Bisalaama Tunis!

My last few days in Tunis were a blur. On Friday, Akira, David and I made a solemn pilgrimage to our favorite sandwich shop for the Last Supper of our regular orders—for me, a tuna taboona (with a lot of harissa, of course) and a fruit smoothie “cocktail.” I absolutely rocked my Arabic oral a few hours later, and (much to the apparent surprise of the program director) scored an unbelievable “Advanced” level on the ACTFL scale. Considering my pretty basic level of competence, I’m sure that isn’t accurate and won’t be replicated in my coming phone interview (yuck) but it is flattering nonetheless. I think the key was just comprehension and circumlocution—my first impressive moment was when the testers asked me how long I had been studying Arabic before I came to Tunisia (an odd question considering they knew we were all beginners, and asked quickly and with a weird tense). When I answered right away, the tester turned to his colleague and quickly said something along the lines of “wow, she’s the first one to get that question—she understood,” to which I responded “of course!” After that, it was actually a lot of fun. I fulfilled my worst fear when I accidentally slid into French, and had to literally clap my hand over my mouth, but I was able to explain in Arabic “when you ask me about French literature, I want to talk in French. Can I have the next question?” without any problem. I even talked about DC and Obama, and when asked for my opinion of Michelle I was able to compensate for not knowing “intelligent” by saying “Michelle graduated from the same university as Obama but their teacher said that she was a better student than him.”

After the oral I headed immediately for celebratory gelato with the girls, a quick final hour of beach with Akira and Tyler, and then home to change for the banquet. Kate and I split a bottle of wine and chatted like true “ochette” (sisters) as we got ready; I wore her necklace, she wore my dress, and we made promises to visit each other fi Mustokbol (in the future). We arrived to the banquet on Tunisian time (read: an hour late) and sat at a table with one of our feminist lecturers, who had amusingly disgusted responses to Mustafa’s run-of-the mill misogynist comments. During dessert they showed a little retrospective video that included the performance of my harissa poem from Dougga and my bus acceptance speech, which got a great reception from all of the Tunisian tutors and parents that knew me who hadn’t seen it live. My own parents were shocked to hear that I could actually speak some Arabic (I never really tried at home, because they just made fun of us) and found my class nickname “fil-fil” (Pepper) to be equally hilarious.

I caught a taxi to Marsa Plage Saturday morning and browsed the little shops and open-air book market before getting the train into Tunis for some last-minute souk action. Over the course of 4 hours or so, I managed to speak French, Arabic and English and even Spanish, and by the time I left, my brain was so muddled with code switching that I could hardly communicate at all. It was gratifying how much Arabic I was able to understand, though, especially compared to my previous, jetlagged experience in the souks on the day of our arrival. My best adventure was a shopkeeper who, after trying to help me find Akira in the impossible maze of shops, lead me on a little tour through the shoe-maker’s souk before brining me back to his own perfume store, where he served me mint tea, gave me a perfume-making and testing demonstration, and insisted that I sample almost all of them before settling on a little vial of jasmine oil. That night, Kate and I had our final dinner with the family, which was appropriately delicious and even more awkward, then caught a cab out to the snazzy “Lac de Tunis” area for smoothies and shisha with some students and my teachers. I got home around 2:30am—just enough time to get two hours of sleep before we left for our flight. Sam’s host brother Eshem came to see us off and gave me a Tunisian soccer t-shirt as a parting gift, which was a much-appreciated gesture in light of my own family’s suckage.

Paris a few hours later was pretty chill—literally. After Tunisian heat, the 70-degree days felt almost like winter, and I spent the two days I was there wrapped up in jeans, tennis shoes and a jacket. With the flurry of finals during my last few days in Tunis I wasn’t successful in setting up appointments to see apartments, so I just relaxed and enjoyed the all-is-well-with-the-world feeling of being in France once again. I got a cheap hotel room with another boy from the program, Anthony, who is waiting to meet up with his sister for a backpacking Eurotrip. (Ah, the good ol’ days…). He doesn’t speak any French, and might have the worst sense of direction of anyone I’ve travelled with, so I felt very useful (Inch’allah his sister has a better internal compass than he does). He didn’t have to wait long to speak a language he knows, though—we were on the RER from the airport to the city when we had our first Arabic conversation, thanks to the t-shirt from Eshem that had a little Arabic on it. Our hotel was in an Arab part of Bastille, too, so we spent our evening browsing Arab butchers and bakeries, looking for telltale Tunisian foods as an invitation to try our “Asalaama. Le bess?” on for size.

