Tunis to Sousse

Warning: This post strives at times to be very serious. The effect, upon rereading, can a be a little goofy. I beg your forgiveness.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 9:30 PM

I saw a different side of Tunis today.

Arriving on Tuesday night, the sky had been clear. By the morning of Wednesday, however, the heavens had opened up, announcing their siege of the city with a might bombardment of hail, sleet and rain.

Short of tornadoes appearing over Sidi Bou Said, there hardly seemed like a better time to leave the city. Worst case scenario, I was putting off the crap weather until the end of the traveling week. Best case, I’d avoid the worst of things by heading south and inland and then return to the north when the worst had blown over.

In this frame of mind, I’d dodged the crusty metro buses crossing Place de Barcelone and entered the train station of the SNCF-Tunisian edition. When I first poked my head in, it was about 9:30 and the station, while busy, appeared to be no more so than any of its European counterparts. I noted the relative levels of chaos and confusion, snagged a schedule for La Sud, and headed over to the Publitel to consult the weather gods.

By the time I returned to the station, with the destination of Sousse in mind, things had changed dramatically. Simply getting through the door was a bitter struggle. I had been thinking that to save space, I’d wear my daypack on the front and backpack, with clothes and all, on my back. Swiftly I realized that was not to be the case; the crush of people demanded I waddle carrying my backpack between my legs, my only hope of actually squeezing between the groups of people going in every direction and those who had decided to seek refuge from the rain by planting their collapsible canoes and assorted gear (see Scoop by Evelyn Waugh for the explanation of that one) in the middle of the station.

It took me about five minutes just to determine where the lines to purchase tickets began, much less where they ended. By the time I had fought my way to the end of the line, odd though that may sound, the train I had planned on taking was due to depart in under five minutes. I resigned myself to the alternative train, an hour and a half later.

Standing in line, though, I began to wonder if I was going to make it. No, not just the time it took to get to the front of the line...I was worried about much more than that. The people in the station (I dare not label them by race or generalized kind, lest I incur the righteous condemnation of those quick to find bigotry) were the anthropomorphic manifestation of rats. Once upon a time, I had the chance to witness humans metamorphosize into squealing piglets before my very eyes (in Santiago de Compostella as the traditional pilgrimage reached its conclusion). Now, I saw the mass of humanity around me meld into vermin.

I should correct that statement. The men-made-rodents were exclusively male and primarily young. That they became vermin is beyond question.

I imagine its difficult to understand just what a statement like that could mean. Even with the aid of a couple lucky pictures I was able to take before being swept into the mob, it must be near impossible to conceive. But I’ll try to paint a bit of the picture.

Simply standing in line took constant concentration. The station roared with shouts, screams, and a thousand conversations competing with one another. Threads of the fabric the stifling blanket of humanity shifted this way at that, without order or consistency, each thread a string of humans pressing to force their way to another impossibly packed side of the hall. Even when I wasn’t moving, I was in constant jeopardy of being bowled over by the reckless youths, smoking and swinging bags labeled “Ferrari” or bearing a knockoff’s perverted logo; by bustling women, shrouded and oblivious to three quarters of the world around them, the portion denied to their peripheral vision by their headdress; by columns of self-important soldiers, certain of their status in spite of the lack of regard by their citizen peers. If that wasn’t enough, I had to fear the people behind me. I could almost hear the hushed fear of those behind me the moment I allowed an inch to appear between my chest and the back of the woman in front of me. The one time I allowed a space of a foot or so to develop betwixt me and said woman (I was moving slowly), I was anxiously nudged forward by the man behind me.

I couldn’t stand up straight; I had to brace myself against the weight of the man behind me, who seemed desperate to lean his fall bodyweight onto me, as if to crush the people ahead of us and advance through their parted flesh to the ticket counter.

Finally purchasing a ticket, I discovered, with a small measure of horror, that they only had second class left. Now, before you decry my snobbish reaction, let me remind you that there are three classes on Tunisian trains, with second class being the lowest. Traveling second class, from the way the guidebook described it (and from what I had witnessed in the station thus far, would be like traveling with the immigrants on the Titanic.

I forced my way out of the line and battled to the doors leading to the platforms. Getting to those doors was such an odd trial. Indicative of how people in the station thought (or failed to think), there was a small group of travelers standing directly in front of the door, talking importantly about something or another, but very clearly not planning to actually pass through the doors any time soon (to the train platforms just beyond). Ignoring my pathetic, “Excusez-moi”, I eventually had to simply push two of them to either side and squeeze through, as did those behind me.

None of this, though, prepared me for the platforms.

