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.