apartment searching and such

January 16th, 2007

Today was an interesting today. I got up around 7:45, planning to spend the day with the Potsdam students, who were organizing a visit to Carthage (a world heritage site). I had considered going to Larry’s Tunisian Arabic class (taught by the “White sisters,” some French nuns living in Tunisia), but I opted for the trip instead, since I like the students and the professors who are leading them (one is an expert on Arabic literature and knew her way around the site). So, I woke up, got dressed, and ran to withdraw more money (with the purchase of my cell phone I had used up my first withdrawal). By the way, Mom, no one uses traveler’s checks – ATM is much easier, so I’m going to save the traveler’s check for Luxembourg, maybe I can use them just to pay for housing there, we’ll see. Anyway, so I hurried back to the hotel and found the students sitting in the breakfast room; they are all very friendly, so I spoke to the girl, Shannon, who will be staying here through March (working at a Tunisian Woman’s Health Organization) about here homestay. After breakfast, instead of going straight to Carthage, we went instead to the Médina to visit a music institute; apparently all of the students have to give mini-reports as they go along, and a student named Hillary gave a report about the music institute (first a sentence in Arabic, then two sentences in English, so not quite a ‘report’, but w/e). We then headed to Carthage, where we purchased lunch from Monoprix and ate first on the steps of the supermarket, then on some steps by the sea; I bought a salade mechouia (tomatoes, garlic, small slivers green vegetables I didn’t recognize – spinach maybe, garlic, lots of olive oil, and then a small amount of chicken or tuna on top), which was too spicy, some ‘table bread,’ and a few small puff pastries type things filled with meat (they didn’t have any filled with vegetables). Asma, the niece of Kacem (the man whose house I went to for dinner my first night here), had looked through the newspaper for me, looking for places where I could stay, and we called a few of them while sitting there. Oddly enough, through the rest of the day and today (the 17th), I received calls from people I didn’t know, who were returning calls Asma had made to them. “I received a call from this number they would say,” etc., but more on that later.

So, with the Potsdam student, I visited the Parc National and saw Roman Ruins, including the Roman Baths; we even walked down inside the cellars, which heated the water to be used. Afterwards, we made our way to Byrsa hill, where we saw Punic/Phoenician ruins, which the Romans built over. I also visited the Mosaic museum and looked at clay lamps made by the Phoenicians, Africans, Romans, even Vandals (of course they had the most simplistic, least decorative design). I took lots of pictures, especially in the baths, because we had a beautiful view of the Mediterranean.

After Carthage, a few people moved on to Sidi Bou Saïd, which they later reported to me was beautiful, but I went to Khereddine (by La Goulette) to look at potential housing. I looked at an apartment right next to the train station, where I could live with an English girl in a pretty apartment (well decorated, TV, nice bathroom, nice kitchen) and have my own room. As I finish my apartment searching, it’s at the top of my list. Afterwards, I returned home and returned to the hotel, dropped off some stuff, and took a taxi to the end of the metro line to look at an apartment that Asma had actually found and already visited for me (isn’t she nice? It’s unbelievable how much she’s done to help me). We had to wait a while for the woman to come, and meanwhile Asma and I had an interesting discussion. She told me that in her opinion, people in the Arab world see the Iraqi conflict between the two dominant Muslim religious groups – the Sunnis and the Shiites – as the central conflict in Iraq; this might sound obvious, but this is how she frames the entire situation. Sunnis are the minority in Iraq, and they are the great majority in Tunisia. The execution of Saddam Hussein – of a Sunnis on a great holy day of his faith (an important Muslim holiday) – was a “slap in the face” of Sunnis across the Arab world; in this way, she views the execution of SH as a sectarian murder, not because SH wasn’t a bad man (she said he was), but rather because his trial was ‘biased against him from the start’ and his execution was carried out by a Shiite-backed govn’t. So, you see, this is why the video of SH’s execution was such a big deal in the Arab world – the fact that sectarian taunts were thrown out by the executioners – taunts that referenced his identity as a Sunni – reinforced the interpretation some had of a minority Sunni leader being executed by a majority Shiite, pro-American govn’t (which, Asma told me, was comprised of men ‘just in it to get wealthy’). Asma probably isn’t the most reliable authority factually (but then again I’m not an expert either, and most of info is based on the media), she is a really good source for the sentiment among Muslim people outside of Iraq, even in North Africa.

