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June 19, 2004
Tunis: Mosaics and Medinas
"Je suis très désolé, mais il n'y a pas aucune salle maintenant." the woman behind the hotel desk said to me.
"Pardon?" I replied, knowing full well what she said but was too exhausted to construct more than a one-word reply.
"Your room, it is not available," she said, switching to English. "It is only half past10 o'clock - we cannot give you a room until 12 o'clock."
"Okay, that's fine," I answered, slowly dropping my backpack, suit bag and laptop bag from my sore shoulders. "May I store my luggage?"
"Naturellement," she replied, inexplicably returning to French.
My Air France flight from Paris had arrived in Tunis just before 10am, a few minutes ahead of schedule. I'd been eager to check into the Hotel Carlton in Tunis' Nouvelle Ville (New Town) so I could get the day started and explore as many sights as possible. I was dead tired, having not slept a wink on the flight from Boston to Paris, but a steady refueling of caffeine and a second wind of "you're in a new country" energy would hopefully give me the strength to get through the afternoon without collapsing. Fortunately, immigrations and customs at the Tunis airport were a cinch, and I was in a taxi within a matter of minutes, After shooing away several taxi drivers who were offering me exorbitant rates of 15 or 20 dinars (USD $12-$15), when the ride to downtown Tunis really shouldn't cost much more than five or six dinars (four or five bucks), I found a driver who didn't seem too intent on robbing me blind. So I threw my belongings into the trunk and made the 15-minute ride to central Tunis.
Now I was at my hotel with no place to freshen up and save my suits from permanent wrinkling - at least not for another 90 minutes. I managed to convince the hotel attendant to let me use a public bathroom to change into fresh clothes before handing over my luggage for storage. I actually hadn't planned on changing clothes upon my arrival, but I was rather surprised to see dozens of tourists walking down the streets wearing only t-shirts and shorts. It'd been my experience in other Islamic countries to always dress modestly, wearing long pants and a long-sleeved shirt. Here, though, it seems it was socially acceptable to bare a bit more skin than you'd see in the likes of Cairo or Amman. It probably helped that the vast majority of Tunisian women I saw on the streets were wearing hip-hugger bellbottom jeans and tight, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination babydoll t-shirts with slogans like "WEAR ONLY ONCE" or "I'M THE ONE IN CHARGE OF THIS PLACE." I'd actually never seen so many exposed midriffs in a Muslim country - it felt more like Athens or Rome, to be quite honest. Tunis was clearly more casual than many other Arab cities, and with the temperatures approaching 30 degrees Celsius by mid-morning, I wasn't going to suffer through a long pair of khakis if it wasn't absolutely necessary.
Sporting a pair of shorts and sandals, I was now ready to hit the streets of Tunis. At most, I figured I'd only have two and a half days here before having to get to work in Hammamet for the UN WSIS planning meeting I was attending, so I wanted to make the most out of the weekend. Somewhere a few blocks to the west of my hotel, just beyond the broad, tree-lined avenue that bisected Nouvelle Ville, was the Tunis medina, the tight maze of bazaars, cafes, mosques and Turkish baths that had successfully earned a spot on the prestigious UNESCO World Heritage list. A few kilometers beyond the medina was the suburb of Bardo, world renown for its unparalleled museum of Roman mosaics. Hopefully I'd have time to visit both today, but given the fact the heat of high noon would soon be on top of Tunis, I opted for a trip to the museum.
Walking several blocks west down Avenue Habib Bourguiba, I soon stumbled upon tram tracks crossing the street perpendicularly. I took out my Lonely Planet book to confirm this was the spot to catch a tram to Bardo. Turns out it wasn't - at this particular intersection, the tram apparently ran only south, whereas I needed to go north, so I'd have to walk another block or two to get to the right tram tracks.
Soon enough I found the correct tram line, and followed the tracks until I arrived at the station. I waited in line until it was my turn at the ticket counter, and handed the agent a one dinar coin, thinking I'd get back whatever was the appropriate amount of change. Instead, he looked at me for a moment, then shook his head and said "Ou?" Apparently the price was based on distance, not a flat rate.
