Tourists, Travelers, and Turbans in Tunisia's South

There seems to be a window in front of every sink in every kitchen. It is small, square, with sooty panes, but somehow the view beyond it mitigates the task of scrubbing dirty dishes in the sink below, and the consequently wrinkled fingertips. As omnipresent as the kitchen sink window is in the blueprint of an American home is the notion of the exotic Sahara in the American mind. Perhaps we owe Hollywood's silver screen for our images of endless beige dunes, trodden by camels ridden by turbaned, tanned men of the desert. In fact, much of this imagery is rather accurate, but for the fact that the turbaned men's skin is more of a bright pinkish tone from the glaring sun. They are joined by their equally pink-skinned, turbaned wives whose turbans might also be pink, depending on the color code of their tour group. And the great 'ships of the desert' tread circular paths in 10 minute increments (for 10 dinars), led by ropes held in the hands of men who are actually tan. These images reflect southern Tunisia, a fitting reference when discussing the West's Saharan fantasies inspired by Hollywood. Tunisia was the location of the sets for Star Wars Episode I and Episode IV, the most notable of which being Tatooine. The homes' design on Planet Tatooine and the Star Wars garb were taken directly from the local desert-dwellers' culture. Tunisia was also the location of The English Patient's desert scenes: If any Hollywood film after Laurence of Arabia influenced the West's conception of the Sahara and its people, it would be The English Patient. That film was the muse launching the Tunisian Tourism Bureau's 1997 advertising campaign responsible for the industry's ten percent growth from the previous year: "The English Patient: Nine Oscars. A Tenth for the Tunisian Desert?" So these marvelously pink specimens dotting the country's southern desert buy their way from throughout Europe (and increasingly from the Middle East, Japan, and America) to the land of stunning sand dunes, evoking the romantic, disorienting psychology associated with the desert and exotic cultures in Euro/American popular culture. Those who come are those who can afford to test the veracity of their Saharan notions. But ironically, the tourists' trips only serve to reinforce them. After paying so much to indulge in one's fantasy, it is disheartening to disregard one's denial of Tunisia's reality. And so after staying a night in the troglodyte-style hotel built both around the bar shown in Episode IV of Star Wars and upon an Islamic saint's tomb, the tourists' vision of their surroundings only becomes more clouded. We drove a lot-some 2500 kilometers in seven days. We drove, stopping through Kairouan, Gafsa, Shebbika, Tozeur, Ksar Ghilan, Douz, Matmata, Djerba, and El Jem. We visited the Great Mosque in Kairouan, the mountain oases in Gafsa and Shebbika, the English Patient and Tatooine sets in Tozeur, the salt lake in Ksar Ghilane, the date groves of Douz, the Star Wars set in Matmata. So I resorted to acting the traveler by looking out the window at all the details of the barren plains, the craggy foothills of the Atlas Mountains, and the sparse badlands without sleeping through the hours of driving between each pre-designated location. But it was just outside Matmata that I thought I might find my sublime. We stopped again to eat lunch with the family of a friend of a family friend of our professor. The family lived in a home carved into a soft sandstone foothill of the Atlas chain. A traditionally dressed Berber woman wearing bright clothes wrapped about her body, her skinny young daughter and her adult son, whom the mother referred to as "her sword," welcomed us in. The Berbers have undergone a nearly complete purge in Tunisia, falling victim to the government's Arabization process. Though the majority of Tunisians have Berber origins, a mere 1.5 percent of the population still adheres to their traditional culture, and even less speaks the traditional language. Fatima prepared us a tomato shorba (a light soup), followed by a large communal bowl of couscous. We ate in one of several small, individual chambers carved into the hill around a central courtyard. The walls were whitewashed, the floors were covered with straw mats, and we sat on the floor before a knee-high table upon which the soon-devoured bowl of couscous was placed by Fatima's daughter. After eating, Fatima called me "Ye'bintee jemeela, tjee ma'ya!" (Come with me, my beautiful daughter!). She took my hand and led me to "her room," and commenced to dress me in Berber clothing. Berbers are unwelcoming to strangers, and this quality is echoed in their inward-oriented homes located in the most desolate of places. But their warmth toward friends and friends of family friends is unparalleled. Fatima wrapped layers of cloth around my hips, then draped them over a rope with she twisted up over my shoulder. These were followed by another pleat unfolded and pinned to my head to which numerous metal ornaments were attached. She took my hand again, leading me back outside. And then she said something to our professor before standing next to me, smiling at him as he raised his camera. A flash. "Matta ookhra," she said. Another flash. When people host visitors, they clean their houses, make themselves presentable, and usually comport themselves in such a way that will make a good impression. When people host visitors who are tourists/students this process is intensified three-fold and captured with a camera flash, followed by another 'just in case.' We soon left for Djerba. The road twisted alongside, then doubled back on itself through a town with a single white minaret, built before a cliff punctured here and there with black apertures. They were troglodyte homes. We did not stop in that town in the midst of the higher Atlas foothills flanked by Tunisian badlands. The authentic is the uncontaminated. And the traveler is never closer than the moment before he touches it. For the moment he does, it is tainted by his foreign presence. It is the instant between himself and his contact with the authentic he seeks that becomes the traveler's sublime. It is that moment: The almost-touching of the authentic's intangibility that maintains its divine, mystic, and otherwise incomprehensible nature. That is why I kept my finger on the Mercedes' window switch, but did not press down before we'd passed through the town of Toujane. We then drove on to the underground mosque on the island of Djerba, and the near-flawless colosseum of El Jem as tourists with the rest of them. Fatima does not have a kitchen sink window. Her kitchen is on the roof, outside.