Sousse

Thursday, January 20, 2005 9:53 PM

What to say about Sousse? I’ll bundle everything together, but under different subheads, so if you’re bored out of your skull, just skip down to the next scintillating talking point.

Sousse:

Most cities respond to rain positively. Los Angeles, after the clouds have gone, invariably feels vastly cleaner as if a city-sized Molly Maid service had scrubbed the sky clean and washed most of the city’s filth away (most likely into the ocean). More recently, Athens profited, doubtless, from the wind and rain sweeping her streets, as the air and water literally swept much of the grunge and dirt off street and building.

Sousse, no.

Rain has been absent too long. The silt in the street is layered too deeply. The filth in the medina has gone unwashed for too many days.

The presence of rain, in short, is a disaster. Take, for example, the center of town. Walking through the main square yesterday, I witnessed the worst of the weather’s effects. The sewers on several streets had flooded. In the distance, manhole covers were threatening to shoot off as small geysers of fecal matter and lord knows what else did their best to escape to the street. The smell overpowered the senses, demanding I hurry on my way, dodging the spray from cars speeding through the rivers of murky sludge.

Later in the day, and thankfully all through today, the rain never came down in enough volume to threaten those on the surface, but the smell remained.

Throughout the city, the small mounds of trash were not washed away by the flood. Instead, they clung mustily to every thoroughfare, making walking a demanding exercise, a continuous effort in dodging piles of refuse in various stages of decomposition. Of course, such debris is hardly unique to this city. A problem that reared its ugly head often enough in the suburbs of Athens, littering is some kind of national pastime here. The train ride to Sousse, remarkably unremarkable in flora and fauna, was prevented from being forgettable by the boils of trash erupting at every opportunity. Every windbreak or natural depression had caught mounds of the detritus of human life, and not only immediately along the train’s path. Well into the middle of lonely fields, one could see building materials from some forgotten project littered with all kinds of filth; broken chairs, tattered clothing, paper and plastic cast about. A depressing sight.

In fact, much of Tunisia thus far, and Sousse particularly, could be labeled depressing. But the employ of such an adjective could only be justified in its connotations. For, in fact, Tunisia has been anything but depressing. The farther I descend into this country, the happier I’ve become. No doubt, I’ve been buoyed in large part by The Knot of Vipers and Zorba the Greek, two incredible novels that helped me survive a packed train and a pair of miserable (in terms of weather) days in Sousse. Even so, my good humor extends me the reach of Mauriac and Kazantzakis. There’s an enormous amount of beauty in this derelict town and much to observe.

The French Influence:

Touching only briefly upon this, I can’t help commenting on the profound effect the French had. Outside of the truly rural areas, both the French language, and French cuisine are just as common as the Arabic versions. Perhaps more strikingly, there hasn’t been any kind of material aversion to reminders of the former colonial imperialists. The olive orchards are maintained, the language still prominent, the diet consumed by the locals...even French cars hold a monopoly over the vehicles on the road. I find it bizarre. Nowhere near the degree of reaction against a former ruling power that I would have assumed to be typical. Ironically, enough, I’ve been listening to Yves Montand for the past half hour or so as I write.

The Medina (of Sousse):

A strange and rather tragic place. Most of it is consumed by stores hawking knockoff Western goods, from sneakers to sunglasses and everything in between. Unlike the souks of Tunis or Kairouan, there’s little evidence of local independent industry. I can only imagine that reflects the summertime status of the city as a beach getaway for Europeans looking to worship the sun on the cheap.

Countless doors and windows have a fading beauty, fading because every single one could use a paint job. Nor is the state of every building a romantic kind of ruin; it’s a little bit tragic and mostly off-putting. Not a soul in the entire city center seems to have the do-it-yourselfer attitude. I imagine that Popular Mechanics would be as popular as the Jerusalem Post here. From the glances I was able to catch of interiors, as locals hustled inside as I passed, things seem to be much better maintained. That being said, many of the buildings were rather disgusting.

Even so, beauty abounded, as my pictures, I hope, will testify.

Me, as a tourist:
Thursday, for reasons you’ve already read, I spent twiddling my thumbs in large part. About halfway through the day, I’d had enough.

“Look, this here is a beachfront ‘palace,’” I said loudly to the mirror, “so, go out and enjoy the beach...test of manliness.”

And with those lines it was decided. I would go for a swim.

That task may not sound that intimidating, but given that the wind was blowing harder, perhaps, than I’ve ever seen in my life and the temperature was threatening to turn rain into snow, those were fighting words.

Nonetheless, I donned my trunks, faithfully brought along to serve just such a foolhardy task. I steeled my courage, basked for one final moment in the steamy warmth of my heated room, and then took off down the hall.

It was a mad dash past dozens of rooms, down several flights of stairs and then out past the pool, before I even got close to the waves. I had to scale the rusty fence and store my clothes under the remains of a cabana that had blown over. The wind was raging, kicking up pellets of sand that threatened to pierce the skin, or at least it felt like it. The rain was being blown in so many directions, I think it went up my pants rather than down them. With a rebel yell, I threw myself into the waves.

I can imagine what you’re thinking and yes the water was stormy and turgid. I didn’t fear being sucked out to see; the hotel is on a small inlet and I never went past waist depth before turning round and heading back into shore.

Just as my head was going under with my initial dive, I had a vision that slowed time. The sewers, bursting at the seams the previous day, could only have been flowing in one direction... to the sea.

The next second I was under water, begging myself why on earth I had submerged myself in this brown slurry. Exploding upward I took a whiff and sure enough there was a dank scent in the air (that or my overactive imagination was pulling a fast one on the olfactories). I splashed about for a bit, somewhat stupefied by my horror at the potential rankness of the surrounding waters, storm-tossed though they may be.

Unable to bear the thought, I swiftly fled the roiling ocean. In a flash I was atop the fence and then pool-side. Desperate to rid myself of the ocean’s patina (and being assailed by wind-blown rain that felt like grapeshot), I threw myself into the clear waters of the pool, expecting no worse than the ocean had served up.

How wrong I was: a pond fed by the slow-drip of melt from a Ross Ice Shelf calf could not have been colder than that bastardly pool. In under a second I must have lost a good ninety percent of my progenitor capabilities. With the water threatening my future offspring and current health, I was back topside faster than the Rat Pack could kill a round.

I spent the next hour soaking in the tub, and then using the built-in blow dryer to render myself dry.

That ended Bill’s attempts to simply ignore the weather. The other idea, to fly the small parafoil kite I’ve been carrying with me (thank you very much, Emmy), died in infancy. Instead I wallowed in Zorba the Greek and mused on what it could possibly mean to be Macedonian, instead of Cretan.