Back Home Again!

"A real journey is not about seeing new places, 
but in seeing with new eyes."

Marcel Proust

Yes and no to Proust's sentiment: I learn in the process of seeing and experiencing new places; and that learning allows me to continually see with new eyes. I'm back home in familiar haunts and languages. I won't say much else, except that my main plan for July is to write, spend time with Nadia and help plan Terri's wedding. If I go anywhere else, I'll add to this blog. Else, this is it. Thank you for coming along with me on this summer adventure and for all of your enthusiasm. I leave you with pictures I've taken recently while on jaunts here in California.

One of my favorite bookstores, in Santana Row.

The majestic Pacific Ocean from up on the hill in Point Reyes.

The Lone Cypress in 17 Mile Drive, Monterey.

Gellyfish at the Monterey Bay Acquarium.

Tomales Bay.

Sky and sand at the beach near Tomales Bay.

El Capitan in Yosemite; after experiencing it, you can't ever see your kitchen granite counters in the same way again.

The Vatican and Pantheon

Tuesday night 10 June


My noteworthy accomplishment for today: I climbed up and down the 571 one-person width steps of the Cupola in the Saint Peter Basilica in the Vatican. Who needs a stairmaster? Below is the inside of the Cupola.
From up above you can see unparalleled views of Rome! The Vatican piazza can hold more than 60,000 people.
The Vatican from Via Crescenzio. So many veiled women!
Vatican guards wear funky garb... It's a feast for the eyes and soul (and maybe sensory overkill too); every wall and ceiling is covered in beauty. The picture below is of a small tile I saw in one hallway.
At the Vatican Museum there is one room filled with colorful maps illustrated with appropriate produce and activities:
And here's disturbing art: intricately made tapestries depicting the massacre of babies. Well, let me explain: "the massacre of the innocents" is recorded in the Bible (Matthew 2:16-18) and described as infanticide by Herod the Great. According to Matthew, the only one to record this incident, after the Magi announced that a new "King of the Jews" would be born, King Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in Bethlehem in order to prevent anyone from dethroning him. The numerous tapestries, murals and pictures at the Vatican depicting this supposed event are beyond disturbing.

And of course, I saw the Pieta. Below, the stairs inside the Vatican Museum.
I saw the awesome Sistine Chapel; you can't take pictures, but I bought a postcard and took a picture of the detail showing Adam and god (not that you haven't seen this before!).
It's a constant: in every city the darkest color skin people do the menial jobs; here, right outside the Vatican Museum, men from sub-Saharan countries try to make a living by selling bags, sunglasses, trinkets, cold water... whatever tourists will buy.

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The Pantheon is impressive too. It's a huge structure built in 27 BCE and rebuilt in 126 AD. It was built as a house of workship and Christians took it over and turned into a basilica. It's still a church. Below is the altar. What's amazing about it is the size of the dome! And it's open, so that when it rains water enters the building but is quickly detoured through 22 tiny and unobtrusive holes located in strategic places on the floor. But size alone can put any thoughtful human being into her rightful place in the universe.
There's some art on the walls. Below is a mural depiction of the annunciation/"Annunciazione" by Melozzo da Forli, completed at the beginning of the 16th century. And below is Juliet's funeral/"I funerali di Giulietta" done in 1888 by Scipione Vannnutelli.

Too much else to tell/show you, but it'll have to wait until I get home and have a little time.

Keats and more

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness...

from John Keats' poem "Endymion"

When I was in grammar school I fell in love with the poetry of John Keats, one of the most famous English Romantics. And then one summer while in college when I was very sad, I buried myself in his work. I started doctoral studies intending to become a scholar of the Romantics, but to tell the truth there were too many such scholars, and the urgency of cultural and literacy studies seemed more purposeful to me. Nonetheless, I remained in love. Today I saw the house where Keats died of tuberculosis at age 25 in the year 1821! The Keats-Shelley House is to the right of the Spanish Steps; it has been privately owned since 1907 and contains a large library on the Romantics and memorabilia mostly belonging to Keats. Here is the side of the house and his two bedroom windows.
When he looked out these windows, he would have seen the Spanish Steps. Here's a picture I took today, and below it is a picture from a postcard. Keats was too sick to get out of bed. Occasionally, Severn helped him walk to the adjoining room, where Severn slept. But if Keats could have walked around, and if he could have climbed the Spanish Steps to the entrance of the basilica, this, below, is something like what he would have seen. At the time of Keats' death, the Vatican law required that when a person died of tuberculosis all of his belongings had to be burned, so, only the rented piano that Keats used was spared. This bed is probably like the one he used to have, the one he died on. This particular bed dates from around 1820 and is made of Italian walnut. It's called a barca a letto (a boat bed); the upholstery is typical of the period. From early on Keats knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life; he wanted to be a poet. In 1816 he wrote in "Sleep and Poetry":

"O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed."

