TUNISIA TRIP - NOVEMBER 30, 2017 TO DECEMBER 10, 2017

 

TUNISIA

November 30, 2017 to December 10, 2017

 

None of these travels would be possible without the patience, flexibility, support and companionship of my partner, Dennis Bowman.

I wrote these musings, but we both lived the adventure.

2017-11-29 FLORIDA TO TUNIS

Below us in the dark the sea yields to the sand and we cross into Africa, 18 hours after lift-off in Sarasota. Our third and final flight left Paris in snowy, dwindling light 2 hours ago.

We land in chilly drizzles ...to sleep again in Africa.

 It is our 8^th journey to our collective cradle in 5 years, and a year since the last. Tunisia is new to us and a gateway to Mauritania and Senegal further south.

Here, we will listen to the ruined stones of ancient Carthage, skirt the Sahara in a bus, wake up in a cave, and be extras in Star Wars. But, first, sleep.

2017-12-02 TUNIS DAY 2

“Le thé. C'est un cadeau Pour le photo ”. And so the waiter gifts us with mint tea, a print of his photo peeking out of the pocket of his impeccable white jacket. The remains of Dennis' lamb and my fish, freshly grilled a few minutes ago, now scraps, bump against plates of chopped salad, spicy pasta, fried egg, pommes frites, and peas, our rewards for hours of trekking through the uncharted alleys of Tunis covered bazaar. Total cost? A few lip smacks over $10.

We have been lost for hours in the sheltered alleys of Tunis' medina, labyrinth of sensations and challenges to the travel budget. The vests, jackets, kaftans, capes, iced with delicate embroidery, are tempting in the chill of this North African winter day, but they stay on their hangers, too bulky for our backpacks, too heavy even for a Florida winter. Twice we are adopted/kidnapped by guys whose father, brother, friend has a shop we must visit. Surely a trip to the roof of a palace with a view of the minarets, and satellite dishes of grey Tunis will soften us to buy a rug, hat, kaftan, scarf, vial of perfumed oils, see how nice the hat looks…something, please. If not, ah well, a smile, shrug, and welcome to Tunisia seal our goodbye. They get freshly and magically printed photos of themselves and the ones who got away. And us? We get ripe and rippling memories.

Tunisian touts and bazaar businessmen are a gentle, polite, helpful lot. Thoroughly lost, we rely on a phone image of the last big square we visited out in the sunlight to spark directions from guys sitting in front of empty shops. ‘Tout droit' is the all-purpose answer, so we keep going, ‘straight ahead’. About the point we figure ‘tout droit’ could also apply to China, or South Africa (surely just around the bend), we pop into the sunlight and into our square. From there it is, yes, ‘tout droit' says the helpful policeman, then the motorcycled courier, then yet another policeman, back to familiar territory.

Five hours after our luscious breakfast in Nozha's kitchen, freshly ATMed and stocked with bottled water for tomorrow's long bus trip to Star Wars, we drag into our digs, shed shoes, and rub our sore feet on the warmed stone floors.

2017-12-03 TUNIS TO CHENINI

“They eat this on desert caravans”. Nozha offers us a thick paste of ground seeds, grains, olive oil, and honey. “And they never get hungry”. She has dusted the bowl with the coral and ruby of pomegranate seeds, her flair unmistakable. It's delicious. Sated and primed with caravan food, plus yoghurt mixed with date jam, and strong coffee, sent off with a hug, and with keys so we can let ourselves in at the end of the week, we head down to the end of the alley, load into the neighbor's taxi and it's lift off to the bus station for the 9 hour trip south to Star Wars.

Flat Tunisia unrolls hour after hour through a day still gripping winter cold, under a blue sky that has refuted all clouds The landscape is washed with dust, and fuzzy with olive trees, a slightly out of focus water color. Only the vertical slashes of dark Cypress trees add sharpness. Sometimes, the road drifts eastward through fallow fields to the coast and the Mediterranean, a flat blue swath up to the sky. The blues don't quite meld.

We stop every hour and half or so for the usual reasons. This isn't the tourist trail. The signs are in Arabic. There are no helpful silhouettes. A slight grunt and head shake from the driver steers me away from the ladies' rest room.

