North Africa Again

The latest upheavals in Tunisia have created new barriers to tourists keen to view the country's beautiful mosques. 'Infidels' are apparently no longer allowed to sully the interiors of remarkable buildings like the great mosque in Kairouan or the family friendly Mosque of the Barber.  This is a serious disappointment and an obstacle to a tourist trade already wobbling in the face of possible dangers, however real or unreal. Tourist cars being stopped by heavily armed Garda, and or military road blocks searching for possible terrorist arms caches and, more believably, for good bribes from the arms carriers or anyone else, appear to be part of the new status quo.  After all everyone has to make a buck somehow when systems and institutions begin to fail......

My earliest travels, at least those involving any cultural element, were made with either of my Grandmothers and a selection of highly cultured and, in some cases, linguistically gifted great aunts and uncles. My children have been lucky enough to travel in their turn with their Grandmother, as energetic a sightseer as she has been politician and company director and as well able as me to put up with the hard pillows and other discomforts offered by the Hostelbookers website or other much less than 5 star hotels and occasionally uninviting B&Bs.





Over the years and with various children according to their age of relative reason, we and she have been to capital cities and cities of great cultural importance all over Europe for a long weekend or a week, usually during the Easter holidays, and long days of intensive sightseeing. The latest trip, to Tunisia, was potentially the last for two more about to be graduates facing the curtailment of their leisure time in the world of work.





Depending of course on the part of the world being visited, lunches and dinners have often risen through numbers of Michelin knives and forks on Granny’s happy insistence (and with her credit card) on a decent restaurant and a good deal of wine, but, on the most recent multi generational whirl round historic Tunisian sites, there was little time for hedonism of that variety and not much chance of it either.





We settled for fairly horrid hotel buffet dinners in out of the way places where advertised à la carte menus and the staff required to provide them were obviously unavailable in the off season of a year of post revolution tourism doldrums. Usually there was something reasonably edible, a touch of gilt amongst the dross; doigt de Fatima, like an open ended spring roll of filo pastry and spiced meat in one dining room; a decent couscous in another, failing all else good bread and sticky, nutty, pastries stuffed with figs or dates. Lunches quite literally fell by the wayside as we drove almost from end to end of the country in a few days, stopping off only for baguettes and fruit in small passing towns. A highly farinaceous diet, eked out with more familiar boiled sweets of the glacier fruit and mint variety was our unhealthy lot in life aside from a final lunch on the island of Jerba. In one of several so-named ‘Poisson d’Or’ restaurants near the beautiful buildings of the Guellala Museum of Popular Traditions with its slightly gloomy mock ups of daily life in the locality, my sons recovered from the display of circumcision rituals on a feast of brightly fresh fish.





Djerba’s popularity as a tourist seaside centre has lead to overfishing and water shortages during the high season. Earlier in the fish market we had looked on as strings of dorade not much bigger than sardines were auctioned off but we chose the largest fish available to be grilled on the pavement barbecue. Accompanied by dips and salad, a deliciously light fish soup, plenty of harissa, bread and finally, good strong black coffee, we ate better than anywhere else on our trip, the only downside, that sweetish, soapy water, non-alcoholic beer that one always imagines will be better than it is and better certainly than the coca-cola alternative – it isn’t.





We were lucky to have that lunch, dinner, in a white-washed Spanish style 3 star that had seen much better days, on the horrendous torremolinos island tourist strip, proved completely out of the question barring salt, pepper, bread, and wine once the first presented rotten bottle had been rejected. In search of coffee prior to our early flight back to Tunis the next morning, the same fossilised cakes were still on offer besides, and this is at 6.30 a.m., small piles of boiled eggs labelled 3 and 5 minutes – to be taken by 9 or so one imagined as 3 and 5 hours. Give me buckets for bathrooms or bugs in the bedrooms and free choice over package tours and none any day.





Food, not then a high point but not really the point at all – we didn’t go looking for the better stuff where it exists. As for those pillows, bags apparently filled with the odd-shaped rocks and fossils I like to collect in desert places, they didn’t stop my own slumbers. The best hotel we stayed in was the Kasbah in Tozeur – an appealing conversion of the old mud brick citadel, with patterned tiled rooms and bathrooms; full of bankers conferring on agricultural debt repayments while we were there, the lobby blue with ever present cigarette smoke – no bans on indoor smoking in countries fuelled mainly by mint tea and tobacco.





