my My Wandering

‘Je suis né à Tunis et j’ai étudié l’informatique. Par conséquent, si j’avais voulu gagner beaucoup d’argent, je serais resté là-bas, où j’avais une maison où vivre, des amis et de la famille sur lesquels compter, ainsi que là où je connaissais bien mon quartier et la ville, où j’étais à l’aise de ce point de vue. Mais j’ai cependant déménagé à Djerba, où la vie me semble plus patiente et où les hommes me semblent d’accord avec cela. Oui, il faut endurer les mois d’été avec leurs foules de touristes, mais même dans ce cas, les groupes de touristes ont la tendance à rester de leur côté de l’île, dans la ‘zone touristique’, said Ashraf upon slowing down (instead of speeding up as other drivers did) while going through a flooded street after a rainy night.’ Indeed, a paved road in good condition, lined with lights went from the airport straight to the Eastern part of the island, the one where big hotels, fancy restaurants and the typical sterile, yet nicely (i.e. exotically) painted experience awaited.

There were indeed more than one Tunisia. One that catered to tourists, with its all inclusive beach resort hotels, well tended streets, cosy souvenir shops, carefully polished sedans and gourmet restaurants. Then, the country where highways linked the Libyan border with Tunis, where the well developed North had a standard feel with its neat cafes, malls and restaurants, where ‘made in China’  Europe was present at every street corner. And then, the other Tunisia, contoured by the tourist roads, off those main roads, featured bad, pothole-lined roads, uneven or non existent sidewalks, poor restaurants and institution-like cafes where large groups of men congregated, weather allowing sitting outside, talking and watching the street life flow down with its fumes and buzz, in all its colour and vibrance. Where poor neighborhoods were made of houses that seemed to never be completed, where patchwork seemed to be synonym with life, yet where this very do it yourself life captivated, thrilled, annoyed and equally charmed one in a most welcome way. A Tunisia where people were not kind because they had something to sell to or get from the stranger, but one where this was an inborn feature of their existence, as it had been for their parents and grandparents, where they had lived in the picturesque medinas with their rich architectural details on the coast or in the harsh, yet equally beautiful ksars that dotted the highlands farther South or West.

‘Merci beaucoup pour votre gentillesse’, I replied as Ashraf said he would arrange things so as to be able to give me and my father a ride from Houmt Souq to Tataouine. 

‘Je vous en prie. J’ai appris une chose dans la vie : quand je le peux, j’aide ceux qui m’entourent. Je n’attends rien en échange, mais généralement les choses reviennent. Je ne peux pas contrôler ce que je reçois des autres, mais je peux contrôler ce que je donne aux autres.’

The wind was very strong and big rain drops whipped one’s face, so that the medina looked deserted, with the few locals around tucked in a cafeteria and merchants trying to call customers from inside their booths or small shops in the souq.

‘Vous voyez, ces nuages ​​ont amené la pluie, et c’était une telle pluie, quelque chose bien rare ici. Et le même vent qui a amené ces nuages ​​au-dessus de nos têtes les emporte maintenant. Il suffit de regarder les petites trous, les fragments d’un ciel bleu là-bas. Ils deviennent de plus en plus grands; nous aurons bientôt un ciel bleu. Comme je le disais, les choses sont bien circulaires dans la vie’.

Ashraf’s words reminded me of a text message I had received as I wanted to turn my phone off while the plane I was on was about to start taxiing to the runway in Istanbul less than a week before. A message saying that my 83 year old father had slipped on a wet floor and fallen hitting his head badly, so that he was in ER waiting for the result of a cerebral scan with a massive periorbital haematoma. While aware of the potential risks in my father’s situation and of his bad condition, as I was to see after rushing to the hospital upon landing in Bucharest, I somewhat knew that we were going to make our planned trip to Tunisia some 4 days later, so that I neither canceled, nor rescheduled our flights or other arrangements.