"Musee Bardo, s'il vous plais," I replied.
"Bardo, Bardo," he said while grimacing; I imagined he got this from a lot of clueless tourists.
After getting my ticket I waited until the next tram arrived and jumped on board. It was swelteringly hot and crowded, but I managed to squeeze in to a spot where I could see the train map. I then noticed there were multiple trams running along the same track, and they'd diverge after a couple more stops. Was I on the right tram?
At the next stop I jumped off to see if I could figure out what tram line I was on, then would jump back on if necessary. As I scrambled off the tram I saw the number 5 posted on the front of the car. Wrong tram - I needed to be on #4 instead. So I took a break from the hammam-like heat of the tram, catching a breeze from the Mediterranean, just a few kilometers away. The relief didn't last for long, as train #4 soon arrived, so I got back into the steam bath and rode for the next 20 minutes until reaching the Bardo station.
Exiting the train, I had to walk another 10 minutes to get to the entrance of the museum, since the station was to the south of the museum, while the entrance was on the northern side. As I approached the entrance I saw a large parking lot. Most of the spots were taken by enormous, industrial-sized tour buses. So that's what it's going to be like in there, I thought to myself.
Paying the agent for my ticket and camera pass, I got in the queue and slowly weaved my way into the museum itself. At first I assumed the slow line was due to security precautions, but it turns out it was just an enormous bottleneck precipitated by the throngs of tourists wandering aimlessly in the first room, waiting to be corralled by their tour guide.
Inside, I was treated to one of the most fascinating, yet claustrophobic museums I've ever visited. The Bardo itself is a former palace, first constructed in the 12th century, with much of the current structure dating back to the 17th century. Being a palace, it was quite spacious, and all the floors and walls were covered choc-a-bloc with extraordinary Roman tiles that had been unearthed from across Tunisia. The dilemma, though, was that each room invariably had two competing tour groups in it, usually dueling in different languages. One tour guide would speak rapidly in French, while another guide would raise his voice in Russian. And all the while, most of the tourists, clad in tank tops and ripped shorts, were too busy chatting it up or making kissy-face with each other to notice what they were talking about it. I guess that's what was most frustrating about it: it's one thing to be surrounded by large groups who are absorbed by the sights around them; it's a whole other thing when you've got groups that would rather being lying on the beach instead of touring a museum.
Nonetheless, I did my best to block out the noise, the bodies, as I appreciated the vast collection of mosaics. Like the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Bardo itself is worthy of visiting, even if it didn't have a single piece of artwork in it. Going from room to room, I felt like I was given the keys to an Andalusian Moorish villa - or perhaps more accurate, a Turkish pasha's palace. It's just that they had a lot of copies of the keys made before moving out, so I had to appreciate the surroundings with about a thousand other neighbors.
Using my book's map of the museum, I worked my way through the ground floor of the exhibition. One room was dedicated to a collection of Punic deity statues, including the god Baal Hammon sitting on a throne. Around the corner, a courtyard was dedicated to an incredible collection of mosaics from the ruins of Bulla Regia, along with a massive statue of Apollo.
I climbed a stairwell leading to the first floor (the second floor for all my fellow Yanks out there), which was adorned with giant mosaics climbing 20 or 30 feet up the walls. Reaching the top of the staircase, I soon found myself with even more tour groups as the vied for space in the museum's most important exhibits. One floor mosaic from the city of Sousse was enormous, around 140 square meters, depicting the god Neptune surrounded by seahorses. Around the corner I spotted a small crowd of people admiring one of the few known likeness of the poet Virgil, flanked by the Muses Clio (history) and Melpomene (tragedy). Further along I found a striking wall-size mosaic of Orpheus charming the beasts. Orpheus himself hadn't weathered the ages quite well, but the animals looked like they'd just been put together by the artist. Another room, the garden room, featuring gigantic mosaics of sea nymphs on all four walls, with hundreds of ocean creatures swimming with them. If it weren't for the tacky plastic plants stuck in the center of the courtyard it might have been the most breathtaking room.
