New Cat

So, a cat showed up on our back balcony a few weeks ago. We live on the second floor of a house, and we have a 2 long balconies - one that stretches in front of the living room and dining room, and another that stretches behind the kitchen, bathroom, and 'study.'

While Johanne, my temporary summer roommate, was at home for the first week, the long skinny kitten meowed constantly, and was insistent enough to jump on the grille outside of our bathroom windows (if you can imagine painted metal bars winding in decorative patterns outside of a window). The kitten clinged to the bars and meowed constantly, scratching at the French style balcony doors, and traipsing back and forth along the balcony railing. So of course, Johanne fed her. It's hard to resist the cats in Tunisia; like everywhere in the Mediterranean, cats are omnipresent. Spaying and neutering seems to be considered by most both too expensive and too imposing ("cats have their lives too" - which is true).

Johanne and I took the cat to the vet for the first time last week, where she got her rabies vaccine along with some worm medicine and a prescription for a flea spray called 'frontline.'

And we gave her a bath!

We also spent quite a lot of time on baby name search engines along with wikipedia pages on the various Tunisian heritages. We ultimately ended up with three names that we really liked: Cardea (the Roman Goddess of doors and protectress of children), Adonia (a Punic name adoring God), and Thiyya (a Berber or Amazigh name meaning 'beauty'). Of course, the Romans, Pheonicians, and Imazighen (plural) have all resided in modern-day Tunisia at some point in history. The Pheonicians even almost made the Roman Empire fall, led by the general Hannibal.

As we struggled to decide between these 3, Johanne's boyfriend Marcel pointed out that the first letter of each name spelled... cat! So, of course, we gave her all three names: Cardea Adonia Thiyya, and her initials are CAT.

Back in Tunis for the summer!

Hi all,

I'll be catching up on some of my travels over the past few months, which were overrun, pretty

much, with traveling, lack of internet, & visitors.

Right now, though, I'll just mention my friend Sirine & her wedding.

Sirine first signed her wedding contract in March, during her "fiançailles," or engagement party, at her home in the north of Tunisia, along the coast. During this party, a notary from the municipal government came to the house to witness the signing of the contract, which explains things like finances, rights in case of divorce, etc. Sirine wore a beautiful dress for this event, made by hand by a woman who lives in the suburbs just outside of Tunis.

(sirine's luteea)

A few days ago, Sirine celebrated her "luteeaa," which is like her bachelorette party, without the racy side. All of her friends and family gathered in a large hall in Bizerte, Tunis

ia, and danced, admired Sirine & her groom (who were sitting atop a dais), and ate salty fingerfoods & sweet pastries.

The "luteeaa" is traditionally a female-only party, but plenty of women have

mixed parties (especially in larger cities, it seems), or at least invite their male relatives to enter at the end of the evening, to have a dance with the bride.

When I was in the south of Tunisia, in Zarzis, I witnessed a "luteeaa" during which the bride danced, sometimes all alone and sometimes with a few female family members (& once in a while a male relative), in front of a large group of women - neighbors, relatives, friends - sitting in plastic chairs, facing her.

(picture of young bride in Zarzi

s dancing during her luteeaa)

What is really different about a wedding ceremony in Tunisia is just this - that the lights are bright, the bride and groom sit on a dais in said bright lights (seeming to me like a constant photo shoot, which they bear with much poise, managing to look consistently gorgeous), and the music is mind-numbingly loud, making it as difficult to speak as if one was

in a night club (from my experience at as many weddings as I can count on one hand). The music is also, in my experience, always Arabic music - despite the fact that Tunisians are polyglots and the most popular station in Tunis - judging from taxicabs - plays American hip-hop, oldies, French pop & oldies, Arabic music from the Middle East and North Africa, & even house, dance, and electronica on the weekends. Otherwise sitting at tables decorated much like ours, wedding guests approach the deis to take a picture with the bride & groom, who occasionally stand up together & dance, surrounded by a group of clapping, swaying onlookers.

The wedding party started around 9 PM and finished at maybe 2 AM or 3 AM. Sirine is off to Malaysia & then Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, for her honeymoon.