Tom Foran Clark

In the dim early morning light, aboard the Palermo-Tunis ferry, the Carducci, Pike was immersed in his book about the Mediterranean, Magna Graecia, Greater Greece, and the conquering Romans. He was talking to himself, moving his lips while he read. He seemed to have regained some energy. At the same time, he seemed calmer. Emery had to wonder if he was feeling any more at home in the world -- he’d fallen so low -- but he let it go.

Already Emery had moved past his resolution never to speak to Pike again. He approached Pike cautiously, asking if there was anything in Pike's book about Carthage, which the two now approached. There was: "The Romans brutally conquered the abundantly creative Phoenicians," Pike read aloud. "Adding insult to injury, they later left only their own Roman ruins behind them."

For conversation’s sake, remembering Pike’s awe at "simultaneity" in southern Italy -- "forever becoming and forever perishing" -- Emery asked him about this now, in terms of Carthage and Tunis, here in front of them, "the historical past existing side by side with the present moment." Pike considered this, and answered carefully, "I’ll tell you what, Emery. I’m not going to jump to any conclusions. Let’s just take this a day at a time."

Later, pushing their bikes through the pathless sands of the Sahara desert, they’d take this concept, simultaneity, for their definition of North Africa: the ancient past, the present moment, and all future time coexisting seamlessly. But then, on the Carducci, as they approached the Gulf of Tunis and Cape Bon, "We’ll see," is all Pike would say about it.

Careening gulls followed the boat in to the port of la Goulette, where Arab dock workers in turbans and brown cossack’s robes, (woolen djellabas), loaded cargo boats with carpets, iron, fruits, and olives with the help of huge, hulking, grimy, twisted, rusted cranes.

In contrast to the slow moving turbaned stevedores, the two port officials who greeted Pike and Emery where the boat’s unloading platform met Tunisia’s soil were nattily dressed, speedily and efficiently checking and stamping their passports.

Pike, born in French-speaking Canadian territory and brought up in the Massachusetts Canuck mill town Lawrence, thanked them fluently and graciously. Then the two rolled out of La Goulette onto the Tunisian causeway over the Lake of Tunis -- where pink flamingos stood on high stilt legs in shallow waters. They went in search of a bundock, a bank, and then on into the heart of the city, the souks of the medina.

Souk -- or suuq -- was the Arab name for market. Medina was the Arab name for town. At the time Francehad taken possession of Tunisia -- since relinquished, of course -- the Medina of Tunis was Tunis. Now it was a remnant, existing within the outer, teeming metropolis.

The Medina was a beguiling maze of winding, narrow lanes of shops and stalls -- souks -- displaying dazzling arrays of wares. There were weaver souks, and souks of rug-makers, potters, goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, tinsmiths, sandal makers, trinket sellers, and on and on. Old men in red felt hats called chechias were bent over sewing machines in the souk of the clothiers. In the Souk de la Laine were weavers; in the Souk des Orféurs were goldsmiths; and so on.

Pike asked around and got a good lead on a hotel on the Rue de Kasbah in the heart of the Medina. A single bed, six feet by six feet, filled the tiny room. Its one window offered a view merely to the entry hallway. Pervading everything, as the two settled in, was chanting. It permeated all. Chanting diffused itself into every activity and setting. The chanting was the constant thing: the dominant, reverberating thing.

Over time, this omnipresent chant became intimately familiar, like conscience, the voice in the head, or your own blood coursing through your veins: la ilaha illa allah ("There is no God but Allah"). Allah akbar: God is great. In Arabia, this is the soul’s breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, dessert, and midnight snack.

The message of Allah’s greatness resounded in the Rue de Kasbah when Pike and Emery fell asleep; and the message of Allah’s greatness resounded through the souks when they awoke, dressed, and entered the labyrinth of souks, going in search of the central Mosque, the Zitouana. The founder of the Zitouana Mosque had originally taught the Koran under olive trees, and so the mosque had taken this name: the olive tree mosque. It had grown to be something of a university in its time: professors had gathered with their student clusters for Koran studies around particular mosque columns – one column per professor.

A later, nineteenth century addition, the exquisite minaret tower, reached high into the pure, austere, blazing blue sky. Not a cloud could be seen. The sun seemed to approach, to move closer -- to better illuminate only sunstruck Tunisia upon the earth.

