How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Tunisia

(I wrote this several years ago--NB.)

Grape vines, fields of lavender. Perfect rows of olive, almond, pomegranate, and pistachio trees laid out along the hills. Square fences constructed out of live, flowering cactus plants. To the west as our bus heads south from Tunis to the island of Djerba, the Atlas Mountains run back in low-lying layers and peaks back toward Algeria, pale and hazy in the morning, richly shadowed at twilight. Women and their children tend herds of sheep and goats by the side of the road, or fill jars from wells, or languidly ride atop donkey carts loaded with hay or branches of palm. Closer to Djerba, camels and their tenders drink water and rest in the last, dusty light of the day.

In the villages, schoolchildren and old men sharing sheesha pipes and tea watch our bus pass with mild curiosity. The younger children wear pink school uniforms, and the older girls wear jeans, sneakers, navy-blue tunics, and headscarves. They hang out together under the shade of trees or bus stops, eating ice cream, jostling each other the way schoolkids do everywhere.

Mesmerized by the passing landscape for eight hours, I’m thinking, What the hell was I afraid of?

Packing for my trip a few days earlier, I had a very clear idea of what I might have to fear in Tunisia. For weeks, every day’s news seemed part of a conspiracy to make my visit an increasingly bad idea. Did I really want to be an American in a predominantly Moslem country during the Iraq war, when sickening pictures of abused and tortured Iraqi prisoners were leaking out every day, and when the Middle East road to peace had run off into another ditch? Not to mention the fact that I was visiting the country in part to cover the annual Jewish pilgrimage to the La Ghriba synagogue on Djerba, where only two years ago terrorists had blown up a truck and killed more than 20 visitors.

I’m not Arab-phobic‹quite the contrary, in fact; my rants about my belief that racism against Arabs, Indians, and Pakistanis is still condoned in the U.S. have often made me something less than the most popular girl at the American party. I am, however, Al Quaeda-phobic, and, it was a real struggle against what I felt to be a shameful paranoia to make the decision to go.

But how often would I have the opportunity to go to Tunisia, a place with one of those names that never fails to ring in my mind like a particularly evocative line of poetry? And just when could I honestly expect the world to become a much safer place?

I had to go. I would simply stay away from large crowds and maintain the same indefinable "safety practices" that I practice when riding the subways in Manhattan.

******

On my first evening in Tunis, our group (I was traveling with other writers and some representatives of the Tunisian Tourism Board, who I’d already managed to annoy with my pre-trip questions about security) toured the artists’ village of Sidi Bou Said. Built in the 15th-century by Arabs who had just fled Andalusia, it’s an insanely beautiful labyrinth of cobbled streets, white houses with Mediterranean-blue trim, and the same interior courtyards and fountains that one finds in Seville. Tunisia, I was thinking, just might be one of those rare destinations that live up to live up to my hard-to-live-up-to dreams of them.

There were, of course, vendors everywhere‹friendly, about an "8" on the 1-to-10 vendor-pushiness scale, and eager to talk. That evening I had the first few of the encounters that repeated themselves everywhere I went in Tunisia:

"Hello! English?"

"No."

"French?"

"No."

"German?"

"No."

"Czech?"

"No." (Here I would smile.) "American."

Skipping only about a half of a beat, my questioner would raise his eyebrows and exclaim, "Ah! American! But how do you like Tunisia?"

Here I would take the opportunity to mix things up a little more by speaking Arabic. "Quais. Helwa (nice)."

"Ah! You speak some Arabic?"

"Shwaya-shwaya (just a little)."

No one, it seemed, expected to find an American‹much less one who could speak a little Arabic in their beautiful country (it was often pointed out to me, however, that I spoke "Egyptian Arabic", but that I was forgiven). As it turned out, every day gave me more reason to be glad that I was one of those rare creatures.

