The wind is blowing hard in Tunis today, breaking umbrellas, forcing people indoors, and swirling trash down cobblestone roads. I’m digesting some couscous and harissa while the Italians study next door, and soon I will attempt to memorize a stanza in Arabic by Mahmoud Darwish. It feels good to sit down. The Nigerian Jimi Hendrix, lions, a hospital visit, a renegade jeep, and the trains have taken their toll.
Itching to explore, I’ve gotten out of Tunis a couple of times recently, mostly to the east on a short, cheap commuter rail. The TGM is the main transit line between Carthage and Tunis; the ancient and the new centers of this land. Beginning at Tunis Nord in downtown Tunis, chugging east on the northern side of Lac de Tunis, past the stations Amilcar and Hannibal, and ending in La Marsa. There are many high schools enroute, and a popular game is to run alongside a departing train and leap through a door held open by accomplices onboard.
La Marsa is, among other things, where I got my new cast. Dr. Charfi came recommended by the US Embassy and my friend Susan. He spoke English. The hospital was an “inefficient” one (Dr. Charfi’s words), but I got an xray, a new cast, and some good news: I can take the cast off on April 26th, four weeks earlier than expected.
With my fresh cast, Didier and I walked throughout the Carthaginian cape. Starting in La Marsa, we trekked past a giant poster of President Ben Ali, ornate doorways, palm trees, gaggles of tourists from Germany and France, expensive trinket alleys, and beautiful white and blue homes. Everything in this region is touristic, which made capturing light a queasy art.
We ended up on a cold beach with exposed geological strata and sand the color of caramel. Five teenage girls were meekly testing the cold Mediterranean with their bare feet, pants rolled up mid-calf. Couples strolled the beach and snuggled on broken staircases. Men with black leather jackets kissing women in headscarves: a sight essentially Tunisian. All along Sidi Bou Said’s beach lay detritus of civilization. Concrete carcasses of cafes and homes stood in the shallow tide, tangled fishing nets and shredded plastic lapping the shores. Above stood magnificent homes, testament to Tunisia’s economic integration, while below on the beach and in the alleys of El Omrane lay the evidence of that same integration’s disparity.
A few days later, I rode the TGM again on the way to Gammarth with my Italian archaeologist zami'li (colleague) Costanza. We spent the day in the decadent hotel-spa-resort The Barcelo, studying Arabic, drinking 5 dinar milkshakes, and watching gaudy tourists. We stayed after nightfall to see an excelled American jazz vocalist named Kevin Mahogany and a highly recommendable Nigerian guitarist Keziah Jones. The student-ticket balcony was bustling with rowdy Tunisian couples and friends. Costanza and I made good use of her zoom-lens and took the TGM home around midnight.
It’s a different train at night. During the day, the TGM funnels service industry workers from their tourism jobs home to Tunis, and white-collar downtown workers to the La Marsa suburbs, but with darkness comes the thrill seekers, partiers and a few drunk people. A Tunisian kid around my age tried to yank my bag, but couldn’t beat my super-cast grip. He fell down and had to leap off the speeding bus. Afterwards, six strangers approached me to ask, in English, if I was OK. Bikhayir, alhammdu’Allah.
Myriam’s husband is named Adnan, but goes by Sabi. Last Sunday, he took Didier and I to the Marché Central de Tunis near the French Embassy. Under a plastic and tarp ceiling two stories high, stalls of dead fish on piles of crushed ice stretched for three city blocks. Sole, carp, and tuna next to shark, octopus and anchovies. Feet squeaked on the slick, cold floor, and avoided the gutters with assorted guts. Sabi said he’d come back later, when the prices were lower. Next door was the land of vegetables: peppers, pumpkins, potatoes, tomatoes, fennel and garlic stacked high in burlap and wooden crates. Sabi took us quickly through the intoxicating aromas to the red meat alleys ringing the market. We walked past little toy rocking-horses in front of a hanging slab of horse, a cow head in a bucket, and skinned and raw lamb.
Sabi wanted to show us one vendor at the end of the alley. “He sells pork,” Didier translated. We continued on our mission: buying a companion for the house’s lonely fakroon (turtle). Sabi haggled and bought a small male and one baby turtle for the house. Aiyoob, Aziz and Noor were very happy, and the turtles seem to have fallen madly, deeply in love.
A week later, Sabi took Didier, Aiyoob and I to another market in southern Tunis. This was was a much more chaotic and aggressive trading center. We crossed Avenue Moncef Bey and were immediately in a thrush of people selling bicycles, parts, motorcycles and scooters. The prices were, at first, outrageous and the choices were fascinating: 140 dinars, or $100, for a Frankenstein bicycle of multiple origins. After two hours of haggling, examining, repairing and pantomime, Didier and I took home a freeride bike and a large utility bike respectively. On the way out, we passed the live animal market. Feathers from dead or alive chickens and caged exotic birds swirled among a seething mass of mongrel canines. Michael Vick could’ve recruited here.
Valerio, Giorgia and I decided to go to the zoo last week, and ended up behind bars, splattered with animal waste. Hippos, hyenas, ostriches, kangaroos, dogs, pigeons, bears and gazelle were part of the zoo’s menagerie. At the baboon cage, where the adults seem to have a colorful anus disease, a man with his family was throwing bits of bread and rocks at the simians. The baby baboons scampered out of the way as an aggravated adult male rushed the cage with a handful of feces. Luckily, only Giorgia was hit. We then were led by an ancient animal handler to the camels, which we fed grass ripped from the neighboring, empty lot. Another handler offered to let us see a baby leopard. We consented and followed him, past two leopards making love, and into a rank tunnel behind their cage. An angry mother growled at us, we watched where we stepped, and then cooed over a small infant with big aquamarine eyes. The feline handler beckoned us back out, and then opened the back of the lion cage.
I went in first, and stood staring at one male and his pride of four females. Tunisians on the other side of the bars watched me. I waved and laughed. The lions’ eyes flicked between my flesh and the steel prod of the handler. Again, the man who had taken us so close to violent, brutal death beckoned. Again, we followed him into another pungent alley. In front of us lay a lion and lioness, soon to be prodded awake by the handler, against our objections. When you can see the plaque on their sabre-teeth, the roar of a lion is beyond scary.
During the weekend, I visited Bizerte with Didier, Marion and Valerio. Founded in 1000 BC by the Phoenicians, the city is Tunisia’s most important port, with architecture leftover from Turkish, Spanish and French empires. It took seven years after Tunisia was granted independence from France for Bizerte to be released from French control, and only after a three day siege when French paratroopers tried to break a Tunisian blockade.
On the beach, we ate bread and cheese and watched two heavily intoxicated men in a jeep groove the sand as couples crooned in the slight breeze. We had qahiwa and shai binanya on top of the meek Bizerte Aquarium, overlooking the old Kasba and the tankers in the Mediterranean.
Back home, the bus dropped us off at the chaotic transportation hub Bab Sadoon, and we walked home as night fell. Didier made crepes with harissa, tuna, cheese, date compote, and chocolate hazelnut-butter. Later, we set up in the marble courtyard and plucked the jazz standard Summertime.
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Dispatches Africa North Forbidden Meat, Commuter Rails and Jazz in Tunis
Dispatches Africa North Forbidden Meat, Commuter Rails and Jazz in Tunis
Forbidden Meat, Commuter Rails and Jazz in Tunis
