The Daily Schedule, or Get Over Your Hill

July 27, 2011

If there’s one regret I have from this summer in Tunisia, it’s that I lacked the time to write about it and share it with you, my dear friends and family who wanted so badly to read regular updates. For my lack of time and blog entries you can thank the incredibly demanding, competent and inspiring people who organize and manage my language program. I couldn’t justify blogging when I’m here learning Arabic on other people’s money and hard work. To give you an idea of what my summer has been like, here’s a typical school day:

Wake up around 5:30am and stick my head out the second story window in hope of feeling a breeze to cool my face; one gets used to living without air-conditioning, yet I’m grateful for a breeze. Sit on my bed and flip through al-Kitaab, the Arabic textbook we beginning Arabic students use and work on conjugating verbs and writing a brief essay in Arabic about what I would like to do in the future. Around 7:30 head down the stairs, greet my host mother as she sits smoking on the sofa and facebooking. I pass through the small kitchen and out to the patio where I eat the Tunisian breakfast of champions: Nescafe (instant coffee), a piece of cake, and the local version of cocoa puffs. By 8am I’m walking to school through the charming, narrow streets of Carthage and Sidi Bou Said, with their white stucco homes, blue doors, and flowering vines.

Out little school building adjoins a bustling, modern (read: expensive) café in Sidi Bou Said. I often get a small coffee there before class starts at 8:30am when we have Tunisian dialect class, where we work on anything from giving directions in a taxi to memorizing part of a politically-charged rap song that was instrumental in the revolution. That is followed by three hours of standard Arabic class, waiting for one o’clock when we can break for lunch and grab a keskroot kefta (a fast food sandwich). Then from 2 to 5, we have speaking practice sessions with Tunisians, sometimes in dialect, sometimes in the standard Arabic. There’s almost a one-to-one ratio of teachers to students in my program, so the personal attention has been phenomenal, truly unsurpassed. Also during this time our teachers are available for office hours, so I’m scurrying from one Tunisian to another, learning how to express opinions about politics after the Tunisian revolution, for example. And all of this is closely monitored and daily reported so that the entire staff is informed about the individual needs and performance of each student.

4:30pm, I’m pillaging the school kitchen for a caffeinated beverage or I’m sprawled out on one of the many mattresses the school keeps so that we can take “power naps” to renew our energy before tackling the average four hours of homework. Homework time.

7:00pm, I’m stepping out the front door of the school and into the bustling café patio where I’m always struck by 1) the late hour and the impending sunset, and 2) the relaxed, sociable nature of Tunisians and their vibrant café culture, and 3) why I’m not partaking in that relaxed café culture and am instead trying to cram one year’s worth of Arabic into eight weeks. The walk home often sets my mind and spirit right, as it is a good time to reflect on the day, to think, to pray, to remind myself of this incredible opportunity to study Arabic in a beautiful country which just experienced a revolution only six months ago. 7:20pm, I change into running clothes and tell my host mom, “Besh nimshi footing.” (I’m going running, or “footing”, rather. Tunisian dialect is fun like that.) My feet pound into the dirt path which winds through Carthage. I’m jogging over unexcavated parts of Carthage – how crazy is that? – and I’m taking in big gulps of fresh, evening air filled with the fragrance of jasmine, the fragrance of Tunisia and budding freedom. At the top of my hill I look towards the shimmering sea where the sun is sinking and the call to prayer sounds from the most beautiful mosque I’ve seen in Tunis. I need this moment. I long for it when I’m sitting in class frustrated and working on the verb “to come”, which I can’t seem to master. Maybe I’ll just never “come” anywhere in Arabic; I’ll just go and go.

