“‘Tripoli?’ said the British Airways agent at Heathrow Airport near London, searching my passport for the hard-to-obtain visa. ‘God help you.’

It’s difficult to think of a place, in our 21st century, left to pioneer. For Americans, right now, that would be Libya, a complicated and confounding land on the North African coast, opened in February after 23 years of a travel ban tighter than Cuba’s.” (New York Times )