Anyway, the woman finally arrived and I saw her house – it was tiny and cold, and far away from the metro. She was kind of interesting though – Asma told me that the woman, we’ll call her Neha, was very ‘open-minded’: she drinks and smokes, etc. Apparently, some ‘veiled girls’ (the English word Asma used) used to live with Neha, but once they found her smoking they left right away – because of this Neha was apparently really interested in living with an American (since American movies make us seem reallllly ‘open-minded’).

After visiting the house, I invited Asma to have dinner (since it was almost 9 and she hadn’t eaten yet), so we went to this place called Hollywood where a famous Tunisian singer sat across from us – and was bothered by no one (Asma told me that he is a regular). She ordered Jumbalaya (I recommended it as maybe the most ‘authentic’ dish, alongside pasta, pizza, etc.) I ordered a pizza, which ended up being a family size pizza with about 8 or 9 slices; I took most of it back to the hotel and am saving it for lunches. Asma was kind of funny though; she told me that she goes to bed every night around 9:30 or 10, so she was worried about being out so late – though she told me that her parents know and think it’s okay because she is with her American friend. I asked her if she would ever be able to stay out this late with a man; she said, “Absolutely not.” As I guessed, she also told me that her family is a bit conservative.


January 17th, 2007

Today has been a crazy day, and tonight is my last night (I have decided) in the hotel. As for now, I am getting ready to go to bed after a long day of apartment searching and a speech at the Center. First, let’s detail what I did today: catalogued some books (or was that yesterday?) and paused to read some things… began to alphabetize Larry’s huge collection of business cards…listened to a speech from a former CEMAT grant recipient – a Tunisian woman who went to BGSU in Ohio to study freedom of the press in the United States (which she determined is not quite as free as expected or hoped). This speech was attended by the press attaché from the US Embassy in Tunis, who of course, for his job, had to throw in his two contrary cents, and another Tunisian man who worked in the US Embassy and spoke amazing English. Another student also came, so there were about 5 of us. Basically, the Ph.D. student (in American studies, which, due to popular demand, is now a concentration) discussed the ‘atmosphere of fear’ in post-9/11 America in which journalists and columnists fear (even if the fear is subtle or not heeded) writing against the government for fear of retribution (think, for example, of publicized cases like that of Valerie Plame and Judy Miller).

After the speech, I went to have dinner with a girl named Juliette who is here on a Fulbright, recently graduated from Stanford and arriving from Cairo. She had a friend visiting, John (I think?), who is a professor of math at American Univ. of Cairo (even though he looks like he’s 24, he’s actually 32); he went to top US Univ. (Harvard, Columbia) and decided just because to go to Cairo, and he loves it. Larry came with us to a pasta/pizza restaurant (oh, another one), and I had seafood pasta, which was good but not delicious, and some chocolate mousse, which wasn’t really chocolate mousse but which I liked more than anything else eaten that day. Unfortunately, I had been hoping I could live with Juliette in her house in Sidi Bou Saïd, but I wouldn’t be able to come until Feb. 1st, which is a ways away. That means that I would have to in any case at least find housing to last me until, which is what I’m still in the process of ruminating over in my head.

After dinner, I saw the Potsdam students one last time, exchange contact info with them, and wished them goodbye. Afterwards, I met Kareem (the friend of Asma’s) in front of my hotel, and he spoke to me and took me to meet his family, who was wonderful. I drank some sweet tea with them and talked to them about their travels to the US, their studies, etc. etc. They all speak French pretty well if not perfectly, though the mother understood French but only spoke Arabic. We spent a good time together, and I’d really like to live with them, but there are two problems: 1) they are very far from school and from the directors of the Center, who like to check in on me, and 2) they don’t have a spare bedroom for me, they would just be giving me one of their bedrooms. I would really like to live with them – although of course living with a host family is a bit stressful at times – but I’m afraid that it would be too difficult to come into the city when I wanted to and too inconvenient for them. In any case, they told me that I can still certainly come visit them and such, which I will definitely do.