******

Only on a few occasions did the subject of politics, or terrorism, or the war in Iraq, come up in my encounters with Tunisians, and I was usually the one who started the conversation. No one I spoke to was anything less than measured and polite in their responses. The general feeling seemed to be that the war was very bad and that the Bush administration was, shall we say, somewhat less than honest and sympathetic in its dealings with the Arab world, but the people I talked to seemed to believe that most Americans did not share the administration’s outlook. (One of our hosts, who spoke no English, did a very funny impression of George W. Bush. Screwing up his face until all of his features seemed to sink into one another, he muttered, "Saddam!" and started shooting erratically into the sky with imaginary pistols pulled from imaginary holsters all over his body.) In Tunisia, at least, where income from American tourism has decreased dramatically since 9/11, people simply seemed happy to have an American visitor find the country "Quais."

And only once did anyone mention 9/11, in an odd, benign exchange on my first evening in among the stalls in Sidi Bou Said. After the usual "Where are you from?" conversation, a vendor of jewelry and assorted Tunisian-style trinkets, a very handsome young man with honey-and-gold-colored eyes asked me in insufficient (for the subject) English if the "very big place" in New York was still there. I didn’t understand what he meant; he clarified by saying, "the big things that we blew up." His use of the word "we", at least as I interpreted it, sounded less like a form of alliance with Al Quaeda than a simple attempt to make a distinction between Americans and Arabs that an American might understand.

"Don’t you know?" I asked him in Arabic.

He seemed genuinely confused. A French girl, it turned out, had either told him that the World Trade Center was still there, or that something else had already been built in its place. The girl, who had apparently spent a few days at his house and had not kept her promise to stay in touch after she left, was clearly the bigger issue in our conversation.

"Americans are very gentle, very nice," he told me. "French people are not so nice." Being jilted by a European girl, it seemed, was much more troubling to him than the state of world affairs, or perhaps amounted to the same thing.

******

During our first dinner in Tunisia, over grilled loup de mer, many glasses of (surprisingly good) Tunisian wine, and boukha (a fig-based liquor which tastes like the Tunisian version of moonshine), I learned that my fellow travelers shared my concerns about security at the Djerba festival. I was relieved, at least, to find out that if I was, in fact, being a bit of a drama queen about the whole thing, I wasn’t the only one.

That night, standing on my balcony overlooking the city of Tunis, I gazed at the yellow lights spread out along the dark horizon like strings of blazing yellow diamonds, and listened to the sounds of traffic, laughter, music, and barking dogs that echoed up the hill from all over the city. In the morning a rainbow straddled the hazy hills and whitewashed houses of the city, and the deep blue harbor.

I couldn’t believe that I was in North Africa.

******

There were policemen all over Tunisia. From a distance, their dark, white-trimmed uniforms looked sharp and imposing; close-up, however, I could see that they were worn at the edges, and that the white gloves had holes in them. The officers were stern, but polite and respectful.

As we approached Djerba after our long drive south, there was even more of a police presence, and there were quite a few roadblocks. The Tunisian government seemed to be taking security very seriously, especially where the trouble had happened several years earlier.

We were exhausted by the time our bus reached the Djerba ferry terminal, and it was dark. I stood on an upper deck on the boat, shivering in a cool breeze that would, a few days later, develop into a furious, cold dervish of a wind spiraling up from the Sahara. Below me, the police were checking parcels, peering into cars, questioning passengers. Jews and Arabs got out of their cars to breathe in the sea air and watch the approaching lights of Djerba. If they took notice of anyone, it was the American journalists watching from above for signs of trouble.

There was no trouble.

******

Jews and Arabs have coexisted on the island of Djerba for almost 1,500 years. It was very important to our Tunisian hosts that we see how peaceful that coexistence has remained, even through the worst of times in the Middle East.

The worst of times for Djerba came in 2002, when a truck loaded with explosives detonated outside of the La Ghriba synagogue at the height of the festival. The majority of those killed were German tourists (Jews from around the world make the pilgrimage every spring). The Tunisian government first called the explosion an accident, but it soon became clear that Al Quaeda was responsible for the attack.

One of my fellow journalists tried to reassure me about our visit to the festival by saying that terrorists tend to strike a target only once. Someone reminded her about the World Trade Center.

******

On the eve of the festival, we gathered after dinner on the vividly colored cushions of our hotel’s sheesha room to have a smoke and some boukha. Ali, our funny, charming waiter (who retained his dignity even while wearing a rather silly costume and pointy, upward-curling shoes‹he looked much better after work in his elegant suit) brought us different varieties of tobacco to try. My favorite was delicately flavored with apples.