Needing shade, coolness, and refreshment, Pike and Emery retreated back into the narrow, clamorous lanes of the souks. There, a tiny brown-eyed girl ran hand-in-hand with a brown-djellaba’d boy who tripped, in the lane, on the hem of his bulky robe. Both fell forward, but it was the girl who took the fall. Emery could not even hear chanting, the silence of that moment was so cutting. Then the little girl began to cry. A piece-of-five coin had flown from her hands, and landed at his feet. Emery picked it up; then picked her up. He put the coin in her precious hand, and she ceased crying. She took the boy’s hand in hers again, and the two pressed on.

Pike and Emery wove their way further toward the Medina’s core of souks, in search of water or soda. Mint tea was far more available -- at every corner café -- but they wanted ice-cold drinks. In Araby, if one didn't drink tea, one drank soda pop. The best soda pop, if one really wanted to slake one's thirst, was lemon soda -- on this point, Pike and Emery agreed.

At noon they ate Chorba, a spicy soup with pasta; baklava, a pastry soaked in honey topped with almonds; asssida, custard with hazelnuts; and mint tea. They then left the Medina and rolled across the nouveau ville to the Bardo Palace, the former home of the Regent, or Bey, of Tunisia, open to the public as a museum. Here they viewed countless works of breathtaking filigree, hundreds of delicate and stunning mosaics and tiles before venturing into the gardens, filled lavishly with flowers, fountains, lawns, and palms, where Emery lay down and, while Pike went out on a photo shooting expedition, he passed a good portion of the afternoon reading in a French phrase book.

When they left the Bardo, they got back on the road to the Medina, weaving their way amid Peugots, Citroens, and camels, by the busy fish and meat market on the Rue Sidi Abd Esselem (got cous-cous, a tomato and semolina stew, and a big Salade Tunisienne to share), returning to their Rue de Kasbah hotel room. They shared their meal with an adopted gray, sleek, and exotic cat they dubbed Sadie de la Kasbah-- Sadie afterwards laying on the bowed-out bed purring and stretching regally.

In the morning, Sadie struck out with them when they checked out -- until somebody tossed chicken bones out an upper window in the Rue de Kasbah . At this, Sadie leapt -- and half a dozen other cats.

The two riders wove their way through the slow electric current of the souks amid the rough, elemental, elbowing throngs to the outlying avenues and boulevards of modern Tunis. They went in search of the offices of Tunis Tour Buses, on the Avenue Habib Bourgiba, which reputedly also housed the American Express office. Indeed, there was a window, and a sign, and an American Express clerk.

Back in Rome, Emery had sent off a letter, special delivery, to North Hollywood, begging his folks to take all his books and things -- Volkswagen and all -- and sell them and take whatever money these might bring and send half of it to him care of the American Express office on the Avenue Habib Bourgiba, and the other half care of the American Express office on the Rue Mauritania in Marrakech, Morocco. Happily, the Tunisian apportionment awaited him -- traveler’s checks -- saving grace. Emery no longer felt completely, totally, wholly, altogether out of luck.

Outside the Tunis Tour Buses company, old men in striped djellabas carried live turkeys by their ankles, upside-down. The turkeys looked bewildered, their eyes perplexed but not pleading. Emery remembered what Pike said when he first saw this. He whispered it in French: "Bon courage."

The two rolled out of Tunis onto flatlands holding decrepit white and blue cubicles, poorhouse huts huddling together in clusters, neighborhoods. Lambs hopped playfully about. Heavily burdened old women hauled bundles of sticks on their backs. Old men stood in horse-drawn carts, calling out "Whoop-pah! Heyp! Yoh!"

Clouds now came in flotillas. Amid dry, cool winds they rolled by orange groves, Eucalyptus trees, and cactus serving as bounding walls around neighborhoods and between cubicles, into a long, low gully. Pike loped over a barren field to check out a half-roofed shack, a potential shelter for the night. He was approached, on a path that had formerly been invisible to them, by two figures in flowing robes. The two girls told Pike they lived further up the path, behind obscuring orange and Eucalyptus trees. Pike whistled out and called Emery's name, motioning for him to come over to where he and the two girls stood.

More than sufficing, Pike’s French was a boon. One of the girls told Pike they would be pleased if he and his friend could come stay at their home -- a spare room was available and it would be a privilege, they insisted, for their family to be a host to the two visitors.

