Fresh from the desert of Ksar Ghilane, I returned to the final week before our final Arabic exams. The week was a blur of preparations: for me, this was my last chance to prove myself at the Bourguiba Institute. The finals were alarmingly difficult at first, but I tried my hardest and they went well. I was asked my dream question for the oral exam: What are the causes of illegal immigration? I passed with a mutawasiT or middle grade. Grammar still defies me. The same day as my first exam, my parents landed in Tunis.
I greeted them at the airport with flowers and a big welcome-to-Africa grin. As I finished my exams, they crashed in my apartment in the middle of Tunis. Sofiene cooked a delicious lentil dish to welcome them, and we drank Magnon until bedtime. In the morning, my parents were happy when Rosa, our friend from Napoli, brought chocolate croissants. I made mom and pops try leblebi for lunch, a dish of crumbled stale bread soaked in chickpea stew with soft boiled egg and olive oil. It might’ve been a mistake.
We walked the tombstones of the American Battle Cemetery and then visited my good friend Susan Driss. She treated us to a plethora of Tunisian sweets and savories. Susan gave us two pomagranates for the road, and my parents left understanding my praise and gratefulness for her hospitality, kindness and friendship.
Our rented car left Tunis the next day. We did not have a lot of time, but I wanted to show them the entire country, not just the metropolitan center. I also had a few items on my bucket list for Tunisia. It was a whirlwind tour of dubious hotels and cursory views, but we captured a wide spectrum of Tunisia.
We started in Kairouan, the center of Islam in Tunisia for centuries. Hiring a guide, we marveled at the Great Mosque of the city, standing in its square, marble courtyard with sundials, imagining the throngs syncronized in prayer. We then followed our guide down empty alleys to carpet collective regulated by the government. Silk and camel hair designs of every color and size hung from the walls. Embroided peacocks, camels and even a portrait of President Ben Ali watched from the corners and ceilings. Our hosts there poured us tea as they rolled carpets at our feet, one on top of the other, advertising the quality, stitch-count and origins of the patterns. We simply couldn’t carry one where we were going.
Next stop, four hours south to Tatouine. We arrived late, hungry and thirsty, and stopped in the first hotel we found for beer and couscous. Sleep and the morning came quickly. Before we got back on the road, we bought gazelle horns, sweet delicacies famous in Tatouine: a porridge of dates, nuts, honey and sugar wrapped in thin dough and fried, then further soaked in syrup. Our box lasted the entire trip and was a helpful glucose-rush on our long road.
We then cut west towards the desert castles of Chenini and Geurmesa. My mom covered herself with my Algerian,Touareg-blue scarf against the wind, and we climbed over the ruins. These are the ksours of the Jebel Dahar, old Berber and then Islamic fortresses. I wrote about them previously, but their beauty does not wear on you. Carved and built from the mountains in a land of rock height and scrubland plain, Chenini and Geurmesa are perched on colossal natural defensive systems. One can see miles in all directions and watch storm, friend, foe and dawn approach from afar.
Our little family car left Geurmesa after sandwhiches in a broken house atop the ksar, and headed due east. We stopped in Douz for the night in a grand hotel that reminded my father of the opulence of Saddam’s palaces. The next morning, we made our way across the thin black strip of asphalt in the white expanse of Chott Jerid. Nothing but baked salt until the brown mountains of the north or blue sky of the south. We passed the oasis of Tozeur reluctantly and made our way north, chugging up the hills towards Jugurtha’s Table. When the road ran out into piste, we merely gazed at its awesome girth when a little girl approached us. Maybe six years old, she wore a smattering of colors and a matted wool hat. I asked her how we could climb to the tableau du Jugurtha and she stammered off a host of directions, followed by an advertisement of her skills as a guide.
She hopped into our car and pointed us to the base of a long line of stone steps. We did not want to climb, lacking time, and I said thank you. She then turned her head and said, “Chocolate?”
Laughing, we handed her a Butterfinger. Before she was out of our car, other kids were swarming, seemingly smelling the sugar on the air. The Butterfinger we were willing to part with, but our other chocolate wasn’t easily given. My father’s coveted delicacy, made in his hometown of Lufkin, is called Chico-Sticks. He refers to them as Texan cigars, and he had characteristically imported some to Tunis and was very reluctant to give them away to strangers. He relented, and from East Texas to western Tunisia, Chico-Sticks made children smile.
One last Butterfinger, a mammoth kingsize, was found latently as we pulled away. I stuck my hand out the window, the orange candy a baton raised to every child’s sugary dreams. Incredibly, the widest girl left the others in her dust. The image of her blue turtle kneck bouncing towards the bar of chocolate, eyes focused, will forever be with me.
We drove down the mountain, chocolateless and smiling, away from Algeria towards the east, arriving in the mountain town of Le Kef during a ruddy sunset.
Le Kef looks like a German ski town, or what the movies tell me at least, without the snow. It was a snug place to spend the night. We drove around the old casbah, and then I introduced my parents to o’jja, the Tunisian stew of tomatoes, onions, spices, sausage and poached eggs eaten with fingers and torn french bread.
The next day, we walked the ancient stones of Dougga, the best preserved Roman ruins in Tunisia. The day broke ice blue and grey over the broken arches, columns and doorways as we gaped at the structures. In the forum, we craned our knecks to stare at its glorious edifice forty feet above us. Like mice around table legs, we stood below it’s columns and marveled at the verdant hills that made Dougga powerful. Millenias of men and women before us must have felt something similar to our wonder.