After Algeria, there was something a little subdued about Tunisia, a reluctance to talk openly. People were well off, but perhaps a little cowed, and lacking the stimulation provided by a free press and media but then again they have satellite from all over the world. Maybe it’s the hush of the middle classes, maybe life is too good to make a fuss. Tunisians certainly like to enjoy their leisure time and the marinas are stuffed with yachts- particualry compared to elsewhere in the Maghreb.
On the island of Djerba, the north coast is reserved for tourism, with a flat shoreline of Ghormenghast-like hotels, while the south shore is where the Sub Saharan Africans and some Libyans come, to set off across the black water in the night, in unseaworthy boats, for the hazardous journey to the promised land of Europe. For the Libyan border is just a stone’s throw away. Djerba seems to be in the grip of strange weather conditions.
As I gaze out across the sea to some sandbanks studded with flamingoes, a sudden freezing mist descended, and I wondered what it would be like to be stranded on a small boat in the dark trying to get across that trecherous sea to Italy. Its also an island that has clung fiercely to its local traditions - women dressed in huge white shawls and straw hats pass us on the road, houses look inwards to their courtyards, whislt sand from the sahara blows in night and day.
