Hammamet, Thursday, June 25, 2015 (early hours) I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here. I have two names, which meet and part, and I have two languages. I forget which of them I dream in. (Mahmoud Darwish, Almond Blossoms and Beyond, translated by Mohammad Shaheen) Just before leaving Honolulu on Tuesday, June 23, I told my husband of my earliest memory of Tunisia. It was night time. I was 4 years old and seated in the back of a car with my mother. My father was in the front talking to a driver in a language I couldn’t understand. Later, I learned it was French. I remember looking out of the car’s windows. The road was flanked by trees I had never seen before. They were young palm trees, short and sturdy. In my childish imagination they looked like they were patiently gathering strength so that they could once rise and walk away.
Sure enough, so many years later I arrived at Carthage airport again late at night. While I was waiting to present my passport to the most cheerful custom official I ever met, I caught a whiff of a familiar smell. I stood still and closed my eyes for a little while to remember the smell. It was the odor of lime washed walls. Most of the Mediterranean countries whitewash their homes once a year for a fresh look and to repel insects. I felt at home already. After the passport control, a Tunisian who had traveled on the same plane like I, tasked his sister and brother-in-law from Tunis with negotiating a reasonable cab fare for me. To no avail, the driver knew I had no choice. It was too late for the train or the louage (French for share taxi). The driver received me with a stern look clearly indicating that he was not open to any bargaining. But when I addressed him in the dialect of Sousse, the city where I had once lived for 8 years, his face lit up. His mother was from Sousse, and he couldn’t believe that I had no foreign accent. As if he wanted to be forgiven for his initial morosity, he began spraying the inside of the car with rose water. I smiled thinking to myself ‘Only in Tunisia.’ As we left the airport behind, I saw that the road was flanked by young and robust palm trees. I looked at them in wonder. Maybe the old ones did walk away. Once we left Tunis, road signs caught my attention. I would only have known of Hammam Lif and Bir Bou Rekba as towns on the way south toward Nabeul and Hammamet, where I had booked my hotel room. Then exit signs appeared showing Mornag, Zaghouan, Grombalia... I had forgotten about these towns. And then, it all came back to me. Where did this knowledge lie buried all these years? Mornag has been wine land since ancient times. Grombalia was known for its good earth. Our biology teacher in Nabeul used to say that anything could grow on its soil. And Zaghouan was famous for its rare roses and its source. Its Roman aqueduct used to provide Carthage with water well into the Islamic period. Just as I saw the sign for Sousse, which awoke an unexpected nostalgia, the cab came to a stop. We were about to enter Hammamet’s touristic zone and needed to pass a check point. When the policemen saw me, they simply waived us through. The driver leaned back for a moment and said with a big smile 'The police are always nice to foreign visitors.' A little bit later, my driver stopped before a closed gate. A sleepy watchman opened for us, allowing me to see a domed building that seemed covered in marble. My hotel looked like a princely palace.
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Hammamet, Thursday, June 25, 2015 (evening) Quae desiit amicitia, ne coepit quidem (A friendship that ends never even began) Publilius Syrus, Sententiae, v. 691 I woke up enveloped by perfect silence. No traffic, no sirens, no helicopters. For someone who has lived for over 20 years in U.S. cities, the quietness felt surreal.
