As I strolled through the tiny seaside town of Mahtma, enjoyed the view of the Mediterranean, and chatted with the friendly people, shortly walking out of town to the south. My method for hitch-hiking is to walk in the direction I want to go, turning around to thumb any vehicles when I hear them coming up from behind, and continuing walk quickly backwards while thumbing. Nope, I haven't tripped over things TOO many times while walking backwards that way.
After hiking for 15 minutes without a single vehicle passing, I realized that I had probably made a tactical error in coming to Mahtma. According to my map it was about 40 kilometers back out to the main road, and I resigned myself to having to "hoof it" all that way. But it was a beautiful warm day, and my backpack fit well, and my boots were still in good shape, and all in all I was content to be marching along the rim of the sea.
I saw a shape on the far side of the road approaching me from the opposite direction. It turned into a Tunisian man and a small six-year-old girl, accompanying a tired- looking donkey with huge clay jars hanging on either side of its saddle. The little procession, when they spotted me, crossed the road to confront me. The grey-robed gentleman assailed my ears with a happy torrent of French.
"Ah, you are a tourist !! We LOVE tourists ! My name is Mahmoud, and I am a fisherman. I have a small boat. Please, please, come to stay with me in my house on the beach, we will eat cous cous, and tomorrow you can go fishing with me !! You are welcome !! Please agree to come and visit !! You will ?? You will ?? Ah, good, here, my daughter will take you to my home and I will speak more with you after I return from fetching water."
Going out in a small boat to learn traditional fishing really sounded good to me, and, quite willing to accept Mahmoud's hospitality, I allowed my index finger to be grasped by Shala, his eldest daughter, who almost ran back with me along the road to the south. After a few minutes she started to call out loudly and excitedly in Arabic, and a dozen other children of both sexes magically appeared, including both a younger brother and sister of Shala's. The whole cavalcade accompanied me to the crest of a low bluff, which revealed a storybook fishing village of a dozen mud-brick houses laid out between the bluff and the clean sand beach, with the blue-grey Mediterranean just beyond.
The children were all very excited, and immediately taught me their one game. They called it "cour, cour !", which they took to mean "run, run" in French. Yes, that was the game. We would shout "Cour, Cour !" and run madly along the beach together, then repeating the process in the opposite direction. After tiring of their game, I took my frisbee out of the backpack, and taught them to throw it. As you can imagine, this toy immediately supplanted "cour, cour" as the favorite past- time, and pretty soon some of the older children could successfully throw and catch the Frisbee. Invariably, those unfortunate enough too catch the toy were knocked down and piled onto promptly by their fellows. But it was a grand day, and a grand game ! After some time playing, Shala took me home and introduced me to Fatima, her mother, and her baby brother Ali.
Mahmoud's nine-foot-short, shabby, peeling wooden dory sat comfortably on the sand near his home. His nets were stretched along the beach drying in the sun. The family home was very small, consisting of one 12 foot by 12 foot room for the 3 sheep, donkey , dog, chickens, and cat, and another very similar room in which lived the humans. There were no windows, no pieces of furniture, and the kitchen consisted of a pump-gas brazier, stored in a niche in the wall when not in use. Fatima was probably a few years younger than my age of 24, but years are not kind to child-brides in Tunisia, and after four children, she looked about 40. She was short, hugely fat, ready to give birth for the fifth time at any second, and had a continual horrible, bubbling, tubercular cough. But she was REALLY glad to meet me, and made me feel extremely welcome !! Fatima didn't speak any French, but she made herself understood quite well in voluble Arabic with gestures, and sat me down inside with my back to a wall, storing my backpack in a corner, and showing me a little photo of a young Swedish vagabond named "Christopher" whom she lead me to understand had stayed with them for several weeks some years previously.
Not long after that Mahmoud returned with the two big jars of water, and sat conversing with me for an hour or so. He was interested in where I came from, and where I was going, and all the usual stuff. He let it be known that we should have a celebration, and I donated some money to the cause, at which point Mahmoud left again for town, on a shopping trip. I played outside with the village children while he bought coffee, peanuts, condensed milk, tea, cous cous, and a few sheep vertebrae for protein, returning later from Mahtma. By that time it was early evening, and while Fatima prepared the cous cous with sheep backbones on the floor in her pressure cooker, Mahmoud and I sat on the sand, while he smoked and repaired tears in his nets, looping them though his toes for tension as he worked. The children had finally run out of energy, and sat around in a tired circle as the sun set behind us, lighting up the clouds scudding across the ocean to our front with rose hues. The modern world was far away. It was a scene which could have been taken unchanged right out of the Bible.
