A traveler between two worlds

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.