A dash of white paint on a beige-brown background of sand dotted with olive trees and palm trees, the partly underground mosque of Berdaoui enchanted the eye with its typical Ibadite architecture reminding one of the M’zab towns, with its functional, yet fluid lines, with its simple, yet so beautiful shapes, with its standing out without creating a contrast from the nature around it. The same familiar absence of straight lines and rigid, square shapes, while architecture embraced a humanly imperfect approach it turned into a masterpiece. An approach that was to also be found in the harsh location of the Berber communities. The ksour around Tataouine bore consistent resemblances with the mountain villages in South-Western Saudi Arabia or with the similar communities around Timimoun in neighbouring Algeria. Yet what drew one’s attention here was the extent a ksar reached while stretching for 2-3 miles along a sedimentary layer hosting small caves the Berbers enlarged and completed with small houses and more rarely even smaller yards, as well as the fine decorations on the walls and ceilings of some of the still standing houses, proof that people that had not known writing (as their language simply did not have a written form) found that as no obstacle to observe Aesthetics and arts. Both the Ibadites and the Berbers had managed to celebrate life without ado, wailing or lamentation, each of them instead turning the little they were given into masterpieces of ingenuity and hard work.

‘Regardez là, perchée sur la pente, la deuxième maison est celle où j’habite avec ma femme et mes trois petits. La vie dans le nouveau village, le nouveau Douiret en bas est bien plus facile, avec la route goudronnée, l’eau courante, les commerces, tout ce que la modernité a amené. Mais je me sens lié à ces falaises et pentes rocheuses, aux petites pièces caverneuses et à ces murs gros en pierre de ma maison, à ces petits sentiers d’accès escarpés. C’est seulement ainsi que j’arrive à apprécier ce qui on a été donné. C’est ce que je ressens en réalité en étant berbère.’

Tataouine itself carried on the multiple Tunisia pattern. First there were those courteous, kind, friendly and nice people in the market place, at the taxi stand or down the street. In a small restaurant where the wallah cook-waiter-cashier busied himself while filling them dozens of bowls with a precise dosage of mouth watering, thick sauces from the three great steaming pots strategically placed in front of the entrance. At one of the spice shops in the souq where the young merchant there, noting my interest in salep, popped out a bag of sorghum flour and started talking about its benefits and cooking options. The two elderly men with their timeless faces running a large cafeteria off the souq, moving their tables and chairs from one side of the building to the other one according to the sun (as it was rather cold in the shade), talking in a slow paced, low voice and answering pretty much any question or greeting with a smile. Then, there were those trying and sometimes succeeding to make some extra money from the stranger, the typical situation where locals hardly making a living, not being able to even contemplate the idea of a holiday see foreigners traveling half the way around the globe and spending money on non-essential stuff just for the fun of it. Charging two-three times the usual price for a glass of thé à la menthe or a meal, asking for an exaggerated price for a bag of fresh pistachios. The great thing about it however was that this multiple Tunisia pattern had a certain consistency and balance about it, as one never got only one side of the coin and the two kept one both alive and thankful for what he or she had been given, while staying away from the numbing feeling granted by too easy living and convenience. As for the response to people acting this way, I reverted to my old habit of pointing out that they were cheating and by more or less how much, while nonetheless paying what they were asking for and leaving it to their conscience, hence relieving mine while remaining with no regrets or bad feelings about the situation.

As vegetation got scarcer and soil turned to dust or sand, Umm Kulthum’s voice filled the louage van which vibrated given the driver’s turning up the volume. Scarce vegetation then turned to nil vegetation, while the road seemed to be the only solid matter in an environment where there was nothing to get one’s attention, no hill, mound or boulder, no village or building, no forest, thicket or lone tree. And then, after crossing some unexpected, Fata Morgana-like palm tree plantations, one instantly immersed in the buzzing street life of Tozeur. Cars rushed down the road in all directions, motorcycles came out of the blue and seemed to multiply out of the blue, while oranges and dates filled merchants’ baskets, sacks and even pick-up trucks at every street corner. Other than that, a certain signpost bothered the eye as it read ‘Zone touristique’, the same omen one had met in Djerba. In this case, this stood for poor food in a fancy package, waiters awkwardly wearing bows, out-of-place tables and decorations, and, ultimately, the numbing comfort and glitz with whatever fragrance aiming to please at all – but preferably low – costs. 

‘On a du shorba, du couscous, de la harissa, du poulet… Mais ici, ils sont tous réunis dans une assiette à la berbère. Ce n’est pas un restaurant touristique et il n’y a pas de spectacle ici. Et nous n’avons pas de menu, il n’y a qu’une seule chose, comme je l’ai dit’, shouted the mid-aged man behind the counter at a small, but busy restaurant across the street from the bustling bus station.