9:00pm. I’m back at the host home, finishing dinner on our lovely back patio, tiled in white and blue and green, enjoying the breeze under the lemon tree. Dishes clatter. Maybe we’re joking about Gaddafi or talking about our demanding program. My host mother tells me in Tunisian dialect that she fancies herself an artist in the kitchen (my expanding waistline confirms this). Her speech is peppered with French, thanks to the 20^th century French colonization. 11 pm, so tired, so many new words to learn, my attention lags; I wonder what people are doing back home. Maybe I can just put my head down on the pillow and rest a minute… In my dream, I’m jogging with the director of the program. She’s an amazing woman, and she tells me to keep going. I might wake up at 3:30am and hear the call to prayer, and if I can’t go back to sleep, like awake and listen to the gentle rustle of the curtains and the rooster somewhere in the distance.

You know something really amazing? This program has encouraged me and pushed me to work so hard these eight weeks, that I can say (roughly and on a very basic level, mind you) the above entry in Arabic.

This entry says nothing of all the special moments and trips we took around Tunisia, or of the individuals who inspired me and I’ll never forget. Inshallah (Lord-willing), after I return home, I will enjoy writing about some of these experiences. Before then, I have two exams: a written one in standard Arabic and a phone interview in standard Arabic with an external tester. And in a few days, I’ll be on a plane headed home. Then I want to get over my hill and see what I find there.

The Tourist Gaze Part Two: Sidi Bou Said

Inshallah, I will have more time to write more thoughtful entries for this blog later this week. Until then I can offer some photographs around the Sidi Bou Said (pronounced "City Boo Siyeed") region of Tunis where I have Arabic classes. With its gorgeous views overlooking the Mediterranean, its winding cobblestone streets, white stucco walls, bright blue windows and doorways, and suq (open air market and little shops) Sidi Bou has long attracted tourists, particularly from Europe. Sidi Bou has the ambiance of a travelogue, but even the locals enjoy hiking up the hill, stopping at cafes along the way, or meandering through the suq. (Hm, maybe I should write travel guides for a living.) This afternoon I enjoyed walking through Sidi Bou with a couple friends and practicing a little tunsie (local Arabic dialect).







One of the characteristic Tunisian doors


Breathtaking views of the Sea



The Suq dishes out some local color...



...and some amusing Orientalist kitsch.


I couldn't resist the tourist-trap of taking a picture with a bird of prey on my shoulder.


Sunset over La Marsa (near Sidi Bou Said) on the walk home

Of Cats and Catcalls

(There’s far too much to write about the first week, and my posts aren’t coming in any particular order, but will be more thematic than chronological.)

Tunis is crawling with the scrawniest, most emaciated and hostile cats you’ve ever encountered. My Tunisian host family says people frequently turn their pets out onto the street where they multiply beyond imagination, scrounging among the junk piles and litter heaps dotting the city. Sometimes when we turn a corner, one of the frightened creatures scurries past us and into a thicket of brilliant pink bougainvillea flowers overhanging the white stucco walls and sky-blue doors characteristic of Tunis. We call “qahtoos, qahtoos” (the Tunsie word for cat), but they never come to us, and instead hiss at our futile cat-calling.

People often ask me what it’s like to be a foreign woman in the Middle East. I can give only my impressions. In Jordan, I experienced curious stares more than verbal harassment; my friends who have lived in Egypt say the cat-calling there is intense. In Tunis, people stare at us openly, usually without intent. Men sometimes greet us women in English or Spanish, but most often in French, the language of their former colonizers. “Bonjour, madame.” Or my favorite: “Ooh, la la.” I’m not kidding. Some of it is friendly, some of it feels more like teasing, and occasionally it is threatening. Most of the time, it melds with the sensory-overloaded street, the noise of taxis, vendors, and the call to prayer. What I can’t ignore is the unsettling, hissing cat-calling. Tsss, tsss. Pshtt. Pshtt. A lanky Tunisian guy lingers in a doorway, leveling his gaze at us; occasionally they follow us for a few paces. (Lest anyone conclude cat-calling is somehow distinctly “Middle Eastern”, it’s a cross-cultural phenomenon. Just think of the American whistle up and whistle down in a woman’s direction; you’d know it if you heard it.)

