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 -

Tunisia #4: Aish aish (10/28/07)

Greetings again from Tunis, and my charming hotel room on the rue de Palestine:

The conference went ok.  I wish I could give you more detail, but the last two days I got a terrible case of, er, travellers illness, and I definitely don't remember much of Friday, which was a haze of exhaustion and multiple medications.  Jeff said I could stay at the hotel, but I felt like that would be being too much of a pansy so I manned up, got myself some crackers and water, and pulled it together.  I honestly will miss some of our participants: Hajer and Faouzia were so excited about me learning Arabic that they specifically spoke as Fus-ha as possible around me and made an effort to include me, and Moez who shared his pictures of his daughters with me...I even have a soft spot for Lotfi, who totally cheated me as much as he could but who has a wonderful smile.  And the man whose name I don't know, who mumbled in Arabic about the pause-cafe and somehow we made it work in putting things together for the participants.  What I have found is that Tunisians are just like Angelenos: half of them are amazing and nice and wonderful and the best people you'll ever meet, and the other half will manipulate you any way they have to to get what they want. 

Saturday night, we had dinner at Liliane and her husband's house after she took us shopping in the souqs of the medina.  I bought myself a present for having made it through the week - a lovely wool Berber blanket.  I am excited for the cats to roll all over it and cover it in black fur!

Today I decided I would be no Dido, and throw away Carthage just because of a male (or in my case the hordes of them and trying to avoid them).  So while my coworkers stayed in Tunis, I made my way to the TGM station and took the train out through La Goulette (if you look on a map, the train runs along the spit of land outside of Tunis and then up north along the coast, it's cool!) and out to Carthage.  Carthage is a very wealthy suburb of Tunis now, beautiful along the lines of Nice or Cannes or Beverly Hills: rich white stucco houses surrounded by lush bougainvillea, palm, lime trees along hillsides overlooking in this case the gulf of Tunis.  Most of the ruins of Carthage are under protection,  but I imagine some houses overlaid the ancient Punic city.  I walked up to the Byrsa hill where the Carthage museum is, tooled around, and then came back down the hill and across the train tracks to the Punic ports musem (1 room) and the Sanctuary of Tophet.  At Tophet, I met Salah, a very knowledgable guide to the site.  He showed me around, and interestingly enough, claimed the site was a graveyard of children.  When the children died, the people believed they should sacrifice a small animal to Ashtarte/Ishtar (goddess of fertility) so that the next child would be healthy.  So when archaeologists uncovered the site, they found children and animal remains.  His story was interesting (he was actually very cool, and we had a very good conversation) but the Lonely Planet's explanation was slightly...different.  LP claims that this site was a child sacrifice site - hmmm...either way, it is actually a beautiful site and one of the best, most ...laid back and pressureless conversations I have had here.  

Tomorrow, we head out to Dougga.  My coworker says it's only an hour and a half drive, but I have been in the car with him back and forth from Mahdia, and he has been working in Tunisia long enough that he now drives like it (that is to say, the rules are - there ARE no rules!) so I think with my boss in pursuit in a second car, it will take us a bit longer.  But anyhow, we are to meet the French who work there, as well as seeing our colleagues and participants who were at our workshop who work at Dougga, so it should be a good day.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that I get on my flight to LA ok on Tuesday -- Air France picked a fantastic time to strike! 

Aish Aish (may God bless you)

Tunisia #1: Celebrity seatmates, ATM rejection and making new friends, Tunisian-style (10/14/2007)

**This post is derived from an email that I wrote to my friends and family while traveling to Tunisia for a former job, working on conservation of Roman mosaics across the country. 

Asalam alaykum min Tunis! (Greetings from Tunis!)

 

Obviously I have safely landed in Tunis...where is it 8:33pm Sunday (11:33am Sunday LA time). 