‘Et en plus, nous ne vendons pas de baguettes, on fait ici notre propre pain, la tabouna’, he added in an even angrier voice.

‘Bah bon, deux plats s’il vous plaît’.

‘Et pour toi je ne peux pas preparer une assiette végétarienne, la comptabilité ne le permets pas.’

‘Aucun problème. Mon père aura deux portions de viande s’il le souhaite.’

The man returned to his filling plates mumbling something about tourists, something that was obviously well deserved, given the Zone touristique some 300 m. up the road from there. He did not show up again and preferred to send one of his staff to bring us the food when it was ready. But I sensed his peeking at us, to check whether everything was fine, but when he saw me turn my head, he was gone, more mumbling about. The food was excellent and the treatment was the well deserved result of those either drawing the borders of or choosing the Zone touristique experience. 

A zone touristique that had become staple in Tunisia: they had built a parallel road to the main (and typically congested, lively, noisy, captivating) one, they had lined it with Tozeur Medina-inspired buildings hosting better hotels, restaurants, administrative offices and other businesses and they had made sure it connected the Dar Cherait with one of the entrances to the Medina. This way, tourists needed not see the town proper, staying instead in their sterile bubble, paying glitz prices for glitz dishes in glitz restaurants the waiters of which wore glitz period outfits. And when they asked for more, they were labeled and placed in offroad cars that took them to some oasis in the desert. As for the Dar Cherait, it fitted the Zone touristique very well, with its obvious recent construction, as well as with its otherwise fine exhibits and wonderful ornated hall around which the museum stretched. The brickwork here, while absolutely superb in its apparent simplicity reminding one at least from the technical point of view of Ghorid art, had something in common with other zones touristiques in the world, like Samarkand, Bukhara or rebuilt caravanserais in Tashkent, with Dar Cherait in fact shared the lifeless feature.

But the medina was a great place to be, with its typically narrow lanes, its rare pedestrians (of which most were small children), as well as its countless cats. Every brickwork pattern had a different signification, as some were meant to protect one from the evil eye or the djins, others represented the latter or celebrated birds and plants in the region. Then, the colour of the medina walls perfectly matched that of the dust and sand all around, what made it to be a natural continuation of the environment it was located in. Then, furthermore, as one was to see later on in Sfax, the medina here was alive day and night, it did not follow strict mall-like opening hours and it did not die instantly at 6 PM.

Passengers slowly came out of the dark one by one or in small groups, most carrying a sort of load or luggage, while louage van drivers called their destination in a low, nearly whispered voice. Except for one heading to Douz, vans did not fill up, so that they could not start unless the existing passengers agreed to share the cost of the vacant seats. The same happened to us, so that we reached the railway station in Métlaoui just as the train was readying to start. Lit by large blue neon lights, the railway station building, massive and imposing, could have hardly come in a starker contrast with the train on its other side: four battered cars and a poor diesel engine, as it had probably been meant more as a Lézard rouge zone touristique rather than a station serving regular passenger trains and phosphate freighters. And then, once the scenery changed from arid expanses to olive tree plantations and eventually to greener fields, as one reached Sfax, the good news one sensed in the air said that there was no zone touristique here. Hmm, err, actually there were several of them, but out of town, so that they did not count as such.

Sfax. ‘Charming while not charming at all’ would have been an appropriate slogan for the city. On the one hand, we had been warned by people in other parts of the country, that it was an industrial town of no interest at all, that people there were always on the run, that it was simply not at all a tourist friendly place. On the other hand, while we found that some of these statements were true or at least had a true core, it was more or less the very same things that made it a nice place to spend a while. The old town with its well preserved fortress-like ramparts was host to a sort of fast paced ants that had no problem to bump into other people, ride their motorcycles straight across busy commercial lanes or the vegetable market, push or leave merchandise carts anywhere, and all that is a very fast pace. Gone were the typical desert people patience and calm. Gone was courtesy; more often than not, people replied to a greeting with a short nodding or a bland and formal ‘salaam’. Gone were smiles; people in the crowd across the medina on a busy Sunday seemed to be able to look only straight ahead and, once they spotted what they were after, to hurry straight to whatever that was. On the bright side, the city had not sold itself for tourism money, so that it had managed to preserve its authenticity. And the medina was a result of the people living or working there, but also it was meant for these people and it should stay this way. Then, when darkness embraced it, the medina turned quiet, deserted, while life either left it or moved indoors, so that one could sometimes hear proofs of its existence from behind its fine window blinds or decorative panels allowing one to see without being seen, just like in Zanzibar or Lamu.

