As you undoubtedly know, a tun (or tunne, as you sometimes see) is a large cask for holding liquids, especially wine, ale, or beer. You might not think that there’s really much of a relationship between the two, but that’s where you’d be wrong. Back in college I interned for a semester in the Office of Science and Technology Cooperation of the US Department of State. In my first few days I had the honor of setting up my good friend and mentor, Bob, with some much needed translations before he left for meetings in the Grand Maghrib. He then said something to me that was probably the supercoolest and most vexing thing I’ve ever heard: “If I’d know about you two weeks ago, you’d be on that plane with me.”
He brought me back a bottle of Tunisian wine – which is still sitting back home in the States – and thus began my lifelong ambition to go to Tunisia, the home of Carthage and Tataouine. Five years later, my lifelong ambition was achieved. The following is taken from my adventure journal, edited for time, content, and to fit your screen.
11 August 2009
8:46 PM. Today I arrived in Tunisia, the twenty-third country I’ve been in – though it almost didn’t happen. I got to Casablanca on Sunday, expecting to meet mom and Paulo that night to leave Monday (yesterday) morning. They never came. The reason for this is that they’d changed my flight reservation for Tuesday so as to take advantage properly of my vacation and weekend time. We didn’t. They went off to Jedida by themselves, I hung around in a hotel in Casablanca. They showed up last night and we left this morning.
I still did my best to stuff it up. On putting our bags in the taxi I realized that I didn’t have my carte de sejour. Even so, I managed to get through every checkpoint at the airport but the last one without being noticed. He asked me if I live in Morocco and where my carte was. I told him that I do and that I forgot it. He gave me a look that said, “Seriously, give me your carte.” I gave him a look that said, “This is about as pathetic as I can be, I really don’t have it.” The lesson here is that when you go to leave the country, make sure that you bring the documents showing that you are, in fact, a legal resident there. After a little more talking and being pathetic, he asked me what my number is. I didn’t know. He tapped his keyboard a bit and then asked me a few questions to verify that the records he was reading were mine, I answered them, and he let me go. The lesson there is that it’s possible to go through customs without your carte. They’ve got your information. It’s probably best to bring it anyway, unless you particularly fancy feeling like a maroon.
Our take off was delayed, and we had to wait forever to get our luggage, so I suggested that we just go straight to Kairouan and skip Carthage. A lot of people would probably disagree with this, as Carthage is probably the most historically significant piece of Tunisia. That’s true, but, first, I’ve never really cared that much about Roman history when compared to some of the other great histories of the world. The coolest thing about Carthage was its total destruction and Rome’s message to the world that if you mess with the empire, you’ll be lost to the world for all time. It’s strange then to go and see it, and disappointing even to learn the part left out of most history texts: shortly thereafter the Romans rebuilt and populated Carthage. I prefer to think of Carthage as salted earth and a poor strategic use of elephants.
The country of Tunisia, however, is quite pleasant. We’ve seen mostly rocky scrubland, similar to that on the plains outside of Azrou and Khenifra, but greener. In fact, as mom likes to say, it looks a lot like “Morocco with a fresh coat of paint.” And from what we could see of Tunis from the highway it was a big, clean, shiny city. The little villages were similar to the ones just outside Fes, but they seemed brighter. There was trash but not quite as noticeable. The environment changes more quickly, however, and I expect it will be even more dramatic tomorrow.
The city of Kairouan reminds me a lot of Sefrou with a Chefchaouen paint job. It’s got an old medina and a ville nouvelle, but neither is really all that interesting. Cute, though. The shops all sell things only a little different from stuff you get in the Kingdom: leather, pottery, metal, soccer jerseys. We wandered around looking for a restaurant that doesn’t exist and being taken to another that wouldn’t serve us (until later, they said), but we got to walk and stretch our legs. The atmosphere is a lot like a coastal town – Jedida, or maybe Essaouira – without much noise or traffic. We had a handful of people offer to be our guides, which I eventually convinced to go away.
Which is the last thing: language. So far, it’s been a little rough, and I think I’m really indebted to the handful of Fos-ha words I’ve picked up. I got along ok with the hotel clerk, and managed to make our self-appointed guides leave, all in Arabic (I should say, Darija). But their accents are hard to understand, and one or more may have spoken the Moroccan dialect. Mom’s right, though: it will be a serious test of my ability to put all I’ve learned to use outside of Morocco, and to see if I have something that might be of use in the future. A lot of the time, though, I’m letting Paulo use his French so that he feels more in control of what’s going on. We’ll see how that changes as we get down south and in the desert.
12 August 2009
10:25 PM. Today I went from kind-of-desert to definitely-desert – though I’d expected to hit pinnacle-of-desert at the end. Tozeur, however, is only assuredly-desert. Perhaps tomorrow, but I get ahead of myself.
We began this morning with an awful breakfast (Tunisian quince jam is no mishmash, though maybe it’s just the high-class hotel), and went to the Grand Mosque of Kairouan. It’s allegedly the fourth holiest Islamic city (after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem). That remains to be seen, but the mosque was incredible. It has spiral-ridged domes that I’ve never seen before in Morocco, though are everywhere here. As we travel, we’ve also noticed that some mosques have the three-ball crowning on their minarets, whereas others have a star and crescent. Some have both.