And what did we see under mostly blue skies? The sharp scirocco sped passing clouds and lowered evening temperatures before the summer heat to come but a short shower or two cleared quickly to leave only a few puddles to damp visions of Dido among the cypress and mimosa in the remnants of Punic Carthage, now barely discernible under the overbuilding of conquering Rome. Hannibal lives larger in Livy’s pages than these ruins but the romance of the name cloaks tumbled stone with the glamour of legend while Rome itself is better served in the magnificent ruins at Sbeitla and the glories of the Bardo Museum’s mosaics in Tunis. Here, hares run forever from hounds, bears and tigers pounce and play, putti flit through tesserae skies. Odysseus stands tied to his mast withstanding for all eternity the siren song, as his ship sails on seas teeming with the same cheerful fish that populate the walls of the Sbeitla bathing pools. There is much more to see – Emperor Hadrian’s mighty aqueduct, the great colosseum of El Jem and the World Heritage site of Dougga, the ‘best preserved Roman small town in Africa’, while smaller sites dot the countryside.

In the main square of Tunis, the flags were flying in the breeze as we headed into the maze of the Medina and its various souks and alleys leading to the Grand Mosque at its centre. Nearby ranks of black Mercedes mark the centre of government, the smaller square still surrounded by rolls of razor wire and a strong but apparently relaxed police presence. Later, a drive through the wealthy suburbs around Carthage overlooked by the hilltop Presidential Palace, less stringently guarded since rebellion toppled presidential statues and pushed President Ben Ali into exile in the Gulf, took us to the Mediterranean views, blue doors and white walls of the hilltop town of Sidi Bou Said.





Southwards then to Kairouan and the marvellous 9th century mosque of Oqba Ibn Nafi, its elegant austerity belied by the warmth of the local honey coloured stone in which it was built and rebuilt over the centuries and the mish mash of recycled Roman columns and lintels around its great peaceful courtyard. A particular peace prevailing in post revolution evenings and early mornings when international news reports have rationed the tourist buses and left the souvenir purveyors bereft. The great mosque is said to be the 4th holiest site in Islam although ‘holiest sites’ are a vexed question dependent on the beliefs of the various branches of belief, in this case Sufism. Holiness ratings in any case are a lot less seductive to the unbeliever than the architectural beauty of many ancient mosques.







Kairouan is also the site of the remarkable Aghlabid basins, vast 9th century water cisterns, part of a sophisticated hydro project, built on the orders of Aghlabid prince Abu Ibrahim Ahmed, as well as further important smaller mosques.The Mosque of the Three Gates is tucked away among winding lanes, its facade decorated with carved friezes and the so-called Mosque of the Barber, the Mausoleum of Sidi Sahab, is a favoured place for family ceremonies. Its colourful interior decorated with tiles and fantastical white plaster work like Breton lace, this mosque venerates a companion of the Prophet who saved 3 hairs of his beard for himself. We witnessed one small boy arriving all dressed up and surrounded by ululating female relations for his circumcision,the doctor in a white coat bringing up the rear of the procession.







Further south is Berber, Bedouin and now Star Wars country where wild flowers, scrub and the palms of the oases add the only other colour to the landscape where ruined sand coloured villages disappear slowly into the land they grew from . Declining the horrors of tourist camel rides and drives in caleches pulled by ribby ponies with badly trimmed hooves, we headed into the desert in a 4x4 to visit the defunct Star Wars sets and, nearby, that of the plane crash in The English Patient. George Lucas was inspired by the Ksours, fortified granaries in the area of the real Tataouine, when he created his screen village. There is indeed something other worldly about their honeycomb architecture, small windows and doors in mud built 3 or 4 storey structures, not to mention the extraordinarily spacious troglodyte Berber dwellings round Matmata, like so many hobbit holes, dug deep into the sandy hills of the area.







So finally to Jerba, via the Roman causeway, now flanked by water pipes bringing much needed extra supplies to the island. The capital Houmt Souk still retains a level of local charm with its whitewashed mosques belonging each to less well-known Islamic sects and souks and markets structured much as they must always have been, shops and stalls now catering for tourists with the usual fake designer bags, cheap jewellery and cheaper tee shirts, the occasional higher quality stock, an exception proving the rule. Jerba’s airport bringing in international charter flights is its lifeline and its ruination – for us, it offered a quicker route back to Tunis and on to London avoiding retracing our steps, our time too short to take an alternative route. We would have stayed longer in this smiling country where people are consistently friendly and there is much more to see – further South, into the Sahara, ancient rock carvings, glimpsed on an earlier trip on the Libyan side of the border; going North, much that we have missed both East and West, from Roman cities and Punic remains to Islamic centres and the birds of the Gulf of Gabès and the Ichkeul National Park.