We spent a good chunk of yesterday in the Centre Pompidou, Paris’ relatively new modern art museum, housed in a controversially odd building that has exposed, color-coded pipes on one side (blue for air, red for elevators, green for water, yellow for electricity) and six floors of inclining hamster tubes of escalators on the other. Somehow I had managed to never visit this particular museum, but after this trip it will always make my list. The hamster’s-eye view as you go to the top is a great panorama of Paris, and the two special exhibits were completely my style. The first was a Kandinsky collection, arranged by time and space to track the influences of his time spent in Germany, Paris and Russia on his work. Rufus Wainwright provided a great soundtrack as I freed my eyes to move along the dark lines between splotches of color—such happy paintings! I’m totally going to make a habit of music-and-painting visits when I’m living there…it’s like do-it-yourself Fantasia. The second exhibit was called “elles”—a Guerilla Girls-inspired exhibit that “might be taken as a manifesto: women artists are now numerous, and in their radical, complex and cross-disciplinary work they are writing a new history of art to challenge the old, tackling head-on the great issues of the day. Yet the new hang is neither female nor feminist in point of view, being primarily intended to show and to pay tribute to their work.” Bottom line? Super cool WGSXy heaven, organized into sections that celebrated/challenged the body, domestic space, domestic arts (sewing, cooking, interior design), etc. complimented by great feminist literary quotes on the walls. Highly recommended if you find yourself in Paris anytime soon (and if you’re reading this blog, you’ll have an excuse to come to Paris starting Sept. 7th. My couch calls…)

One test down, one to go

This last week has been tense and uneventful as far as material for blog entries goes. Monday was my Tunisian dialect oral proficiency test—I did pretty well, so I’m happy. I just finished my three-hour written Arabic final, which only leaves the 15-minute MSA oral interview tomorrow. I’m a little nervous about it because it’s with official Foreign Service testers (and I hate oral anything anyway) but I feel surprisingly proud of my Arabic regardless of how well I perform under pressure. Having the last few days to review everything we’ve done so far has really given me an appreciation for the range of my vocabulary and my ability to be inventive with the language. I have the basic tenses and grammar mostly down, and I’m able to talk in some detail about why I’m here and what I’m doing next year—pretty cool accomplishment in a language I couldn’t even read eight weeks ago.

Other things from the last week or so…

*I FINALLY hit up Tunisian bookstores. The books I got for my SMP last year had to be ordered from France at high cost, so tracking down a few hard-to-find Maghrebine novels has been on my to-do list since I got here. I picked up a few novels I’ve been wanting for a while, as well as a book of coming-of-age short stories by Tunisian writers, a book of the famous Tunisian poet Chebbi’s work (in Arabic!), and some bilingual French-Arabic children’s books that recount the adventures of “Petite Anne.” At the recommendation of my new friend the bookstore worker, I also got a book by Tahar Fazaa, who is apparently a very popular and hilarious local writer à la David Sedaris. Last but not least, I found a poster of Africa and the Middle East that featured the names of all of the countries in Arabic. Woohoo!
I was surprised to find out how expensive books were (not so bad when you translate the dinar into US$ or Euros, but relative to the cost of other items in Tunisia, pretty high) and I wonder how many typical Tunisians are actually able to afford books. I know that my host family has almost none, and none at all for their 5-year old daughter. There was a separate children’s section in both stores, but it seemed rather limited (and also very French-heavy…there were almost no children’s books in Arabic). I also found the Tunisian bookstores to be much smaller and less inviting than American bookstores. Without a couch to sit on while I browsed through books, I instead opted to crouch Indian-style on the floor, which seemed to surprise and amuse the bookstore employee I had been talking to. (Tunisians are really weird about the floor—sitting on it or putting anything on it earns you some weird looks, as does putting your feet up).

*I went to Hammamet (literally: the baths) with the group last weekend, which is pretty much a classier version of Ocean City, or, in my mind, a less-classy version of Nice. Definitely the most “touristical” (in the words of our adorable guide, Hatem) and less culture-rich of all the places we visited (complete with a theme park “Carthageland” which is basically a less-intimidating, non-bargaining version of a typical medina market…totally weird). It was good considering how burnt out we all were, though…I didn’t do much except lay around on the beach and enjoy my first wine in WEEKS. I’m glad I’m doing my graduate work in a wine-friendly country. I’m convinced this whole thing would be much less stressful if I were allowed to maintain my wine-and-whine working routine (which is much healthier than the tea and shisha routine here).