As I made my way up to the top floor, I was greeted by emptiness. No people, no noise - just beautiful rooms with walls full of dazzling mosaics. For whatever reason, the tour groups weren't venturing up to the top floor, which was strange, because there were some tremendous views of the wall mosaics on display in the open courtyards below. I wasn't going to question their judgment, of course - instead I reveled in it, slowly taking my time going from mosaic to mosaic, contemplating an ostrich here, a panther there. Most of the upstairs collection seemed to be dedicated to animal mosaics, save a statue of a drunken Hercules, urinating a la Brussels' Mannequin Pis.
After two hours at the Bardo, I'd had my fill of the tour groups, and probably needed a change of pace from the mosaics as well. I stopped briefly at the museum cafeteria for a Diet Coke - my caffeine supplies were dwindling and my second wind fading fast - then hailed a taxi outside. As luck would have it, I picked the most talkative cabby in Tunis, who didn't seem to care that I barely spoke French. He asked if I spoke English, clearly prepared to switch tongues to continue the one-sided conversation; I lied and said I was Norwegian. Fortunately he didn't seem to realize that most Norwegians speak English better than most Americans, so he returned to talking to himself in French, giving me a few minutes to wonder if I'd make it through the afternoon without collapsing from exhaustion.
The taxi dropped me at Place de la Kasbah, at the western entrance to the medina. The plaza was flanked with whitewashed government buildings and a large plaza where boys played a feverish game of football. A Moorish-style mosque and minaret marked the entrance to the medina itself. Soon I was lost in the medina's covered bazaars, or souks. The souks simultaneously reminded me of Old Jerusalem and Istanbul's covered market; the bazaars had the chaos of Jerusalem's Arab quarter combined with the vaulted architecture of Istanbul's market. Unlike Istanbul, though, the shops weren't well-lit or decorated in polished metal and glassed storefronts; this medina felt like a living, breathing place that kept things interesting even when the tourist buses weren't visiting.
Within a few minutes I lost all sense of time, space and direction. I had no early idea where I was or where I was going, and it was delicious. I felt like I could walk for miles in the medina, with sudden turns and dead ends, and never find my way back to the Nouvelle Ville again. Apart from the periodic tugs by touts trying to drag me into their shops, I was able to wander the back alleys of the medina and lose myself in its marvelous atmosphere, completely forgetting that 12 hours earlier I was heading to the airport in Boston.
Soon my growling stomach snapped me out of it; I needed to get some lunch before the restaurants closed for the afternoon. My guidebook had recommended Café M'Rabet for its good food and great second-floor view of one of the medina's mosques. By the time I arrived there, the lunch crowd had left and I had the restaurant to myself, save one French couple that was paying the bill as I settled at my table. The lone waiter informed me that there was only one item on the menu at the moment - couscous - and I could choose between chicken and lamb. I ordered the chicken. A few minutes later, huge slabs of French bread arrived at the table, along with an appetizer of canned tuna in olive oil, drizzled with harissa pepper sauce and a small collection of green and black olives. It occurred to me that I'd somehow managed to order a multi-course meal, which was perfectly fine given how hungry I was - I just wondered what the bill would be.
Eventually I received a large portion of couscous that could have fed a small dinner party, topped with half a chicken, a variety of beans and a cylinder-like steamed squash. I soon wished I hadn't noshed on the bread during the first course, because I could barely make a dent on the couscous and chicken. (The waiter looked quite disappointed in me.) Afterward, I was able to wash it all down with a delicious glass of mint tea with boiled pine nuts - a local specialty that gives the tea a buttery taste. When all was said in done, the meal cost me 14 dinars, or $11. It certainly could have been a lot worse.
After lunch, I strolled around the perimeter of Zitouna Masjid (the olive mosque), the Great Mosque of Tunis. The mosque is open to non-Muslims during morning hours only, so if I wanted to go inside I'd have to return another day. From there I walked east on Rue Jemaa Zitouna, the central souk that spanned from the mosque to the eastern gate of the medina. More so than anywhere else in the medina, this street was primed for tourists. Every square inch of storefront seemed to be dedicated to Tunisian chotchkes, from leather goods to shisha water pipes to stuffed toy camels imprinted with "Tunisia Souvenir" across the hump. To no surprise, the shops were crowded with tourists, though they didn't appear to be horded like lemmings as had been the case at the Bardo Museum.