There are munchies galore at the rest stops, packaged bright and shiny to offset the doldrums of the road, and luridly upstaging our stash of travel peanuts. My favorite eye-catcher? Chewing gum under the unlikely brand name ‘FLORIDA', wrapped in citric colors acidified way beyond nature. A slab of cake, a layer of ground almonds built atop a crumble of shortbread crust, and under a smear of date syrup, updates our caravan fare.

Six and a half hours south of Tunis the olive trees have slipped over the horizon. The first date palms sweep the sky in the softening afternoon light. At 7 hours south of Tunis our first camel joins the herds of sheep along the road. Then it's 5pm and winter dusk and deeper cold settle over our day. The moon rises full, huge, a deep orange. Our padded jackets keep us warm but without the style of the thick and hooded robes wrapping some of the older men, lumpy shadows sipping in cafes along the road. Signs point southeast to Tripoli, in nearby Libya.

Nine hours south of Tunis, we drop into the dark of Tatouine. With the kindness and helpfulness intrinsic to the Islamic world, the cabby calls ahead, gets directions, delivers us to the village of Chenini, 20 kilometers up into the hills, and waits with us until people come to fetch us. His name is Murad. He'll pick us up in 3 days.

Tonight we sleep in caves.

2017-12-04 STAR WARS DAY 2

“C'est la vie. Pas toujours le bien.” That’s life…not always good. The young villager smiles above his thick robe, welcomes us and when we reply ‘Américain’ to his question, he beams, tosses thumbs up:Obama!! Then, ‘Trump…c'est la vie. Pas toujours le bien'. No kidding.

Supper follows (fresh salad, stewed chicken, pasta, all delicious) in a white washed cave. Other guests are a quiet Spanish family (mother sporting ‘Maine’ on her hoodie), a lone and silent Italian man, and a noisy bunch of Americans and Canadians, mostly youngish, one complaining loudly that her gardener clipped her flowers too short.

Our cave is Hobbit-snug, white-washed, warm, with 3 beds, plus mine in a cubby hole, a loom, lights. The bathroom is an annex cave, with hot water. Sleep is an avalanche.

This morning, all of us well coffee-ed and fed, the Spaniards leave westward for Tunisia's tiny corner of the Sahara with a wave and big smile towards us, the loud North Americans trailing decibels to pollute some other quiet place. The Italian has evaporated. We are the only guests left. Sweet-faced Bilel tells us that guides to the village will arrive “aprés”. We can pay them what we want.

Lanky and loping Berkassan guides us in French. The French goes in easily. What comes out begins to resemble French, though not in accent. We climb into the blue sky and chill wind, to the top of the village. People have lived here for 1200 years…or maybe 2000. No one knows. There are only 100 families left, mostly old people. The mountains echo the sounds of the 30 kids in the school playground way below. Otherwise, we are in silence except for the put upon brayings of donkeys. Before tourists were scared away from Tunisia a few years ago, there were 500 a day here. Today there are 3, and we never see the quiet Italian. We stop for tea (coffee for Berkassan) at the mosque, stark white in all that blue,…and log into the wee-fee.

Lunch is salad of peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic grilled, then minced with olive oil, hot to the tongue, celestial to the taste buds. Followed by a burrito-shaped and deep fried confection of egg, parsley, pepper, squash, wrapped in thin pastry, dotted with lemon juice and sublime. Followed---much to the surprise of our exploding bellies---by medallions of turkey, and rice with raisins and saffron. It costs 5 Euros ($5.60).

I sit in the sun writing this. Bees buzz. The call to prayer echoes down the valley. Otherwise this is total silence. Two women bring our freshly laundered clothes, wind-blown sweet, and sun soaked dry in three hours.

Berkassan fetches us at 3:30 for a walk across the valley, smelling herbs he picks, and trading snippets of our lives that we quilt into the possibility of friendship. He is very bright, articulate, interested and knowledgeable about the world, mystified by people who are not. He beams when we stop to listen to the sound of water trickling. We almost make it to a favorite spot to watch the sun set. No matter.

It is dark as we reach the Mosque Café. Below us the village is blackness, wrinkled only sparsely by wisps of light. Our tea is “trés chaud”, welcome in the cold. Dennis, Berkassan, and his heavily caped friend, all have symptoms of the “grippe”. We share our stash of cold meds, make a date for a long hike tomorrow.

