emails from tunisia: march, 2001

Touch Down in Africa
Fri, 23 Mar 2001 09:42:58 -0800 (PST)

tunisia is clean and green... not quite what one's north african fantasies would be. arrived yesterday (after a day and a half wandering the atmospheric back streets of palermo... mom and dad headed back to philly from there). met maryellen at the airport without any trouble, exclaimed how we couldn't believe we were actully in africa, got a taxi into tunis, and checked into our hotel... high, high ceilings and white walls... very 1920's french feel to the place... and baquette and cafe au lait for breakfast.

in the morning we took a little walk around tunis... very, very clean and sophisticated... palermo felt more exotic in many ways... palermo is definately more dirty and more chaotic; then we took a louage --- a shared minivan taxi --- west to the city of le kef, on the way to the algerian border. the drive was lovely.... green fields, olive tree orchards, jutting rocks... felt verdant and rough at the same time. our hotel in le kef is great... and has a magnificent view of the casbah up on the hill, perched over the town.

so we've just finished wandering around... lovely little winding streets made of cobblestone stairs... lots of little children to chat with... people (except for the occasional bothersome male) are all very, very nice. i just wish i spoke more french. some people speak a litle italian, and a lot of the younger kids speak a little english... but after two weeks of getting along pretty well i am now at the mercy of the phrasebook.

the loveliest part of today was wandering into a little street of cobblestones, lined with white buildings with green doors, with a perfect little mosque at the end. we went in... full of children and women lounging around... they only had smiles for us... it is friday, so i guess that's why they were all there. then we wandered through the medina, but (again, i guess becquse it is friday) many shops were closed.

now it might be time to search out some couscous. We haven't eaten very much today (well, aftr italy I think that is a good thing!). it is much hotter here than we thought it would be!!!! really hot, though it guidebook had told us to expect highs in the low 70s.

tommorrow i think we plan to go see the roman ruins of dougga... and go get a "turkish" bath at the hammam.

au revoir – maria

Golden Ruins
Sat, 24 Mar 2001 10:27:25 -0800 (PST)

tired... tired... sunburnt... hungry...
tortured by this french keyboqrd...

we went to dougga today, an incredible roman city of ruins up on a hill in the countryside about an hour from kef. it really is just gorgeous... golden bricks and columns and temples surrounded by fields of multicoloured wild flowers, groves of olive trees, sheep and shepherds, and the valley below. we had a little picnic, explored... and after a few hours took the long way home, walking through the valley to a nearby village to get the bus, rather than taking a taxi to the larger town that is nearby. and then sat on the pavement on the side of the highway for over an hour, waiting for the bus, sort of stupified with exhaustion. some boys tried to bother of us, but were relqtively easily dispersed... and it was worth the walk in the country, the offer of a lift from an old man on a donkey, and the kids' grins when we walked through their town.

what else? before going to dougga we visited the restored synagogue in kef... the jewish community here used to be very large, but left with most of tunisia's jews for israel and france after independence. but in 1984 the synagogue was restored (i think by former members of the community) and now there is a little museum inside. it was very simple and pretty... and proudly shown to us by the caretaker. i think it was a good example of tunisia's tolerance... the man even
showed us the cans used to collect donations for israel, without any comment except an enthusiasm for showing us something of interest from his town.

there was also an AIDS awareness poster in one of the local stores that house pay telephones... another surprising detail...

we haven't found any couscous yet... they are always out of it...

but saw some julebis (an indian sweet) in a sweet shop! asked the owner what they were called and he responded "jahleebees" or something like that... another gift from the moguls, i suppose?

the internet cafe is buzzing with boys on icq... instant messages everywhere...