This oil on canvas portrait of John Keats, below, is a copy of one painted in 1822 by his friend, Joseph Severn. Severn wrote: "After the death of Keats the impression was so painful on my mind that I made an effort to call up the most pleasant remembrance in this picture." In some other place Severn also wrote: "This was the time he [Keats] first fell ill & had written the Ode to the Nightingale (1819). On the morning of my visit to Hampstead I found him sitting with the two chairs as I have painted him & was struck with the first real symptoms of sadness in Keats so finely expressed in that Poem." After Keats' death, Severn painted a number of idealized portraits.
This oil on canvas portrait of Keats, below, was made by Richard Westfall in 1813. Keats wrote about it: "I happen to know this portrait was not a flatterer, but dark and stern... even as black as the mood in which my mind was scorching last July when I sat for it. All the others of me--like most portraits whatsoever--are, of course, more agreeable than nature." This third portrait, painted around 1819, is by Joseph Severn.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

from "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (and check out the urn he drew).
This is John Keats' handwriting, below! It's an excerpt of his poem "Lamia" composed in 1819. He took the subject from a story he found in one of his favorite books, Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. In the story Hermes gives human form to a serpent, who as a beautiful woman then ensnares the young philosopher, Lycius. After Keats' death, the manuscript of this poem was cut into strips (like you see in this picture) and given to his friends.
This too, below, is his handwriting; it's a letter to his sister, Fanny. He wrote it a week before leaving England. He wrote: "At any rate it will be a relief to quit this cold, wet, uncertain climate."
Keats had two younger brothers and a sister, but she's rarely mentioned. Since she was much younger, they didn't spend too much time together, but while he was sick and dying in Rome, she wrote to him every single day. This oil on canvas portrait of Fanny Llanos (Keats) by Juan Llanos (yes, a Spaniard, her husband), depicts her in old age. After John died, in 1826 when Fanny was twenty-three, she married Valentin Maria Llanos, who had met John in Rome just three days before his death. Fanny and Valentin settled in Spain in 1833. In the spring of 1861 Fanny visited Rome and saw the house on Piazza di Spagna where, forty years earlier, her brother died. She met Joseph Severn who wrote: "For a long time we remained without being able to speak... 'twas like a brother and sister who had parted in early life meeting after forty years. How singular that we should meet in the very place where Keats died."

Fanny went to Keats' grave and planted two bay trees. Keats' youngest brother, Tom, died of tuberculosis at age 19; Keats nursed him through his last days, and that's not long after both their parents died. His other brother emigrated to the United States where he too died, at age 42, of tuberculosis. I guess that sort of relentless tragedy is partly what appealed to me about Keats--and the fact that he kept on going! No matter the loss, he kept on writing and living. He was lucky too; until visiting this house in Rome I didn't know the details of how his friend, Joseph Severn, took care of him while he died, and then took care of his business afterward. That's a good friend.

Keats' death mask, made by Severn. I didn't get to see his grave in the Protestant cemetery, but here's a picture that's on display in the House. He wanted the grave marker to say only "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water," but unfortunately his wishes were not respected and other text was added. Severn is buried to the right of Keats' grave.
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President George W. Bush in Roma for 2 days!
Wednesday and Thursday

And because of him, I had to walk an extra hour to get to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (pictured below). He and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi were meeting at the Villa Madama, right near the museum. Thousands of police officers were out en masse; streets were closed; buses and tram routes deviated; commercial flights banned over the city; protestors watched carefully. People out on the streets were very angry, because they think Berlusconi colluded with Bush and sent troops to Iraq against their wishes. Although almost all those troops are back in Italy, there are about 2,000 still in Afghanistan. They're also pissed because both leaders are now discussing how to force Iran to abandon what they think is an effort to make nuclear weapons. (Italy is one of Iran's top foreign investors.) There were anti-war activists and demonstrators marching in opposition to President Bush's visit and PM Berlusconi's warm welcome. Needless to say, the chaos was not fun for me. But I finally made it to the museum, and lucky for me it was open extra late because it was the first night of an exhibit by Mario Schifano, a multi-media artist. I should go to sleep. More later.

