Night in Tunisia

Sweet Ettadhamen

Let me tell you about Hay Ettadhamen today.

Today the smog is so thick in the air you cannot see the sun. It's not a cloud, or a fog, but a hazy screen like a thousant layers of fine silk floating against each other and filtering the sun until it is a soft yellow ball in the sky.

It's Friday, so the streets a busy. There are girls in tight pants and hoop earrings shouldering bags and clicking in their heels. There are mother and grandmothers with toddlers everywhere, helping them step up and down the broken curbs and catching them when they trip over debris and crumbled bricks. The cars in various states of disrepare keep cruising past in an endless streem of noise, some moving toward the edge of Ettadhamen, some moving deeper into it's crumbling centre.

People are moving in and out of the shops. They buy water and candies, hot nuts and pastries, shoes and handbags, second hand clothes and canned goods. It's Friday afternoon commerce and the street is alive with people laughing and debating. The streets are dirty, the air smells of smog. I am totally out of place and feel suddenly at home.

Normally I'm not out in the street at four in the afternoon, but I ate early and I'm hungry again. I'm headed the two city blocks to my favourite vendor of hot nuts and candy. He sells the best roasted chick-peas on the street and I get a fix of them at least three or four times a week. Now I'm familiar enough that he'll tease in his broken French about how I'll turn into hummous, or he laughs and winks when I can't find the 10 Dinars I put on the counter a minute ago, the one he whisked away while I wasn't looking.

With hot "hums" in a small brown bag I head back to work, stepping around children and old pop bottles, dodging old men with canes and brown puddles of sludge next to the curb.

Today I'm not as worried about the looks that I get. I'm young and curvy and very white compared to most people here. I'm in such a good mood I don't even feel that nervous feeling that is universal, I think, and irrelevant of location. The feeling you get when you know someone's looking. When I reach the corner where I turn to go to enda, a beat up black car pulls up behind me and coast along. I can see the gate to enda's entrance and I think of how to get around the car to the door.

The car pulls ahead and the driver calls out. He's young and dark skinned and I can't make out what he says because it's in arabic. The the passenger leans out too, and realizing that I can't understand them he makes the universal sign of appreciation, pressing his pinched fingers to his mouth, kissing them and releasing his hand with an upward gesture.

He is so young, and so sincere that I actually burst out laughing, and he grins a huge grin. I disappear into the courtyard at enda and up the stairs back to my desk, feeling quite pleased, and finally quite at home.

posted by tiaraletourneau @ 5:31 p.m.