Tunisia #3: The Rough Guide (10/23/2007)

Assalema bikum:

 

The conference is officially underway.  It was an exhausting week of 14-hour days in preparation, with some conversations being wonderfully easy and some being near incomprehensible.    To use the word interesting would be an understatement; this conference is an education unto itself. The cultural differences, and odd institutional relationships at play here, are mind-boggling.

Sunday we also had the chance to explore the medina of Mahdia.  The port city, built by the Fatimids in the early 900s in order to take Cairo – and was abandoned in 967.   This spit of land juts out into the Mediterranean, with its blue blue window shutters and sea and brightly white stuccoed medina.   The farthest point of the spit has a cherry red lighthouse, a cemetery spilling down the hill to a Fatimid gate, standing without its walls as a porthole to the sea, and a Fatimid fortress.   It is beautiful and charming, your prototypical Mediterranean fishing village with white buildings and domes clustered together along cobblestoned streets.  And again, the aqua shutters are ubiquitous.   I went wandering alone, while everyone else waited for their fresh fresh (literally, the garcon went to the fish market to buy it) fish lunch, since mine had been spaghetti and come and gone.   I wandered up to the mosque, which was destroyed in the 1500s by the Spanish and rebuilt.  It was closed for prayer, and someone came up to me to inform me that Muslims pray five times a day (like a PSA, or something, for the random blonde lady).   Turns out he was a shopboy at "Mama Bazar" around the corner.  Somehow I ended up on a stool drinking mint tea with Lotfi, the owner of Mama Bazar (bizarre), who had pictures of himself all over the store, along with his cheap wares that I didn't want to buy (hey man, if I can scratch off the top layer, it's not real silver.)  Later, after I bought a bowl from him, he insisted we take a photo together, where he insisted on holding the jewelry he gave me.   This photo pretty much sums up my Tunisian experience, or at least 1000 words worth. 

In the end, the good the bad and the ugly: this is definitely (what I hope will be) a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Next time I come to Tunisia, I will be much better equipped (and better packed, good lord why did I even pack one pair of heels?).   And at the least, it has given me some great material for characters in short stories.   And, thank God, I have some good music to dance to in my huge hotel room, the internet to maintain contact with my loved ones, and ...inshallah a sense of humor at the end of it all.     

May your toilets be equipped with toilet paper & functioning flush, your food be tuna-free, and your spirits light -