Colosseum, scenes from the city

Water is the blood in the body that is Rome. The impressive Colosseum from inside. It is indeed an unrivalled architectural wonder from the outside too. It's true that Italians have a knack for decorating and presenting the most mundane in exquisite ways. Surely, everywhere I’ve been, I’ve seen people in dire need, but there are certain images that are emblazoned in my memory. From Rome, I’ll always carry two. At the top of the Spanish Steps, the entrance to the guilded Trinity Basilica: a woman supplicant, layers of grungy smelly clothes patched on to her frail body, legs folded under her, torso bent as in yoga’s child’s pose, forehead touching the cement step, but elbows bent upward wrapped tightly concealing her face, creviced hands, long blackened-nailed fingers clasped erectly over her head in prayer; in front, a small soiled basket with one Euro. How could she sit there for so long in that one unmoving position? Was she embarrassed? Was she hiding her face to maintain her integrity? Was she hurting? What had she done when she was young? Where did she sleep? Did she have anyone to love her? From inside the warmth of the Leonardo Express headed toward the airport, just as emerging daylight began to reveal gentle rain: an apparently unused and in much need of repair station; rows and rows of covered bodies lying neatly perpendicular on strips of cardboard against the wall, as if the collateral of war waiting to be shipped home; some, all dark-skin men, groggily stooping, or seating on their tiny piece of filthy cement, smoking for breakfast, exchanging clothes, washing faces out of bottled water—for the entire length of the station. Immigrants? Lonely? Hungry? Peddling all day and late into the night, perhaps some cheap trinkets, to hoards of tourists? Loved ones in distant Chinese, African and Latin American hut homes? Sons and daughters waiting for the monthly hard-earned dribble of money that will keep them alive? Even after accumulating quite a retinue of such memorable scenes, I’m usually uncomfortable, unsure of how to feel. I am, however, certain of one thing: the relative wealth I am fortunate to have is not an entitlement; it is, absolutely, a responsibility and a command to notice, remember and do something about inequity in the world. The back of the huge Villa Borghese where inside the varied collection of art is almost as stunning as the Sistine Chapel. Below, one of the pieces in their vast collection: "Madonna con Bambino" by Pompeo Batoni, ca. 1742.

I arrived in Roma, Italia

Sunday evening 8 June

I admit that I take too many pictures of clouds, especially when I'm in planes. But they're so pretty and fluffy. These I captured as I neared Rome.
First sight of Italy, approaching Leonardo da Vinci airport in Roma.
From the airport I took the train into Termini, the transportation focal point in Rome. It's where all the buses, trams and trains begin and end. It's a half hour ride into Termini. I noticed that the ground is covered in red poppies. Later, while walking the city, I took this picture.
My hotel is located right near Termini. Right near my hotel there is a big showy fountain at Piazza della Repubblica, and right next to it is Santa Maria degil Angeli. I walked to this basilica and was stunned to hear Central American Spanish being spoken on my first foray. Apparently, the right side of the outside of the church is a gathering place for these immigrants. They meet to catch up on news, to exchange information. Most were men smoking and talking, and the few women were digging through bags of clothes, which I imagine they were exchanging.
When I arrive in a city for the first time I like to walk it. That's how I become intimate with it, how I enjoy its surprises and nooks and crannies. Walking Rome can be demanding, because so much of it is noisy and dirty, but at bends the unexpected is usually very pleasing. For example, there are many old decorated bridges crossing Fiume Tevere.
And there are fountains in just about every piazza; Fontana di Trevi is the fanciest of them all. When I stopped by it the day was already ending and people were settling in around the area's many outdoor cafes. It's a huge fountain, ornate, in the Baroque style. It was completed in 1762 and inaugurated by Pope Xlement XIII. The surrounding square is small, and it makes the fountain seem especially dramatic, particularly the large statue of Neptune in the center.
I really like the gorgeous fountain that sits at the bottom of the Piazza di Spagna, the Spanish Steps. It's a Barcassia done by Piero Bernini as ordered by Pope Urban VII in 1629, and accordingly it's adorned with the papal coat of arms. It's supposed to be a reproduction of a royal boat which ran aground.
Via Vittorio Veneto is very very pretty: there are lots of trees, thus though traffic is heavy, the noise is muffled. The sidewalks are wide and lined with beautifully draped (and some glass-enclosed) restaurants furnished in elegant upholstered chairs and lavished with flowers. There are also many upscale hotels on this street.
It's amazing to me that as you walk Rome at any turn you'll find structures that are hundreds of years old. This wall is near Villa Borghese at the beginning on lovely Via Vittorio Veneto.
This is interesting: there are gas stations--one or two pumps--on the edge of sidewalks, so cars just side in and fill up.
Buses vary in size and color, but the most common ones are red and long.
There are also trams (which look almost exactly like those in Tunis). Lots of taxis, cars, bicycles, horse-drawn carriages and of course a gazillion pedestrians and motor bikes.
And the subway... deep in the bowels of Roma... a bit shabbier than the one in New York, but fast and functional. Sometimes, almost all these modes of transportation collide.