For one of my classes at U Chicago, we read a bit of French micro-history which wryly makes the age-old connection between women and cats. In this story, two young apprentices work long, grueling hours in a bakery and suffer at the hand of the cruel baker’s wife, a vindictive woman who treats her pet cats better than the apprentices. One night, the apprentices climb the wall up to the baker’s bedroom and howl like cats; they repeat this sabotage night after night until the baker, enraged by the sleep-deprivation, constructs a gallows and hangs all his wife’s cats. In this way, the apprentices had their revenge on the baker’s wife.

Back to Tunis. I don’t appreciate being hissed at and propositioned as if I were one of those deranged animals slinking along the street. But then there are times when no one cat-calls and I think I must not look good that day. Sometimes I wonder if the overt, public, ahem, appreciation of women isn’t somehow related to the warmth and – for lack of a better phrase – touchy-feeliness in this country. Women often walk arm in arm, and male friends will sometimes hold hands. Men and women display affection in public, arms encircled around one another’s waists or brushing arms and legs while seated in conversation, looking into each other’s eyes. People greet one another alternating cheeks with a kiss-in-the-air. “Asalema, shnee-hwelik? Lebays?” (“Hello, how are you, fine?”) “Lebays, alhamdullilah, ou enti?” (Fine, thank God, and you?”) Lebays. Perhaps this behavior surprises you, considering the American media stereotypes of the Middle East. Today when I walked past a Tunisian mother with two little girls in tow, one of them looked up at me with wide, adoring eyes and whispered to her mother, “Shoof, Eurobiyah,” (“Look, a European woman.”)

Tunisia, with its many languages and Mediterranean sensibility, is certainly the most European of the Middle Eastern countries I’ve visited. And yet, despite all the European influence, it is distinctly, well, Tunisian. It’s tempting to wrinkle our noses at the post-colonial nostalgia for Europe, or to be annoyed with the expectation that as a foreigner, I should speak French, not English. The language, the croissants, the evening meals at 10pm – none of its makes Tunisia any less legitimately Tunisian or connected with the Middle East. As I write this, I’m hunkered down in a corner of a bustling, cosmopolitan café in Sidi Bou Said, wondering at the mingling of cultures in here. Hardly anyone wears the hijab (veil), which makes the entrance of a one young woman all the more unusual: she turns more than a few heads with her chic, white, lacy hijab and wrapped and draped smartly from head to toe in what’s sure to be designer. Unlike the more traditional male-only cafes which line the streets near my home-stay, in this café, no one cat-calls.

Tonight the taxi driver dropped jasmine petals into our hands as if he were paying us a peaceful gesture that somehow makes up for the cat-calls.

Arrival Scenes

June, Week One: Arrival Scenes

Anyone who has ever read a classic ethnography, colonial-era novel, or some form of travelogue (Heart of Darkness comes to mind) will know what I mean when I say I romanticize the arrival scene: the weary (typically Western) hero or heroine, after journeying some days, weeks or months plagued by seasickness, swatting flies and cutting through dense jungle, lips cracking with thirst and mirages in the desert, and threatened by fevers, thieves, rapids, wild animals, or quicksand, finally arrives at some frontier outpost. There was a time when Tunis might have been a distant outpost, but no longer. The transit from the Paris airport to the Tunis airport seemed like one contiguous, placeless space; as we passed the duty free shops and onto a bus, I felt that I hadn’t arrived anywhere yet. We had merely hopped from one ubiquitous, anonymous space to another, but that’s how airports are.

In 2008 I studied abroad in Jordan with a group of American students. Before my trip, I read widely about the country. When we arrived at the Amman airport, a solemn Jordanian met our group at the gate to take us to the hotel. After we loaded our luggage onto the bus, this silent man, who only told us his first name, proceeded to sit next to me on the bus and ask me all about myself. Having been (mis)lead to believe that it would be improper for me to converse with Arab men, I tersely answered his questions, glancing nervously out the window and fumbling with my backpack – only to discover the following day that he was the director of the study abroad program.