*After not doing laundry for more than two weeks, and not doing our whites for over a month, our host mother FINALLY did some yesterday. Granted, it was so shoved in the machine it probably hardly got clean and will have fun detergent spots all over it, AND I got scolded for my pink skirt bleeding on a white shirt (who washes bright pink with whites?) but at least it means that I might make it to Sunday without having to do any emergency sink washings, inch’allah

* We had our last pottery class this week. Overall, I kind of fail at pottery as an art form—especially on the wheel—but I liked the cool earthy feel and the metallic smell and the fact that it was pretty much the antithesis of studying Arabic (and I only thought about Ghost a teensy bit). I made some Tunisian-esque tiles, a bowl, and some failed pots that I probably won’t waste suitcase space on. Our teacher, a really cool Tunisian artist, gave us all a piece of his own work as a parting gift...I got a really cool crackle-glaze and gold bowl with a bird in the center that would probably go for a few hundred dinar if he chose to sell it.

*I’ve been taking the bus home lately and really enjoying it. Once I climb in and pay my 450 to the man in the back (a dinar is broken into 1000 cents here), I put on my iPod and enjoy the small amount of “alone time” I’m allowed in this program. The ride itself is somewhere between the crowded sweatiness of the Nice buses and the reckless downhill speeds and sharp turns of British buses (think the African version of the knight bus, all you HP fans). The Tunisians have some inherent ability to remain still, looking on nonchalantly as I stagger around with each turn.

*I have learned a lot about myself as a student and a person in this program. Conclusions: 1) I’m a very auditory learner, at least with languages, although I also do pretty well independently when it’s writing-related. Classroom reading and computer exercises do very little for me. 2) I have a strong need for alone time and the ability to dictate my own schedule to a small extent at least; not having either makes me cranky. 3) If I can be aware of being cranky, I can take conscious steps to be more positive. 4) And last: to make positive thinking successful, I need to surround myself with positive people. Fortunately, they have been in no short supply in this program.

Tomorrow night is our banquet, Saturday will be a Tunis day, and I fly out Sunday morning to Paris to apartment-hunt for two days before I meet Mom in Morocco! Yes, my life is awesome. I just need to get enough rest to appreciate that again.

On the homefront...

The homestay continues to be a challenge. There’s no getting around it: my family is just weird and unpleasant, but at least my interactions and conversations with other Tunisians have helped me realize that it’s just a personal thing and not a “Tunisian” or cultural disconnect. My roommate Kate and I played the “trying to look on the bright side” game last night and came up with this:

1) Food at our house is amazing. Our mom is a great cook, and takes a lot of pride in her “hospitality” of making a variety of authentic Tunisian meals for us, (although her begrudging and bitter attitude spoils my appetite a little). Our meals are much better than the harissa-and-tuna diet that a few of the other students seem to be on at their houses.
2) I can’t remember if I’ve said this before, but our host parents are obsessed with mosquitoes. This means that they blame us keeping windows open or lights on every time they find one, and killing one becomes an intense affair that puts a frighteningly murderous gleam in Mustafa’s eyes and often ends in a marital argument if he fails. The upshot: we wake up with far fewer mosquito bites than a lot of our classmates, who bug spray-up before bed to little avail.
3) Our bathroom is nice. It’s clean, we have toilet paper (even if we can’t flush it), and even though our shower is still the kneel-and-hold-the-shower-head sort, it’s spacious, clean, and has decent water pressure. Kate and I also have our own bathroom (the rest of the family uses it for bathing, but they have their own toilet/sink). After visiting other homestays with questionable bathrooms, I have grown to appreciate ours (especially in a climate that makes showering a daily necessity and with a diet that plays games with your stomach at times).

On the negative side…it is unbearably hot, stuffy and muggy in the house—ALWAYS…even when it’s nice outside! It’s particularly terrible now that the daytime temperature is up above 100; I’m pondering secretly migrating to the couch tonight because it’s much cooler in the living room and I kept waking up last night drenched in sweat. Also: Lubna ranks up there with the most passive aggressive people I’ve ever known. We had pretty crappy towels from the beginning relative to theirs, and as we continued to shower daily our towels began to disappear. For a while, we had to tromp down to the laundry line outside to retrieve them in the morning if we wanted to shower. At some point last week, they disappeared altogether. I finally got into a cupboard and stole a new towel for myself—a bigger one, this time. I’m also in a constant fight over territory in my own room, which is full of Lina’s stuff. I’ll often come home to find my books/belongings shoved into a pile to make way for stuffed animals or toys, or one day their was body glitter all over my bed and I was sparkly for three days afterwards. The most recent manifestation of this has been the epic Closet Wars. The wardrobe in my room started out half Lina’s clothes (why any 5-yr old has so many I can’t understand…they’re almost all pink, and she wears the SAME skirt everyday anyway…) and half space for me. As the summer has progressed, one new pair of little girl shoes and one new pink puffy winter coat per week (again—why so many near-identical coats? Does it even get that cold here?) have been illegally immigrating into my half of the closet. Before this past weekend’s trip, the coats were taking up about half of the space. When I came back, there was a coat that broke the Becca’s back: a girl version of the suit in Where the Wild Things Are, fuzzy, pink and long complete with ears, mittens and a tail. Irked, I took all of the coats out of the closet and hung them up on the little coat rack. I returned from school the next day to find them back in the closet. I moved them again last night. We’ll see what happens when I get home…if she has put them back I’m going to start dressing the unwelcome stuffed animals in puffy shades of pink.