Sousse

Mary, her boyfriend, Mahmoud, and I rented a car and drove to Sousse, just beyond Nabeul. It's a beautiful city with wide open streets (less dirty than Tunis) and loads of construction going on, see below. Sousse is Tunisia's third largest city (after Tunis and Sfax). The majority of people live in la ville nouvelle, a grid-city built by the French--and its grand Art Deco buildings definitely reflect French culture. On the way there, through the two hour drive, I got to see the "country side," meaning lots of olive groves and vineyards. (Tunisia produces huge amounts of wine, little of it is exported.)

Olive trees on the way to Sousse.
Very often you can see manicured buildings in the middle of nowhere; they're the offices for the national police. According to Mahmoud, any Tunisian on the street will tell you that a government priority is to keep the country safe... by having lots and lots of police and military personnel.
I like Sousse more than Tunis. It's right on the sea and it has a long pretty Corniche. As you can see in these scenes, it's a city in the making.
Mahmoud told me that the reason it's cleaner and better organized is that the city gets more money because President Ben Ali is from Sousse. Today was a day for meeting friends. In Sousse we met Nafissa at her house. She served us coffee and lots of hospitality. (This picture's for you M. V.)
And then we met Deborah and her two nephews-in-law; all of us went to the beach and then to late dinner at Sol Kantaoui, Tunisia's "riviera." It's a resort complex along a marina packed with ultra modern yachts. The harbor is dotted with cafes, restaurants and shops, and of course is full of tourists. We arrived just as the huge fountain lit up and started to move along with blaring classical music. Right near, there was a camel, and many were just leaving the golf course or returning from paragliding.

Mary and Mahmoud.

Nabeul

Friday 9:30 PM
Today I walked a while to take two trains and then a two-hour bus ride to get to a town called Nabeul, the ceramic center of Tunisia--ceramics very much influenced by Andalusian immigrants! Every Friday there is a huge buzzing market. I strolled the very long souq at Rues Farhat Hached and el-Arbi Zarrouk: it was filled with throngs and throngs of people from everywhere. Look at this picture of such a colorful display of dishes!
More text tomorrow... now I'm about to curl in with Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr's 1938 film Algiers.
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Wow, that movie's filled with stereotypes! I'm sure I must have watched it before, probably when I was a kid, but I just don't remember it. Hedy Lamarr's character is a bit of a vamp, and Charles Boyer's rather empty-headed. And the kasbah is represented as a dark evil place. The Algerians, needless to say, are represented as one-dimensional buffoons who lurk and deceive and there are strange versions of Andalusian gypsy women who get mistreated and react like kicked dogs who lick their masters. Disturbing.
Anyway, here are some pictures...
The bus station on Habib Thameur. I took the "confort" bus, slightly more expensive (about $4.00 from Tunis), but airconditioned, clean and uncrowded.
This bowl of oranges sculpture sits right in the middle of the street.
Right next to the bowl of oranges, in the middle of the street, there is also a pretty little house (I don't know what it's for).
One of the many mosques in this city of 57,000 people; Tunisia is developing into a country of cyclists:

Jews in Tunisia, "to read" List

One of the things that interests me about the Middle East is its relationship with Jews. Since visiting Morocco so very long ago, then Egypt and Turkey just recently, and now Kuwait and Tunisia, I've been particularly fascinated by the expulsion of Jews from these lands (which is so similar to their expulsion from Spain in 1492; in the educational portal I discuss below, I learned that many of the Jews expelled from Spain were well received in Tunisia); so, I've been reading mostly memoirs like André Aciman's Out of Egypt: A Memoir, keeping my eyes open as I discover Tunis, and just culling information. I'm especially interested in the ways Jewish women are depicted in "home grown" films, postcards and other visuals. I want to share some of the things I'm learning, and some of the visuals I've been gathering.

Jewish women in the Tunis cemetery. Watercolored postcard published by Garrigues.
Tunisian Jewish women, postcard c. 1910. Beth Hatefutsoth-Visual Documentation Center, Courtesy of Abraham Attal, Israel. Girls' Festival/Esther & Judith
In Tunisia, Jews celebrate the sixth night of Hanukkah (which coincides with the first night of Tevet) as the Girls' Festival; in French it's called La Fete des Filles. Because of the holiday's timing, it is also called the Daughters' Rosh Hodesh or, in French, Roch Hodeceh el Bnat. The Girls' Festival is held in memory of the Jewish heroines Esther and Judith who during the month of Tevet acted in ways that impacted their entire Jewish communities. As inscribed in the Scroll of Esther (and as celebrated on Purim), around 470 BCE Esther saved the Jews of Persia from death, by (although hiding her true identity as a Jew) being bold enough to approach the king and ask him to foil the plot to destroy all Jews there. And, as inscribed in the Apocrypha, around 600 BCE Judith saved Jerusalem from capture by the Babylonians by walking into the enemy camp, tricking the Babylonian general, Holofernes, and cutting off his head with a sword.