‘Vous savez, c’est ici à Sfax que furent réalisées les premières cartes de la mer Méditerranée au XVe siècle. En fait, elles étaient les oeuvres de quelques savants qui vivait ici, sur cette ruelle. C’est cette ville qui m’a rappelé après avoir terminé mes études en France. Sciences politiques et histoire’, said the thin elderly man with a lean face upon entering the wonderful old house  we were staying at, a house he was the owner of.

An idyllic postcard showing a long line of white houses set between the blue sky above and the turquoise sea below. Another one with a polished stone-paved lane bordered by white houses in an apparent breezy atmosphere. And then, a third one with some people fishing along a rocky coastline on what appears to be a peaceful, relaxed afternoon. All these instances were true, but they all missed something the respective postcard images could not reveal: traffic. Because in Mahdia both locals (especially keen of their Vespas) and tourists (especially keen of their SUVs or anyway show off cars, with the driver or passengers usually holding a smartphone ready for live streaming) seemed unable to walk even for short distances. The whole peninsula was surrounded by a paved road where the two categories above converged to become one, so that a monotonous roar filled one’s ears while a blueish stream of fumes plied the Medina lanes, as well as this road. While in larger medinas such as Sfax or Tozeur motorcycles were needed due to longer distances and heaps of merchandise to carry, their number was greater in Mahdia and utility was next to nil. And while in one of world’s most polluted cities like Lahore motorcycles and rickshaws were related to poverty and lousy infrastructure, in Mahdia they were related to hedonism, ego and, ultimately, a sacred glitz phallus. One that came in a stark contrast with an otherwise airy, picturesque and tranquil old town. It was plain hilarious to see someone using a motorcycle for moving some 50 meters along the coast with his fishing rods or more or less the same distance from one cafe to another in the old medina.

‘Buona sera’. It appeared that most foreigners filling the many big hotels North of Mahdia were Italians, so that we were instantly labeled as such when a shop attendant tried to have us come over and see whatever knickknack he was selling. Then, there was always a story, a marketing hook to begin with, such as the many Tunisians studying medicine in Romanian universities. One could not but wonder – thankfully from a considerable distance and should not be shortened – what sort of crap (marinated, seasoned, minced, stirred, scrambled) was provided to and expected by the planeloads of tourists with their vast appetite for cheap all inclusive holidays.

As the louage van passed by the Monastir crossroads – with the big wig hotels on the skyline – and later on, as it approached Sousse with its large industrial plants, I rejoiced at my choice of not going that way, but rather, after merely changing vehicles in Sousse, of carrying on to Kairouan. With a rather oscillating reputation, the city welcomed us with several encounters with kind and open locals, whether this was about the smiling faces of a hotel receptionist or of a restaurant cook speaking only Arabic, but doing her best to understand us (a quite complex case, as my father could not eat (too) spicy dishes (in a country where harissa was de rigueur in all dishes including some desserts) and I was a vegetarian. 

‘La place du 7 novembre?’

‘Oui, juste à côté de l’hôpital Ibn El Jazzar’.

‘Ah oui, désolé de ne pas connaître l’endroit sous ce nom, mais, vous savez, le dernier président a fait renommer toutes les rues et places du 7 novembre’, answered the kind taxi driver that would be very keen on giving us the change to the last sou at the end of the ride. Then indeed, as we were to see also in the medina, the main North – South lane had also been renamed from 7 Novembre to Habib Bourguiba.