Fortunately, when I step back from the situation I find it all kind of hilarious. Kate’s not quite as adept at detaching herself, but we help each other find the humor, and we generally stay away when we don’t have to be home. We had a great time last night, though, which is what inspired me to write this post…our host parents decided to go out to a café (for once!) and left us home alone. I immediately took the opportunity to soak my tevas in hot soapy dishwater in the kitchen (it really bothers me how stanky my feet are), and my underwear/bras in the bathroom (Lubna won’t wash our underwear, so we have to sort of secretly do it in the sink at night and let it dry in the window) while Kate sat in the corner of the house to mooch off of the neighbor’s wireless to Skype her parents. Then we dug out the bottle of wine Kate had stowed away and took to the balcony to drink it in the cool night air with some Simon and Garfunkel, laughing at how jumpy we were every time a car-that-might-be-them pulled onto the street.

thoughts from a Tunisian wedding

On Sunday night, I went to what I believed to be the marriage of Amor, our neighbor and the host brother of another American in the program. Little did I suspect that marriages here are a week-long affair and that what I was to attend was only a bachelor’s party of sorts. Tunisian weddings apparently begin with an official civil ceremony that isn't widely attended but that produces the chains of honking cars I keep seeing/hearing. Then there are private parties for the groom and the bride, which include a wide circle of neighbors, family and friends. The final party, where the bride and groom are finally allowed to see each other, is huge, wild (or as much as it can be without alcohol or overly-overt sexuality, I suppose) and late. Weddings are almost like a community service here, or perhaps a public celebration of wealth and happiness, and they all take place during the summer months. There has almost literally been a wedding in our neighborhood every night I’ve been here (you can hear them through the open windows), so it was exciting to finally see what goes on firsthand.

Festivities started at 7 (which in Tunisian time meant 9:30) with a dinner on the roof of their house. The roof was covered with tables and chairs, with the prime real estate sectioned off for the men and the rest left for women, families and Americans. A little tent in the corner housed three ancient, veiled women with huge platters of food that must have taken several days and kitchens to prepare. I got a plate of couscous topped with lamb and vegetables, salad mishweya, some quiche-like tajine, bread and watermelon. After I had finished I was quickly ushered out by Eshem, the groom’s brother, who was on dish detail and responsible for turning tables to assure that everyone was fed. We moved on to the space at the end of the street that I had seen them sweeping off earlier that day, which was now draped in Tunisian banners (and randomly, a superman banner?) and covered in rows of folding chairs in front of a traditional Tunisian “band”—six men wearing traditional white robes and red wool hats, whose chanting and drumming was amplified to an almost deafening level. Again, the genders were segregated—with woman (a high proportion of whom were veiled—I couldn’t figure out if the family just has an abnormally high number of “traditional” friends or if women who usually go without will don them for formal occasions) occupying the seats in the front, and men grouped standing in the back or sitting along the sides treets with tea and shisha. There was also a gender difference in clothing—while the women were all dressed very nicely, the men were much more casual, with the old men in regular house clothes and the young men in their typical “going out” attire of tight, dark jeans, fitted black tees and a full head full of gel.

At about midnight the band stopped and the crowd migrated back to the house to see Eshem and Amor (who, to my surprise, had been wandering around unshaven in a grungy white tank top and shorts tending to guests) emerge in traditional dress with the rest of the family. Eshem “carried” a very miserable-looking Amor down the stairs (not really—Eshem is short and spry, and Amor kind of chubs) at about the pace of a bridal march as the women you-youed. Once on the street, the whole family paused for pics (Amor still looking terribly unhappy) and ceremonious candle-lighting before the street side party resumed with dancing and throwing money at the groom-to-be. Everyone was joyous—the older people and especially the women (who often stay at home while husbands go to cafes) seemed to enjoy the chance to mingle with friends, while the younger crowd enjoyed the chance to mingle acceptably with the opposite sex. Young Tunisians actually have a pretty active and scandalous social scene, complete with dating and a little bit of drinking…it’s just kept on the down-low. Weddings are a rare socially acceptable and almost desirable time for overt courtship to take place, as the aggressive attention I was getting from a friend of Amor’s demonstrated. Exhausted from Le Kef and knowing I had class early the next morning, I ended up leaving shortly after midnight, although I heard the party continue late into the morning.