Jewish woman in Tunis. Published by Lehnert and Landrock. On the night of the Girls' Festival, Tunisian girls receive gifts of special pastries. For example, they receive "Yoyos," which are donuts, and "makrouds," which are semolina pastries filled with dates and fried and dipped in a light orange flavored syrup. They also get "debla" that are made of fluffy dough that's fried and dipped in light orange flavored syrup; debla look like delicate ribbons. And of course, girls get "baklava," which are baked layers of nuts, dates and cinnamon in between thin sheets of filo dough moistened with honey syrup.

Jews walking. Published by Römmler and Jonas.
Jewish woman at home. Published by Lehnert and Landrock. The pointed bonnet is called a “duka” of “takayda.” The name for women’s generic bonnets is “shkufiyya” or “jufiyya.”
I find the depictions by photographers Lehnert and Landrock really interesting. Lehnert and Landrock lived in Tunis for a while.

Hospital for Jews in Tunis/Hôpital d'Israëlites. Published by E.L.D.
There's a documentary film about the mass exodus of Jews from Arab countries and Iran called "The Forgotten Refugees" produced and directed (in 2005) by Michael Grynszpan. I think the film is owned by the David Project, a non-profit organization. The film explores mainly the history of Jews in Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, but the organization has a useful educational portal that provides a lot of information about Jews in Tunisia.

Jewish women walking. Published by Lehnert and Landrock.
And, a color version. Published by Lehnert and Landrock. According to the educational portal, Jews arrived in Tunisia following the destruction of Jesuralen's First Temple in 586 BCE. The historian Herodotus, wrote that Jews arrived in Tunisia on Phoenician ships. The writings of Saint Augustine refer to Jews in Utica and Toseur. Jews lived all over Tunisia, but were concentrated in certain areas. An intellectual community lived in Carthage, where there was also a Jewish cemetery.

Jewish woman wearing a red dress. Published by Lehnert and Landrock. In 1945 there were about 105,000 Jews in Tunisia. Subsequently, most emigrated to Israel, many to France. Djerba Island, the "Jerusalem of North Africa," is the most active Jewish community in the Arab world. In the portal it says,

"Although in its heyday in the early 1950s the island boasted thousands of Jewish residents and nearly 50 synagogues, today 11 synagogues and 900 Jews still remain in the two main Jewish quarters, known as Hara Kebira ["Big Quarter"] and Hara Sghira ["Little Quarter"]. Djerba is home to Tunisia’s only Jewish school for girls and the last yeshiva (Jewish study house) in the Arab world. The community is the subject of a documentary, a book-long study called The Last Arab Jews [by Udovitch and Valensi, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1985], and appears prominently in a new book called Scattered among the Nations."

Two Jewish women facing each other, Tunisia, between ca. 1900 and 1923. Frank and Frances Carpenter Colleciton, US Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Division. I learned elswhere that in 1961, President Bourguiba's press conference in New York (which to me is clearly prophetic) was received as a verbal attack on Israel; he said:

"Israel constitutes a colonial problem of a new kind; not domination over one people by another, but still worse, the sub- stitution of one people for another. The people who were in the country now find themselves in the situation that the Jews were in during the war when they were ill-treated and persecuted by the Nazis. They are in concentration camps close to their country. . . . This is a problem for which no solution has been found, and it cannot be solved on points of detail. So long as there is no agreement between the Arabs and the Jews and they come from Europe or Central Europe the existence of Israel is precarious. I think that if the international bodies are not in a position to find a just and suitable solution to this problem, then sooner or later, if not today or tomorrow, then the day after, in a year or ten years, there will be armed struggle in Palestine."

Jewish women walking. Published by Lehnert and Landrock. There were several other issues that prompted Jewish flight out of Tunisia after the 1950s: in the early 1960s President Bourguiba strengthened ties with the Arab League. Postal communication between Tunisia and Israel was disrupted. There was a lot of friction caused between Tunisia and France when they argued over the territory of Bizerte in 1961; since there were about 15,000 Jews with French citizenship living in Tunisia, many of those French Jews were accused of supporting France, not Tunisia, in the fight over Bizerte. A section of the hara (the centuries-old Jewish quarter of Tunis) was demolished in the spring of 1961 to make room for much-needed roads in the heart of the city. And, though not directed at Jews specifically, there were new laws enacted which restricted the merchant class; since most Jews were merchants, the community began to feel highly ambivalent about living in Tunisia. Jewish flight began in earnest.