There seemed to coexist two medinas in Kairouan. First, there was the tumultuous, crowded one along the main North-South axis and a few lanes or souqs just off it. Shoes, trinkets, sweets, perfume, incense, baskets, vegetables and fruits were all sold there, with merchants calling for customers, customers walking from one shop or stall to another one, with halva or local sweet-filled carts going back and forth, with motorcycles or bicycles making their way sometimes avoiding accidents as if through a miracle, and well, with the odd car making it along those narrow lanes by half an inch, taking next to impossible turns or even pushing pedestrians aside so as to be able to pass. Then, there was the quiet Kairouan medina elsewhere, with its maze of narrow lanes, beautiful, sometimes well hidden houses, great gates with fine carved stone frames, with white, light blue and light green making up the colour scheme. Similarly, there were different approaches to a souq, as, for instance, a private museum such as Governor’s House with its wonderful interiors had become a warehouse (and a picturesque one, indeed) for carpet merchants, as its rooms hosted piles of small carpets, pillows and rugs, while larger ones were hanging from the ceiling or rolled up. An ad-hoc solution that seemed to be working much better than carpet merchants inviting tourists visit their shops with the same set of old stories and schemes that proved ever less efficient with the hedonist, always on the run contemporary man. The whole thing was even more efficient with the help of half a dozen men walking up and down the lanes on a 100 m. radius of Governor’s House, while advertising it as a museum and sending or leading tourists there.

The Great Mosque of Kairouan was not necessarily impressive, but simply beautiful without any architectural extravagance. Its layout, courtyard and colonnade reminded one of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, while some of the zaouias (shrines) scattered across town had one’s memory travel back and forth, from Lebanon and Syria to Morocco and Algeria, in a great, rich journey. But then, the other face of the medina often awaited down the same street or around the corner, with ruined old houses, decaying pieces of decoration or ugly contemporary inserts complete with plastic window frames, unfitting colour schemes or tacky banners adorned on heritage walls.

‘Cela peut paraître absurde, mais ce n’est pas le cas; il y avait un souq ici jusqu’à ce qu’il soit incendié et que personne n’intervienne. Ici (and he knocked on a rusty gate with a great chain), fermé, ici (and he pointed to a door half covered in rubbish and dirt), fermé. Ils ont tous quitté ce quartier de la médina. C’étaient mes voisins, j’habite là-bas, dans la maison bleu clair. C’est là que je suis né et où je veux mourir. Mais je l’avoue qu’on commence à se sentir seul même dans une médina si animée à seulement 200-300 m. d’ici’.

It sometimes happens that time plays tricks to them humans in their desperate, obsessive race to precisely count, divide, calculate and definitely not waste it; it is funny though that man has the tendency to pathetically and uselessly keep counting, chasing, fighting time. Going to the station de louage in the morning, we knew that the Makhtar route did not see a lot of public transport and indeed the van heading there did not show up for a long while. Walking to the bus station nearby to see whether were were luckier with a bus, by the time I returned a few minutes later, my father told me that the van had come, filled up and started, while he could not convince the driver to wait. So that we moved to the bus station looking at a nearly two hour wait, which turned out to be twice that, time that we used to do things that might translate as doing nothing when put in black and white. Taking in the buses, coming and going, with those crowds of passengers fighting to get on and get seats. Lazying in the sun, with the background made by the buzz in the second hand flea market nearby. Talking to various local people and the attendants at the couple of small shops there. 

Sipping tea at one of those omnipresent cafes where people stood around tables or alone, simply facing the street, disregarding of how busy, noisy or fume intensive the street, lane or avenue in front of the cafe was. Many were typically chatting. Yet some were quiet, sharing their silence with their friends and relatives. Quiet for dozens of minutes, while taking in the street or looking into the distance. All that to such an extent sometimes that whole cafes were quiet, a quiet place in a busy town humdrum. And yet, it felt as if a single, lively conversation  took place there, one where everyone around had his or her say, one that started with inquiring about one’s well being and family. One where voice, ado, noise, package, debauchery, aroma enhancers were all unnecessary to communicate.

‘Vous savez, à part quelques mots, je ne comprends grand chose quand vous parlez à votre père en roumain, mais je pense que nous, les gens sur la Terre, devrions nous concentrer sur ce qui nous rassemble et pas sur ce qui nous sépare. Pour moi, tout être humain est comme un frère. Pour cette raison particulière, je ne pourrai jamais comprendre les guerres civiles. La Libye, la Syrie… Ou les combats en Ukraine, en Palestine, en Israël, au Soudan. À mon avis, quand un homme prend une arme pour tuer un autre homme, n’importe qui, il est sans doute pourri. Pourri. Se disputer sur qui a commencé, qui a «raison» et qui a «tort» est vain. Comment séparer précisément le bien du mal? Quel point de référence ultime définit le bien et le mal?’.

