ExpaT-TraveL
GREAT FISH LIES BEHIND WHITE WALLS appreciation of the fascinatingly first class highways in my passable high school French. Abdel responded with a hint of a gloat that the country was as good as anything in the West of Europe. I would have agreed with the comparison had he not pounded a few shallow pot-holes and flown past a couple of beggars at a malfunctioning traffic light. We eventually arrived at the hotel located in an area known as El Menzah VII and I retired for the night as the hard work was scheduled to commence the following day. When dawn broke, I opened the curtains and took in an aerial view of the city. What struck me most was that almost all the houses and buildings were painted white. As soon as I set up my lap top at the client’s office, I decided to Google the reason for this as Abdel had mumbled something unconvincing when I enquired in the car. It turned out to be a popular search item with similar questions about other Mediterranean countries like Greece and Spain. A plethora of explanations were proposed by online ‘experts’ including keeping the houses cooler, the
use of white-wash on the buildings and the blue and white colours of the Greek flag. Our host, Salem, took us out to lunch where I was treated to the freshest and tastiest fish of my life. I noted in this and the other restaurants we were to visit, that Tunisians do not drink much alcohol but smoking and the consumption of strong shots of black tea was a pastime of the majority.
Presidents being displaced. Salem’s view was that, although their overthrown Head of State Ben Ali was a dictator, he had surrounded himself with technocrats who developed the country. Tunisia, he said, had a more enviable economy than Libya and Algeria despite not having mineral resources like these two neighbours. He concluded that things seemed worse following his departure with the economy having dipped and people not knowing what to expect from the government of the day. We left the restaurant two hours later, a routine that we were to repeat for the remainder of my stay. Long lunches seemed to be the order of the d a y
The conversation centred on the recent Arab revolution which began in Tunis and spread to a number of countries with various long-serving