tommorow we move on. maria

The Sunday Bus to Kairouan… and the Monday Market
Mon, 26 Mar 2001 10:54:26 -0800 (PST

we were expecting to leave kef on the noon bus yesterday, but then once we got to the bus station we were told that the noon bus leaves at 2 on sundays. So we were a bit stuck... with all our bags and the midday sun beating down... in the new town, away from anything of interest... we hiked up the street 2 blocks and found a bakery where we could sit out of sight and undisturbed and eat macaroons and petit fours and apple soda. but then the nice family man
behind the counter started playing dire straits (money for nothing and your chicks for free... dire staits, right?... had enough of that in the eighties) at a mindnumbing volume, so we didnt't stay too long.

back at the bus station, we sat and sat, as a fine layer of dust blew in and covered us. too bad we didn’t have those extra hours up in the old town... we went to kef's museum of nomad life earlier... it was fantastic, housed in an old sufi building... but we rushed through to get to the bus by noon.

eventually... we were herded onto the broken down bus for kairouan... plenty of leg room and soft seats, but it had seen better days. the first part of the journey was beautiful if hot and dusty... fields of cactus... hills and jutting rocks... stark mixed with green... passed through the roman site of maktar... but once we got down on the plain, it was just plain and extra dusty and a little more hot.

with the change in the landscape, came a change in the surroundings... not as clean, not as prosperous. we pulled into kairouan and it was a very different place than kef. bigger, more hard-bitten, definitely dirtier! after a few wanderings, we settled on a nice hotel... the "splendid". and had a good veggie couscous dinner, finished with some of the fried pastry and date and syrup and sesame seed sweets that kairouan is famous for. think fig newtons with less fig and more sugar.

this morning we went off to kairouan's weekly market. we were the only tourists there, since it is on the edge of town and sells nothing that tourists would want, only the household stuff that ordinary people buy. it stretched over miles, it seemed! lots of folk in from the country... some live chickens... and lots of plastic colanders, used clothes, toothpaste, and fresh mint leaves for tea. no one really paid us any mind... they were all intent on bargains.

it was probably more crowded than usual, since today was a holiday... the first day of the islamic year. of course, we didn't find this out until the end of the day, and it did mean that some museums that we wanted to see were closed. but, after the market, we set out to do the sights of kairouan...

after getting rid of two different guys who were trying to scam us while we tried to find the great
mosque --- and with the help of a nice old man coming back from the bakery, who realized we were trying to escape a "great mosque ticket" scam artist, we found it. it is huge; it is not hard to miss.

stark and beautiful and built of brick, with many roman columns that the arabs culled from older
buildings... not as impressive as the jami masjid in delhi, but beautiful in a different way. shortly after leaving it, we had a stoke of luck and met up with a very friendly and enthusiastic polish lady, who was on a tour with her two pre-pubescent daughters, and had hired a female, english speaking guide from the tourist office. they invited us to join us, and the guide was wonderful... pointed out quite a few things that we would have otherwise missed and told us a lot about the old houses of kairouan that are hidden behind the medina's closed doors and high walls. and
the polish woman was hysterical... dressed in a dramatic black outfit, with flaming red hair and a
lisp, she is a geographer and so was really excited about all of tunisia's different landscapes and was breathless with recommendations. her daughters, on the other hand, just wanted ice cream.

we left them and went to lunch... turkey kabobs!... and then went for a wander through the medina. beautiful... the walls all light blue... the doors all painted and carved in darker blue and aquamarine and rich browns... once you wind your way off the touristy main alley, it was really an evocative place. we went back for another stroll this evening, the weather all cool with a nice breeze. everyone was out buying freshly baked loaves of round tunisian bread... we had some for lunch and it was fantastic...

now... time for couscous...