I soon found out that the night watchman had shared my return story with the receptionist who told the waiter who told the kitchen staff. By the time I sat down for breakfast, I think everyone at the Majesty Golf Hotel knew my story. But there were still questions. Surely, your father was Tunisian. No. So, your mother? No. How come you lived in Nabeul but speak like a Sahliyya (a woman from Sousse and surroundings)? Because we lived there before moving to Nabeul. The question I had a hard time answering was what took me so long to return. Yes, my studies in Germany, my moving to the U.S., the job offer from the University of Hawai‘i. All plausible reasons but none sounded right. I finally got ready to ride the bus from Hammamet to Nabeul around noon. Over my excitement to find my childhood friend, I ended up waiting on the wrong side of the street. After I missed my bus, a merchant invited me into his shop to enjoy the shade. He was from Jendouba in north-western Tunisia and only in Hammamet during the touristic season. I asked him how the business was. He complained that the shooting at the Bardo Museum on March 18 had scared off many visitors. But he was confident that tourists would eventually return. As I was getting ready to leave, he said ‘Please, tell everyone, we Tunisians are a friendly people.’ The conductor smiled when I asked for a ticket to Nabeul. It cost DT 1350, the equivalent of $.70. I got myself a window seat so that I could see the plantations on the way. But what I saw were not only lots of new buildings but entire new neighborhoods. Most of the olive and orange plantations had disappeared. I should have known. The only buildings I recognized were Hammamet’s Borj (fortress) and “Dar Sebastian” (House of Sebastian), once owned by Rumanian born millionaire George Sebastian and converted into a cultural center in the 60s. It was once occupied by General Rommel, and Churchill is said to have written parts of his memoirs there. I wished I had had the time to visit. But that day was reserved for a mission that took decades in the making. My friend Neïla’s picture has sat on my desk for the last 20 years. It shows her at the age of 14. Does she still live in her native town? What if she had moved away? What if something had happened to her? I had googled her name hundreds of times over the years, without ever finding a single trace. She could have found me within seconds. Did she ever attempt to contact me? Just as I tried to picture for the hundredth time the way to get to her family home, some shouting shook the back of the bus. The conductor was arguing with a young fellow who had tried to get a free ride. He was dressed the way young Tunisians imagine American youths. A grey cap turned backward, a sleeveless shirt, black jeans, and a heavy iron belt. The conductor asked the driver to stop the bus. He designated a passenger to watch the cash register, grabbed the youth by his neck, and walked him straight to the next Police Station. No one on the bus seemed to mind. I asked the passenger seated next to me about it. He said Tunisians were tired to witness the decline of law and order since the ousting of President Ben Ali in 2011. It was time to get the country back in shape. I listened in silence. It seems every transition from dictatorship to democracy comes at the price of instability – whether in the Islamic world or in post-communist countries. When the bus arrived in Nabeul, I thought of first walking to my old high school, since it was from there that Neïla and I used to get to her family home. But straight ahead was the souk (open-air market), and from there I knew it would be shorter to the small town of Dar Cha‘bane, where I hoped to find my childhood friend. I passed by the shrine of Sidi Ma‘awiyya, a Sufi saint who is said to have journeyed from Morocco centuries ago. His zawiyya (pilgrimage site) was reduced to the mere domed shrine that was now squeezed between two street lanes. I looked at the blackened niches in the front and the back of the shrine. People were still lighting their candles there. (The picture on this website shows the shrine on the left and the street leading to the souk on the far right. In the middle is a gigantic fruit platter symbolizing the importance of pottery and oranges for Nabeul.) The souk looked rather deserted even for Ramadan (Islamic month of obligatory fasting), when less people venture out in the streets. I noticed that the quality of the merchandise available was nothing compared to what it used to be. What happened to the sophistication and imaginative designs of typical Nabeulian pottery and tiles? I asked one of the merchants if his ceramic ware was imported. He threw his arms in the air complaining that the youth didn’t want to learn the traditional crafts. Young people may just realize that Tunisians are too impoverished to buy high end ceramics and that even tourists who could afford quality pottery have become scarce. I finally left the souk behind me and approached Dar Cha‘bane. The longer I walked the