But then, as much as one tried to have one glass of tea here and another one there, to talk to local people wherever possible and respond to their kindness, to look beyond the package, beyond the glitz tourism industry, beyond the new business and residential quarters, beyond picturesque medinas or poor neighborhoods with their dusty streets flooded in rubbish, as familiar and easy to travel across (compared to other countries in the region) one found parts of Tunisia, one still remained alien, stranger to its atmosphere:

‘J’apprécie beaucoup vous voir assis ici, en prenant un thé avec nous sur des chaises dans la rue comme ça, au lieu de choisir l’une de ces pâtisseries et restaurants chics comme les groupes de touristes qui arrivent en bus, prennent des photos de monuments et puis repartent sans nous parler. Mais pourtant, je vois que vous êtes loin, très loin d’ici, votre esprit est ailleurs, ça se voit dans vos yeux.’

The bus eventually came and we joined the crowd of passengers streaming in the shabby bus. At first the road crossed the familiar dusty, arid fields where only olive trees, dry grass, equally dry shrubs and cacti seemed to be able to grow, just to slowly get greener, with cereal fields and pine tree forests coming into sight. The road then started to go uphill, crossing a few sometimes dramatic and rocky hills before going down to extensive farmlands. It was then once more uphill, until El Kef came into sight, a city on a smooth hillside. It was nearly dark: it had taken us some 8 hours to cover slightly over 200 km., but we were not at all upset, happily talking about the day’s encounters.

El Kef was different. Its traffic stopped in the centre, where, in and off a T-shape crossroads, there was even a day long traffic jam. But beyond that point, as its medina climbed the hillside with its narrow lanes often running into stairs and its being bordered by a fortress wall on the hill crest, there was next to no motorized traffic across it. This, together with the rather small population of the medina, granted the whole place a serene, peaceful atmosphere that seemed a world apart if compared to Kairouan or Sfax. Then, there was next to no souvenir shop or tourist cafe and restaurant in or around the old town, with local hotels being rather few and, save for a couple, small businesses, which talked of few visitors, from my experience mostly Tunisian families. Other than that, the medina was highly picturesque, while, beyond the kasbah, the three neighbouring graveyards – the Muslim, Christian and Jewish ones – located on a pleasant, forested, smooth hillside, offered one an evocative image of centuries of coexistence, while the good maintenance of the first two contrasting with the destruction in the last one offered just as evocative an image of the present.

’Salaam!’, a giggling girl in a group of 7-8 year old children greeted us as we were walking off the Sidi Bou Makhlouf.

‘Alaykum salaam!’

‘Are you with the Palestinians or the Israelis?’, she carried on in English.

’Neither of them, I am definitely against anyone that trains children or youth to kill, against anyone that does to others exactly the same bad he had been done by others.’

There was a quite long silence before the giggles resumed and I somewhat felt bad about saying that to children, but on the other hand I would have hated myself to answer using some diplomatic, complacent retort, especially to children that should never be lied upon.

After an early morning train into Tunis and a great change of scenery to the big prospects of the city and its faster, business-like pace, we headed out to the archaeological sites off Carthage. Imagination was key and it felt as if the sites needed nothing more than that to start living anew, but the distance between sites made my father become quite tired when we started going up to the Byrsa Hill, along a street bordered by posh villas of the rich and famous or just rich. A black car passed by, but then stopped some 20 meters farther:

‘Bonjour, j’habite ici, mais si vous voulez, je peux vous conduire jusqu’au bout de la route. La pente est dure pour le monsieur, je crois.’

The mid-aged lady living in one of those large villas complete with an elegant garden wore a designer’s outfit and a delicate scarf. As my father – that had started to feel the day’s early start and long walks – agreed, she drove us up the slope.