Tunisian Star Maps
Mon, 2 Apr 2001 10:32:30 -0700 (PDT)

oooohhhhh... after all those emails, i've turned into a bad correspondent. though i did write a very long one last week, only to have it eaten by cyberspace before i sent it. maryellen left on friday, and i leave tunisia on wednesday. at the moment, i am trying to squeeze every last bit from the trip...

today i left the resort island of jerba at 6AM, and now i am in sfax, the prosperous business-oriented 2nd city of tunisia. they do, however, have an excellent medina, with not a tourist nor a stuffed camel to be seen, so i am on my way to check that out. then, in 2 hours, i hop the train to see el jem, the colosseum where they shot "gladiator"... oh, and they shot "the english patient" in the sfax medina so i guess i'm having a hollywood day. not that i really like either of those movies...

then i get an evening train back to tunis, so that I can go to the bardo museum, maybe carthage, maybe sidi bou said... and buy some dates... before leaving on wednesday morning.

so now i must go off to the medina, though i do want to fill you in on everything that's happened the past week: women's (and children's) night at the turkish bath... the long walk through the palm tree oasis... getting within spitting distqnce of the algerian border... the day the dust hit... spending shabbat in one of the last remaining jewish communities in tunisia (to maryellen: you guessed it... i ran into jonathan on jerba, on his way to synagogue with all the young men of the village!)...

but now, i'm off to look for ralph fiennes...

maria

Bella! Bella!
Sun, 8 Apr 2001 12:43:41 -0700 (PDT)

amici ---

here i am, back in beautiful bella vista, celebrating the opening of a fresh fields/whole foods market across the street... assuaging my sadness at returning to rome for one beautiful spring day, and then having to leave that beautiful city once again.

so, yes, i had one last lovely day in rome, preceded by a busy day in tunis going to the bardo museum and to the monoprix supermarket. the day before that was the sfax/el jem day... it turned out that all the shops in the sfax medina were closed up when i was there. just a lonely group of german tourists were wandering through, trying to figure out why they were there. i was, however, propositioned in front of the great mosque a total of three times by two crazy men.

i was standing there looking like the ultimate geek, with my glasses and my guidebook and my white socks and sneakers, trying to decipher a byzantine panel on the side of the mosque, when i heard a murmuring next to me. an old man was there, gesturing with his hand and repeating something under his breath. i assumed that he was begging (even though i thought it strange
that a beggar should be holding a full bag of groceries) and tried to give him a coin. but he
wouldn't take it, and just continued to wave his hand in the air and repeat his mantra and stare at me. soon i realized that he wasn't beseeching me for money or asking allah to bless me... he was saying "bella! bella! voulez vous faire l'amour avec moi?" over and over again.

i started to crack up, moved away from him and concentrated on my guidebook, and eventually he left. but two seconds later another old man with a crazed look in his eyes was at my side, presumably saying the same thing but in arabic. i moved away from him and he shuffled off. i continued to examine the byzantine panel... when the first one reappeared, beseeching me
again to "faire l'amour avec moi! vous est tres belle! faire l'amour avec moi! bella! bella!" [please excuse my bad french... i not sure if that is correct.] I waved him away, cracking up with laughter. he left again, dejected, and i finally figured out why there is a byzantine panel on the side of the great mosque of sfax. i never did, however, find out why horny old crazy men hang out there.

then i went off to el jem, which was really incredible to see... much more impressive than the colisseum in rome, since it rises out of the nothingness of a small tunisian town, and since the insides are well-preserved and you can go down underneath the stage and see where the gladiatiors and wild animals were kept before going on. no candy machines and comfy chairs in those green rooms... (actually, strongly resembled the national pastime theatre's basement
dressing rooms.)

and then i took the late train to tunis, and ended up spending the night in the dirtiest, noisiest,
creepiest, and most expensive hotel i encountered in tunisia. the next day i moved to a cheaper, cleaner and friendlier one...

but as i sit here and type in my little apartment, with no teenage boys around me downloading pictures of mariah carey in bathing suits, i find i still haven't caught up on all those things i briefly listed in my last email. and since (in case you haven't realized this yet) these emails have been serving as my travel diary, i feel the need to record for posterity. so i'm going to mail this email off, and follow it right up with another one...

then, i believe, the journey will finally end.

maria