Pike and Emery went along the path with them. Soon two shacks emerged into view. Coming closer, they could see the two huts formed two sides of an inner square bounded on its other two sides by bamboo-like stalks, or rush, fences. Straw-topped lean-tos were attached to each house. In the square, an old woman, elaborately tattooed with henna on her arms and legs and face, greeted the visitors heartily. Raza, grandmother of Fatma and Nouri, was dressed in swirls of dark blue burlap or thickly woven wool.

The two girls put the bikes in a different room than the one the guests would be staying in. To this spare, long, narrow room Raza now led them. In the corner of the room was a rolled-up straw mat. Smiling, her deep brown eyes twinkling, Raza gestured to the mat, then to the floor, clearly indicating Make yourselves at home.

The two guests laid out the straw mat, then sat down on it, crosslegged, beaming with peace and calm. Outside their door, in one of the two lean-tos, Raza fed a fire in a pit, stirring up a crakling blaze. She then placed burning coals into a brazier, then brought this into the room to provide warmth. Dusk approached.

Soon a group of youngsters pushed into the room, crowding in on the two strangers, marveling at their presence, shaking their hands and swooning. One fellow, in a huge, loose djellaba, pulled up a place very close to, but not on, their mats. This was Ferid, curious to know every detail of their having arrived here. Next entered Khaled, slightly younger than Ferid, taking a place close on Ferid, leaning in toward the two visitors precariously, asking questions. Both peered at them in awe, the one nearly falling over the other as they leaned in on their elbows, punctuating their serious inquiries with uproarious laughter.

Nouri and Fatma stood in the doorway, now proprietarily keeping a certain distance, beaming and giggling. Pike had them all laughing away, not only because of what he was telling them, in French, but also because of the way he was telling things -- his exotic New England Canuck mill town French accompanied by his wide-waving arms.

When night came, Pike and Emery were ushered out and taken to the other hut. They were invited to dinner. Mats were brought from the corner of this larger, whitewashed clay chamber. In this room were also a dresser, suitcases, and blankets. Nouri and Fatma removed their guests shoes. All sat together on the mats. Pike and Emery sat in the center of the room, with the brazier (called a "canoe") set directly before them. The hot coals glowed amid dead gray ashes. A second brazier was brought in, and fresh red-hot coals were added from it to the first brazier. Mint tea was made, and served in small shot glasses

Cous-cous was announced. Room was made, the middle of the chamber cleared for a forthcoming giant bowl of food. In the meantime, Ferid and Khaled now began to explain the general circumstances of the Bouzayene family, a collective of disparate relatives. Fatma lived with her grandmother Raza in the other hut. Apparently, she had never met her mother. In this chamber, where Pike and Emery now sat, Nouri lived with her mother, Kedija.

Now Kedija herself entered the room -- on cue -- a beautiful woman dressed in a brilliant, colorful scarf headdress with a billowing, flowing robe, turquoise blue. Also entering the room was her youngest son, Bechir. Her other, older son, Mohammed, would arrive momentarily, in the company of their family mule.

Ferid and Khaled were not members of the immediate family, but of Kedija’s extended family. The grandfather was dead, and the father was "away." It was a lose family structure: Kedija’s husband (Pike explained to me later, from what he was able to glean) was a polygamist, with several wives throughout the region.

Fatma and Nouri brought in a huge curving platter, half bowl, of cous-cous – lamb stew with red peppers and tomatoes atop a pyramid of semolina. Spoons were set before Pike and Emery. They were told to begin. The other participants in this ceremony avidly went at the food with their hands. It wasn’t very long before the guests threw in our lot with them, putting aside the spoons, shoveling in the cous-cous with their fingers.

When they all could take in no more, stuffed to the gills, Fatma and Nouri removed the cous-cous platter. The braziers were moved to the edges of the room, and mint tea was brought in, with intricately peeled oranges.

While they sipped tea and ate the fruits, Emery noticed Kedija was studying him with puzzled intensity. Finally, she asked Nouri to ask Pike, in French, why Emery looked so serious -- pensive. Pike informed Emery Nouri said the golden rule for foreign guests is to look blissfully happy -- and Emery wasn't doing that. He was dampening down the merriment, Pike said. Emery told Pike to convey to them all that he had enjoyed their cous-cous only too well, and was now overly filled and contented. He then searched his Arab-English phrase book for an appropriate phrase. "Kuluh mumtaaz shukran," he said. "Everything is fine, thank you." On hearing this, Kedija beamed brightly.