I also made some linguistic observations. There is no گ in Tunisian Arabic, though there is a lot of the “g” sound. They use this letter: ڨ, and don’t make “v” sounds (they just do ف like in Fos-ha). I’ve learned a few new words, like نزل for “hotel.”
And I’ve begun learning about Tunisian food. At lunch in Gafsa we ate rice, lubiya (not as good as Middle Atlas), a dish of spiced beef called kamounia (with cumin, obviously), and an eggplant salad with oil and spices called shlada meshwiya. For dinner I ate camel (not great) and tried some Tunisian tagine. It’s like a big omelette, not as good as the Moroccan kind. I did get to try the harrissa, whis is fantastic, and taste Tunisian olives, which are smaller than Moroccans and harder, but with an incredibly rich taste.
That was all in Tozeur, where we got to drive through the palm oasis and go out to watch the sun set over the shotte. Perhaps we just couldn’t see enough of the shotte to appreciate it, or the experience was altered by the artificiality of the fabulous Belvedere Rocks. We’ll get our fill of the Shotte El Jerid tomorrow as we drive over it for more than an hour.
I also bought my souvenir, which is certainly more than I should have paid, but precisely what I wanted: a turban just like the one Indiana Jones wears in Raiders of the Lost Ark (some of which was filmed here, I hear). Now I can feel like I’ve been to a desert country.
Final thoughts: Tunisia is incredibly flat, aside from the measly ridges rising out of the kind-of-desert. The rear wiper (not present) is broken on the car causing the mechanism to turn constantly and not be able to shut off. The noise that the motor makes every ten seconds or so will drive me insane before this trip is finished.
13 August 2009
9:46 PM. Today was the longest day of our Tunisian voyage so far (though tomorrow may prove to be longer), travelling from Tunisia’s almost western-most frontier to its almost eastern-most.
We left Tozeur after another pitiable breakfast, striking out from the palms and into the desert. Almost immediately we entered the Shotte El-Jerid. Here there was no vegetation – only sand and a burned out tour bus. And salt. The El-Jerid is a salt pan (or some similar geological term), as evinced by the salt creek bubbling alongside the causeway. Salt crystals form wherever the water collects, often forming a crust over the water like a layer of ice in the winter. And the water, for whatever reason, is red – ranging from a soft pink to a deep purple Kool-Aid color. And it was also here that Luke Skywalker brooded over Tataouine’s two moons, so we took plenty of angsty teenager photos.
We continued past the shotte, passing unattended grazing camels and sand/salt sculptures made to look like them until we reached the town of Douz. Douz is home to Tunisia’s largest desert date palmery and borders on quintessential Sahara desert. Mom and I took a little ride with Ali, our guide, and Ali Baba and Mohammad, our camels (mine and hers, respectively), most likely so named as soon as I asked what their names were. It was delightfully touristy, having men on horses and camels ride up and offer photograph opportunities, and men on mopeds offering coke, but they didn’t make us dress up like caravan herders like some Italians near us. And I rode a camel in the dune sea of the Sahara Desert, even if it was only a half hour in the “coastal waters.” It was pretty cool.
From Douz we started heading into the mountains and to the highlighted part of today’s trip: Matmata, Luke Skywalker’s home. The ground got at once more desert-like and more vegetated – with little oases spotting the hills and the occasional grass. We passed some troglodyte houses and finally arrived in Matmata. After completely blowing through town, we were accosted by Mustafa, a self-appointing guide who took us first to his house (to see a Berber house, I guess), and then to the Sidi Driss Hotel, where Luke lived with his aunt and uncle. It was great to walk around and see all the doors and windows I recognized. We stayed for lunch, but it never came. They had nothing in the shops about Star Wars.
So we ate elsewhere, and were treated respectfully (rather than like livestock rolling off a tour bus) and ate a lovely meal al fresco. We sampled brik, a kind of poached egg, parsley, and potatoes in an eggroll-fried crust, and Tunisia’s couscous, a bit courser than the Moroccan kind and with a spicy tomato base. Very good, though I’m partial to what I get back home. We left Star Wars country and headed on, glad to have seen it and completely ready to go.
Aside from mom being flagged over randomly by police and then sent on immediately upon being recognized as foreign, we had no incident on reaching the island of Djerba – supposedly the Land of the Lotus Eaters. (I don’t care much about Rome, but the Odyssey is my bag.) The ferry is a short fifteen minutes, and the island has a very Newport or Block Island feel. We pulled up just after sunset and walked to the port, photographed the fake pirate boats, and ate dinner. With dinner we tried ojja, another egg dish, this one of seafood with poached eggs in a tomato sauce, and had some crepes. It was delicious. We also discovered the most poorly translated menu of all time. I got one to take home.
