STONES INTERLUDE Barbara Sekerka (for Will Jungkuntz) trying to rid herself of its weight, of something too heavy on her head. “ It doesn’t matter what they called us. They hold us responsible. Of course, in a way we are.” “ We d id n ’ t p la n t the bomb fo r crissakes—” And so on. The conversation devolved into a morbid post-mortem of past grievances by Tunisians against Americans and the Richardsons’ insecure but smug assertions that Tunisia was no different than any other Arab country—the Islamic Revolution and its attendant chaos and ruin could happen here too. Ted left the next day for Beirut. His former experience as an ordnance specialist for U.S. Army Intelligence had been called upon by the embassy in Beirut before. He hated going there. “ It’s a piece of my bloody past always coming back at me,” Ted shrugged as I bid them goodbye at the bus station. The bus rolled across the dry, patchy north Sahel dotted here and there with pointillist fields of blood-red poppies. I thought I’d take a brief tour, then head back to Tunis to rendezvous w ith the R icha rd son s when they returned. Four hours south of Tunis, near the cold, dusty town of Makthar, was a development program that Ted administered. He had arranged for me to have a look at it. When I reached Makthar, a Tunisian extension worker named Faisal took me by jeep some 60 kilometers into the hills to the site of the village project. In the midst of this overgrazed, desolate landscape, Faisal showed me how irrigation was pulling life and greenery from the trickling thread of a river. A weaving coop had also been established, along with rabbit-raising to increase the protein supply. Faisal cut a sharp figure next to his traditional, rather ragged countrymen: slim, very handsome, dressed in dark blue Levis and denim jacket, with soft gray Italian shoes. His face was smooth and unlined, intelligent but as yet un- cynical. We talked about development programs, mostly, and how hard it was for his government to get college-educated young people like himself to work in the countryside. But we also had a strange conversation about Jews, Hitler and South Africa: it seemed Faisal liked Gadhafi because, “ like Hitler,” he was a man with a vision. I told him where that kind of vision led. I mentioned South Africa and was absolutely astonished to discover he’d never heard of the slavery, racism and violence there. F AISAL LIKED GADHAFI BECAUSE, “LIKE HITLER," HE WAS A MAN WITH A VISION. I TOLD HIM WHERE THAT KIND OF VISION LED. I MENTIONED SOUTH AFRICA AND WAS ABSOLUTELY ASTONISHED TO DISCOVER HE'D NEVER HEARD OF THE SLAVERY, RACISM AND VIOLENCE THERE. As we left, we passed the mysterious heaps of rocks I’d noticed at the approach to the village. “You see the piles of white stone?” Faisal said. “Yes? It’s an ancient custom. Thousands of years old, no one knows how long. The people collected enough money between them to buy a cow, perhaps one a year. And they brought it to these ancient places, they sacrificed it, they divided the meat. These are places left from pre-lslamic times. Now they have the rabbits, so they don’t need to buy cows.” Later all I would remember clearly of this place, squeezed between the vast, oceanic sky and Arizona-sharp mountains rising up across the withered creek, were the ancient heaps of white-washed stones blackened by recent blood. The next day I reached the coast of that great shimmering ash-blond sea, the Sahara. At the edge were two small towns clutching a subterranean lifeblood. My first impression of Tozeur, the larger town, was that some ill wind from the north had blown in the detritus of tourism and the populace had hung on to it as if to a splendid addiction. Underground, thousands of springs fed a vast oasis that was quickly being bled dry by booming luxury hotels. I stayed one night and moved on the next day to Nefta, a smaller village some 20 kilometers out in the desert. Nefta was quiet, fragile, sitting on a hill amidst thousands of palms. It was a place where an ancient life streamed on touched only here and there by the relentlessness of modern times; a strictly delimited world, an amorphous organism with a hard, white-washed core to it. There was a single water-guzzling hotel perched on a ridge above the town, and only two or three other, far more modest offerings. I picked the Marhala, a rugged, desert-motif “ touring club” on the outskirts of town: a full pension was only twelve dollars a day. The center of the Marhala was an open-air courtyard with a bar undercover, and rooms facing off the square. Only the bus drivers and I seemed to be staying there. The afternoon was all slow, golden heat. I sat in the bar, had a bottle of the national beer as the flies droned, and chatted with Bertrand, a German geographer who had stopped in for a drink. I was bemused by the opening of our conversation, how it sounded like some espionage code, all formality and detail: “ You have been here long?” said Bertrand in fairly fluent English. “ I only just arrived.” “And you will stay?” His milky blue eyes coaxed me. “A few days.” “ You have been yet in Djerba?” The Island of the Lotus Easters; the well of Odysseus’ lost men. “ I’m thinking about going there, yes.” “ Don’t go. Too many hustlers, all rich hotels, it is horrible. You would not like it there.” “Ah, corruption.” “ Be ca re fu l in the no r th , to o— Bizerte—that is where some PLO went when they left Beirut. There is a camp there and they have stirred up much anti- American feeling.” I was amused at Bertrand’s concern for my safety, thinking foolishly that since I handily survived the streets of Naples, I was ready for anything. “ I came here pa rtly because my friends told me that palm wine is something I should try,” I said. “Oh yes, by all means. But you must go into the oasis to try it, I think.” “ I hear it is best in the mid-morning.” “ No, it is the best in the evening, I think. It cannot be bottled, you know.” Candace Bieneman Clinton St. Quarterly 7
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