I learned later from Lubna that it is expected and respectable for the groom to be solemn (although not miserable) and for both parties to be kind of grungy-looking until the last day, to make the contrast all the more fabulous. The bride spends the morning of the wedding or the day before with a group of girlfriends at the hammam (more to come on my own bridal hammam adventure soon!) while the groom gets a shave and a haircut. If my own family and Amor’s is any judge, weddings are starting to change here (getting much later in life, with divorce a much more acceptable option, although homosexuality is still not even mentioned) but the ideal is still a marriage in the early twenties for a woman and the late twenties for a man that is a “good match” in terms of class and wealth. The man is expected to have a job and supply the money for a car, a house, and its furnishings, while the woman contributes a pillow; obviously a more symbolic than useful gesture. This is changing as women enter the workforce, but even if the marriage is more egalitarian they seem to at least keep up the appearance of a traditional bread-winner/housewife ideal.

On another note, if my conversation and observations over coffee with Amor and one of his flirtatious female students a few weeks ago is any judge, I read Amor’s expression right at the wedding—he’s not just solemn, he’s upset at losing his “freedom.” On that night, when the waiter gave his number to the student, Amor ripped it up immediately and swept her into a hug, saying “you don’t need that, you have me!” Alas for him, I don’t know how that’ll fly with a ring on his finger (or maybe it will just drive it underground…)

Roaming the Ruins

On Saturday I took the TGM train a few stops over to Carthage where I met up with one of the guys on the program, Akira. The sites were oddly spread out and not that well marked, so we kind of just trekked around to see what we could see, with Akira identifying the components of every column and statue we came across (he’s a geological engineer). The coolest part was the roman baths area, which had the most complete ruins over a larger area, although my mind wasn’t as much on the history as it probably should have been. After a grueling week of work I was really just enjoying the exercise and fresh air, as well as the half hour plus conversation we had with an old Tunisian museum worker who taught us how to put a pen between our teeth to pronounce خ and forecasted that we would soon be married, taking a photo of us to “show your grandchildren someday, inchallah”.

After we got tired of sightseeing, we slipped away from the hoards of bus tourists and followed a few locals down a little path to a “beach” of big rocks bordering the sea. We found a place among the rocks to stash our stuff and stealthily changed into bathing suits. Standing on the rocks waiting to jump in, I felt a pinch on my foot and looked down to see a crab dangling off of it. In the process of trying to shake it off, I ended up slipping and hitting my hip on the algae-covered rock before splashing into the chest-deep water. Akira laughed at my clumsiness and totally didn’t believe me about the crab. Later, when we got back out and were sitting on the rocks to dry off, we saw about twenty more. Ha.

We took a taxi back to Akira’s place, where I was invited to have dinner with his mom and brothers (Mediterranean salad with olives, tuna and egg; cous cous with fava beans, meatballs and liberal amounts of the spicy harissa; dessert: this delicious melon that’s kind of a cross between a cantaloupe and a honey dew that I’ve never seen in the states). I talked for a long time in French with Akira’s mother and her friend, who was apparently Tunisia’s first woman lawyer. After my experiences with my own traditional host mother, it was fun to interact with an unabashedly smoking, gaudy-jewelry wearing, French-poetry spouting, overall spunky old lady. We had espresso in the living room following dinner, after which point I begrudgingly returned home to shower the salt out of my hair and head back out to a house party hosted by Nathan and Justin’s host parents: a Tunisian artist and his French wife.

Their place was AMAZING—a bright, airy celebration of a house, with yellow walls overflowing with the dad’s artwork, light fixtures sculpted from driftwood, and knickknacks from various corners of the globe. In short: everything I want my house to be assuming I ever grow up and settle down long enough to get one. The music was similarly eclectic—I recognized some Cuban rap from my Spanish class alongside traditional Tunisian tunes and Michael Jackson. My FLTA Ashraf taught me how to dance like a Tunisian, and the host’s huge dog Starsky joined in the dancing with the mother as his partner (apparently dancing is Starsky’s favorite past time). The food was also great, (Tunisian brique, tarte, watermelon, sausages, and even wine! Yay French wife) but since I was still pretty full from Akira’s, I stuck mainly to almonds, which in Tunisia come fresh in their fuzzy green shell. It’s almost a social activity to sit around eating them, as it takes quite a bit of effort and jaw strength to bite through the green covering and the tan shell, then peel off the skin to get to the fresh, moist, milky-colored almond fruit (apparently it’s the oxidization that makes them brown).