I crawl into my Hobbit hole thinking maybe I should watch the Star Wars films to see if I can spot Chenini scenes we walked through today. On the other hand…..

2017-12-05 STAR WARS DAY 3

“Vient le soleil” says Berkassan. We round the corner, leave the chilled shadow of the hill, and the sun does come, welcome.

The path is narrow, high up the hillside but heading downward, sometimes steeply, and always crumbly, part rubble and part fetal landslide. Way behind us are the caves of Chenini. In front are the brown plains of southern Tunisia, sliding towards the distant Mediterranean. Above, are the level flats of the mesas that mark what was the bottom of the ancient shallow sea that once covered all of North Africa. In the rocks are fossil corals. “Et, peut- être dinosaurs”, perhaps dinosaurs, laughs Berkassan. We are alone, except for a donkey complaining dimly way below.

This is Berkassan’s kind of day, walking his countryside. He stoops to pick up something for us: a piece of flint (“to make fire”), a crystal (“like a mirror”), a chunk of gypsum (“to make the walls white, also cement”). He has scoured pictures of our travels in the phones and questions our choice of digs. “Là-bas”, down there, is a place for you, and points to a shallow overhang in the cliff wall. His deep laugh grabs us and he walks along picking our future accommodations. His favorite is a rounded shelter over a spring. “Ah, c'est parfait…you can sleep…and drink...and wash.” (Translation courtesy of moi.) Berkassan is great company. Perhaps he thinks the same of us. He looks at his watch: two and a half hours! “Le temps est vite”. Time goes fast.

Ahead is a white-washed mosque, bumpy white domes the only softnesses in this flat and angular landscape. It has the look of being patted semi-smooth by many hands. There is nothing around it. The minaret tips sharply, Pisa-like. (Berkassan: “it's falling asleep”.) The caretaker is rotund, a heap of round shapes forged inside one of the domes. I get his first sentence (“Mecca is that way”). The rest struggles past a minor speech impediment and strains through a mustache of walrus-ian magnificence. It reaches my ears as impenetrable as Martian. My French today is on “vacance” somewhere far away, but, alas, not so far as Mars. We smile, ooh, ahh, and generally show appreciation, at the right moments, apparently: we do not create a major international incident. To “merci”, “shukran”, and “bon voyage” we make a small donation, leave His Rotundness, and continue upwards towards Chenini, and tea at the Mosque Café.

Lunch is excessive. “Couscous Berbère” says Bilel. It follows lightly olived, chopped salad of potato and carrots, then a crisp deep-fried package of egg and veggies. It's delicious, but mountainous, and subverts any intentions about an evening meal. Or about anything else except a return to the snuggery in our Hobbit Hole.

Much later, above us, the white of the mosque holds onto the last light of the sun, the darkening below it already cold. In front of the café, we discover the only other outsider in the village, that mysterious Italian, now smiling, and interviewing an immense pile of robes and capes wrapped around a jovial road company Jabba the Hutt. Jabba wants us to take his photo. Check! But demands approval, rejects the first showing his rather spacious dental landscape, and permits a retake, several in fact. He accepts his print with a “merci”, and a royal nod of the head. He may be toothless, but he has class. Bravo.

Word spreads about our magic printer. No one asks for a picture, but no one refuses the offer. Berkassan organizes a photo shoot inside the café. The men cluster in various combinations, all stiff. Tea flows, then more tea, then more photos, ice melters. We get invited to spend a few days in the desert, “la prochaine fois”, next time. Berkassan tells us there were “peut-être” 2 or 3 other Americans in the village this year. In many years there are none. Most people stay a few hours. We'll be here 4 nights, one more than planned. Of course there's room. He smiles.

The inevitable questions about our wives, children, families uncover that we’re surrounded by bachelors. There's no work in the village since tourism dried up after “the things in Tunis”. No work, no money. No money, no marriage. Berkassan says he likes being “libre”, free. He's 30. I wonder how he'll feel when he's 40. Choices may be few. We have neither seen nor heard any women other than the two who wash, dry, and deliver our clothes.