If there could ever be a term that was an amalgam of bedlam, mayhem and utter confusion, then perhaps there would be words to describe the chaos that reigned on those platforms. A sea of people crushed even tighter together than in the station, the viscous mass punctured by lines of travelers thrusting their way to a more distant quay. Above all reigned desperate cries, near-shrieks rending an air already heavy with the wailing of hundreds.

Even to this madness, though, there were regular patterns. At each platform, long before the train actually approached, a mass of people would start to surge against the railings the police had erected to block off the quays themselves. There was some kind of an effort to allow first class passengers onto the “Voie” first, leading to a frenzied battle at the gates between the first-class travelers, the surrounding second-class opportunists, and the police. Soon, only second-class passengers would be surging against the gates, and the police would simply block all access. Young men would fight their way, by the most vicious methods, to get up to the gates and contest bitterly with the police, shoving and screaming. On more than one occasion the police called in their backup: men in all black, wearing steel-toed boots and leather jackets. They would plunge into the heart of a seething mass of humanity and extract the worst trouble maker. Then they would brutally remove him from the station. If he shrugged off their hands, they would shove him (more like a directing slug) through the crowd. I saw one such trouble-maker removed right in front of me. Within ten feet he had lost both his shoes and had fallen a number of times. The men in black weren’t in his face so much as deadly serious about kicking his ass (if you’ll excuse the bald language).

The blackjackets, though, never had more than a temporary effect. Within minutes, young men would literally climb on the retaining walls, using women’s heads and shoulders as support (most often, though occasionally they would try to lean on other men) and simply leap over the barriers and onto the tracks. They were never successful and often simply succeeded in stumbling and falling back into the crowd, winning them no friends there either.

Eventually, as the time of departure drew nearer, the police would lose more and more control. The mass of people would surge and seethe and rail and with a roar would break loose like a torrent, washing onto the long finger of the quay. Dozens would simply run down the tracks, while others would flood the platform and lean dangerously off the sides, eagerly awaiting the train’s arrival.

When the train finally did arrive, then all hell would break loose. Typically the trains were incapable of pulling all the way in, because too often people through themselves onto the tracks to arrest the locomotives advance, then would spring down farther, pulling open the doors prematurely.

In other cases, the train would barrel in recklessly. Just as recklessly, one or two young men would leap onto the sides and cling to the doors, preventing them from being opened so that they would be the first inside.

As I watched countless hands snatch at a man clinging to the door of a car, I couldn’t help feeling sick. He swatted them away furiously until he could throw open the door and sprint to a seat. Then, the man and woman would fight, literally fight, to get through the narrow doorway and get a seat. At times it seemed like I was watching the Keystone Cops: people actually got stuck in doorways because too many tried to fit through at once and they were all pinched together like pigs fighting for the trough. I even saw several men break open the cargo door for the dining car on one train. The size of a doggie door, it was intended for passing food and drinks inside. These men broke it open then crawled through like rats escaping into a hole. Grown men throwing their briefcases inside and then heaving their girth through this tiny opening. Or well-dressed twenty somethings leaping onto trains still moving speedily, forcing open a window and then falling through.

It was truly disgusting, just sickening. Happily, though, I didn’t feel so perturbed as to feel bad. Instead I wondered at a culture that regularly accepted simple travel (the farthest any of the people going on any of these trains was five hours mind you...not a terribly long distance) as demanding the most animalistic competition for seats. It seemed like a culture in its infancy: not one like ours, which seems determined to coddle the youth and feign their infancy, but rather one that couldn’t be guilty of such a crime because it hadn’t yet advanced to such a stage.

It might help to understand that ninety to 85-90 percent of all travelers were male. On the plane to Tunis, the proportion was significantly higher, 95 percent or so. Women aren’t as visible traveling, in cafes, or in many places outside of working in the service industry. A truly bizarre society, especially given it is the most Westernized and “liberal” of Arab states.

The train was disturbing. Perhaps it is limited to travel, but this is not a society that breeds charity. Opening doors, conceding your place in line, or aiding another onto a train, all seem inconceivable. When things come to competition, this society can be brutally barbaric.

Of course, this is a massive generalization to be making from one day of experience on a train. But as I left the train in Sousse, and the cars were bordered by others making the return journey, I witnessed a similar phenomenon, replicated in miniature. The fascinating thing was that there was no possible way all the seats were to be filled; there just weren’t enough passengers. Everyone was guaranteed a seat on the train...it was apparent to all. And yet, as the doors opened I saw that familiar desperation as one pushed off another, to force his way in first. Lord knows what primal instincts were driving that reaction, but primal they were, for they were utterly irrational.

I’ve often had visions of trains, boats, helicopters leaving war-torn areas or utterly impoverished areas, packed with those desperate to go somewhere else. I kept thinking to myself, this doesn’t seem like a place where three million Europeans come to holiday every year...this seems, well, like Africa. And of course, I had to realize; hell, this is Africa.