less familiar everything looked to me. How was I to find Neïla’s home with no markers on the way? As I walked into Dar Cha‘bane’s main square, I had a sense of déjà vu. But something looked different. Then I realized it was the mosque. It looked quite shiny; it must have been renovated recently. Come to think of it, all mosques I had seen on the way had a rather radiant appearance. In a corner of the square I spotted a group of retired men. You could tell from their body language how well acquainted they were with each other. They looked at me with discreet curiosity as I approached them. I told them that I was trying to find my best friend after 33 years of absence. Her name was Neïla, she had a younger sister, their father had been a painter… Also, that her husband’s name may be Hafed. Just as I run out of possible clues, one of the gents jumped up and said ‘I know her, I know her!’ He then turned to his buddies and said 'Her parent’s home is at the end of that street.' He pointed at a street behind him. I almost shivered when I understood how close I was. He turned to me and said ‘But she doesn’t live there anymore.’ He must have sensed my disappointment because he added quickly ‘Hafed’s brother lives at the other end of the square.’ We walked over to the home of Hafed’s brother. He met us in front of his door and called Neïla on his cell. I couldn’t believe it. In one moment I thought I may never see her again and in the next I was going to talk to her. I’m not sure I would have recognized Neïla’s voice if it had been a random call. But as I was clinging to the phone, I did think that there was a timbre that rang familiar although Neïla didn’t say much. Nor did I, for that matter. I think we were both in awe. Finally, I heard her say ‘Don’t move. Hafed will come and pick you up.’ I waited with the whole group of retired gents. They were almost as tense as I. Nobody said a single word. When a car showed up and Hafed emerged, I finally relaxed. I couldn’t believe it. Hafed and Neïla had been high school sweethearts, and I used to be their chaperone. And here decades later, he was taking me to the home they had built for themselves. When I entered their new home and hugged Neïla, I knew I could finally let go of my quest. This is what ancient travelers must have felt when they reached their destinations after years on the road. Neïla and I spent hours and hours talking. I don’t know of any other person in whose presence I may be just myself. We talked about our husbands, children, childhood dreams, the prayers that we used to perform together, and the future of Tunisia. I showed her a picture of us on my 13th birthday, the last one I celebrated in Tunisia. We looked at our former likenesses and at each other, and laughed and laughed. Where has all that time gone? Marcel Proust once wrote his famous À la recherche du temps perdu (lit. Searching for Time Lost). Neïla and I celebrated our temps retrouvé, time recovered. Hammamet, Friday, June 26, 2015 (morning) On Friday morning, I was on a bus traveling to Sousse, a famous coastal resort and the city I lived in for 8 years as a child. I was going to meet the family of another childhood friend. A Tunisian radio station was playing a song by popular Christian Lebanese singer Feyrouz, when the music stopped abruptly to make an announcement. I was taking part in an animated conversation about a provocative Tunisian theater play called “Da‘ish” (the Arab acronym for ISIS), when my Tunisian counterpart and I realized the sudden silence on the bus. We finally tuned in and understood that a terror attack had left 24 tourists killed on the beach of the Hotel Imperial in Sousse. In the following hours the death count increased up to 38, and the number of individuals injured was estimated to be higher than 40.
The shock was such that we didn’t realize the bus had come to a full stop. Within minutes, dozens of other vehicles queued behind us. Nobody knew what to think. Half an hour later, cars began to come from the opposite lane. Drivers were honking their horns and shouting 'Turn around!' and 'The road to Sousse is blocked.' Our bus driver offered to unload passengers who wished to wait. After about 10 passengers got off, the bus made a u-turn and drove back to Hammamet. I joined the rest of the passengers gathered around the conductor in the back of the bus. One older man cried and kept saying 'Tunisia is gone!' He was working as a night watchman in a hotel in Hammamet and expected the attacks to scare tourists away from Tunisia. In a country where more than 15% of the economy relies on monies generated by the travel and hospitality business, the watchman’s worries seemed justified. It turned out that while we were talking, a Belgian airplane about to land with more tourists had flown back to Brussels. Major European travel agencies announced mass cancellations within hours of the attack. A younger woman shouted 'Where are the police when you need them. They got a TD 200,000 bonus (about $100) after the revolution which we the people carried