As for where I will stay, I’m not sure; I guess maybe I’ll go to the apartment with the English girl and see how that is, and maybe I will be able to change if necessary. We shall see…


January 18th, 2007

So today was pretty stressful, and busy. I moved out of the hotel, categorized cards at the Center (this was the most stressful activity of all of course… I built a card filing box out of the top lid of a shoe box and some pieces of cardboard which I cut into strips), lunched with Riyadh, and moved in the apartment in Khereddine, which is already inhabited by an English girl. I’m feeling a bit lonely right now though, because I’m here alone, and I don’t really know the house very well, and it is freezing cold. Right now, I’m wearing a sweater over my shirt, along with long pants, slippers, a scarf, and a hat, and I’m wrapped in a blanket. There is apparently no central heating in the apartment, just a small heating unit in my room which doesn’t seem to do much. I also have the feeling that I’m being bitten by mosquitoes, which I think probably is true, but maybe not to the degree I’m suddenly convinced of. In any case, moving in a foreign country has always been kind of hard for me; briefly put, I miss the hotel. I hope that I made the best decision about this housing (rather it be for the week or for the full month and handful of days I will spend here, we’ll see. I’m off to bed, if possible, and more news to come tomorrow.

The second day, lunch craziness and the Center

January 15th, 2006

I woke up today around 9 AM, but not for the first time; I slept for a long time, but my sleep was interrupted by noise from outside and general time zone switching confusion (as in, I awoke at 3:30 in the morning – 9:30 AM US time - and looked at my watch; ‘3:30 in the afternoon!?’ I thought, baffled at how I had managed to sleep through my alarm clock, before I suddenly realized that it was dark outside, which meant that it was 3 AM, not PM). I had breakfast at the hotel, which featured a small assortment (maybe because I came late?) of coffee and hot chocolate, croissant-like rolls, pain au chocolat, weird (Tunisian, I’m guessing) cereal (which was basically small choppily-sliced flakes of chocolate), ham, cheese, and baguettes. I had a bit of cereal, some coffee (mixed with hot milk and a bit of chocolate mix), and a roll with cheese. I left the hotel around 10 and made my way to CEMAT with the help of a map, walking down the Blvd Habib Bourguiba to the Médina, where parking is extremely limited and the streets crowded. At CEMAT, which is in a beautiful old white building with a blue gate (such Mediterranean colors), I met Rijadh, the 20- or 30-something man who is the assistant director of the Center and who speaks wonderful English. He took me out to buy a cell phone, which necessitated returning to the hotel to get a copy of my passport. I purchased a SIM card for 5 TD (Tunisian dinar), which I thought was an amazing price, and a decent cell phone that allows you to listen to the radio for a decent price. Larry later told me that Riyadh is preparing his wedding for the beginning of August, and that he is in the middle of the stressful process of furnishing an apartment with the necessary goods (required before the wedding).

After purchasing the cell phone, I went to get lunch with Faizu, who is basically the guard/odd jobs man of CEMAT. We probably would have been better off speaking Arabic, because his French wasn’t very good; this led to me ordering a chicken plate when I wanted a salad plate and lots of confusion when he told me to take money out of my wallet before going to the register instead of at the register (basically, I think, so that I didn’t have my wallet open in a mass of people). So anyway, for lunch I had a chicken schwarma plate with lots of vegetables (which I couldn’t finish) and two large pieces of Tunisian bread (which I brought home with me for a snack later), along with some type of apple soda and some yogurt. I was so full that for dinner I just had a few dates and some small Tunisian pastries I picked up by my hotel.

For the rest of the day, I talked with Larry and a professor from Potsdam (whose name is Laura) about potentially housing/home stays; I’m going to go visit an apartment tomorrow, but I’d love to see about a home stay with or through a female professor in Tunis who studied at Stanford, so we’ll see. I read a bit (some article about how hormones don’t affect the brain and so males and females really shouldn’t behave so differently; yet, the article contended, by their very nature they do – they cited some example of two parents who wanted to raise their daughter ‘outside of gender obligations’, and so gave her toy trucks when she wanted something to play with – apparently they came into her room at night to find her tucking the trucks into bed and saying, “Shhh… they’re sleeping!”). CEMAT has wireless internet (which is amazing), so I read some articles on CNN and wrote some emails. Finally, when Larry came back to CEMAT around 4:30, he walked around with me a bit to show me the town and took me to the general store, where I bought some much-needed batteries for my camera and the aforementioned dates. Finally, I made my way back to the hotel and read, plus went to speak to one of the Potsdam professors I had seen today to ask about their trip to Carthage (a World Heritage site) and Sidi Bou Saïd, both a short train ride from here. I’m planning on going with them tomorrow, so I have to be up early, which means I’ll go to bed. Night.