After the cous-cous, tea, oranges, and conversation, the mats were cleared again. Now a ceramic drum was brought down from the dresser and placed before them. Bechir took the drum in hand, and began playing.

Now Pike and Emery were called upon to dance. Khaled motioned for them to move to the far end of the chamber, where they should earn their keep -- where they should dance for them. Pike and Emery did what they could -- fluttering and flapping, swaying and spinning to the hypnotic drumming and handclapping.

Their hosts were delighted, swooning and clucking. When the two were finally allowed to again sit down, they joined in with the others, clapping and chanting while Bechir beat the drum. The cinders in the brazier were stirred by sticks; the heat filled the room. Kedija sat across from Emery. Smoking a cigarette she’d rolled herself, she offered to make one for him. He declined politely, whereupon Kedija offered Emery snuff from a tin. When he again declined, she disallowed it. She insisted Emery take some snuff. So he took a pinch and placed it in the snuff-box wedge of skin at the base of his thumb and took a snuff. It was heady stuff. All laughed and applauded. Emery sneezed, triggering yet more laughter and delight.

More oranges were brought in and delicately, decoratively peeled -- a formal ceremony also, with just-so handling of the knife, slicing around the fruit, lifting away the coiling rind. Even the gesture through which the peeled orange was offered was ceremonious and gracious.

So it went, on into the night. It was near to midnight when Raza, Kedija, and the girls departed to sleep, then Bechir and Mohammed. Ferid and Khaled remained with the two guests another hour or more, picking their brains. Then they began teaching Arabic, shouting rills and frills of words, pointing at things in the room.

"Ahlan beek! Kayf haalak?" (Hello, how are you?)

"Al-Hamdu lillah wa kayf Haalak anta?" (very well, thanks, and you?)

"Nam." (Yes.)

"Mandacheena." (No.)

"Ha- ba-chu-ma?" (Can I have some water?)

Khaled said he may have just saved the lives of the vagabonds, teaching them about asking for water. When next they found themselves in the desert, riding, exhausted, falling in the sand, parched, dehydrated, Pike and Emery would remember him, he said, and cry out, Ha- ba-chu-ma!"

Ferid and Khaled crammed their heads to brimful with Arabic.

"Laa tanaij." (Don’t worry.)

"Bisur-ah!" (Hurry! Hurry!)

"Ala mahlak." (There’s no hurry.)

"Sa-eed." (Happy.)

"Maa touja." (It doesn’t hurt.)

"Banaat jameelaat." (Pretty girls.)

"Sayidaat jameelaat." (Beautiful ladies.)

"Arjook taqabal j-Atizaarna." (Please accept our apologies.)

"Shukran." (Thank you.)

"Bijad! Sa-heeh!" (You’re joking!)

"Tawaqaf!" (Stop!)

Ferid got out four blankets from a suitcase. At his bidding, Pike and Emery laid down on mats. Ferid gently placed blankets over them. He and Khaled slept under their blankets on mats at the far end of the room.

In the morning, Nouri served bread and coffee in the sunny central courtyard. Roosters and hens paraded around them, flexing their necks and scratching the ground. Ferid and Khaled didn’t miss a beat. Wide awake, warm in their djellabas, they resumed their lessons.

"Mumtazz." (Good.)

"Haaza mumtaaz." (Very good.)

"Haaza raa’I bi-jad.." (Really great!)

"Alf shukr." (Thank you very much!)

"Tawasal bis salaamah." (Goodbye, may you arrive in peace.)

Before departing, Pike got out his camera and took pictures of each -- Raza, Kedija, Fatma, Nouri, Ferid, Khaled, Bechir (with drum), and Mohammed. Then he had them stand together for a group portrait and, after, setting the automatic shutter release, he grabbed Emery. The two stood amid the family for a photo of all of them together.