on our shoulders. But when danger comes to us, they are nowhere to be seen.' Actually, all touristic sites are surrounded by road blocks manned by Police and National Guard forces. But no one thought of placing security right on the beaches populated by tourists. Finally, the conductor who had stayed quiet for most of the heated exchange, said in a calm voice 'We are losing more than tourism, we are losing our country.' That line could be heard again and again on the various Tunisian TV shows that followed the attacks. Most Tunisians are concerned that after the disintegration of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, their country could be next. On our return to Hammamet, I saw dozens of Tunisians wrapped with their country’s flag, as if they wanted to say that they were prepared to defend Tunisia from attacks with their own bodies. The one word that kept recurring for most of the day was irhabi (terrorist), not jihadi or shahid (martyr). When asked about the word choice, Tunisians answer that calling cold-blooded killers jihadis or martyrs was conferring dignity on people who have none. The true Jihad is the struggle against one’s own passions. Anyway, a genuine Muslim does not kill the innocent. Nor is there a qur’anic promise that he will go to paradise for committing such an act. Later on that day, Tunisian President Beji Caid El Sebsi stated on National TV that a small country like Tunisia could not be expected to fight a global terrorist movement on its own. Only a partnership with major international powers could yield results. It is hard to disagree with these words, especially since the Tunisian killings were coordinated with same-day attacks near Lyon (France) and Kuwait. It is quite obvious that the Tunisian attack was part of a more encompassing plan hatched out outside the country. (An earlier version of this text was posted by Honolulu Star-Advertiser's Pat Gee on her facebook page.) Hammamet, Friday, June 26, 2015 (afternoon) gratus quod menti quolibet ire licet (I am grateful that the mind journeys where it wills) Ovid, The Black Sea Letters, III, V. v. 48 After the shattering news of the attacks in Sousse, I decided to go to the place that I had revisited in my mind endless times since I left Tunisia. It has always offered me solace. I rented a motor bike. More beast than bike and much too heavy for me to lift to make it stand upright. The owner insisted that I wear a helmet and kept telling me that I shouldn’t worry: Hammamet was a safe place. So many people had said this to me since I came off the bus that was supposed to take me to Sousse. Doubts began to creep in. In some moments I did think that my long orange blouse made me a perfect target. Why didn’t I wear dark colors that day? But I brushed the concerns aside. Attacks such as the one in Sousse were planned long in advance. There were no armed bands roaming around the country and waiting for a possible target. I started at a low speed but grew bolder after a while. As I drove towards Nabeul where my father had once managed four hotels, I wondered whether I would recognize them. The bus did not pass by them the other day. At some point I saw a sign saying ‘Zone Touristique.’ It sounded right, especially since the road was headed towards the sea. I turned right and then left. Within minutes I spotted the Hotel Mimosa, one of the four. Parallel to it run the train tracks. All I needed to do from there is to wait for the train bridge over the oued (streambed that only has water in the rainy season), where the road stops. Our home was the last one on the right. I only spotted the train bridge once I found myself already on a parallel bridge and saw the wide oued below me. So, the road now continues and follows the tracks all the way to the city. I made a U-turn and headed straight for our last home in Tunisia. It looked different. You could tell no one lived there all year round. The new owners built a wall around it. One could still see the house but it seemed so contained. Also, the access to the beach was gated. Before, the house was open from all sides, and the breezes whispered through the slender oleander leaves. I got back on the bridge and over the dry riverbed. On the right, above the sea stood the Marabout (shrine) of Sidi al-Mahrisi. Its white dome crested by a half-moon rested on a cube-like structure. Like other marabouts on Tunisia’s coast, it guarded the land against invaders from the sea. There were now many new beach homes in its vicinity but no one was out in the street. However, a skinny tiger cat greeted me affectionately and never left my side. It was as if it had been waiting for me. I leaned my heavy bike against the fence and walked slowly towards the shrine. Its whitewashed walls shone in the sun. I used to sit hours and hours on the rock on which the marabout was built, with my back against ancient mosaics that once ornated the bathroom of a Roman home. I used to imagine the ancient villa that must have once stood above the rock and children rushing into the sea.