Jewish woman wearing blue dress/pants. Published by Garrigues. In the early 1960s there were 300 synagouges and most Jews lived in Tunis; other Tunisian cities with high Jewish populations include Sfax, Sousse and Djerba. Despite their massive flight out of Tunisia, many Jews on Djerba Island have refused to leave. Apparently, they feel tied to the ancient El Ghriba, the oldest of the synagougues, whose foundation supposedly contains a stone from the Temple of Solomon; also, it houses the world's oldest Sefer Torah (handwritten holy scriptures). The synagogue is located in Hara Seghira (also known as Er-Riadh), southwest of Houmt Souk, the capital of Djerba.

Interior view of the El Ghriba. Djerba, Tunisia, 1981. Photo by Jan Parik. Beth Hatefutsoth - Visual Documentation Center.
El Ghriba was build by cohanim, Jewish immigrants who arrived on Djerba after the destruction of the First Temple of Jerusalem in 586 BEC--that's 2,000 years ago!

Jewish woman wearing a wedding dress. Published by Lehnert and Landrock. Jews also lived in Kairouan. Early Muslim conquerors founded the city of Kairouan, which became an internationally known center of Jewish learning, but by 1057 when Egypt conquered the area Jews were banished from Kairouan. Jews returned to the city when the French colonized the country in 1881. In mid 20th century, when Tunisia was occupied, the Nazis began building a gas chamber in Kairouan.

Jewish woman reclining. Published by Lehnert and Landrock.
Jewish woman reclining. Published by ND.
Here's one postcard that makes me feel a little uncomfortable (because of the text): A young Jewish woman and her "negro"/Jeune fille juive et son "nègre." Published by Edition de la Librairie et papeterie du Phénix. These two next pictures are of a woman wearing a sifsari. I saw her at the souq in Nabeul. You don't see many women covered in sifsaris; I wanted to take her picture because the sifsari looks so much like the covering Tunisian Jewish women wore at the beginning of the 20th century. Later, I learned that both Muslim and Jews wore the same covering. I trailed this woman but I was too embarrassed to intrude and ask her to allow me to take her picture up close. (I wanted to photograph the front of the sifsari, the folds, the way it's arranged.) Jews in Tunisia were interned in camps beginning July 1942. First the French Vichy government and its dependent protectorate authorities in Tunisia were instigated by the Nazis to intern Jews. Then, when the Germans occupied Tunisia in November 1942, the German authorities became solely responsible for how the Jews were treated. Camps were fenced in and tightly guarded; no one could leave. Hygienic, medical and living conditions were extremely inadequate.

On 14 June 2006 something really interesting happened: members of the Claims Conference Negotiating Committee met with German officials and pressed for expanding the eligibility criteria for the Article 2 Fund, and Tunisians imprisoned by the Nazis in internment camps in Tunisia became (I think) eligible to receive ongoing compensation payments from the Germans. Article 2 Fund payments are 270 Euros (about $350 dollars) per month.

Photo by AFP/Getty Images. Tunisian Jewish women pray at El Ghriba in Djerba 6 May 2007. Tunisia's Jewish community marked that week to remember the third anniversary of the suicide bombing that desecrated the ancient synagogue and killed 21 people--14 of them German tourists. More than 5000 Jewish pilgrims, including 1000 Israelis, attended events on the island of Djerba from 4 to 6 May 2007.

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My "to Read-Screen"/Literature-Films by Tunisians
List in Progress...

al-Farsi, Mustafa. al-Munʿaraj/The curve. 1969. (Born 1931.)

al-Madani, Izzidin. (Born 1938. Drama.)

al-Tabayniyy, Natila. Shayʾun fi Nafsika/Something within yourself. 1970. (Born 1949.)

al-Shabbi, Abu al-Qasim. (Poet 1909 - 1934.)

Azzouz, Hind. Fi al-Darb alTawil/On the long road. 1969. (Born 1926; wrote in Arabic.)

Béchir, Zoubeida. (Born 1938; wrote in Arabic.)

Béji, Hélé. L'oeil du jour (The eye of day). 1985. (Born 1948; wrote in Arabic.)

Ben Mami, Laila. Sawmaʿa Tahtariq/The burning hermitage. 1968.

Ben Saleh, Mohammad al-Hadi. Sifr al-Naqla wa al-Tasawwur/The book of transfer and imagination. 1988. (Born 1945.)

Ben Shaikh, Abdel Qader. Wa Nasibi min al-Ufuq/My share of the horizon. 1970.

Bouraoui, Hédi. La Composée. 2001. (Tunisian Canadian American. Born 1932.)

---. La Femme d'entre les lignes. 2002.

el-Houssi, Majid. (Tunisian Italian.)

Ghachem, Moncef. (Born 1947.)

Hahn, Cynthia T. "The Tunisian Women's Movement: A Socio-Historical Commentary." In Women's Movements and Gender Debates in the Middle East and North Africa. Indiana University Press, 2006.

Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces, 1995 film directed by Ferid Boughedir.

Laskier, Michael M. North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. New York: New York University Press, 1994.

Memmi, Albert. Agar/Strangers. (Tunisian Jewish.)

---. Decolonization and the Decolonized. 2006.

---. Jews and Arabs.

---. La statue de sel/The Pillar of Salt. 1953.

---. Le Desert/The Desert.

---. Le Scorpion/The Scorpion.

---. Portrait of a Jew.

---. The Colonizer and the Colonized. 1957.

Man of Ashes. 1986 film directed by Nouri Bouzid.

Misbahi, Hassouna. Kitab al-Tih/The book of the maze. 1997. (Born 1950.)

Mortimer, Mildred, ed. Maghrebian Mosaic. A Literature in Transition. Boulder CO: Lynne Reinner, 2001.

Nalouti, Aroussia. Tamas/Tengance. 1995. (Born 1950.)

Naluti, Arusiyya. (Born 1950; wrote in Arabic.)

Satin Rouge. 2002 film directed by Raja Amari.

Schely-Newman, Esther. Our Lives Are but Stories: Narratives of Tunisian-Israeli Women (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology). Wayne State University, 2002.
This book discusses stories about migration told by four Jewish Israeli women from agricultural communities in Tunisia.

Silences of the Palace. 1994 film directed by Moufida Tlatli.

Slim, Fatima. (Born 1942.)

Thamer, Nadjia. (Born 1926; wrote in Arabic.)

Tlili, Mustafa. (Tunisian American.)

Musée du Bardo, Bellagi, around Tunis

I've yet to see one Starbucks anywhere near Tunis... and that's okay with me. (Though I finally saw a United Colors of Benetton, which is owned by Italians.) Early this morning I walked to the TGM station in La Marsa from where you can see blue-green water in between the buildings. I paid less than a dollar for the first class car, below, which to me didn't seem all that different from the second class cars. (The seats in first class are cushioned.) Here's another tram:
At the end of the TGM line, at the Tunis Marine station in Tunis proper, I took another train, the métro léger (it's like a tramp) to Bardo stop, walked a few blocks, passed the 17th century palace now occupied by the Tunisian National Assembly, and after an hour and a half finally reached the suburb of Bardo west of Tunis and the Musée National du Bardo (front entrance below) where there is an extraordinary collection of Roman mosaics from Tunisia's finest ancient palaces. These are tiny colorful pieces assembled to depict all kinds of scenes on the floors and walls of elegant wealthy houses. Ships, like below, would carry the materials needed to make the mosaics, as well as other things such as marble for floors, columns, and other decorations and furniture. When politics and power changed geographic locations, those same ships carried those treasures back to Rome and Athens. The pieces gathered in the Bardo Museum are a fraction of what actually existed in Tunisian palaces around two thousand years ago. The city of Bardo, built in the 15th century, became the residence of the Tunis court in the 18th century, and thus was also the political, intellectual and religious center of the country. In 1882 the beys' residence became the National Museum. Today it ranks, along with the Egyptian Museum, as the best in north Africa. Tiny pieces of stones were used to depict grand themes in literature. Above is a scene from Homer's Odyssey where Odysseus ties himself to the mast to avoid being lured by sirens as they sail past their island. And in the Virgil Room there is a beautiful mosaic that was found in Sousse in the third century AD, below. It depicts Virgil with the Muses Clio ("History") and Melpomene ("Trajedy") inspiring him to write the Aeneid. Lines 8 and 9 from Book I are written on the papyrus scroll Virgil is holding: "Musa mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso, quidve" (meaning something like, "Muse, tell me the reasons that offended the divinity"). In another room there is a huge mosaic dated 372 AD. It depicts Theseus and the Minotaur in the labyrinth.
There are also various depictions of women:

And in a small room, behind glass, there is a collection of Judaica, including this Torah.
A few days ago Mary and I went to an art gallery to pick up paintings she bought, and today while at the Bardo I realized that the artist, Jelenka Galic Bellagi, is basing her work on the ancient art of Tunisian mosaics. She uses small square pieces, the size of a miniature tile, but bigger than a traditional mosaic, about an inch square, and rather than assemble one scene, she depicts individual things in each mosaic. In one "painting" that I really like she depicts one fish in each square, but those fish relate to one another, they're not separated by the boundaries of each tile. In fact, you can see one fish eating the other. She calls that painting "War." I looked her up and learned that she calls herself a ceramisist. According to a website, she was born in 1950 in Croatia. She also paints with oil and watercolors and has exhibited throughout Europe. Mary bought this very beautiful oil on canvas piece, above, "Tunis, la fin d'un jour"/Tunis, the end of the day. Even in oil she echoes the tiny mosaic pieces you see in the two thousand year old grand installations at the Bardo. And, below, here's a detail of a ceramic tableu, "Le Guépard," that I like.

