The Tunis Medina

The Tunis medina is a maze of narrow alleyways closed to motor traffic, packed with shoppers.  Although many of the shoppers are tourists, only a minority of those are European and we only occasionally heard shoppers speaking English.  In the more crowded lanes one bobs along in a sea of Arabic.  But the shop keepers are sharp-eared polyglots – “Where you from?  English?  Look my shop!  Cheap.  Everything for nothing!”  Sometimes they guess wrong and address us in German or French, skipping from one language to another.  Pauline and Tony speak Arabic, and Pauline seemed to know a substantial proportion of the shop keepers.

View from the roof of a carpet shop in the medina.

Another such view.

A traditional tea and coffee shop in the medina.

One of two mosque minarettes visible from the medina.

The other.  Tony told us that the different designs indicate different sects.

Fruit syrups in a medina shop.

One of innumerable such displays of shoes in the medina.

A chechia maker named Othello puts the finishing touches on a chechia (traditional Tunisian hat).  We bought several.

The Tunis Market

On our last full day in Tunis, Pauline and Tony led us on a tour of the city’s main market and the medina.  Having survived the drive downtown (despite the breathtaking insanity of Tunisian drivers), we started with the market.  It is a visual and olfactory kick.  We visited on a Monday, when the fish-selling portion of the market (which looked huge) is closed, but the place was nevertheless amazing.

The hanging ones are Bergamot lemons, whose essence is used in many perfumes and in Earl Grey tea. 

The Frippe

“The Frippe” begins as a 4-block stretch of street, closed to motor traffic (except for the occasional rogue scooter and one crazed Fiat).  The street is crowded with battered wooden tables heaped with used clothing and various and sundry other things that can be purchased for next to nothing.  Reportedly, many of these are European donations (think Big Brother) that come to Tunis by ship in huge bales.  Young men stand near (sometimes on) the tables, crying their wares. Moira, Karen, and Paige found nice sweaters and scarves for a dinar or two apiece (a dinar is currently worth about $.70 Canadian); Paige scored a pair of Italian leather boots lined with rabbit fur. 

Especially for Adaline!

Dough, stove, and pan for making a tortilla-like flatbread served with harissa and egg.

The Frippe street gives way to a large open lot, crammed with all manner of products:  Yet more clothing; household sundries; doors and window frames; calligraphy; ornate silver guitar wall mirrors; curious fishes; heaping-full bags of spices; mounts of olives; live chickens beheaded, gutted, and plucked on order.  Best of all were the faces of the men and women in the Frippe, many of them deeply and richly marked by years of sun and hardship.

As I write this, I can still conjure the shocking taste of the juice of these oranges.  Marvelous.

The Roman Aqueduct

Within 2 miles of Karen’s place stand the remains of a vast system of cisterns built by the Romans around 250 ad .  These were the terminus of a tremendous aqueduct that brought water from 150 k away.  We tried sneaking in without paying, but were stopped by two men who explained that we would have to buy tickets for 9 dinars apiece, which would give us access to a number of sights in the region.  For some reason we thought we’d have a better chance of getting past if Karen and Paige feigned ignorance of French.  We ended up paying 5 dinars for all four of us to get a wonderfully engaging tour of the cistern by the older of the two gents.  Toward the end of the tour he displayed several coins that he said he had found on the grounds after rains.  Paige was charmed and bought one – and he threw in three small, eroded ones gratis.

Christmas at Karen's

Karen’s home is the middle unit in a three-unit row-house.  The walls inside and out are covered in an extraordinarily hard plaster, and the floors are marble, keeping the interior cool (and echo-y).

Christmas eve, Paige hosted a visit by Papito and Ashmaya, the delightful children of Karen’s across-the-street neighbours Reem and Nejmadin.  Paige helped the two kids hand-paint ornaments and decorate the tree (which Moira had painstakingly assembled).  This was Papito’s and Ashmaya’s first-ever Christmas-tree-decorating experience.

Christmas day we hosted a traditional turkey dinner for the above-named neighbours and for Karen’s colleague Pauline and Pauline’s husband Tony (Kiwis who have been in Tunis for 17 years).  The Tunisians tucked into the turkey, potato casserole, squash, stuffing, and gravy with gusto, and later said that the evening was a memorable “first” for them.

Tunisian Desert Trip

Tunisia is a trip.  It is simultaneously 2010 (cell phones, wi-fi [pronounced wee-fee], the latest Mercedes Benz models) and 1910 (breads cooked in ovens fired by long thin olive twigs hauled in a huge bundle on the back of a robed man; donkey-drawn carts negotiating traffic circles and hugging the shoulder on the highway; the butcher hacking up hunks of meat on a huge block so battered and worn that you couldn’t balance a beer bottle anywhere on its surface).  The gent below, wearing a  Berber hooded robe while taking a cell call, captures the chronological mashup of Tunisia.