Tunis, Tunisia

January 14th, 2007

So I’ve arrived in Tunis and am currently sitting in my room, on one of the two beds that have been pushed together (apparently the other bed is for an ‘angel’, according to the old man at the front desk). The room is relatively sparse (no huge paintings hanging like in American hotels) but clean, and has a huge, dark wooden closet next to the beds. I checked in the drawer of the desk, which is just in front of the bed, to see if there was a Qur’an inside (like the bibles in the US), but there’s nothing. That’s probably because Tunisia is one of the most ‘secularized’ (in some senses) Arab countries. In fact, interestingly enough, in 1960 Tunisia’s first (of their two) presidents, Habib Bourguiba, urged workers to choose not to fast during the holy month of Ramadan. When religious clerics resisted, Bourguiba responded ingeniously; he argued that Tunisians were waging a jihad (holy war) against poverty and so were not required to fast, just as Mohammed had dispensed warriors engaged in jihad from fasting in order to preserve strength. This bit I learned from the history chapter in my lonely planet guide book, which I read (covertly) while on the plane here. Interestingly enough, however, where Bourguiba detested the veil (even the hijab) and banned it from schools, thinking it would disappear. Most women under 30 today don’t wear the veil in any of its forms, although there has been a resurgence in the past decade or two; anthropologists attribute the resurgence to women’s desire to reaffirm their Muslim and female identities when entering into the commercial (traditionally male) professional sphere, along with world events that inspire Muslims to express pride in their religious heritage.

The first thing that I have to say about Tunis is that this Sunday afternoon, on a busy street (could have practically been a side street of Paris), I am the only female walking down the street by myself, and one of only two light-skinned females – so I am doubly visible. I did see another older white woman walking down the street – she looked American – and part of me wanted to walk up to her and start a conversation, finishing by asking if she would like to walk with me. This is not to say that there aren’t any women; there are – they are just with other women or men. Men, on the other hand, did walk alone; I talked to Larry, the director of the Center of Maghrebi Studies in Tunis (where I’m interning), and he agreed with me but added that since I'm obviously foreign, people don't really care. Also, Riyadh, from CEMAT, later told me (on the 15th, when I finally have internet access to publish this post), that Sunday is also a family day, so it is normal that I didn't see women walking alone; furthermore, he told me, in the suburbs you will see groups of women, especially students, out in cafés, even though in the city of Tunis that might seem a bit uncommon. In any case, it’s really interesting to know that you don’t blend in; just walking down the street (and many Anthropologists talk about this), the experience of your physicality is felt differently. It’s an interesting feeling, probably an important one.

Of course, the fact that there were no other women walking alone (during my 30-minute promenade) makes sense, since traditionally women socialize in the home in Tunisian culture; a man hanging out in his home could feel just as uncomfortable (especially when his wife has guests), and so men rarely gather in the home to socialize, instead congregating in cafés to play cards, etc. There is another thing that may seem paradoxical to you, like it did to me at first; even though the fact that young women are not out alone implies a certain conservatism about gender traditions (private vs. commercial sphere conflict), the young women who are out are dressed just like the young women I saw in Brazil and that you might see on the streets of any US city in the summer: tight clothes, decent amount of skin, fitted jeans, lots of makeup, etc

In other news, I’ve noticed that in the shower and the sink in my room, the cold knob is on the right and the hot on the left – the opposite from the States. I contemplated why this is, and I’ve come up with the answer: since right-handedness is more common (and left-handedness used to be considered a deformity, etc.), and Tunisia has a warm climate (suffocatingly hot in the summer), it is only logical that the cold knob be more often used and so placed in the more accessible position. This may sound like examining something that doesn’t merit an examination, but, as my theology professor said last summer, “Everything, everything could be otherwise. So why is it as it is?”