Ferid insisted Emery wear his itchy camel-hair djellaba, then Khaled ran and fetched a straw hat. At first, Emery was hesitant, reluctant to put on this garb, but it wasn't very long before he was filled with satisfaction doing it -- complying. Here was a pleasure kin to what actors must feel onstage, taking a part -- taking part. No harm in it, and much delight! Pike put on Mohammed’s robe. Now Bechir was snapping away like a seasoned photojournalist, going through thirty or more exposures in about two minutes.

Pike and Emery went with Raza to retrieve their bikes. They loaded them up, and then came to the hard part -- saying goodbye.

"Tawasal bis-salaawah," the family sang to them. (May you arrive in safety.)

"Kuluh mumtaaz shukran." (Everything is fine, thank you.) "Salaam. Salaam."

Pike and Emery shoved off; wobbled away; rolled down the road.

Under clear skies, they took their time getting to oceanfront Nabeul, where two Arab boys rode over the cream-white sand on bikes, calling " Tawaqafoo! Tawaqafoo!" -- Stop!" One of the two had a satchel, a battered black businessman’s briefcase, on a makeshift rack over his back wheel. In it were tattered, much-handled magazines the two were eager Pike and Emery should see and purchase -- pornography.

"Bijad! Sa heeh!" Pike brushed them off. (You’re joking!).

"Intazirroo! Intaziroo!" (Wait! Wait!)

Pike and Emery didn’t wait -- and they didn’t look back. They rode into the village center, where they were immediately surrounded by excited schoolchildren waving brightly colored scarves. Nebeul’s Grand Mosque and delicately carved minaret glowed brightly, golden, in the late afternoon sun. Downtown Nebeul was a of ceramics showplace, filled lavishly with pottery of all colors, kinds, and sizes -- urns, vases, pitchers, bowls, cups, saucers, plates. Pike and Emery wheeled past these, sighing and admiring, but not stopping to purchase anything. They rode down the Avenue Habib Thameur and turned southwest toward Hammamet.

"We’d best be looking for a place to camp," Pike called back to Emery as they rode through darkening fields and groves -- acres and acres of olive trees. The sun was going down fast.

Pike had been saying they couldn’t just camp anywhere in North Africa, lest they get their throats cut. Pike maintained they needed to be not merely careful but, better, secretive and cunning. A field came up that caught Pike’s eye. He paused to check it out. "Too many shrubs," he concluded. The two kept going.

They rode amid further, like, expanses of fields, then turned down a narrow side road that went to still more fields. Eventually, in the distance, in the dark of night, the two approached the silhouette of a lone edifice that turned out to be a dilapidated cinder-block shack. They rolled their bikes down into a gully -- plunged down, rather. Pike -- food, pack, all -- fell sideways. He got it all together again, then proceeded up the other side of the gully toward the hut. Then all fell again, and Emery again helped him re-load. Under this strain, they wheeled their bikes toward the shelter.

They used a flashlight to check for a safe clearing on the shack’s floor, then set down the ground cloth, laid out their sleeping bags, settled in, and brought out their evening meal -- tomato and cheese sandwiches. As they ate, they saw three Arab youths pass by on the other side of the gully embankment. Pike moved his treasure map and other papers from his deep coat pockets to his sleeping bag, and stuffed them around his feet. The youths passed by a second time -- now calling, greeting, hooting, and saluting. They made a third pass, now on the other side of the gully, and approached speaking French.

Pike went out to talk with them. He was abrupt, bristling in anticipation of our being robbed and killed. Worse than death to Pike, I now knew, was the idea that Townsend’s treasure map and diary -- heaven forbid! -- should fall into the wrong hands. The kids must have felt Pike’s deep discomfort. They departed without further ado, shrugging their shoulders, mumbling disappointedly among themselves.

"No way," Pike said, crawling from his sack. "We’re not staying here tonight." In the dead of night he quickly packed his things and loaded up his bike. Drowsily, Emery did likewise. Pike's nervousness and rushing brought about the downfall of his pack, which slid sideways from his bike to the ground. Pike cursed his fate, railing at the stars amid amorphous silver swirls of clouds.

Emery helped Pike pick up his things again, then re-packed his own bike. Emery followed Pike along the opposing ridge of the gully, which eventually led back to the road. The two camped in one of the vast, innumerable roadside fields. They only knew they were somewhere just out of Hammamet. "But it doesn’t matter where we are," Pike whispered anxiously, shivering, "so long as we don’t wake up in the middle of the night, robbed of our papers and severed limb from limb."