Peace to Tunisia!
(Photo of Roman ruins at Dougga, Tunisia, by your humble blogkeeper)Back in 2006 I visited Tunisia and wrote about it in one of my earliest posts.
A commenter on that post replied that
"In Algeria, they used to say: When Algeria is a man (a warrior), Tunisia is a woman (peaceful) ... "I hope that pacific reputation survives the country's current political upheaval.
My adventures in Tunisia included a retired English archaeology professor breaking into a show tune from Oklahoma to help explain rivalries between herders and farmers in Punic and pre-Punic times.
An Eid Mubarak! (Blessed Eid!) uttered at the conclusion of any transaction went a long way toward generating good will, earning me smiles, at least one slap on the back, and accurate directions from a shopkeeper who led me out of his store and into the street so he could be sure of steering me right. And I saw a henna-haired woman in a sleeveless top, as slender and graceful as a cypress in the Mediterranean breeze, loading her shopping cart with booze in the liquor section of a supermarket in Tunis.
Peace and good wishes to the sane, hospitable nation of Tunisia!
© Peter Rozovsky 2011
Labels: images, travel, Tunisia, Tunisia images, what I did on my vacation
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 11:40 PM
8 Comments:
It's a very nice photo. I wish them peace as well.
The Muslim world has got some bad press in recent years, so it was a pleasure to find myself in a sane corner of it. I hope that can last.
I guess my short time in Tunisia left me with some affection toward the country.
well said, Peter. I have a friend from Algeria and they are all watching this situation with great interest. Democracy being the prize.
The author of that comment was a French woman whose husband was a Muslim from, I think, Algeria. She apologized for not remembering what they used to say in Algeria about Morocco. I wondered where Libya fit into the schema.
"Democracy being the prize."
A beacon of hope in that part of the world, one might say. I do remember that French newspapers in Tunisia were full of coverage of the president and that, while we were warned not to photograph the presidential palace, the only visible guard at the palace was a single armed soldier -- far less than what one would run into trying to get into Downing Street.
Ah, nice blog!
Much obliged. This post put me in mind of travelling again. After I put it up, I spent a bit of time reading about possible destinationa. Albania? Bulgaria? Damascus? Timbuktu?
Peace, but democratic rights and civil liberties, too--and jobs for young people.
One might not come without the other. Apparently lots of the demonstrators were young, educated professionals who could not find jobs and were enraged by the wealth of the president's family and allies.
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