in Hoblers telling. Thank you, Randy for this amazing journey.

Gene Cretz

Ambassador to Libya and Ghana

Hobler kept a detailed diary while including the accounts of more than 100 fellow volunteers. This group approach enables him to cover every aspect of the Peace Corps experience, whether the exotic food they pretended to enjoy, the old motorbikes forever dying on them in the middle of the desert, or Hoblers own challenges of maintaining a budding long-distance relationship. These vivid memories, via Hoblers novelistic eye, take you into the thick of this extraordinary adventure.

Tom Seligson

Author of six books, two of which sold to Hollywood, and an 11-year CBS documentary producer

Randolph Hoblers account of Ghaddafis rise to power and the impact on ordinary Libyans is fascinating. His updates, addressing Libyas current descent into disorder, heartbreaking. As in Ondaatjes The English Patient, Hobler introduces us to an international sand club of interesting personalities living fully in a unique place and time.

Edmund Hull

Ambassador to Yemen

Peace Corps VolunteerTunisia

A bittersweet wonder. The book is about the authors Peace Corps epoch in Libya but is, of course, ultimately about youth, the passage of timeand about love. This colorfully detailed account of Hoblers life during a period of extraordinary changehis own and that of his adoptive countryis an edifying, emotionally nourishing journey. His naturally sympathetic depiction of a place and people most Americans reflexively regard as savage and violent is bridge-building. A completely immersive read!

Jeff Wing

Columnist, The Santa Barbara Sentinel

Content/Feature Writer, Procore Technologies

Resident, Libya 1968--1970

Having served as US Ambassador to Libya from 2013-2015 following the attack on our mission in Benghazi that took the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, I was intrigued by the penetration of these young, idealistic Americans into the cities, towns and villages across the vastness that is Libya, their resourcefulness, and most of all their engagement with a broad spectrum of Libyans. The photographs are an added treat. I wish this book had been available prior to my own engagement.

Deborah Jones

Ambassador to Libya

Peace Corps VolunteerAfghanistan

Randolph Hobler has produced a fascinating study of the unique experience of Peace Corps Volunteers in Libya before and during Muammar Qadhafis 1969 coup dtat. As a former Peace Corps Volunteer myself, I can attest that he deals humorously and accurately with the fumbling efforts of the early Peace Corps to select effective volunteer candidates and then to cope with the chaos which often accompanied their deployment in a land which then had little experience of Americans.

Dane Smith

Ambassador to Guinea and Senegal

Peace Corps VolunteerEthiopia

Libya in Arabic. Even though in Arabic it reads right to left, you can equally well read it left to right.

The only country name thats a visual palindrome.

Copyright 2020 Randolph W. Hobler.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any meanswhether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronicwithout written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-7168-1166-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7167-1130-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7168-1165-4 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 08/20/2020

This book is dedicated to the villagers

of Al Gala and Um El Jersan, Libya

for their heartfelt generosity, unstinting hospitality

and deep human goodness.

The only real voyage is not an approach to landscape but a viewing of the universe with the eyes of one hundred other people.

Marcel Proust

Forethoughts

I n a book of recollections, I suppose I should make mention of my earliest one. One that will forward-relate to Libya, I promise. At the tender age of three, Id managed to develop a right inguinal hernia. So, on October 14, 1949 my parents trundled me off to the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. I vividly remember lying on the operating table and watching as a brown rubber ether mask bore down upon my face just before I went under. The surgeon who operated on me subsequently performed no less than 17,000 hernia operations. And 35 years later, Dr. C. Everett Koop became U.S. Surgeon General under President Ronald Reagan. Clearly, I should get credit for giving him such a great start.