At this point in the afternoon I figured it was probably a good idea to check into the hotel, if only to get my laptop out of the storage room and locked into my room. The sun shone brightly as I exited the medina, passing through the French Gate and walking east along Avenue Bourguiba. The avenue's cafes were jammed with locals, particularly young couples enjoying a shisha and coffee under large umbrellas. Not far from the hotel, I discovered a large bookstore with very friendly staff. Their selection of English books was limited, but I was impressed with their Tunisian coffee table book collection.
Back at the hotel, I checked into my room and surveyed my new digs. The room was somewhat small, but at least it was nonsmoking with a queen-size bed and a strong, hot shower. I took advantage of the shower, soaking away the last 24 hours of sleeplessness in a matter of minutes.
Returning to the medina around 4pm, I wandered the souks until I found the perfect teahouse to waste away the rest of the afternoon. Not far from the Great Mosque, hidden down a nondescript corridor, I spotted Café Chaoechin, a grotto-like place with enormous murals of medieval teahouses on each wall. Algerian rai music poured through the speakers while I settled in for a couple hours of mint tea and an apple-flavored shisha. During my stay at the teahouse, the demographics of the patrons shifted from older males to twentysomething couples in fashionable clothes. To my surprise there were actually more women than men in the teahouse by the time I left. It certainly made me feel a lot more welcome; for whatever reason I always worry about sticking out like a sore thumb when sitting in a teahouse with a bunch of elderly Arab gentlemen.
The tea kept flowing as I immersed myself in the climax of Black Mass, the true story of how Boston Irish mobster Whitey Bulger managed to wrap the local FBI office around his finger for two decades. There was something extraordinarily incongruous about drinking mint tea, smoking a water pipe and listening to rai while reading about Special Agent John Connolly's corrupt activities inside the Boston FBI, I found myself having to read the same paragraph over and over to absorb what was being said in the book, struggling to reconcile it with my definitely Tunisian surroundings.
Around 6pm I left the teahouse and started to walk east towards the main gate of the medina, the French Gate. I veered away from the main souk and found myself in a parallel souk that was packed with hundreds upon hundreds of Tunisians. Unlike elsewhere in the heart of the medina, the ratio of tourists to locals dropped dramatically; as I flowed like molasses through the throngs of shoppers, I think I spotted only one or two other tourists. The souk became so crowded that bottlenecks of window shoppers caused a logjam; I was pressed tightly within a group of several hundred Tunisians waiting relatively patiently for the multitude to surge forward. While the men joked with each other, dozens of women seemed to be muttering "imshee" (Go!) in unison, trying to break the bottleneck.
Exiting the medina, I noticed that it was extremely dark outside, much darker than it should have been for that time of the evening. Then the raindrops landed on my shirt. I realized that the darkness was caused by enormous thunderclouds that had settled over the city. I'd hoped to go for a long walk in search of a restaurant for dinner, but instead I had to high-tail it back to the hotel since I didn't have an umbrella with me, and the shops I passed were selling them for an extortionate 45 dinars ($36). In a land that's home to the Sahara, umbrellas apparently come at quite a premium.
Lightning flashed and thunder cracked as I arrived at the hotel. I was getting a little run-down at this point, so I decided to get dinner at the hotel restaurant. Unfortunately, it didn't open until 7:30pm, so I had to keep busy working on my journal while wondering if I'd be able to stay awake much longer. Fortunately, writing helped pass the time, so around 8pm I went to the restaurant and had a lackluster fixed-price meal of tomato harissa soup, fried chicken and chocolate cake (my French must be extremely rusty - I really thought I'd ordered something else). With the raindrops outside doing their best to mask the whirring sound of the restaurant refrigerator, I ate dinner while finishing Black Mass, wishing I'd brought a second book and an umbrella with me.
Posted by acarvin at June 19, 2004 9:20 PM
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