Night in Tunisia

Bienvenue Chez Nous!

So I know we haven't managed to get our pictures up and online for everyone to view, but I promise that's comming soon. In the mean time I'd like to give you a tour of our home, as best I can with words and my memory, as I'm writing you from ENDA.

The appartment complex is fenced but not gated. We live on the peak of a small hill in Ennasr 1. When you enter the courtyard from the North (the main entrance) you find yourself in a parking lot with buildings on three sides and a small arched passage at the South leading into a grassy spot and another pedestrian entrance. Our entrance is on the left back corner (South-East). You enter the glass door that is forever propped open and turn up the stairs. Each floor has two doors, one to the left and one to the right, connected to the narrow landing. Our appartment is on the third floor on the left side.

I loved the door the first time I saw it. I call it our hobbit door, as the doorknob is located in the centre of the door and does not turn. There are two bolts a top one that turns one click counterclockwise and a center one that turns two clicks cockwise. To open the door turn the key another half turn and voila, the door is open.

The entrance hall is about two persons wide and the first thing you'll notice about it is that it is white. White walls, white ceilings and a patterened white marble floor that feels very smooth and cold on your feet. A quick left turn shows you our bathroom and kitchen. Open double doors on the right lead into a salon/dining room and at the end of the hall are two more doors leading to the bedroom on the left and the guest room/studio.

The kitchen is small, big enough for one person comfortably and two if you squeeze. Standing in the entrace you see a double window with closed white shutters on the outside; a narrow counter with a scratched, white, double-basin sink in the centre and a drying rack to the right; and three small shutter-cupboards inset in the counter under the sink. To the right is a door that leads into the supply closet/boiler room. That door is almost always closed. A white garbage bag is hanging on the door-lever half full of strawberry yogurt containers, orange peels, date stem sticks and an empty Safia water bottle. To the left is a short gas stove and oven with a white cover leaning against the wall behind it. The burners rest on an obviously home-made tinfoil cover, protecting the white surface from sticky substances. To the left of the cooker is a white fridge that looks bizarely oversized in the small room and on the wall next to the door that you are standing in are shutter-cupboard double doors that open on the only shelves in the kitchen. They go from floor to ceiling, though, and you figure a lot can be stored in there. Also from this angle you must wonder how they can access things on the shelves when the fridge is so close to the doors. The answer, I must say is that you have to open the far one first, and then get in there before you open the second. It's like shutting yourself into a small room and then reappearing with the things you need.

From this position if you turn around (180), back toward the hall, you'll find the bathroom on your left. I'm sure you'll laugh at the comicaly small bathtub in the back left corner and the absurd smiley-face curtain flanking it. On the left is a toilet with no flush handle but a round pull handle at the top of the tank. (I'll explain toilets another time. They have a rant comming.) In the right back corner is the sink with a huge plastered-over crack running down the stand, and a miror hanging over it. This is our ridiculously small bathroom.

Back into the hall, you turn into the double doors (left one closed, right one open) on the right where you see the salon/dining room. Its a good sized space with nothing on the walls. There are two low loveseats with a rather bright, tacky pattern, and a small scratched black-painted coffee table with closed sides to the floor. These take up the back centre and right side of the room. There is a double window with the same white-shutters on the outside at the centre-back over one of the loveseats. At the moment the coffee table is covered in american and french fitness magazines, a french novella, The Time Traveler's Wife (which Loren is reading to me in the evenings), a disertation on the development of the Maghreb (North Africa) and Loren's english lesson plans. In the near right corner is an old, round, wooden patio table wedged into the corner with three blue placemats in the centre and three bowls holding figs (left), oranges (centre), and dates (right). There are two wood and patterned-material chairs in front of them and a total of the spending for the week. In the back on the left is a door that leads to a large balcony with a view of other appartment balconies and some trees below. You probably giggle as you notice the red clothes line running from the patio door to the salon entrance door. It's too cold for clothes to dry on the line outside in the winter so we improvise indoors (Loren is brilliant that way.) And no, there is no washing or drying machines, in fact I don't even think people have heard of a dryer. In the summer here things dry faster on a line than they would with a machine anyway...

Well, I'd love to show you the rest of the house, but the study and the bedroom are a bit messy. How about I show you those next time?

So why don't I fix you an arab coffee and we'll just stay in the salon for a while...

posted by tiaraletourneau @ 10:19 a.m.