Overall, a great Saturday, and it was nice to see everyone looking so happy and relaxed for once. Sunday was pretty uneventful, but a nice chance for me to reorganize my notes a bit and review vocabulary. Today was work-work-work again...boo...although our time with the worse teacher seemed a little more productive today (she got on me for doodling though...grrr..I swear it helps me concentrate by giving me something to do with my hands). I also think I got something out of my one-on-one tutoring, even if it was a drain on my hw time. My this week's happy thought: our second excursion to the South starts Friday morning and ends Monday night. Translation: both this and next week will be only four days long! woohoo!

I have clean underpants again!

Officially back from my first weekend excursion, which was a lot of fun. Pictures and details will be forthcoming as I have time this week. Returning home last night felt surprisingly comfortable, and it was nice to hear Lubna say that she missed having women in the house this weekend. I also have clean clothes again--Lubna finally got to our laundry while I was gone, with the exception of my underwear and bra, which I hand-washed at the hotel in Monastir (it's extremely offensive in Tunisia to have other people touch your soiled undergarments--apparently this goes for socks, too, which Lubna left untouched in the hamper). Feeling well rested for the first time since I got here, I was able to get up early enough to make my own tea this morning to avoid more of the disgusting whole-milk-and-Nescafé (instant coffee-like drink) that has been forced on me every morning so far, and even managed to avoid insulting my host parents with the (completely made up) explanation of how growing up in a Commonwealth country made me partial to tea. Here's hoping they take the hint.

Every Monday we have to turn in something called "Critical Incident Reports" detailing moments of revelation, culture shock, etc that we've had in Tunisia. Rather than give a full blog entry today, I thought I'd share what I'm turning in:

Mistaken cat calls

During the halftime at a Tunisian National futbol game I went up to the concession stand to buy a bottle of water. Rather than the many large, bright windows of overpriced hot dogs and beers that I would find in the States, this was a small, dark hole in the cement surrounded by a crowd of men shoving for their orders. Taking a deep breath, I dove into the chaotic crowd. After a few seconds, I started hearing the familiar harassing “Hey! You! English? Girl? Hey!” I did my best to ignore the calls, keeping my eye on the window, until I felt a hand shake my shoulder. I turned around, to see a man pointing at my butt, saying “watch, watch!” Uncomfortable, I pushed away, but he was near me again in a second, shaking and pointing: “watch it! Watch it!” Finally he found the word he needed: “money! Watch it!” I looked down and saw what the man had seen—not my butt, in fact, but a colored piece of newspaper sticking out of my pocket that looked an awful lot like a Tunisian bill. He motioned that I should tuck it in further, using “bad people” as his explanation as he motioned towards the crowd around us. I laughed, pulling the paper from my pocket to show him what it really was—the article from the daily paper saying that women could get in free to the game. He laughed too. I used the little bit of Arabic I could muster (this was only a few days in to the program) to introduce myself, before switching into French to thank him properly for his kindness.


My first big “whoops” and my first big “whoa!” in the same five minutes

One night, when I stayed after hours at SIT, a friend called me over to help him communicate with the cleaning lady (I’m fairly fluent in French, so I’ve been filling in where our developing Arabic isn’t yet sufficient). Confident, I repeated what the friend had asked me to say (“did you find my shirt in here last night?”) in French to the woman, who stared at me blankly. “Je ne parle pas français” she said.
I felt suddenly helpless—more than I had been anywhere since our arrival—and I realized how much I had been using my French as a crutch. After mangling Arabic trying to get the question across, I tried to excuse my inability to communicate with “Sorry, [my] Arabic is not good”—unfortunately it came out as “Sorry, Arabs are not good,” a pretty severe faux-pas if you ask me. Luckily, she was quick to understand that racism wasn’t my intention, and after an apology and another minute or so of gesturing, we were able to get the point across. My friend thanked the woman for the shirt, which she returned to him with a string of Arabic. “What was that?” he asked. “She says you left it out on the balcony yesterday,” I said. It took me a minute to realize that I had somehow understood her perfectly, but that she had been speaking Arabic. “How did you know what she said?” my friend asked. I’m still not sure, but what I do know is that it felt pretty amazing.