After visiting the archaeological sites on the hill, when waiting for the suburban train back to Tunis, hearing us talk in a language that was obviously neither Arabic, nor French, a dislexic man (that could be easily considered drunk from a distance, but was not) approached me and started an apparently endless phrase where a certain word repeated itself every now and then:

‘Les Français, brr, vous savez, sont merveilleux, je suis brr reconnaissant pour l’aide, brr, et le tourisme que nous recevons, c’est, brr, merveilleux, mon père travaillait pour une entreprise française et, brr, c’est merveilleux. J’aime les européens pour tout, brr, ce qu’ils nous ont donné, beaucoup de choses, brr, merveilleuses, je pense que tout cela est merveilleux…’, and he carried on with variations to the same theme for a good ten minutes or more until the train came.

Minutes later, another man tapped me on the shoulder:

‘Bonsoir, monsieur. Je voudrais m’excuser pour ce que cet homme-là vient de vous dire. C’est honteux pour nous, que nous soyons arabes, berbères ou français, que quelqu’un vous harcèle ainsi. Je suis désolé. Permettez-moi de… de vous donner ceci, s’il vous plaît.’ And he took a big apple from his grocery bag, gave it to me, and then, after wishing us a good night obviously still embarrassed, turned around and walked away.

The stream of life across the medina in Tunis led one across different backgrounds that made it hard to believe they were located quite close to one another. Busy lanes packed with shops selling jeans, slippers, shoes, wedding dresses, perfume, toys and cooking pots. Other lanes where the tourist industry flourished, with rugs, carved wood items, pottery, spices, leather products and even small mosaics inspired by those at the fascinating Bardo Museum. The rather deserted and poor Northern side that sometimes resembled a village more than a big city medina. Cul-de-sac lanes flooded with rubbish or crumbling walls or ruined houses. Glitz tourist cafes including the odd pink theme ice cream parlor. Well concealed, wonderful museums and heritage houses with sublime decorative tilework panels and carved wood doorways. A crossroads down the arched souq where round wooden tables, chairs and big pillows plied the walls while a fez-wearing man busied himself to ferry in big glasses of mint tea and water pipes to a colourful crowd, with Umm Kulthum’s wonderful voice blending in that fragrant smoke, people’s chatter and my father’s reciting Tudor Arghezi’s third psalm: 

‘Send, Lord, thy harbinger of remoteness,

Thy little, new-fledged angel,

To flap his white wings around the moon,

Bringing me thy words, once more.’

‘Ah, ne vous inquiétez pas. C’est la Tunisie, toujours comme ça’, said the ENT doctor as I tried to pick up the some three dozen wooden spatulas that had spilled on the table because the cheap, improper recipient they were in broke as she picked up one during consult at the Charles Nicolle Hospital due to my developing a severely clogged ear. ‘Vous avez l’ordonnance ici’, she carried on while handwriting a medical letter in case the treatment prescribed did not sort things out in two weeks. ‘Mais comme nous sommes le 31 décembre, vous ne trouverez probablement que des pharmacies de nuit ouvertes. Soyez vigilant, les apparences sont plutôt trompeuses et on ne sait jamais dans notre pays’.

Telling her without any trace of diplomatic or complacent retort that I found Tunisia very welcoming did not seem to change her sincere opinion about the country. On the other hand, it was true that the medical facilities in one of the country’s largest hospitals – state-run, true – brought back memories from the early 1990s in Romania (a country that still had a lot to improve about its medical system even in 2023) and definitely contributed to the doctor’s impression.

The cashier at the large and popular restaurant-cum-cafeteria down the central Habib Bourguiba Avenue stood on his tall chair by the door, with a few piles of coins grouped according to their denomination: a hundred millimes, two hundred millimes, half a dinar, a dinar, two dinars, five dinars, while banknotes were carefully stacked in a drawer. Whenever a client came to pay, without his looking down, his hands instantly produced the precise change needed, while also leaving the banknote stacks, respectively the coin piles intact, in the strictest order. The cashier, a lean, tall man with a long face and grey-white hair, sported a carefully trimmed moustache and a general old world outlook. He answered customers’ greetings or waiters’ questions with a smile and a nod, no words used. Then, during the few and short times he had no payments to clear, a humble smile grew on his face and his lips said a poem or song without voicing the respective words, with only his left hand slowly, quietly tapping an unheard rhythm.