An exchange between Sloan and a wounded Derek in PTL's Season 2 premiere, New Guard suggested this story. Sloan asked Derek, "What about Al-Kufar?" Derek's reply was, "I don't want to talk about Al-Kufar?" That tweeked my curiosity, so I decided to search for Al-Kufar. Low and behold I found it... and in the best possible place for a potential story set in the early 1980s... Libya.
Al-Kufar... or Al-Kufrah... also variously spelled al-Kufra, Kufra, Kufrir... is a real place. It has various spellings because the of the shift between the Arabic and Latin based alphabets. It is
a depression, and the "state" named for it, in the southeastern Libya, near it's juncture with Egypt, Sudan, and Chad.
Libya has been known to offer refuge to terrorists and may have had, and may still have, such camps somewhere. To my knowledge, Al-Kufrah is not a terrorist training center, however, it was used as
a military staging area for the 1980's war against Chad, mentioned in Chapter 17. As far as I know, there were no UN sanctions against Libya in 1983, though at that
time there were several US-Libyan confrontations concerning the Gulf of Sidra. The
bombing of the US embassy in Beruit, also mentioned in Chapter 17, occurred in April
of '83 and killed 87 people.
The information about Al-Kufrah came from various guide books and from a
very kind Sudanese gentleman, Mr. Al-Badri, who, in the early 1980's, worked as an engineer on the
Gialo to Al-Kufrah highway and on the Great Man-made River project that Col.
Kaddaffi built to bring water from the immense aquifer beneath the Al-Kufrah
depression to the more populated north. The camel market at Jenzia did exist as of that
time, and may still.
The route from Cairo to Al-Kufrah does exist via the highway (Rt. 341, also
called the Great Desert Circuit) and the various tracks and trails mentioned, though
their true conditions are unknown. The various oases named, Bahariya [which, of late, has become rather notable for the discovery of an immense necropolis], Farafra, and
Dakla also exist, as do the Temples of Philae, which were moved to make way for
Lake Nasser.
There is a legend, probably an ancient fraud, of Alexander the Great's possible
burial at the Siwa Oasis.
Tanit or Tanith was a Carthaginian goddess (a variation of the Middle Eastern
Astarte and Ishtar). Within the past few years there have been cemeteries unearthed,
I believe in the vicinity of Tripoli, that contain large numbers of children and appear
to be dedicated to her. One of the reasons for the Romans' particularly vengeful
destruction of Carthage, other than as a political, economic, and military rival, was that
they regarded the Carthaginians as barbaric because they engaged in human sacrifice.
Little is known of their religion. The symbols mentioned were associated with Tanit.
According to Mr. Al-Badri, the Islamic calls to prayer are accurate. If there is an error, I deeply apologize. It is entirely my fault.
;-Dubricus
February 1999
PS In one of those odd coincidences that some PTL fans have come to call "PTL Moments", the announcement was made, in May 1999, of the discovery of an immense necropolis filled with thousands of Roman era mummies located beneath Bahariya in Western Egypt. For those interested, check out The Discovery of the Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya Oasis, the website owned by Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of Egyptian Antiquities.