In the Ville Nouvelle, the more modern part of the city built by the French, there are wide tree-lined avenues and grand buildings. There is large Catholic Cathedral, Saint Paul the Apostle, below.

And there is this towering monument:
And of course, there's a mall, not far from the souq; it's called the Palmaryum.

I arrived in Tunis

From the plane; approaching the airport in Tunis. Monday 2 June, 10:00 AM:
Even at 3:00 AM when I left Kuwait it was inhospitably hot. I had a short layover in Doha, Qatar where already it felt as if you could breathe easier. And now in Tunis it's simply a delight. I'm wearing a light cotton sweater in the evenings. The ocean breeze feels good on my skin, and the songs of birds and russling leaves are soothing. There are flowers everywhere: riots of red geraniums, jasmine perfuming my walks, spectacular jaracanda trees dressed in deep purple, multicolored bougainvillea draping most walls and wrought-iron balconies, hibiscus in myriad blue pots... dazzling sensuality after a week of sizzling drought in beige and scarce green.
I'm staying at Mary's house, above, in La Marsa, on the northern part of Tunis. La Marsa was once the Ottoman beys' summer base. It's an exclusive beachside suburb with grand white villas. Last night we walked to the palm-lined Le Corniche, below, and throngs were out and about promenading, sitting in outdoor cafes and patisseries, talking and listening to music: palpabale life out and open and accessible. We dined at a vegetarian restaurant overlooking the Gulf of Tunis, then strolled home and drank hot cups of ginger and lemon tea. Tunis is urban; it's home to 90% of the 10 million-plus population of the country (almost 15% is unemployed!). It was born in 732 AD and became the seat of Tunisian power in the 9th century. In the 19th century the French colonized the country until Tunisia forged independence on 20 March 1956. But it's been a unique "independence": the first "president," Habib Bourgiba, remained in power until 1987 when at age 83 a team of doctors declared him physically and mentally incapable of carrying out his duties. Since then, Ben Ali has served as president. Both have fought fiercely to establish and maintain a secular government, and to give women equal rights. In fact, although they're free to do so, the government has been critical of women wearing head scarves. I get a huge kick out of (re)learning such cultural history while being in the country; it makes books come truly alive!

Below, the beach beyond the Corniche in La Marsa.

More later. I just wanted to let you know that I arrived.

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Monday evening...
Niiiiice day: Mary and I walked a lot. First we went to Carthage, founded in 814 BCE. I couldn't believe I was actually walking the streets of such a historical and literary city! Virgil's Dido (remember his Aeneid?) came alive to me again today, and Hannibal, that great military genius who lived in Carthage. Epic. We took a taxi to the Musée de Carthage, which is housed in the former French cathedral seminary, and we saw 5th century AD mosaics and Roman sculptures and fragments of buildings and everyday objects. Above, Mary at the Roman Villas.
Then, we walked to the Roman Villas, the remains of a palm-filled complex of houses where affluent Romans lived. After a late lunch break at a Lebanese restaurant on the Corniche, we kept walking all the way to Sidi Bou Saïd, a hilltop cobbled streets village that glimpses at the azure coast. I took one too many pictures of doors, for example above, and I'll only be able to share a few, because the internet connection is poor, especially at night, and it takes forever to upload. Anyway, I enjoyed this village tremendously; it reminds me of Spain, since the houses are painted in gleaming white, and the window grills are invaribly trimmed in cobalt blue, sometimes with an accent of yellow. Geraniums and bougainvillea drape almost every wall. Tonight while reading Lonely Planet's book on Tunisia, I learned that Sidi Bou Saïd's distinctive architecture is inspired by the influx of Spanish Muslims that arrived in the 16th century. We sat for a very long time at the Café Sidi Chabaane in the center of the village. The café is really a series of layered terraces carved into the steep cliff overlooking the blue-green sea, juttings of Tunis and a marina packed with yachts. Each terrace has railings and bench seats where people gather to sip thé á la menthe (mint tea) and thé au pignon (tea with floating pine nuts)--and to relax. Some sniffed what I later realized are jasmine buttoneers. When the vendor stopped by our bench, I couldn't resist. Mary caught me enjoying, below. Then on the way back down we saw an old man making these fragrant buttoneers, below. (I really like this picture; I think I'll enlarge and frame it.)
Just as you leave/enter the city, there's a beautiful fountain. In the center there are jasmine bouquets.
Below: as we were leaving Sidi Bou Saïd, we saw a woman wearing the traditional sifsari, a long white outer garment with loose folds that covers the head and entire body. It is commonly worn over Western-style clothing.
Hibiscus... for you.