Night in Tunisia

Carpet Ride

Thursday was a holiday, it was the Birthday of the Prophet Mohamed, called El Moulud. Since it was officially a day off with pay, I requested Friday off too and we prepared to leave for the South of Tunis for a long awaited vacation and camel tour of the Sahara. The adventure is too long to tell you about it all in one go, so you're going to get installments. Hope you don't mind!

We ran into a number of problems. The first was that in order to avoid the very touristy group camel rides that last about two hours into the Sahara and then come straight back out, we needed to find someone with the right connections. Someone who could get us off of the tourist track. Our friend Wifak has a sister whose boyfriend has a friend that works in tourism. (that's how things work here!) So she promised to set us up with something non-tourist. The only condition was that we wouldn't know what the plan was until Wednesday night because this friend was a busy guy and couldn't get the scheduling done right away.

So we packed our bags and lunch for the next day, checked out how much a rental car was going to cost us, and waited for our phone call. It came at around 8PM, and we were surprised to hear that the friend had been REALLY busy and hadn't managed to arainge anything. It looked like the order of the day would be to improvise, so we shrugged our shoulders and decided to play it by ear.

We woke fairly early the next day. At least, Loren and I did. We woke Jason up and tried to mobilize him, but he had been up late the night before working on some report that he had to finish, and we couldn't seem to get him going. When he and Loren were finally ready to leave for the airport it must have been about 10AM. Loren and I were on the verge of calling the thing off, but Jason seemed confident that things would run smoothly. He didn't know what we know about Tunisian bureaucracy. Nothing happens as quickly here as it does in the first world. Nothing.

Jason replied that he only needed to pick up the car, pick up the bags and then go. Since it was only 6 hours to Tozeur (prounouced tou-zer) there shouldn't be a problem. I started packing a lunch, and then I washed all the dishes, and then I swept the floor and then I washed the bathroom before Loren called. It was 11:15. They had the car, but Jason had wanted to change his ticket with AirItalia. It might be italian, but the system was Tunisian, and it took him an hour to find out he couldn't. They were on the road. I had the floor mopped too by the time they made it home, then we packed up and hit the road.

I could tell you all about the road trip, how Loren got us a bit lost on the way out of town, about the great scenery, the forests of olive trees, the candied peanuts and roasted lamb by the side of the road, the horrible public washrooms and the passport checks at roundabouts, but it would take much too long to get it all down.

Our first major stop was in Karouan. We had made a point of stopping there on purpose as it is considered the fourth holiest city in the Islamic faith and today was the Prophet's birthday. All the roads were closed when we arrived and the city was teeming with people. There were police everywhere, and we were tempted to leave without seeing anything just to avoid the throngs of people.

I have to admit we were a little lost when a couple of young men/boys on a scooter pulled up next to us and started gesturing dramatically. We rolled down the window and asked them what the problem was. They told us we were headed out of the city and that most of the roads were closed but they could show us the way to free parking if we were interested. We were, so we followed them. They took us to the walls of the original city with the first minaret built in Tunisia standing massive and proud at its centre. We were in awe of this 14th century construction, still standing and still home. We got out of the car and thanked the young man who stayed behind to talk to us.

He pointed at the buildings and started telling us about the history and where to go to find the market and medina. I smiled, figuring he would want a tip, but I was happy with his tourism gig, so I didn't mind following when he started off, still telling us about the city. He took us through a park and down on to the road below the old city and directly into a rug shop.

I was a bit anoyed that I had been hooked so easily, but I did want to see the looms, and he showed us how the looms work and how the wool is threaded together. Then a relative, someone I hadn't seen in the room took over and led us into a show room. We looked at each other, wondering if we should really stay, but the rugs were so interesting, we couldn't help it. They told us to take a seat on the bench, proffered mint tea and began telling us about the different rugs in the room.

All the rugs were rolled up and propped against one another on the wall. There were hundreds of them and they showed them to us by snatching roll after roll from the wall and unfurling them with a flick across the floor. We were truly in awe. It wasn't even something that could be concealed. There were fine weave rugs and thick weave rugs, camel hair and lamb's wool and pure silk rugs, in berber patterns and arab patterns and bedouin patterns too. Any colour, any size, any thickness, any pattern you wanted was there. They were all hand made and they must have rolled out about 80 of them before they called a stop to the unrolling.

The we played a game. We learned two words in arabic (they escape me now) one meaning "roll it" and the other meaning "put it aside" and we sorted through the pile systematically. We got down to about three rugs each and then we got down to about two each and then we just had our favorites left. Jason wanted two silk rugs "magic carpets" as our sales man told us. Loren and I fell in love with a berber patterned, earth coloured rug. Then it was a matter of prices.

First, I should say, I liked this salesman. He obviously loves what he does and loves what he sells, and he never really pushes you. He just seems to know that in this magical place full of the most amazing handmade crafts there is something for everyone and if you let them dig long enough they'll find what they are after.

The rug was priced at 350 Euros, but that, he told us is a tourist price. Resident price, which is what we often get when people find out I work in Ettadhamen doing social work, was that price in Tunisian Dinars. That sounded very reasonable. It was still out of our price range. We weren't really sure what to do. We had been talking about getting rugs since we had arrived and we had always intended to take a trip to Kairouan for that express purpose, and now, here we were, but we just couldn't justify buying a RUG for 350 dinars.

I really wanted it. I really did. The guy was great, he asked what the problem was and we told him we just couldn't afford it. We didn't have a tunisian bank account so we couldn't just make automatic payments on it either. But we REALLY wanted it. I was ready to leave it, but I was ready to cry about it too. He shrugged and made one last suggestion. "If you promise to buy your other rugs from me, and if you bring your friends and family my way when they want rugs, then I can bring it down a little." This is the line you get when they are almost giving it away. You will rarely hear it. It is how they justify giving something at a low price. They ask for your loyalty instead of a regular profit margin. I had never heard it until this point. "I'll give it to you for 250." It was a deal. It meant that things would be really tight for a while, that there wouldn't be any money for treats and pop and things like that, but 250 we could do.

By the time we left the store, we had been there ogling rugs for over an hour. We had just enough time to swing past the entrance of the Medina before we headed out of town. We hadn't seen much of the city, but we had seen one of the things the city was famous for. And we were pretty damn happy that we had.

posted by tiaraletourneau @ 9:18 a.m.