Berkassan has been busy. While we nap an entire city (the minimum number, from our experience) of Chinese tourists arrive to click, click, click, then move on. “There are always many women with les Chinois. I hold one in each arm, pour les photos. But I would like to marry an American woman.” I wonder if he has heard about the thriving market for exotic younger gigolos among the many European women ‘of a certain age’ who flock to upholster Tunisia's beaches.

We drink more tea. Berkassan walks us part way back to the Hobbit Hole, guiding us through darkness without stars. “À neuf heures.” We meet at nine in the morning. I am glad we will have this extra day, one more to shine a bit of light on another snippet of his world. Vient le soleil.

2017-12-06 STAR WARS DAY 4

“Tout est calme”. Berkassan breathes deeply and scans his world. Only windy sibilants ruffle our ears. We have walked for almost three fast-passing hours down from the summits of Chenini, out into the flats, then up rocky slopes to get closer to “le chameau”, a rocky approximation of a camel, precarious lounger on a seriously eroded summit. Now we sit.

It's our last day, added because Chenini is hard to leave. We're greedy, sucking in the tawny beauty of this extraordinary place. I carry a bit in my left pocket: a sprig of fragrant rue. It grows everywhere in bristled clumps, greenish grey, an insinuating fragrance of pine, oregano, and rosemary. My hand carries it now, for a few more hours.

Far, far away, and way, way above us, the mosque of Chenini---and the Mosque Cafe---are tiny, stark white, wrapped in blue sky. Four hours after our morning tea, we crest its steep slope, almost weak-kneed, and claim ‘our' table by the window. One coffee, two teas, and a big bottle of water, please.

An urgent message from Moussa in Senegal demands an answer, wrenches us. Too soon. Done, decided (yes, the boat on Janvier 5 is ok), arranged in an electronic flash. The internet tears us from the chilled and sere angles of this landscape to the sea and voluptuous greenery of Senegal. Too soon.

Finalities take over the day. We pay Berkassan, then Bilel who carefully shows us how he calculated the total from Dinars and Euros into dollars (so we're not short of Dinars for the trip back to Tunis). Our two room, 4 bed “grotte” costs $35 a night. Two dinners and 6 of those lunches come to $50. And, three big bottles of water are $.80 each.

Berkassan invites us for “thé et cake” (yes, the word here is “cake”, not “gateau”) at le café. The light fades, setting sunlight absorbed by rain-heavy grey clouds.

At dark, Berkassan has something to show us: his special “chambre”, a 2 room “grotte” with a big bed, two divans, table and chairs. A French backpacker helped him set it up, and he hopes to be able to rent it out. “Mais, il y a une problème”: the toilette.. Even though every house in the village has running water and electricity available, he still needs to hook up nice hardware, a shower, a water heater and a nice toilet (though current version in a sitter, not a squatter). “Maybe you two will come back, stay here, and help me. “ it's a germ of an idea, but….water heater first, please! And we leave it at “la prochaine fois”, next time.

He walks us almost back to our “grotte”. The goodbye is hard. He is so bright, so loves his place, is such a good guide, and good, good company. Once he was busy with tourists. Now? The terrorist attack years ago on western tourists in faraway Tunis (delayed revenge for the bombing of Baghdad) has crippled options for him and other villagers 400 miles from Tunis. Did anyone think the bombing of Iraq through?

We watch him walk away into the dark.

2017-12-07 CHENINI BACK TO TUNIS

“Ça va?”

It comes out of the 6dark am and chill. Bilel has met us halfway from our “grotte” to the restaurant. Swathed and hooded in deep brown, he is right out of Star Wars, except for that sweet smile. “Le café” is hot, “le fromage” spreads easily on “le pain” and we are well breakfasted. The taxi arrives. It is the same driver who brought us here too few days ago. “Marwad, bon jour. Ça va?” he beams that I remember his name. Bilel waves, turns back up the hill.  And the night swallows Chenini.

We pass a road sign in the dim light: Tatouine. 18 Kilometers. Luke Skywalker, eat your heart out.

At the bus station, Dennis finds the key to our “grotte” in his pocket. Marwad gets the problem immediately. No problem, he'll take it back up to the hotel next time. Then, he takes our Dinars, and comes back with our tickets to Tunis (9 hours for $12). Photos follow. We wave goodbye, then a few minutes later he runs back with our change: 2 Dinar, about $.80, waves again and goes off. There's a hot coffee waiting.

