North African Adventure
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The elation I felt upon touching down in Tunisia slipped away when I presented a bearded customs official with my Israel stamped American passport. "Profession?" he asked me in French. "Journaliste," I responded, feigning calm. The official brusquely flipped through my passport, settled on a free page, and stamped it. Breaking into a big smile, he told me, "Bienvenue a Tunis." Despite Tunisia's precarious location, sandwiched between Algeria and Libya, the tiny North African country is among the most welcoming and stable Arab countries. Jutting into the Mediterranean just 90 miles south of Sicily, Tunisia has long served as a crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Middle East. More recently, the sun blessed country about the size of Florida has emerged as a haven for European holidaymakers. They have uncovered a secret still largely unknown to Americans: From the vineyards of Cape Bon to the sands of the Sahara, Tunisia boasts astounding geographic diversity and attractions to please many tastes. I began my trip in Tunis, the nation's capital and a pleasant, roughly three-hour flight from Paris serviced by most major carriers. My friend Michael, who is studying Arabic for the year in Tunis, had lured me there with promises of trips to the desert, an island with Tunisia's last Jewish community, and the largest Roman ruin in Africa. He did not disappoint. My lingering doubts regarding whether I would feel comfortable there as an Ameri can also quickly dissipated. There were not many travelers along the path, and Tunisians we met received us graciously, particularly when they learned Michael spoke Arabic. When we said we were American, Tunisians openly expressed animosity toward policy, but made the distinction between the country and its citizens. Our sole day of sightseeing in Tunis began with cappuccino and croissants at an outdoor cafe on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, a broad tree-lined boulevard constructed under French colonial rule. I was the only woman at the cafe, traditionally a male domain in Arab countries, but sitting outside I did not feel in the least uncomfortable. Women in Tunisia enjoy a relatively emancipated status, due in large part to reforms made by Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president, shortly after independence in 1956. The current president and Mr. Bourguiba's successor, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, has maintained the tradition of secularism and development, though in the process he has clamped down on fundamentalist and opposition movements. After breakfast Michael and I headed for the Bab il-Bahr, or the Sea Gate, a towering stone arch marking the entrance to the old Arab city. Whitewashed buildings line the narrow cobbled streets of the bustling Middle Eastern souk, where vendors shout out their wares: pottery with an Andalusian flavor, antique Algerian jewelry laden with precious stones, and stuffed camels. Under clear Mediterranean afternoon light, we took a 30-minute train ride out of Tunis to the stunning blue-and-white hilltop village of Sidi Bou Said. There we climbed the stone streets, bypassing the stand selling bambalouni, the town's famous donuts, and settling for mint tea with pine nuts at a cafe nestled in cliffs towering above the ocean. Unfortunately, on our tight schedule we had to skip the ruins of Carthage, located in a nearby suburb, since we had bought tickets to take a night bus south to the desert oasis of Touzer. For the more comfort-inclined, Touzer can also be reached in just over an hour on a roughly $50 plane ride on Air Tunis. Another popular destination is Douz, an oasis town known as the gateway to the Sahara, where outfitters can arrange desert excursions ranging from a weeklong camel trek to an overnight stay a few miles south of the city. The closest we came to camels was passing a wild herd along Tunisia's western desert. About a dozen stick-legged camels gracefully trotted along the vast horizon - an entirely different breed from the mangy ones I had seen in desert tourist towns in the past. In Tamerza, a desert oasis on the Algerian border, we explored the surrounding dusty canyons on foot, stopping to talk to young shepherds and bathe in one of two natural waterfalls. At night we were served couscous, tea, and apple-flavored tobacco at a cafe that also rented us a tent. The next night we traded our tent for pitdwellings, carved into the desert by the indigenous Berber residents of Matmata, a southern desert town made famous in the original "Star Wars." The accommodations at Hotel Sidi Driss, which were the set for Luke Skywalker's home in "Star Wars," are bare - a pit room and shared bathrooms - but breakfast is served in the bar where "Star Wars" mementos remain and the Berber ingenuity keeps the underground dwellings warm at night and cool during the day. Our most southern destination, the island of Jerba, is home to Tunisia's last significant Jewish population. According to Josephus, Jews first arrived in Jerba more than 2,000 years ago after the Roman emperor Titus expelled them from Jerusalem. After the Inquisition, the population swelled with Sephardic Jews, and - despite a decrease following the founding of Israel - there remain about 1,500 Jews in Jerba. We rented bikes in Houmt Souk, the island's largest town, and peddled roughly ten miles to the opposite coast, stopping at El Ghriba (the stranger) the island's oldest synagogue. Every year at the Jewish spring holiday of Lag B'Omer, the synagogue welcomes hundreds of pilgrims from throughout North Africa and Israel. El Ghibra was also the site of an April 2002 terrorist attack in which 17 people were killed. The ornate synagogue showed no signs of the attack, other than a security guard out front, and bustled with Tunisian and French visitors, climbing on the central prayer area and admiring the scores of hanging lanterns. We left with the sun already sitting low on the ocean. As we coasted down to the other side of the island to a village specializing in pottery, the call to prayer rang out, and Jews headed to Friday evening prayers.
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