**Part of my catching up on old travelogues...slightly edited from original email version to protect identities of individuals. Anthropological convention...
My enthusiasm was dampened a bit after a joyous late morning walk
to have breakfast at the cafes alongside the Avenue Bourguiba - a man
came up from behind my table, took my digital camera off it, and ran
away (luckily I still have my Getty-owned work camera, so I was able to document my trip some). I saw this fat hairy arm come over my shoulder, and
before I knew it, his chubby ass had made off with my birthday present!
It is the first time I have ever been robbed in my life - never robbed
anywhere in Europe, Russia, Turkey or Southeast Asia, so I guess it was
my turn to buy some good karma. The biggest loss is the pictures I
hadn't yet added to my computer. I hope some Tunisian kids eat well
this month.
Then I made some new friends. Two "gentlemen," Bechir & Ali,
came to sit with me and chatted me up at the cafe as I waited for the
commissariat de police to arrive to take my statement. They seemed
nice, so I figured, why not? I can either pick them up now, or I can be
hassled all day. So I took my chances, and while I was taken to Ali's
leather shop and shown around, on the whole they were tremendously
respectful and showed me all around the medina. We discussed politics,
immigration, the educational and work systems in our countries...it was a
very pleasant afternoon, which I needed after the rough wake-up call.
| Bechir & Ali, Tunisian hosts/guides |
I made it back to the hotel to meet Jeff & Francoise for
dinner, after having some help from Bechir & Ali in picking out some
Tunisian CDs. (One has a video component, score! They were
1,500TND. That's 75 cents). We ate at a place in the medina, Chez
Nous, and headed back to the hotel to crash before meeting with our Tunisian counterpart
this morning. We showed up at her office, which is in an old palace in
the medina, and it's gorgeous Islamic courtyard architecture, tiles
everywhere, skylights in the domed central courtyard, walls covered with
books and tapestries...I didn't talk much in the meeting, but it was an
interesting power play of cultures and institutions (the director of
the institute asked me if I understood French, after I had failed to laugh as
heartily as he would have apparently liked, at his lame joke...no buddy I
got it. I got all of it. It wasn't funny). I thought to myself, I
could easily work here because the office alone is beautiful.
Then...and then we saw Liliane's house when we picked her up for
lunch.
Liliane, a Frenchwoman, is our translator, and is married to a
Tunisian dramatist. They bought a house
in the medina - huge carved doors, like you see on postcards, open into
30-ft hallways (I'm prone to exaggeration, and I'm not this time!)
filled with books, mirrors, paintings, Arabic calligraphy...her home is
arranged around a central courtyard filled with herbs, and plants, and
cats...she handpainted all the decorations, according to accounts of
what the house had originally been like, and restored the mosque on one
end, and has yet to tackle the HAFSID (11th century) wooden walls on the
north side of the house. It is amazingly beautiful - the hard work of
restoring an 11th century home shows!
Liliane led us through the winding cobblestoned streets of the
medina, past the Zeytouna mosque and down into a corridor with
occasional skylights passing blotches of light into the small souqs
lining it. She turned suddenly, into a small alcove, and we sat down at
the table that barely fit in the alcove, to order some salade mechoui
and "the best lamb in the medina." She was right, it was delicious!
After gorging, it was time to head down to Mahdia. Our little
Megane could barely handle all the bags and boxes and tubes of junk, but
somehow we made it fit and zoomed out of Tunis on the only freeway in
the country (2 lanes each way - it makes Santa Monica blvd look like the
405). And then...then the highway stops just after Sousse. And you go
village by village, through the only paved road, past goats and butcher
shops and small souqs and pedestrians dodging traffic and waiting for
the bus. Somewhere along the way the sky turned sour, and then the sky
dumped down buckets of rain, that quickly drowned the flat road. Soon
we were plunging through puddles in the little Megane, trying not
to spray pedestrians, but to no avail. Several puddles later, we
arrived at our hotel in Mahdia...much to our dismay. It's pretty much
the Tunisian version of a Sandals resort - huge and gaudy and filled
with chubby Germans and Russians taking the cure. Jeff commented, as we
waited in the reception, that it looks like one of Saddam's
palaces...and it kind of does. There are two swimming pools, 3 bars, a
spa....and lots of native Tunisians forced into horrid condescending
outfits. All of us were ready to find a new hotel, pretty much as soon
as we pulled up...but alas...
Anyway. Tomorrow we drive into El Jem with Ahmad, our Tunisian partner, and begin the
planning, in detail, for the workshop, and I meet with the hotel
manager. Exciting, la vie tunisienne.
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