Excitement with my fellow-countrymen

Once returned to Sfax, I took a very cheap room with thin walls above a tavern/teashop in the wrong part of town. A large ground-floor area of round tables was surrounded by a second floor interior balustrade, behind which were the rooms. It was very noisy, with perhaps 50 or 60 Tunisian card players using the tables to play a four-handed game with standard decks, and thick with cigarette smoke. Everyone played the same game, and there seemed to be no variation. The dictates of Tunisian manhood required that as each card was played, it be "snapped" down forcefully on the table. The result was a very noisy area, with a continual papery snapping crackle and a loud hum of Arabic conversation.

In the morning I searched out the Libyan consulate and applied for a new visa. My passport info was already in Arabic, but still, it would be three days before they could process the paperwork. Well, I settled down to enjoy the place for a couple of days, even though there was NOTHING of real interest to see or do in the harbor town of Sfax.

When I returned to my tavern, I sat at an unused table and ordered a glass of tea for myself. Shortly I was engaged in conversation with some of the card players, and soon was initiated into the rules of their one simple card game. My new card-sharp friends were determined that I play, and made a space for me at their table. Gratifyingly, I lost the first few hands we played. Each dealer in turn would place all the cards face down in the center of the table and then stir them around with the palms of his hands to randomize them. When it was my turn to deal, I took the pack, "riffle shuffled" it, and riffle-reassembled the deck.

"Brrrrrrrrrrrraakk -- -- Brrrrrrrrrrrooshh "

Immediate dead silence reigned in the always-noisy room with every goggling eye in the place paying rapt attention as I riffle shuffled the cards a second time. With amazement, my new friends told me they had seen this behavior in films, but had never before seen it first-hand ! Ah, an unexpected talent in the vagabond ! I offered to teach them to shuffle the cards that way, and pandemonium ensued. Every one of 50 Tunisian men wanted to learn ! But I limited the hands-on lessons to just the three guys at my table, so that they could gain status. After about half an hour, two of them could riffle haltingly, so that most of the cards didn't fly across the table. They were thrilled !! I never had to buy myself a tea or soda for the remainder of my stay there. Every time I walked through the bar on the way to my upstairs room several men would buy me drinks in the hopes that I would teach them to shuffle like the riverboat gamblers of the movies. Naturally the few Tunisians who learned the trick from me refused to teach it to any of their fellows, and endeavored to discourage me from giving lessons to anyone else !

That afternoon in Sfax I met a young man named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem was 17 years old, and a student, and interested in all things American. He was thrilled to learn that the best basketball player in the world shared his name! We got on well together, I was invited to his mother's little apartment for a light dinner, and we buddied around town together every following day. But even with Kareem's encyclopedic local knowledge, there wasn't anything interesting to do or see in Sfax.

Sauntering around by myself the second afternoon, I saw a gaggle of six or eight non-Tunisians in white uniforms. They were obviously sailors of about my age, and when they spoke to me in American idiom, I discovered that the Houston, a U.S. Navy cruiser, had docked in Sfax that morning. My new American sailor friends couldn't speak any French, and wanted to know how to ask "Where is the discotheque?" in that language. I taught them, and they were very pleased to find that the long word in the query is exactly the same in both languages ! They wandered off muttering "ooo aee luh discotheque" to themselves so that they wouldn't forget.

That night, Abdul-Jabbar and I were traversing the dock area just before midnight, headed back towards my cheap lodging and his apartment. The damp, grotty lanes were almost completely deserted, but we ran into a group of six American sailors headed back from their "Cinderella liberty" which would expire at midnight. Of the six, four of them were some of the same guys I had befriended with translation earlier in the day, the other two being older, "saltier" swabbies. They were all drunk, and hadn't yet had their fight for the evening. This was a bad situation.

The two older swabbies came up to me on the echoing dark street, and couldn't help but notice my straight, shoulder-length hair. They decided to deride me for being, in their eyes, a homosexual, making lots of rude, mincing comments about how beautiful they found me, including the details of the sexual acts they intended to enjoy with such a pretty little bit of fluff. They intruded into my personal space, even grabbing my T-shirt front between thumb and forefinger, twisting it up to simulate nipples. I spoke to them openly and reasonably and tried to make conversation. Every time I took a calm step back, they immediately followed up. The two drunks really wanted me to take a swing at one of them, so that they could finish their liberty with a fag-bashing before returning to the ship. Things were very tense. I looked around, fully expecting Abdul-Jabbar to have vanished, but there he was just behind my elbow. He couldn't speak English, and was aware that something really heavy was taking place in that language, but to his eternal credit, he stood by me in spite of the imminent likelihood of being beaten up by six foreigners. Two to six is LOUSY odds in a street-fight.

The time had come when I had to do something other than just back up another step. The bleary, jeering eyes of my countrymen were only inches away from my own, and the liquor fumes of their breath were choking me. I had a longshot idea, and asked the most aggressive opponent, "What do you do on the Houston ?" His piggy eyes regarded me suspiciously, confused by the change of subject, but admitted to me that he was Chief Bosun's Something-or-other. "That sounds like an important position", I offered.

Well, it was just as though I had flipped a switch inside his head. He stopped, puffed up slightly, and in a slurred voice began to expound to me JUST HOW important he was ! Shortly he offered me a pull from his hip flask of liquor and slapped me on the back, allowing as how I didn't seem to be such a bad sort !! A few minutes later we parted regretfully, vowing eternal friendship, because they had to get back aboard by midnight.

So, against all odds, we did NOT get pounded into the pavement that night, and I learned an important lesson. Every aggressive asshole in the world is proud of something. If you can figure out what that something is, and express an interest in it, you cease to be a person whom should be knocked over, and become someone to whom to brag. And once you make that crucial transition from "opponent" to "audience", belligerence just fades away. I have used this defensive technique several times since, and it has never yet failed me.

Next time: Missed Chances and Minor Miracles in Libya