4-27
I was still sick, and desperate to sleep. Having booked an early flight, however, I had no choice but to tear myself out of bed at 4 AM for the drive to the Algiers airport. There were some difficulties in security – my ticket was lacking a stamp, apparently – but at last I reached the security checkpoint, where I filled out yet another form. My visa was scrutinized a final time. Then my passport was stamped, and I was free to go.
The flight to Tunis was short and uneventful, though my illness repeatedly sent me to the bathroom. The Tunis airport felt different from its counterpart from Algiers. Tourists, clearly, were welcome here: there were even posters of dune buggies and beach resorts on the walls. After breezing through border control, I made my way to the Europcar booth, where – after the usual rigmarole – I was issued a battered rental car. Plopping myself on a seat scarred with cigarette burns, I adjusted the mirrors, set Google Maps for Bulla Regia, and was off.
Within five minutes, I had narrowly avoided several collisions. From my last visit, ten years ago, I remembered traffic being chaotic. But I hadn’t recalled just how insane it was. Highway driving was straightforward enough (though each toll demanded fistfuls of millimes). The moment you entered a town, however, all hell broke loose. The roundabouts were the worst. If there were rules, nobody observed them. Every car just charged, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, into a whirling maelstrom of vehicles. I had no choice but to follow suit.
At last, with trembling hands and a thousand-yard stare, I emerged from my car at Bulla Regia. Although the baths and theater are relatively well-preserved, the site is famous for the subterranean rooms of its elite houses. Built to shelter the occupants from the heat of the African summer, these elaborate basements featured bedrooms, courtyards, and richly-decorated triclinia – dining rooms – that mirrored the rooms above ground. Buried by sand and debris in late antiquity, the underground levels are almost perfectly preserved, and provide a fascinating glimpse into the lives of Roman Africa’s elite.
I wandered from house to house, enjoying the solitude. In the first half-hour, I saw only one other person: a workman with a long scythe, cutting the tall grass. Besides the midday call to prayer, the only sound was the wind.
I drove next to Chemtou, not far from the Algerian border. Here, for half a millennium, the Romans mined Numidian Marble, a golden stone, veined with crimson, more valuable than any other besides Egyptian porphyry. Although mining resumed briefly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, all work ended long ago, leaving the ruins of the Roman quarry and city to crumble beside with the tailings and mill buildings of a later era.
I began in the large, white museum, where I seemed to be the first visitor in days. Set up by the German archaeologists who worked at the site for decades – the placards were in both French and German – it was well-designed, beginning with the geology of the site and moving chronologically through the development of the Roman work camps and the city that emerged beside them. I especially liked the rooftop terrace, from which visitors could admire the fragments of the first structure made from the marble, a colossal Numidian tomb.
As I was squinting at one of the artifact cases, I heard the tap of leather boots behind me, and turned to find a tall policeman. He demanded to see my passport. I gave it to him, and he took a picture before returning it to me with a curt nod. In this region, where tourists are so rare, my presence must have seemed suspicious.
Outside the museum, as I tried to make sense of the site map, I was joined by a feral dog, who lay in the shade at my feet. I knew how she felt – I was so exhausted that I could barely walk. But I dragged myself around the ruins of the Roman city that grew up in the shadow of the quarry. Cows were grazing in the theater, and a shepherd was watching his flock at the base of a vast broken bridge.
Upslope, beyond the shell of a nineteenth-century Italian church, I walked beneath the colossal cuttings of the mines. Here and there, half-finished blocks and columns, condemned by cracks, protruded from heaps of rubble. On the far side of the mesa from which the marble was cut, I could see the sprawling ruins of walled camps, each designed to hold hundreds of slave workmen. I wondered how many had died there, looking up toward the golden cliffs.
Collapsing into my car, I followed a winding two-lane road through hazy hills. Flocks of sheep grazed by the roadside. On one lonely stretch, I passed a man riding a donkey, a 25-gallon water container strapped on either side of his saddle. The road climbed to a high ridge, and the land on either side fell away in ranges of hills. The wind pressed patterns through the young grain. At last, I sank with the road to the picturesque town of El Kef, where I immediately drove the wrong direction up a one-way street. Among other misadventures, I came very close to pulverizing a flock of chickens.