A group of men and women came in, in chic European dress. Accompanied by the hotel’s oud player, the women began to sing in Arabic, beautifully. Ali (who had also noticed my "Egyptian Arabic") told me that the songs were those of Um Khaltoum, the much-beloved Egyptian singer (her American counterpart might be Rosemary Clooney, or Billy Holiday). When I stood closer to listen, the best of the singers, who resembled Jeanne Moreau, invited me to sit with them. I was fascinated by the pleasure they took in singing; everyone knew the words.

Although they spoke no English, they were able to tell me that they were a group of Moslem, Jewish, and Christian Tunisians, now living in Paris. They were in Djerba to help promote understanding and tolerance among the religions. It seemed to me that their songs should do the trick, but then I was just an American writer obsessing about her own safety.

******

At the entrance to the La Ghriba festival stood a guard with what I assume was an AK-47 (I’m not much of a gun aficionado; in any case, it was huge). In the parking lot, however, police officers and tour bus drivers gathered around radios in the buses, listening to a particularly important soccer match.

The synagogue, from the outside, appeared much smaller than I’d expected. There was no sign of the damage the explosion had caused; everything was white and pristine. The crowd was not nearly as big as I’d expected‹or, I imagine, as the promoters had hoped.

Past the main gate, there were two buildings, one on either side. In a courtyard in the building on the right, there was singing, celebration, souvenir and food vendors, and an auction involving scarves and the menorah that would shortly be carried about the village streets in a procession.

On the left was the synagogue itself, predominantly blue, softly lit by shafts of light from above, and filled with worshippers. The floor was covered with shoes, and sticky with what I took to be boukha (which is a popular refreshment at the festival) and orange soda. Men and boys prayed in the first, larger room, and in the second room children handed out candles to be lit and added to a long row of burning ones. The atmosphere was serene and vibrant at the same time.

Later, from a distance (in keeping with my solitary safety rule), I followed the raucous procession as the menorah was paraded through the streets. If I’d had any doubts about the seriousness with which the Tunisian government took security, they vanished then. Streets were barricaded with buses. Guards were stationed on rooftops and all along the procession route.

This was where the "peaceful coexistence" would be put to the test. Moslems stood in the doorways of their homes and shops, watching, occasionally selling ice cream to Jewish children participating in the procession. From one store I thought I heard a song in Arabic about Mohammed; I wasn’t sure what to make of its intent.

I decided to leave the procession route and explore the back streets of the village. Here, Moslems watched the festivities from behind barricades, or sat talking in their doorways. Children played ball, and sometimes a deep blue door would open to reveal a Moslem woman shyly watching me, and then close again. No one addressed me, but they answered politely when I asked them a question. My Arabic wasn’t good enough to ask if they were watching the procession from so far away because they wanted to, or because they had been told to do so.

I passed some Moslem women and children returning home from shopping. They were stopped by security people, and made to take a different route home. That, I supposed, was the answer to my question. It seemed an extreme measure, but it was remarkable to me that, in a predominantly Moslem country, such precautions were being taken to ensure the safety of a handful of Jews.

Walking back toward the synagogue, I passed a very severe-looking police officer. Maneuvering around the barricade he was guarding, I remarked, "C’est comme New York!" He cracked up.

******

Several days later, on my flight home from Tunisia, I met two women and a man from central Pennsylvania. They seemed the most unlikely people to find in North Africa, but they were already planning their next trip to Tunisia. We talked about the unspoiled beauty of the country, the elegance of the resorts, the kindness of the people. I told them that I’ll be returning in December to see the Sahara festival. We were like a secret society--Americans who have been to Tunisia and fallen in love with the place.

******

The news of my first day back is that Al Quaeda has beheaded a civilian from Pennsylvania in Iraq. Long, jagged, out-of-season strands of lightning hit the ground all afternoon, as they also did in Frankfurt during my trip home. The green hills, blue-trimmed white houses, and tranquil, dusty streets of Tunisia seem more like a dream now than they did before I left home.