 

When I got to the business class lounge at LAX, which I'm stoked about, just in and of itself...and I see this guy - a famous one - I'd seen once before, while dining at Pace in Laurel Canyon.  A friend had mentioned at the time that it was so&so from "The Shield."  The guy sat down at the other end of my row once I boarded my flight to Paris.  I knew he was famous, but I had no idea what his name was, and I don't watch the Shield,  but some Italian guys on our flight did, and got all over him to take pictures while people were trying to board around them.  He was really nice about it, and when he sat down, I made some comment about it to him.  He's super nice, headed to Italy for a movie, and his girlfriend is one of the directors of 11th Hour.  I thought it was cute that he didn't push his shows but told me I should go see hers! We talked about LA real estate, politics and Barack vs Hillary vs Gore, LA in general, and our backgrounds...it was nice.  He's a cool guy - and he said I had a "very interesting, well-rounded life"....  His name is Walton Goggins, by the way.  

 

As soon as I got on my AirFrance flight, I started getting nostalgic for Europe.  Thanks, Mom & Dad, for making my childhood so difficult to top!  It was exceedingly difficult to hear the soft cadences of French, listen to an announcement that I had landed in Paris, and not take off running - screw the luggage - and just abandon myself to the Musee D'Orsay, the Champs Elysees, the Latin Quarter, the banks of the Seine, the crepes cart in the Latin quarter that makes those to-die-for banana and Nutella crepes...but I resisted the urge based on some random sense of duty to the Getty, and headed toward my connecting gate.  I was nearly there when I heard someone call out, "Beth!  Beth!"  I wondered if I was having some sort of Shane Plossu (for those of you who don't yet know Shane, you're in the minority, most of the world does) moment - who the heck do I know at Charles de Gaulle?  I turned and it was Aurora, one of the PMs from the Getty.  I had had no idea we were on the same flight!  It was a nice surprise!

 

Upon arriving in Tunis, I was relieved to find all my luggage intact, including the asinine poster tubes I had to check (thanks to my fantastic packing partner, I think, the tubes were barely banged up at all!), and went to take some dinars out of the ATM, since I, like a genius, hadn't brought any cash to exchange, nor did I have any extra Tunisian dinars hanging around at home.  The first ATM I tried told me to take my card back, my request could not be completed.  I got a bit nervous, and went in search of a second, which told me the same thing.  I wanted to start hyperventilating, angry at Bank of America because I had called them to alert them where I was going so that this wouldn't happen, and now I am alone in North Africa without money to get to my hotel...when...the third ATM was the charm.  I guess the other two were just out of money?  Aurora told me that this happens a lot - fair warning, I suppose, that would have been much more useful at the other end of my journey.  But the third ATM worked so I withdrew enough that I could pay for my cab fare into Tunis.  My cab driver was very sweet - he was thrilled with my few words of Arabic that I shared, ruminated on the difference between "Tunisi" and "Fus-ha", and felt the need to describe in detail Eid-as-sagir, pulling the cab over to get out and hug two cops standing by the side of the road ("I had to tell them happy eid"), and how it was the end of Ramadan.

 

Once I had washed off the stink of 24 hours of travel at my cute little hotel, I went in search of a supermarket to buy a few things I had forgotten - on the way out, I dropped my dinar change.  A man helped me to pick it up - and when I said thank you, he responded "Afwan" instead of "De rien."  (Everyone else here had addressed me in French). We spoke only in Arabic. At the end of our conversation, he invited me to dinner with his brother and sister-in-law, and when I said no (I am alone here, after all!) because I had to have dinner with coworkers, he invited them too...  I had a brief moment where I wondered how his sister-in-law would feel if he showed up with 3 strangers in tow...then he told me that if I don't call him before I leave, he will cry!  Arab hospitality, witnessed, check!

 

Anyhow, those are the adventures thus far.  Tomorrow I am set to explore the medina of Tunis before my coworkers arrive, and the mayhem begins.  Wishing you much happiness and a hot cup of mint tea, from Tunis!