I approached and saw the mosaics were still there and also the bathtub, exactly as I remembered it. But there were iron bars protecting the site. Probably, a good thing. My favorite mosaic had always been the beautiful Nereid riding a gigantic hippocampus. I had a story for her. She was carrying away the soul of a sailor that she kept safe inside the medallion hanging from her heavy necklace chain. What used to be my rock was now covered with a semi-circular platform enclosed by iron rails. Certainly convenient and safe, but you couldn’t let your legs dangle in the breeze. How right Ovid was to suggest that in our minds we are at liberty to journey to the places we call home. The actual location may be far away, changed, or even lost, but the one we chiseled onto our memory remains. All I needed to do is to close my lids and stand still. I was then able to recall instantly the image of myself sitting on the rock above the sea looking in the distance. I had done it thousands of times in all these years. But now I was able to hold the image in my mind while actually standing on top of my rock with my arms stretched. I felt complete. As old Vitruvius put it, the square and the circle have to be harmonized, but he never revealed how it should be done. The marabout’s cube (earth) and dome (heaven) had modeled it, but I hadn’t paid attention to the transformation that arises from their interplay. I suppose each one of us has to find his or her own unique formula. I took my farewell from Sidi al-Mahrisi with a heavy heart thinking that I was not going to visit it another time before leaving Tunisia. When I returned to the hotel, I called up Neïla and told her that I was going to stop by for dinner. When I closed the phone, I realized how natural it felt to just say ‘I’m on my way.’ I was hoping that no one on the bus to Nabeul would mention the Sousse attacks to me. Luckily, the bus was almost empty. It was close to sunset, when Muslims are anxious to be home and break the fast with their families. Hafed waited for me at the end of the bus route. His first words were ‘Did you hear about the attacks?’ Hammamet, Saturday, June 27, 2015 (morning) This morning I found myself all alone in the hotel’s restaurant. The few tourists I had seen upon arrival were all gone. There was something eerie in the air. I didn’t feel trying going to Sousse again. The pictures I saw on Tunisian TV channels the night before were rather disturbing. Abu Yahya al-Qayrawani (=the one from Kairouan, Tunisia’s holy city), as the attacker fancied calling himself, even shot a young boy from a close range. At first I wondered why he thought he needed a nom de guerre. His birth name Seifeddin (Sayf al-Din=Sword of the Faith) Rezgui was colorful enough. I suppose a new name confirms one’s new identity. Rezgui’s mother reported later that her son couldn’t even kill a mouse that had once plagued the family home. But once Rezgui morphed into al-Qayrawani, he found it in himself to murder dozens of defenseless people and to probably even draw satisfaction from it. He must have been told that yielding the sword in the name of God during Ramadan would be particularly auspicious for him. He would die a shahid and bring honor upon his family. It turned out his family did not feel honored. The only way they cope with his transgression is to assume their son was brainwashed. After breakfast, I parked myself in the lobby, the only spot where I had WiFi. I hadn’t mentioned anything to my family until then, hoping that because of the time difference (Tunisia is 11 hours ahead of Hawai‘i), it would take at least half a day before they would hear of the attacks on the news channels. I didn’t want to deprive them of their sleep. But the first message I saw when I opened my account was my son’s e-mail. The subject line said ‘URGENT, URGENT, URGENT!!!!’ My family did hear about the events in Sousse. I rushed to skype them and assure them that I felt safe. I had to promise that I wasn’t going to leave my hotel that day. It seemed, indeed, a good idea to wait for more information to become available before planning any more traveling. When I got off Skype, I realized that the hotel staff had been waiting politely for me to finish talking to my family. The receptionists came to show me their metal detector wands and even gave me a demonstration. I was genuinely impressed that the hotel had those detectors in store. Then, my favorite waiter showed up with a big smile to ask me if I wanted a coffee. I felt I really needed one. He returned with an aromatic qahwa on his tray and sweets from his native city Kairouan, called makroudhs (semolina pastry filled with dates). He too was trying his best to make me feel comfortable. After thanking him for his kindness, I carefully inquired what the people of Kairouan thought of the attacker. The first thing he said was ‘That irhabi was not from my city!’ So much for the astute nom de guerre. No native of Kairouan has a desire to claim al-Qayrawani as one of their own. Later, I read that Rezgui was from Gaafour, a small and neglected town southwest of Tunis. I also asked my waiter if he knew what Rezgui was studying. The media had mentioned that he was a student but not his major. Apparently, Rezgui had just earned his M.A. in electronic network management at Kairouan’s science and technology college and even picked up his certificate at the end of the summer semester, barely a month before carrying out his beach raid. It seems he lived in two worlds, one in which he was a student preparing for professional life and another where he was training to kill indiscriminately. Just as my young waiter was leaving, he spotted the open news channels on my computer screen. He asked ‘Is anyone abroad mentioning that the staff at the Hotel in Sousse saved the lives of many tourists?’ I told him truthfully that neither BBC nor The Guardian nor CNN had reported it on line. Not even Al-Jazeera. He replied ‘See, no one is interested in us Muslims when we do a good thing.’ I could tell his sense of honor was hurt. I did my best to convey to him how proud I personally felt of the Tunisians at the hotel in Sousse and that I didn’t recall any other bloody event where so many local people put their lives on the line to shield foreign visitors. A maid even threw a chair at the assailant in Sousse. I assured my waiter that I expected the story of the Tunisian heroes to be eventually reported abroad. Foreign journalists were probably verifying the story as we were talking. The waiter gave me a sad smile and said ‘Inshallah’ (if God wills). When I went back to my room, I found that my bed and the sink in the bathroom were sprinkled with petals. The maids had found their own way to let me know that I should stay. (To thank them and the other members of the staff at the Majesty Golf Hotel I enclosed some photographs I took while there. The first picture is from the Hotel’s website, the others are mine.) Men, women, politicians, cab drivers, journalists, TV anchors, show masters, waiters, conductors, teachers, accountants…. everyone I heard in the last 24 hours was so earnestly reflecting upon the recent event. What it meant, how it could happen, who was behind it, what did it say about the country’s state of security, what kind of person it took to commit such an odious crime? Some were angry at Rezgui’s parents for not reporting an earlier disappearance of their son (when he went to train in a Libyan camp during Spring break). Others accused the government of taking revenge on the people for having dared a revolution by deliberately not providing sufficient security.
A statement I heard frequently is that you cease being a Tunisian if you take orders from a foreign entity. Or, true Tunisians do not harm the territorial, economical, and moral integrity of their country. Only traitors commit such vile acts, and they do not represent their country of birth. Tunisians are obviously very self-conscious of the image of their country abroad and how it was affected by the double attacks in this year, the one at the Bardo Museum and the other in Sousse. So, who may claim to be a true Tunisian? From all we know about the mindset of extreme Islamists, nationality, countries, and borders are irrelevant. Calling the likes of Rezgui traitors is of no consequence to them. What counts from their point of view is the propagation and strict enforcement of a supra-national Islam. As a result, it is no insult telling irhabis that they are not good citizens. They think of themselves as members of a universal community of believers (umma). The measure of a good action is then whatever serves the welfare of that community, its spreading, its strength, and its safety. Since the welfare of the umma is construed in power terms –and with no spiritual aims as in the days of the Prophet Muhammad – gruesome killings and utter destruction become all justifiable. The brainwashing method is frighteningly simple. As to what makes one a good Tunisian, everyone I met while in Tunisia exemplified it. They had questions, they reflected, they discussed, and they rejected violence. They may be confused about the right course of action. Who wouldn't? But I found them critical, vigilant, and highly aware of how quickly a country could descend into chaos. You could say they are citizens committed to civil society and to the idea that each voice deserves to be heard for as long as it doesn't bring harm upon others. |
AuthorDr. Tamara Albertini ArchivesCategories |