After some searching, I found the sepulchral Ottoman building that housed my hotel. The elderly owner gave me a glass of fruit juice and showed me to my room. The bed was rock-hard and the wi-fi nonexistent. But the view from the small balcony took in the massed white buildings of the old city, falling toward a distant valley against a dark backdrop of hills. Sunset caught every color, and turned them all to Numidian marble.
4-28
About a half-hour before reaching my hotel in El Kef, the tire pressure light in my car had come on. This morning, after a few minutes of pondering the proper French phrasing, I approached the hotel owner and attempted to ask where I could get my tire fixed. At that moment, fortunately, the owner’s English-speaking son – visiting for the weekend from Hamburg – happened to walk by. After I explained my problem, he and his father conferred in rapid Arabic. The son shook his head. “Since it is Sunday,” he said, “all the car repair shops are closed.” “Even those,” I asked, “that only repair tires?” Father and son conferred again. “There is one man,” said the son, “who might be open. I can take you to him.”
Thanking him profusely, I carried my bags downstairs, threw them in my car – whose bad tire was now almost completely flat – and followed the hotel owner’s son to a grimy street on the outskirts of town. He stopped in front of an open garage door, where a man in a tight black t-shirt was smoking a cigarette against the wall. Club music was blasting inside the shop. The man crushed out his cigarette and motioned me to open the trunk. It took him only five minutes to remove the tire, replace the tube, and bolt it back into place. Then he charged me the equivalent of three dollars, and I was on my way.
I was almost immediately stopped at a police checkpoint, where I nodded, smiled, and proclaimed to everyone within earshot that I was an American tourist. I was quickly waved through. An otherwise uneventful hour brought me to Dougga, perhaps the only Roman city in North Africa better-preserved than Timgad. The ruins occupy the upper slopes of a prominent hill. Olive groves blanket the surrounding hills, and wheat fills the valley below.
Here, for a change, I encountered other tourists. There were three busses in the main parking lot: one for an Italian tour group, another for a party of Japanese, and a third packed to the roof with Tunisian schoolchildren. Although I was feeling stronger than on the previous day, I was still sick. So I took it slow, working my way down from the theater, filming methodically. The highlight, as before, was the almost perfectly-preserved Capitolium, with its relief of an emperor’s soul being carried to the heavens by eagle.
I ended my visit, as I had ten years before, sitting on the shady side of the towering Numidian Tomb. As the wind rustled in the olives, I looked toward the ruined city, its gray walls climbing upslope with geological massiveness. It was a beautiful place, but I was very tired.
I drove south through legions of hills, beneath a vast pale sky. Miles from any town, I followed a lonely road to the edge of a whispering wheatfield. I crashed a hundred yards or so through the green crop, and came to an enigmatic mass of ancient masonry. This is Kbor Klib – the tomb of the giant – one of the great mysteries of Roman Africa. It is likely a victory monument, but scholars disagree over whether it was set up to commemorate Scipio’s defeat of Hannibal at Zama or Caesar’s triumph at Thapsus. We will likely never know. All around the monument were recent pits, dug by local farmers in the hope of finding treasure.
I walked back to the car through the streaming wheat, and drove toward a tall ridge, where clouds were spilling in waves over the crest. On the other side, a low and unbroken overcast pressed low on the landscape. Rain speckled my windshield. In a remote canyon, I spotted a broken Roman bridge paralleling the modern highway. I parked by the roadside and walked out to it. The piers loomed gigantically through the gloom.
A short distance beyond, I found an unexcavated Roman city – its name, I later learned, was Aggar – sprawled beside the road. In the midst of the rubble, near the remains of a small Byzantine fort, a flock of sheep was grazing. I stopped beside a two-story mausoleum. Only one vast slab of its gabled roof remained, frozen in the act of collapse. Behind, the ruins rolled away toward a broken range of hills. Under that brooding sky, there was something apocalyptic about the scene.