So about my flights – I’m a little mad because my flight from Cincinnati was in a crappy old airplane (as in smaller seats and only 1 big and 2 little TV screens per cabin). The food was also bad (our dessert was a packaged brownie and our cheese was labeled “processed cheese spread”). They were supposed to show the movie The Queen on the 3 screens (ha), but one of the flight attendants somehow got confused and put in the tape of ‘shorts’, which basically meant Food Channel shows and an episode of House. I asked about the movie twice, and they kept saying they were putting it on; then there was a problem with the screens and they had to shut down and restart the system, blah blah blah, so basically I slept fitfully in my tiny seat and wallowed in disappointment because of the missed movie. I sat next to a woman from Syria who was going home for a month (she is an American citizen, works in the US, etc., but goes home every year to visit family for a little while). We talked about Western stereotypes of the Arab world, and she told me that some of her friends asked her, “Can you really plan on doing work there with all of the fighting going on?!” She told me that her hometown was the last place in the world where you didn’t even have to lock your front door.

I had a three-hour lay-over in Paris, during which I spent an hour waiting in line to re-pass through security (by the way, Charles de Gaulle really is an ugly and oddly organized airport). While in line, I ended up talking to this man from Cincinnati who has a daughter about my age and some younger kids in high school and grade school; another guy who started talking to us was in the middle of a long journey to Montreal, which originated from India and continued via London and Paris.

(PS Dad – don’t let me forget to turn in my ticket for ff miles).

When we were landing in Tunis, I was amazed at how beautiful the city and surrounding suburbs were, interlocked by lots of white buildings and some ruins here and there. A man picked me up at the airport from the hotel and drove me back; they already knew who I was, and asked me after they saw my passport, “Why are you speaking to us in French if you are American??” I guess they didn’t believe that Americans studied foreign languages, since English is ‘the’ international language of the moment. I came up to my room, unpacked a bit, then left and strolled around to exchange money (in a hotel where a man was kind enough to break the rules and exchange euros and pounds for dinars from a non-hotel guest). I then made my way to a bookstore – “Al-Kitaab” – which had books in Arabic, French, and English. I finally made some phone calls – which I still can’t figure out if they were expensive or not (I think I spent about 4 dinars = 2.40$ US) – but some man kept bothering me, trying to give me more money for my calls when they were running low (you just keep putting in change, like a pay phone), and the owner of the shop finally came over and told him in Arabic to “leave the girl alone,” though in a meaner version. That’s what is great about Arab culture, in the general emphasis on the value of family and community, and what my Arabic professor often spoke about – men will be irritating, but once they are obnoxious other men will step in and tell them to go away. In fact, my professor once told me that some man in an Egyptian town was saying ridiculous things to her while she was walking down the street; after she asked him to leave her alone to no avail, she started yelling in Arabic, “This man won’t leave me alone! He’s bothering me!” And of course, several older men came running over and the man who had been bothering her was berated and left, embarrassed.

After my phone calls I came back and read, typed a bit, and then got ready for my dinner with the CEMAT director, Larry. He came around 7:30 and proposed that we go to his friend’s Kacem’s house. Kacem was hosting some students from Potsdam University for dinner; the students have been in Tunisia for about 2 weeks for a ‘winter break’ type course, and, just a note, all of the guys present could have easily (and adorably) applied for a spot on Beauty and the Geek (their idiosyncrasies and wandering attentions included one guy who ran into the door as he tried to exit and then yelled something indecipherable in Arabic, which he doesn’t really speak (I think he might have yelled “What’s your name?”, which some of the kids had just taught him) – in any case, whatever he said made all of the children laugh). I of course thought that dinner with a group of people sounded wonderful, so we made our way to Kacem’s house in the northern suburbs of Tunis, where we had appetizers and dinner in a beautifully decorated living room. It was really fun, and it was nice to see other Americans and to meet Kacem’s family (two sons, one of them engaged to be married and waiting for a marriage contract so that he can get a loan from the bank - weddings are pretty elaborate affairs - and two daughters). We had roasted chicken and rice, along with a salad, and some delicious sweet tea (not mint, but made from some other leafy plant that was less pungent and smelled a tad bit flowery). One of the other students, a girl named Shannon, will be here until March, so we are going to hang out and potentially find housing together through our directors. I took a taxi back to the hotel around 10:20, showered, and now am tired enough to go to bed (for some reason I wasn’t tired all evening at Kacem’s).

Tomorrow morning I have breakfast at the hotel (included in my stay), and then I’m headed to CEMAT to see what’s what.