Aunt May in Libya, part I

Aunt May, another of Mum’s sisters, was telling everyone about her most recent visit to North Africa. Her daughter, my cousin Rita, had eloped with a Libyan student from the London School of Economics. Dissolve thirty years. Rita now lived in a guarded, high-walled estate in Tripoli, and her son-in-law oversaw part of Qaddafi’s nuclear program. They lived well in Libya. Very well. They took holidays in Switzerland and in England, and they had bodyguards. If nothing else, it was safe to assume they lived in fear of their lifestyle.

Stopping for directions

“Now, when you get up there, you’ll come to this thing we call a ‘roundabout.’ Got that, yeah?”
He talked slowly. He talked loudly. We realized he thought I was foreign. He thought I was an American! He said again, but slower, “a ‘ran-da-bhat.’ ” Bloody nerve.
“Anyway, you’ll come to this ‘ran-da-bhat’ and—”
He never explained what a ‘ran-da-bhat’ was exactly. Instead, he started making large circular movements with his oddly bent hand and arm. If I had been American by birth and not by choice, I might have imagined he was describing a carousel with gaudily painted wooden horses placed on the highway to amuse passing commuters, rather than a traffic circle. I stared at him. He smiled, nodding, looking like the amiable idiot he thought I was.
“Yes, yes, I know what it is, I’ve been ‘ere before.” I tried to thicken up my Cockney accent. He went right on, ignoring me and my strategically dropped aitches.
“But don’t go right a-rhaand it. Turn off before you do, and that’ll get you on the Ilford Road. Can’t miss it.”
I thanked him and we were on our way.