We enjoyed our evening meal, and small glasses of very
strong coffee, by the light of a tiny ceramic oil lamp, just
like those found in museum cases worldwide. By this
time Mahmoud was wearing my wrist watch, and Fatima
was wearing my magic traveling bangle. The little girls
had discovered my hairbrush, with which they had fallen
deeply in love, never having been able to brush out their
hair before that evening. Combs were not nearly as much
fun as the hairbrush.
And then it was time to sleep.
The floor of the house was cleared, sheepskins were spread out, baby Ali was wrapped up and put in his niche in the wall, and the three other children laid out in a row. I got out my sleeping bag, and unzipped it. "Ah,: said Mahmoud, "what a wonderful blanket!" and when I turned around again, I found that the three children were fast falling asleep under it.
Hmmmm, well, okay, I took the children's threadbare blanket and rolled up my jeans in a bundle against the wall to use as a pillow. When I turned around again, there was Mahmoud, with his head on my jeans, under the children's blanket facing the wall, rapidly falling asleep.
Hmmmm, well, that left an open place on the floor between Mahmoud and Fatima. I stood there for a few uncertain seconds in the dim flickering light of the oil lamp, thinking of how different one culture could be from another, while Fatima offered the space to me. "Keef- keef" she said softly, meaning we are just the same, all brothers and sisters. I lay down in the open zone, whereupon a hundred famished bedbugs and fleas emerged from the old sheepskins and began to bite and tickle me. I lay there on my back, with Mahmoud sleeping peacefully just at my right shoulder, and the imposing wall of Fatima's back and buttocks just to my left.
All too soon, I sensed the buttocks quietly inching ever closer to me. Fatima half rolled over, and in the dim light of the trimmed-down oil flame, I could see that she was making definite "goo goo eyes" at me.
"Leht" (no), I whispered. " - - leht, leht, leht", but soon I was being groped powerfully and intimately by the extremely pregnant woman, meanwhile avoiding massive lip-crushing Tunisian kisses !! It was an AWFUL: situation, because, from what I knew of Moslem customs, if Mahmoud, sleeping at my elbow, awoke, he would have NO choice except to kill me !! What was I gonna do ??
Well, in horrible interpersonal situations my first solution has always been direct honesty. I grabbed Mahmoud by his shoulder and shook him. "Mahmoud, wake up, you've gotta wake up." That was when I discovered that Mahmoud, bless his duplicitous heart, was not asleep, but was only pretending to be asleep. He was sporting a dandy hard-on and just waiting for Fatima to get me warmed up !! What my new friends had in mind was apparently a pita bread sandwich with American cheese.
Now, mind you, that is NOT what I had planned for the evening !! This was certainly the strangest situation in which I had ever found myself.
My impulse was to depart immediately, but with my things scattered all over the house, this would not be easy. I had a small epiphany, and my schoolboy French did not fail me as I said to my aroused host, "Oh, Mahmoud, it is against my religion to sleep with another man !". He stopped, believed me, looked disappointed, and replied, "Well, there is my wife !" - - - "Oh, Mahmoud, it is also against my religion to sleep with the wife of another man !" Soon poor dejected Mahmoud and I had changed places, and I was against the wall with my head on my bundle, under the children's blanket.
As you can imagine, between suspicion of Mahmoud and the biting bugs, I got no sleep that night. Sheep came in from the other room twice in the night and had to be ejected. One of the sheep carried the family cat curled up comfortably asleep in a warm nest on its back.
In he morning it was unfortunately too windy to go out fishing. So I retrieved and packed up my stuff, giving my hairbrush to Shala and her sister, but ignoring all entreaties to leave my Frisbee behind as well. I gave Mahmoud a small amount of money for the baby which was due so soon, and , when Fatima realized what I intended, she scooped up Ali, the existing baby, and happily held him up in front of my face. "Yeah, OK, Fatima, here's a little for Ali as well."
I said my good-byes and the village kids accompanied me for a quarter mile along the road. I marched steadily southward wondering just a little bit about "Christopher", Mahmoud's Swedish house-guest, and shaking my head in silent amazement.
Next time: I almost enter Libya