There seem to be two kinds of faces in southern Tunisia. Faces such as Berkassan's and Marwad’s are all angles, architectural, lean, flesh blown by the desert wind from the high cheek bones, exotic and memorable. Then the rounded, fuller faces, baby face sometimes as a with sweet Bilel, at the hotel, or full and sensual, as with the lithe and very handsome tall guy stowing luggage on our bus. Angular or softened, but all tawny, dark-eyed and heavy-lashed, and leading with high-bridged prominent noses, these faces draw Europeans to the thriving gigolo scene on the beaches of Tunisia. They seduce my camera.

Ten and a half hours into our nine-hour bus ride, we berth at Tunis' southern bus terminal, with spectacularly bad timing. Around us traffic snags and snarls. My ears, then tongue, join the snag, gumming up on a new word,“embouteillage”, which I guess means “traffic jam”, in theory. In practice, it means “find a snack, people watch, and call me in two hours” in taxi-ese. We do.

Noxha and Hamet have wine, thick soup, and a fish stew waiting for us, and the new arrivals, young Laura and Alessandro from Sardinia.. And the news that there will be huge “manifestations ” (demonstrations) all over the city to protest tRumpleThinSkin's declaration of Jerusalem as capital of Israel. And me without an ‘Oh, Canada' tee shirt. (Note: I claim a slight---okay, murky and untenable---right to one since my father was born in Canada and was a Canadian citizen until a teenager.) Best to plan on an excursion out of the city, says Nozha.

So, it's off to Carthage in the morning.

2017-12-08   FAST TRAIN TO CARTHAGE

“Tout  droit” says Nozha, but first, right, then left, then after you pass the fountain, and the clock, and find Avenue Bourgiba,”oui c'est tout droit” for the train for Carthage. After 40 minutes I am sure we have run out of “tout” of the “droit” but Alessandro's phone assures us the train station is indeed up ahead, yes, “tout droit”. 

We get a bit distracted by some demonstrations (we're guessing reactions to tRumpleThinSkin's Jerusalem nonsense yesterday). People snap pictures. Bored looking police in black, padding, and leather, lounge and chat, billy clubs well stowed. Obviously picked to look impressive, they are definitely that…flavor Chippendales. Look for the calendar.

The train ride is a snap. Ancient Carthage, or what's left of it, sacked and burned to the ground---along with its library--- by the Romans in 146bc is a suburb of Tunis.  We debark at the station Carthage-Hannibal, named for Carthage's general, acknowledged as one of the greatest tacticians of history. He convinced elephants they wanted to cross Spain, then the snows of Pyrenees, and the Alps to invade Italy, so perhaps his rep is warranted. 

He won that battle but lost the war, the second  of the three Punic Wars.  I don't know what happened to the elephants. They were not with the Romans 64 years later when Roman troops sacked Carthage, enslaved the Carthaginians and burned the city, and with it one of the great libraries of the ancient world.
(Note:Romans didn't necessarily disdain learning, just other people's collections of it. They repeated the atrocity when they burned the greatest library of all, Cleopatra’s, in Alexandria, though that might have been an accident. 

Later, Marc Antony sacked one library to give his sweetie 200,000 papyri for her collection, surely history's longest love note. It worked…though once again the general won the battle but lost the war.)

What's left of Hannibal's  Carthage is rubble under the city the Romans built on the ruins of the original Carthage. It compares poorly with the many other much better preserved Roman cities that rim the Mediterranean, but the name and associations give it street cred in the Rock and Ruin crowd. It does have avenues of pictorial mosaics, once floors in houses and public baths, now outside, underfoot, and unprotected. 

Laura sends a video of us walking on the 2,000  old images to an archeologist friend back in Italy. The response is apoplectic.

The setting is worth the trip: blue sky, bluer sea, blazing bougainevillea, gateway to the village of Sidi Bou Said (Siddy Boo Sah-yeed).  Sidi Bou dominates its cliff, and dowdier older sister shattered  in ruins below, with its jumbled  confection of whitewashed walls, ultramarine doors, windows, and shutters, and views. We walk, gawk, and eat bambalouni, fried donuts, flighty as clouds, licking sugar off our fingers.