Karen treated us to a mind-blowing 4-day Tunisian tour.  Our super chauffeur (Salem) picked us up shortly after 7am last Saturday, in a new Land Cruiser. (Libby [whom locals assume is named in honour of neighbouring Libya] stayed home with Mabrouka, Karen’s housekeeper, who moved in for the duration.)  A detailed recitation of our adventures would take hours, but here are a few highlights.

Our first stop (aside from a very earthy highway rest area) was El Jem, site of the third largest Roman colosseum.  It is indeed colossal and remarkable.  It is easy to imagine the roar and sweat of the crowds (estimated seating capacity of 30,000) as wild African animals were goaded into fighting one another and gladiators battled sword to sword.  We were able to walk beneath the stadium to see where the contestants awaited their turns.  Very evocative. 

 

Later we sat at an outdoor café hard by the colosseum and had mint tea and “makroud” date cookies made by the proprietor’s mother (he said his wife is too lazy to make them; he also gave Paige the first of several “desert roses” and other trinkets that she acquired gratis over the trip.  A desert rose is a roseate crystalline mineral formation found in the desert.

 

The next stop was an extraordinary museum of mosaics.  There was a lovely museum building with dozens of large mosaics, recovered from the floors of Roman ruins, on the walls.  Out back were those self-same ruins, many of which still featuring yet-to-be-recovered mosaics exposed to all weathers.  Next door another recovering project was ongoing, with the aim of rebuilding/replicating a Roman villa that had stood nearby the remains of which were discovered by constructions workers a few years ago.  The mosaic expert gave us an extraordinarily animated tour for a few-dinar tip.

That night we stayed in a faux troglodyte hotel.  Some Berbers lived in troglodyte homes built into sandstone caves.  Our hotel rooms were built to be cavelike; the effect was heightened to a remarkable degree by the electricity going out in the night.  DARK.  By 7, when we rose, it was no longer truly pitch dark in the bathroom (which had a window), but still it was the darkest shower I recall ever taking.  

Throughout Day 2 we visited a number of real troglodyte homes.  The region is dotted with such homes, which characteristically include a tent outside a cave-like entrance that gives on to an enclosed sandstone courtyard with a number of cave-rooms surrounding the courtyard.  Some are still occupied.  In the one shown below, there was a child asleep in each of two rooms, and an older woman gave each of us a turn getting a feel for how to grind barley.

We also visited the remains of several Berber villages, which are remarkably Gaudi.  Surely Guadi must have seen these and been inspired by them.  They also inspired George Lukas, who staged portions of several of the Star Wars films in such villages (and also built a faux Berber/alien village as a set).

The largest of the Berber villages that we visited was built into and around a hill.  We visited a small museum there, where the handsome and intense curator, Mongi, gave us a vivid introduction to aspects of Berber culture.  The village was a defensive stronghold, with numerous clever features (e.g., a complex maze of smoke tunnels interconnecting every kitchen, so that the smoke from the entire village first travelled horizontally, depositing much of its particulate matter along the way before being vented to the air some distance away; a tunnel that allowed women to fetch water from distant wells without being seen leaving or entering the village; sprial street layouts that slowed the progress of any aggressor and afforded numerous defensive positions).  Mongi also talked about how Berbers had combined aspects of numerous religions into their belief systems and art, and most especially about the technical, aesthetic, and symbolic sophistication of their textiles.




Day 3, we got up, had a quick breakfast in the hotel, then drove directly to camel lot.  There we were provided with robes and head scarves and within minutes were astride dromedaries.  Our guides led us out into the desert.  Technically we were still some 50 miles north of the Sahara, but it looked 100% Sahara to us.  When we were well out and away, the young Omar Sharif, dressed entirely in black and astride a black horse, rode up and posed magnificently.  By and by we all stopped and dismounted, and Omar took each of us on a horse ride in turn – Paige and Karen riding behind him bareback and getting a decent gallop as part of the ride, Moira and I being more placidly led along.  Then back on our camels (dromedaries, really, but how awkward that is to say) and back to the lot.  It was an absolute and total scream, and I’d do it again in a NY minute. 

Much later on Day 3, after visiting various sights, Salem took us offroading.  He had hitherto maintained a somewhat reserved (not to say solemn) manner, and it was delightful to hear him laugh like a lad as we screeched as he drove the big 4-wheeler up, over, and slithering down steep dunes.  A hoot!

Day 4 began with a small town market, then a 2-hr round-trip mountain excursion on a train originally built for a Bey in the 19teens.  Very beautiful and a great change of pace.  Then a whole lot of driving took us to the city of Kairouan, site of one of the most revered mosques in the world.  Not being devout, we spent almost all of our Kairouan time buying carpets and camel-leather bags.

Then back into the Cruiser and the indefatigable Salem piloted us back to Tunis.  Truly an incredible journey!