4-29
I spent the night in Kairouan, where sand was blowing on the streets. A short drive brought me to El Jem, the site of Tunisia’s – and North Africa’s – best-preserved Roman arena. Back in Algeria, Mary had told me about visiting the amphitheater in the 60’s when it was still surrounded by olive groves. Those days, sadly, were long gone. El Jem has grown into a busy town, and I had to fight my way up a series of chaotic, one-way streets to get anywhere near the arena. Once I had finally found a parking place, I ducked and wove through the mayhem to the ticket booth.
The amphitheater was undoubtedly impressive. Built in the early third century, it remained almost intact until the end of the seventeenth, when part was razed by a local governor. The rest is remarkably well-preserved. Here, and almost only here, visitors can explore the upper corridors and stairs of a large amphitheater, and look down on the arena from the top seats. I had intended to record a live video during my visit. But my illness – which had turned into a bad cold – defeated me, since I started to cough uncontrollably whenever I tried to speak. I had to be content with silent footage.
On my way out of El Jem, I nearly lost a mirror when a large truck shoved me off the road. But I managed to escape with only a few new scratches, and made my way north to Zaghouan. As I approached, I could see a high and jagged peak, capped with cloud. The sky cleared as I drove up the switchbacks toward the summit, which raked by a raw, cold wind. Here, in a public park shaded with pines, I found the Sanctuary of the Nymphs, the monumental fountain that marked the beginning of the longest Roman aqueduct ever built.
With the exception of an elderly French man dressed entirely in black, I had the ruins to myself. I took dozens of pictures, trying to capture the drama of the mountain crags rising over the smoothly sculpted colonnades. After tracing the aqueduct channel – partly-excavated – to the edge of the park, I returned to my car to follow the aqueduct to Carthage.
At Mohamedia, about three-quarters of the way to its terminus, the aqueduct rises on majestic arcades over a broad valley. The modern highway parallels its course, and I stopped repeatedly on the dusty shoulder, braving the howling traffic and the wind booms of passing trucks, to film the ruins.
Finally, I fought through the building rush hour traffic to the colossal La Malga cisterns, fed by the Zaghouan aqueduct. Though appropriately vast – 15 parallel vaulted chambers, each as long as a football field – they seem to be ignored by tourists. During my visit, I saw only a few feral dogs.
After refueling at the most crowded gas station in my experience, I struggled through heavy traffic back to the airport, where I finally returned my car. My hotel had promised to send a driver; he showed up a half-hour late, then stopped to urinate on the roadside.
My hotel, in the heart of Tunis’ labyrinthine medina, was an impressive Ottoman-era palace centered on a large courtyard. Still lacking the appetite for a spicy Tunisian meal, I walked to the nearest market for simple supplies. To my surprise, I found a Tunisian brand of peanut butter (ButterNutty). Less surprisingly, it was terrible. I was, however, impressed with “Daddy’s Chips” – a local potato chip brand. It was only after I returned to my hotel room that I realized the water I had just purchased had been bottled at the springs of Zaghouan.
4-30
This morning, after a pleasant breakfast at the hotel, I decided to take a long walk through Tunis to the Bardo Museum. I almost immediately regretted this decision. Although the Art Deco and Art Nouveau buildings on the edge of the medina were interesting, the rest of the neighborhoods I walked through were mid-rise concrete jungles. Traffic snarled and snagged along the wide French boulevards, and pedestrians scurried like rats between. There was no shade.
At last, I reached the Bardo. Almost as soon as I entered, I saw the most sobering addition since my last visit: a memorial tablet, worked in mosaic, commemorating the victims of the 2015 massacre. Despite this, the museum was full of tourists. To judge from the harried-looking tour groups shuttling past me, there must have been an Italian cruise ship in the port. But after an hour, almost all of the groups vanished, and the museum was as quiet as I remembered.
I took my time, working through room after room of spectacular mosaics. I remembered most of them from my previous visit: the famous portrait of Virgil flanked by two muses, Odysseus and the Sirens, the Cyclopes in the workshop of Vulcan. The Sun emerged, streaking the gods and seascapes with light.
Upstairs, I explored the rooms devoted to the Mahdia shipwreck. The cargo, spilled into the sea sometime in the early first century BC, consisted of Greek artworks and architectural elements, bound for the aristocratic palaces of Rome. Although the bronzes were remarkably well-preserved, the marble had been devoured by marine parasites. I was especially struck by one Corinthian capital, intact on one side – where it had been protected by sediment – holed and pitted on the other, as though by acid rain.