This time, I hoped, there would be less faux pas, but the more I travel abroad, the more I see that each place and each encounter has its own dynamic. As soon as we boarded the bus for Tunis, some of the advanced Arabic students took a voluntary language pledge to speak in Arabic as much as possible. Being unable to converse in Arabic with some of my fellow American students was only the beginning of my culture shock. Feeling the numbness of exhaustion, I leaned my head back against the bus seat and awoke only when our bus lurched up a long hill and pulled into the Hotel Sidi Bou Said parking lot. There we caught our first glimpse of the sleeping city flickering below in the darkness, and beyond, a thin sheet of glass gleaming still and austere in the moonlight. It was the Mediterranean. Beyond that were some purplish-black hills. And beyond that was darkness and sleep.

The Tourist Gaze Part One

June 1^st : The Tourist Gaze Part One

Living in a foreign country makes even the most mundane occurrences new and exciting.

Thinking we only had a few moments before the train departed, we rushed through the subway doors, pushing past a couple of disgruntled Canadians who cursed us for running over their toes with our luggage; we nearly tripped over a man and woman protectively crouching around three dogs wrapped in blankets. Stepping gingerly over the agitated dogs, I searched wildly for an open seat and squeezed between a large suitcase and the train window. The other American students with me had scrambled onto the train, only to find that it was not about to leave but had been sitting in the station some 45 minutes. The car was dusky and stale. The people looked at us with indifference, and the air was heavy with the hushed whispering and the panting of the dogs. The heat was a shock to my body. Only a week before I had been in chilly, windy, rainy Chicago.

Now I was with some two dozen American students headed to Tunis, Tunisia to study Arabic for the summer. That morning – or was it the morning before? - our flight in Washington D.C. was delayed over two hours, so we had missed our connection in Paris. This gave us a 12 hour layover in Paris. Though exhausted and sleep-deprived, our hearts leapt at the chance to explore the city. We spent the next couple hours frustrated and carting our luggage around the airport trying to figure out how to get from the terminal to the trains to the city. After some minutes, the train doors closed and we lurched forward into the darkness of the subway tunnel. Just as suddenly, we shot out of the tunnel, into the white hot daylight. The crumbling outskirts of the city streamed past: broken tenement buildings, and waves of colorful graffiti rising and falling along the track walls. Then darkness again; then into the light. The sunlight hitting the metal track looked like mercury, climbing higher and higher as the train plunged forward through the countryside. Another train passed in the opposite direction, rocking our train. The train sped along gently and the conversation buzzed pleasantly. I was being lulled to sleep.

In the sunlight on the window glass, I caught a glimpse of my reflection. So this is the tourist gaze, I thought: Seeing one’s own querying expression reflected in train, car, taxi, and bus windows; the sensation of seeing oneself; one’s own gaze suddenly looking back. Millions of people travel by public transportation every day, most from necessity, yet being on the train in France was something serendipitous, mysterious.

When we reached our stop, we pushed off the train and into a damp, crowded tunnel, up some stairs and into the blinding daylight. The first thing I saw as I emerged from the tunnel was a café; then we stood stupidly in the middle of the sidewalk. Frankly, I felt I had surfaced in a Hollywood backlot; this couldn’t be real. And then we turned to the right and there was Notre Dame. Had I been planning this trip, maybe it would have felt more real. Had I slept more the previous week, maybe it would have felt real, less dreamlike. We moved as in a dream, hesitantly, gazing around us. Because we only had a few hours, most of us planned to follow the Seine River from the Cathedral to the Eiffel Tower, which turned out to be a longer walk than we expected. Along the way, I kept thinking about all the history of the place.

A café or two later, a friend and I stretched out on the lawn beside the Eiffel Tower, basking in the sunlight. The weather was as perfect as you can imagine. Near us a group of French-speaking people reclined on blankets, with a spread of wine and cheese before them. I lay on the earth, enjoying the still, blue expanse above. Tunis can wait until tomorrow, I thought.

Looking up at Notre Dame.


Reading by the Tower.


One for the calendar.