Tired of the “grippe” and sore throat (souvenirs of Chenini, where everyone was dripping/grippe-ing?), my head and muscles lobby for an early night. They win. 

We leave for the desert in 2 days. I can't lose this war.

BIDI BOU SAID

2017-12-09 TUNIS

“C'est catastrophe”

The train is crowded, tight. The young man leans close in and asks softly if I am “Européan”? “Non, Américain”. His voice drops. “Ah, Trump…c'est catastrophe.” He doesn’t look or sound angry, shrugs.

We're on the Metro heading for the BARDO, Tunis' world class museum of antiquities. The glory exhibits here are the immense mosaics, some 20 feet by 40 feet and mounted flat on walls, swept with natural light. The dolphins flying across one are at least life size, their liquid curves translated sinuously by the tiny mosaic pixels. Even they are upstaged by the setting. Most of the museum spreads through the voluptuously tiled rooms of an old palace, some empty because they, not contents, are the reason to be here. The walls of a tiny chapel, dense with color and design, soar to a vaulted ceiling of intricately carved stone, white on white, a glimpse into infinity, and anchored by columns, braids of color tying the up there to down here, and achingly lovely.

Stuffed with beauty, we leave, find a café, and nurse our overloaded eyes... with hot chocolate. A warm omelet, parsley, and veggie sandwich from ‘Fast Food Chapati’ on the corner goes down quickly.

Nozha and her family insist we stay for soup. We do. The pictures of Chenini and our ‘grotte’ there catch the attention, minutely, briefly, of their autistic 8-year old until he is lost again, returning only with screams. Murad apologizes, unnecessarily. The two younger boys continue drawing pictures and painting them. Nozha is sadness itself. I am sure the look in her eyes is not for the ‘catastrophe' out in the world.

2017-12-10 TUNIS - CASABLANCA – NOUAKCHOTT

“À la prochâine fois”, and we truly hope there is a next time as we double kiss-hug Hemet, wave to Alessandro and Laura, heft our packs and head down the long alley to Bab Lakouass and a taxi. Nozha said goodbye earlier on her way to a meeting where “a woman's voice must be heard”. I wish we could see that. But we have a date to meet Ruth (and her caravan of luggage) in Casablanca and fly together south to Mauritania, over the desert where we will live for the next 20 days.

Royal Air Maroc Flight 571 throws a decent lunch, with spacious seating, even here in steerage. Smoked trout from Morocco’s high mountains slips down past the taste buds very easily. Rubble from my tiny forkful of orzo takes another, less rewarding, route, leaving skid marks down my shirt. When will airline ‘food designers’ figure out how to offer either food you can spear, or food you can snort, or big bibs, and save us passengers on cleaning bills?

Casablanca airport is stunning, but I am severely put off. This is the 75^th anniversary of THE film. Where is the fog? Where are Bogie and Bergman? Where are Henreid and Raines? Where are The Usual Suspects? Muzak can NOT replace ‘As Time Goes By'. Surely, they could make some effort. Populating the place with five thousand extras wandering looking lost does not count.

Not only have they misplaced the entire cast, they have lost our friend, Ruth. The desk clerk at the hotel for long-term transit passengers assures me “ce nom n'existe pas dans le système”. Ruth finds us via email. From the hotel where she “n'existe pas”. I am so tempted to ask her to look for Bogie and Bergman, on the off chance they’ve just been misplaced. Four hours of bleary-eyed people watching later, we spot Ruth’s blazing red hair. Our desert adventure group is taking shape.

And now, the airport makes up for misplacing Bogie and Bergman:

A West African lady crosses through the crowd. She's spectacular. Even here on the cusp of Black Africa, where the varieties of ways to drape the human form defy superlatives, she creates a wave of recognition: THAT'S the way it's done. And THAT is her headdress. She probably bounces grandkids on the waves of white swirled expansively from shoulder, almost to ankle. Below, tendrils of primary colors whip into deep wide cuffs. Atop, is her headdress. The same colors in the material that sweeps the ground around her, soar into folds, and twirls, cantilevered up and out, an origami-ed rainbow of assertive her-ness, held ramrod straight, gliding. Brava!

Ok, so we don't get Bogie and Bergman. What we do get is why we travel.