Cab ride revelation

I noticed the difference in license plates on my first day here—longer than ours, with some Arabic letters squished in between numbers. Not knowing how to read the letters, I assumed that they were, as ours are, randomly selected to create a wide range of possible combinations. On the cab ride home last night, after our first week of classes, I was staring absently at the car in front of us when my eyes fell on the suddenly meaningful letters: Tunis!

One week down...

I'm sure everyone has heard about the Egyptian method of preserving bodies by shoving a red hot poker up a corpse's nose, scrambling the brains, and pulling them back out in a melty mess. My Tunisian education thus far feels pretty similar (Egypt's only one country over, after all...). This week has been outright exhausting. I wake up at about 6:30 to get ready and get to school, which starts at 8:30. We have two two-hour sessions of class, a one-hour dialect lesson, and then hours of homework. However, what with the need for lunch in there somewhere and at least a little bit of down time, plus all of the activities we've had planned in the evenings, I never finish. I inevitably get home around 9, help set up for/clean up dinner, eat, and talk with the family, and by then it's about 10:30 and I have an hour or so to do what work I have the energy left for and get to bed.

We had our first test today, which I totally bombed (due to the time limit and not my Arabic ability). I'm not too concerned--I'm not getting graded after all. I feel pretty good about my progress thus far, regardless of testing. I can now read and write every letter, although I still have problems spelling, obviously, and I read at the pace of an electric company video from Sesame Street (Cuh----Aaaah----Tuhhh....Cuh--Aah--Tuh....CuhAhTuh....CAT!). I can also introduce myself, talk about my family, count money, order food, ask about the bathroom...pretty much do anything I would absolutely NEED to do. I'm also beginning to pick up words here and there in the conversation at home, which makes me sound rather like an idiot when I suddenly interject during dinner to parrot back the words I know (table! chicken! She doesn't want!). My host parents react as encouragingly as real parents would, smiling and repeating it back to me along with a string of other words I don't understand. Lina's five-year-old intellect has finally wrapped itself around the idea that my muteness is due to incomprehension, and she is now on a mission to correct everything I say, not that her choice of vocabulary is always helpful (she spent five minutes last night trying to get me to say something like Gahr-Gah Bool Zed...which turned out to be Dragon Ball Z, her favorite TV show). Asking her "shoowa hedda" (what's this) also has mixed results...I asked about a Tunisian flag and she said "aller aller!" (French for "let's go, let's go") and then started singing a Tunisian futbol chant. Ma'lesh. (Oh well).

Arabic itself is as fascinating as it is frustrating. I'm looking forward to next week, when we will progress beyond the alphabet and learn more about conjugating verbs and such. Not being able to string together sentences is killing me, as it's always the creative and structural aspects and actual conversation that I'm good at, not the memorization. As per usual, though, I'm still able to find ways to amuse myself, whether by the semi-orgasmic noises that emerge when a room full of students is practicing their "Huhhhh" (mine's getting pretty good, by the way), the fact that "sup?" translates into Tunisian as "penis," or that the Tunisian word for 15 is "mustache."

On the homefront: things are better, slightly. Kate and I are getting better about establishing our boundaries with Lina, and since we've been getting home around 9 we don't spend a whole lot of time with the family. Mustafa's brought up politics a few more times--apparently it's not just America and the Jews he hates, but also the French, the Chinese, the British... I slowly but insistently counter his opinions with "actually"s (actually, in America I have Chinese friends and....actually, I lived in Britain for a semester and...) Even if he's intolerant, he's at least giving me a little space to express myself--I just need to watch what I say, and not be the one to bring things up. On the other hand, I had a perfectly lovely (and long) conversation with Lubna last night about Islam--she was surprised to find out how much I new about her religion, and also surprised to find out that a lot of the Quaranic stories are also in the Bible and Torah. I'd love to pick her brain a little more...she's such a puzzle in my mind (educated and intelligent, but submissive, modern, but religiously traditional). I'm really looking forward to seeing where this friendship goes.

We leave at 8am tomorrow for our first weekend excursion to the Sahel--a central region on the coast. I'll check in again next week with pictures and a summary of how it goes!

The honeymoon had to end sometime

So the homestay is going to get harder before it gets easier, it seems. Lina is cute, but spoiled, and her brattiness is getting old quickly. She seems to think she has the right to anything she sees (translation: anything I'm holding) and has no problem going into my/her room to explore my belongings or even grabbing them right from my hand. If I refuse or take them away from her she starts tantruming. I'm learning some Arabic phrases today to discourage her...if her parents won't set the limits, I will, and I've already noticed that the Arabic "leh" has more effect than "no" so maybe broaching the linguistic barrier will help. We also got a hateful tirade from our host father last night about politics--how naïve we Americans are, how we believe Muslim stereotypes of terrorism that are ignorant, how the Jews are behind all of our politics, and are responsible for 9/11 and the war in Iraq...etc. Near the beginning I tried to divert him, but it became pretty clear that he was looking for an audience, not a discussion partner, and the fact that he was citing propaganda as truth made me realize that there was probably little I could do to change his opinions. The experience left me uncomfortable and Kate even moreso. We brought it up to the program leaders today, who have instructed us that next time we should just end the conversation when it starts, and gave us a number to call after hours if that doesn't work.