Finally, I popped into a souvenir shop to get something for Salma and got into a fantastic conversation with Mohammad, the clerk. We talked about tea services, rosewater sprinklers, horses and elephants, and almost everything else. It was great because he definitely spoke Tunisian Arabic, but we understood each other really well.
And a final note of linguistic discovery: it may be that “g” and “k” sounds are nearly the same. The towns of Gabes and Kebili were written on street signs as ڨابس and ڨبلي , both with the Tunisian ڨ . The town of Kettana, however, starts with a ك . And ث may be pronounced like an “s.” An ice cream company, ثلجة , was written in French as “Selja.”
Somehow, while trying to operate the windshield wiper fluid, mom unintentionally shut down my nemesis: the rear wiper, which by this time in its eternal struggle with an imaginary wiper against imaginary rain had taken on the tone of a very angry machine.
14 August 2009
10:26 PM. Tonight is my last night in Tunisia – for this trip, at least. I turned out to be right yesterday when I wrote that today would be the longest drive. We went a good 400 kilometers (I think) from Houmt Souk to Nabeul, a little town part of the Hammamet touristopolis, almost all of it pretty uneventful. We rode the ferry back across from Djerba and I was almost tempted into buying a GStar hat, we drove by endless miles of olive groves and tried to photograph the little roadside gas stands, and mom got pulled over again at a random inspection stop.
Our highlight for the day was El Jem, a tiny town with the largest Roman arena in Africa (and in terms of its preservation, more glorious than the Coliseum in Rome). Approaching the town, the ruins tower over everything else, much like a modern stadium would. In fact, it was a lot like any other arena I’ve been in, aside from being 2000 years old and the site of violent ritual death. It was also absolutely amazing. You could walk up into the stands and down into the gladiator holding dungeons.
And I finally found some of those guardians of the bey to get as presents for the Assekours and Seghirs – and one for myself. I didn’t bargain any, but I got a free desert rose (I think for speaking Arabic and being Moroccan).
Finally, we drove the rest of the afternoon and into the evening to Hammamet. It turns out that this is the vacation capital of Tunisia, and was more packed with tourists – both foreign and domestic – than I’ve ever seen here in Tunisia or elsewhere. We also didn’t have a reservation anywhere, but they found a place in the sacred tour book. We spent the next hour trying to find it, learning, at this time, that it was in Nabeul, or “North Hammamet.” Eighteen kilometers later and there were more tourists, and no sign of the Hotel Alya. In the end, we settled for a different place, from a different tour book, which required driving back across Nabeul to find. We found it and had a lovely dinner on the beach. No new foods, though.
On the road, I noticed a sign for the town of Zrig, written as زريق . I don’t know if it was just missing a dot over the final ق , but if it wasn’t, it’s strange to see that letter transliterated as a “g.” I know that Kairouan is spelled القيروان .
And the biggest shock has been here in the Greater Hammamet Area: humidity. It feels like noontime in Atlanta in the middle of the night, an exaggeration only because I haven’t felt that ever while living in Morocco. I don’t know if I’m going to miss East Coast summers or not.
15 August 2009
12:14 PM. I’ve just taken my seat now on the Tunisair jet ready to take me back to Morocco. Today has been spent almost entirely in the airport, but it’s given me a chance to reflect on this experience.
I also had a most amazing encounter sitting at a little café and meeting another American – a Peace Corps volunteer just CoSed from Mauritania – sitting next to me and having the same sandwich. He’s on his way to Casablanca to see a bit of the country before returning to the States and whatever fortunes await an RPCV. We might even meet in Fes.
And now I’m here thinking about all I’ve done and seen in Tunisia. Mom made a good point last night when she said that it seemed like we’ve been doing a lot of driving, and we did that, but we also saw a lot of the country. And though we probably spent as much time each day in the car as we did out, that’s where we got to experience the desert, the mountains, the palmeries and olive groves, the little towns and homemade gas stations.
We pretty much did or saw only one thing in each city or town where we stopped, and there are plenty of places left where we never went, but I enjoyed what I saw and did. The people were friendly, and it was fun to actually be a Moroccan. I got by with Darija, which bodes well for a PC Moroccan’s chances after service when it comes to being a useful “Arabic” speaker. Almost everyone I talked to thought I’m either full-on Moroccan or that at least one of my parents has to be (usually my father if they saw me with mom).
And so the question remains: am I glad to have come? My answer is yes. Not only is it a new place to add to my list, but I’m content with the way I saw all that I did. I ate as many different Tunisian foods as possible, I spoke the closest form of the local language as I could, and I never bought anything without first learning about it. The man taught me how to wear the desert turban, my friend went to great lengths about rosewater sprinklers (and everything else in his shop), and I forwent bargaining over guardians of the bey in exchange for learning about their history. I even demanded to know the harvest year before buying a box of dates.
Would I come back? Tunisia won’t be at the top of my travel lists, but that’s because there are so many other places I still want to see. If the opportunity presents itself, I’ll certainly take it. I haven’t seen the deep desert or Cap Bon, Carthage or Tunis, and I’d like to spend more time in some of the places I did see, especially Kairouan and Djerba. All that, however, will have to wait until the next time, inshallah.