Night in Tunisia

Future Tense

I was noticing with Tiara today the look of the workers coming into Citee Ennasr and couldn't help but think of those old photos of Brooklyn in the late 20s through 40s. The similarities are as startling as the differences. They are for the most part either first or second generation city-dwellers caught up in the typically industrial rural exodus and fitting themselves into the 'modern' world. They are the street-sweepers, the housekeepers, the masons and plain old manual labour.

Tiara works down in their world, and while it's not the picture of despair that comes to mind when we think of the early Italian or Eastern European or Irish quarters of old New York, I don't know that it's far. It's not unusual for a family of six, with grandparents and cousins and uncles to live in a small house together. They import their religion and cultural values to the city that will not validate them, and they work for the people who are the most flagrantly open and un-traditionally muslim in the entire middle east. Granted they have a house, and that's one of the differences that I'll get to in a bit - because it's nothing like you'll see in North America.

The men and women who are able take the 'popular' (meaning cheap and incredibly crouded) bus to the rich neighbourhoods or factories and work all day for pitiful wages and then back to their world - out of sight and out of mind.

The masons in particular come to mind. You see them, eight stories up (nothing goes up very high here, which is a good thing...), walking narrow scaffolding that consists of boards punched through the brick wall on which other boards are set or affixed (sometimes a nail or two will be used). And they lay bricks, cement, plaster, electric cables... The heat rises, they crack out their plastic bottles for water, and roll up their sleeves. They are thin, due to a meagre diet with very little protein and also to their intense physical exercise. They grin, they're missing teeth, the rich few ride in on those strange little motorbikes that hack black up the hills. The contrast to their millieu is stark.

And there's a difference, around them in Nasr, the culture is the height of modernity - the women are in pants or shorts - showing skin that the men in their districts would never show. The vehicles that roll by are a parade of brand-new Audis, Mercedes, Coopers, SUVs, Hummers. The coffee at 2 1/2 dinars is TEN times the price of the their cafes. The gap between rich and poor is flaunted. It's also a gap of years - every day they move from the 1950s of Citee Ettadhamen - cars / trucks / brick ovens / dirt roads and collapsing asphalt - to the 21st Century with escalators / blase teenagers / computers / reliable electricity and water...

The weird bits are where it crosses over. Houses, for example. There's a strong house-building initiative in Tunisia, there's an established family-planning program designed to limit population growth, new clothes and consumer culture are solidly intrenched to say nothing of the police controls. These last serve a dual purpose of balancing the cultural revolution and protecting the population such that thefts, let alone agression, are rare.

The new third world. The old and the new. The world.

posted by Loren @ 5:40 p.m.