I'm determined to view this as a challenge, though, and an opportunity to let myself and my actions speak louder than the media when it comes to impressions of Americans. Inch'allah, maybe I can change some minds in the two months that I'll be here. Also, aside from political lectures, the family has been extremely hospitable, and the food is great--last night's dinner was a great Tunisian pepper salad called Mushiwya on bread, and a chicken and pea dish that reminded me of subsaharan african cuisine. Tonight is going to be some sort of Tunisian speciality involving spinach...mmmm!

And now, for the promised futbol summary:

After learning from a Mozambiquian guy from DC (small world, ain't it?) about the futbol match, me and a group of nine other CLS students climbed into our first Tunisian taxi (which was, like all others I have ridden in since then, a seatbelt-less, crappy-radioed, thrilling experience) and headed to the outskirts of town for the national Tunisia vs. Mozambique game. Women got in free--a little sexist, perhaps, but I was happy enough to save the five dinar. We decked out in headbands and Tunisian flags and did our best to follow along in the foreign chants, much to the delight of the Tunisians around us, who offered us commentary, snacks, and--in my case--phone numbers (from the taxi driver, then the widowed dad behind the cute Tunisian boy in this photo--I need to figure out an action plan for these sorts of situations.) It was cool to see Tunisian women and children cheering alongside the men (I see them much less frequently then men in public here), and curious to see tea and bread vendors instead of beer and hotdogs. Overall, a ton of fun, and I think we're going to try and make the next game in a few weeks.

Hedda Ohrkti

Hedda Ohrkti: this is my sister. Heya esm ha Lina: her name is Lina. This is about the extent of my Arabic at this point, although being only 5, Lina has yet to realize that I don't understand her constant babbling, so I've been enjoying pleasant (if rather one-sided) conversation. I've discovered that if I speak French to her, she understands me about half of the time but responds only in Tunisan (although French is widely heard here, most Tunisians speak Tunisian in the house and begin to learn French formally when they start school). She calls me ta-ta (auntie) and drags me around everywhere by my forearm (eeejuh! eejuh! shoof!) (come, come, look!). This picture was taken when she discovered my laptop and was insistant on playing with it...rather than have her mess up my documents I opened up photobooth and....voila! Instant distraction.

Also in my family: my father, Mustafa, my mother Lubna, and a three-month-old brother, Amenallah. So far, Mustafa speaks to me of politics in bursts of beginner's English, Lubna speaks of religion, education, and womenhood in French (when her husband is not around), and Amenallah...well...he gurgles in universal baby. I share my family with another girl in the program, Kate, although seeing as how she speaks no French and our parents speak very limited English, communication is largely up to me. The house is small, but clean and sufficient. I'm sleeping in what was clearly Lina's room (and which we still sort of share...it still contains all her toys and we each have a half of the closet) and Kate sleeps in what used to be the study and still holds the family computer (and many sci-fi posters...Mustafa is a self-proclaimed sci-fi fanatic and is seemingly obsessed with Jodie Foster).

The family is traditional Muslim, which is the exception rather than the rule in present-day Tunisia and makes me a little more worried about what is expected of me, but it should be an interesting cultural experience nonetheless. Lubna dons a full veil and robe everytime she leaves the house, as well as each of the five times per day that she lays out her mat for her prayers. I've already had a few enlightening conversations with her...but more to come on that later. It's a little awkward right now as we work out the family schedule and negotiate cultural differences (particularly surrounding meals, and when they should be eaten, and how much we're expected to eat), but I'm sure things will feel more comfortable as we settle in.

Today was also our first day of classes. We have Modern Standard Arabic from 8:30 to 1:00, then lunch, then a few hours of "free" time to take advantage of the school's internet as we do our homework. 5pm is Tunisian dialect lessons every day this week, although they'll drop off in frequency in the coming weeks to be replaced with different "cultural excursions" (I have my fingers crossed for a hammam) and culture clubs (I'm in pottery club).

Off to class again! More to come soon, as well as photos and commentary from the national futbol game I got to see on Saturday night....