After the long walk back, I sat on the balcony overlooking my hotel’s courtyard, getting some work done. Clouds crept overhead. Thunder began to roll. Rain cascaded from a livid sky, drumming on the roof, fountaining from the gutters, speckling the windows.
5-1
The morning air was clean and damp, and a cool breeze blew from the sea. As I walked through the medina, white buildings met blue sky in crisp lines. I cut through a large covered market, where sellers were just opening their stalls, then followed Avenue Habib Bourguiba down to the harbor, where I would catch the TGM train to Carthage.
The train was just as dirty and overcrowded as I remembered. Besides me, the only tourists in sight were a hapless Japanese couple, surrounded by a high-spirited Tunisian school group trying out their English. One of the students had a drum, and they started to demonstrate local songs, complete with clapping and wailing.
Three chain-smoking teenage boys forced open the door as the train rumbled toward the first station, sending a cool breeze streaming through the car. But after only three stops, we ground to a halt. There was, apparently, work being done on the line, and everyone on board had to disembark and walk a mile to the next station. In the end, realizing that I was relatively close to Carthage, I simply walked to the ruins instead.
For the past century, Carthage has been a wealthy seaside suburb of Tunis, covered by white villas with fenced yards scented with oleander. In most places, only the street names (Astarte, Amphitheater, etc.) suggest the presence of the ancient city beneath. The visible ruins are scattered and unprepossessing.
I began, like last time, with the Salammbo Tophet. In the Carthaginian era, this was a graveyard for children. Some – archaeologists disagree about how many – were sacrificed to Baal and Tanit. In the excavated part of the necropolis, hundreds of stumpy stele are arranged in rows. Each marked a child’s tomb. The oldest are unadorned, save perhaps for a bottle-shaped baetyl. Some of the later examples show a mother and child, or the symbol of Tanit.
A few blocks away, I visited the remains of the circular military harbor, from which the war fleets that menaced Rome were launched. These days, villas cover the naval sheds, and blue rowboats bob where sleek galleys once cut the water.
I climbed up to the Byrsa, the ancient citadel of the Punic city, and found myself surrounded by Italian and Spanish cruise tourists. The museum was closed, but I could still enjoy the view out toward the aquamarine gulf and the hills beyond. The Roman settlers of Carthage cut ten meters from the hill’s summit and pushed the rubble over the lower slopes to make room for a new forum. In the process, they buried – and inadvertently preserved – a neighborhood of Punic houses, whose ruins peered out between the colossal piers that supported the forum terrace. Of the forum itself, only a few fragments of the civil basilica remained. Over it all loomed the towers of the French St. Louis Cathedral, built by the third empire to remake the hill.
Back on the coast, I stopped at the so-called Magon Quarter, where I watched waves crash over sunken Roman breakwaters.
At the Antonine Baths, swarming with cruise passengers, I explored some of the vast subterranean passageways. Then I caught a TGM bound for Tunis, made another long walk around the gap in the line, and continued on to the city.
That afternoon, unexpectedly, I had received a call from a distinguished Tunisian archaeologist, a friend of Jerry Sorkin. We had arranged to meet for dinner in the Medina at 8. When we did, we found no restaurants open. At length, we ended up in a smoky bar, where the archaeologist was nearly as out of place as I was. We ordered, and he talked.
He was a frustrated man – frustrated with the state of Tunis (he shook his head at the police barricades downtown), frustrated with his country (“2011 solved nothing”) and its corrupt officials, frustrated with his own stalled career. He had a curious love-hate relationship with America, where he had worked for several years, admiring and resenting its power. He seemed to have little hope for the future of his country.
It was a dispiriting monologue. But eventually, it became something more of a conversation, and he brightened a bit. As we walked back through the moonlit city, he reminisced about the Tunis of his youth, just after independence, when the boulevards rivaled those of Paris. We parted, and I walked back to my hotel through the empty medina. Lamps shone dully on the whitewashed walls. My steps echoed oddly on the crooked streets, so that I kept looking over my shoulder to see if I was being followed. But there was nothing to see but cats, peering with luminescent eyes from the dark.