Something About Sousse: A Call to Prayer
Act 1:
“I am going to Hammamet!”
“No, you’re going to Sousse!”
حَيَّ عَلَىٰ ٱلصَّلَوٰة Hasten to the prayer
حَيَّ عَلَىٰ ٱلْفَلَاحِ Hasten to the salvation
حَيَّ عَلَىٰ خَيْرِ ٱلْعَمَلِ Hasten to the best of deeds
ٱلصَّلَوٰةُ خَيْرٌ مِنَ ٱلنَّوْمِ Prayer is better than sleep
Scene 1: Enter Tunis Carthage Airport, Tunisia, North Africa. The date is June 29th, 2020..two days after Tunisia opens its borders for those stranded abroad to return home.
“How did she get on the plane? I thought only Tunisians were allowed to board the flight?”
“What are we going to do with her?”
“Dude you are American, there is no way they are letting you pass through immigration..”
Enter me, not so fresh off the airplane after a 15 hour flight, covered in sweat and banned from South Korea for one year after overstaying my visa during a pandemic. I hand the immigration officer my passport.
“Mam, I am going to need you to step over here. Please sit down.”
I look at the two people sitting next to me, a Cali American with a Tunisian wife and a woman from Libya who just wants to return home.
“Don’t worry they just need to make a few phone calls so they can let you pass through. They are quarantining us at a 3 star hotel, when I wanted 5 stars!”
“Hey kid, you have US dollars? Slip 20 in your passport..works for me everytime.”
To my left, I see my friend (we met in Incheon Korea airport) walking back through into immigration. I jumped up to tell him all about the hot guy I fell in love with on the airplane and how tall he was!
“Sit down! Smart American!” chuckles an immigration officer in a hearty voice.
A million hours later.
“Mam, okay come back around, let me stamp your passport. So tell me how exactly did you end up in Tunisia?”
And that’s where I jumped back to August 2019 and told him my story of where I had moved to Kaohsiung, Taiwan, only to end up stuck on a mountain in a Typhoon plus smothered in bed bugs, and then escaped to South Korea. If you have been following my articles with AYME Magazine since last August, you will remember the whole journey of Taiwan-South Korea-Philippines-back to Korea-Taiwan-South Korea, stuck during a pandemic.
“Welcome to Tunisia.” he laughed as he stamped my passport, joked around a bit, and gave me safety tips.
Picking up my baggage, an airport government worker pulls me aside to ask me my hotel name.
“Nope sorry not on the list of government approved hotels.”
“I am going to hammamet “
“No, you’re going to Sousse!”
Scene 2: Enter 146-149 BC (somewhere around that time) after the Third Punic War (the last of the Punic Wars that were fought between Phoenician colony of Carthage and the Roman Republic).
“I HAVE YOU NOW AFRICA!”- shouts Caesar with his raised fists in the air. Tunisia now becomes Roman Africa.
From the Italians, to the Arabs, and of course the French, etc. It seemed like ‘everyone and their moms’ marched their way on into this historical town with its fortress wall that sits on the coast of the mediterranean sea- Sousse.
Scene 3: Second to last day in the quarantine hotel with my sea view balcony. I don’t know what I was expecting during quarantine, but quite sure there was a party the night before near the pool. All of us were eagerly awaiting our covid test results, we had to take 24 hours prior.
Sticking my head out of my hotel room that I do frequently to chat with other guests, looking straight ahead I see a Tunisian man who came from the UK flights, who had arrived a day after mine.
“You are Lateisha right? Ah yes, you are the American girl who switched hotel rooms 4 times, I heard about that! Anywho, we had a party last night and took a dip in the pool. Damn, you got a sea view room, okay.”
“Wait how did yall go swimming?”
“We took those beach chairs and lined the pool, that way if any worker came after us they had to go through the barrier and we could run back to our rooms.”
Scene 4: “HARAM ALYIEK!” – I shouted as I pounded my fits on the taxi driver’s trunk and threw my head into the driver side window going all Brooklyn on him as we shouted over the money he tried to jip me out of. My airbnb host yelled arabic at him, as I went off in New York Style English, whatever that means.
“Wait, hold up. How you don’t know Arabic, but you know haram?”
Synopsis: And that’s how I found my way through North Africa. Getting lost in a maze of the UNESCO World Heritage Medina as I haggle my way through a tea shop. Eating tons of couscous and other dishes I have no idea the name for. Jumping in the clear waters of the Meditateran Sea and racing towards what I thought was a big blue bag floating ashore only to find out it was a jellyfish or as the locals call it-Medusa. The ‘evil’ Medusa of Greek mythology. Is she evil or just misunderstood? Jumping behind beach bar cafes and teaching the workers how to make iced coffee. Trying delicious almond green tea and having distilled flower oil put in all my coffee. Renting ant ridden apartments with broken aircons from sketchy landlords that never gave me all my money back..as I spent 2 days shaking my laptop from all the ants crawling through it. Falling in and out of “love” on a daily basis and probably breaking some hearts along the way. Beware of the men, they are all mainly tall and very handsome and the women are gorgeous. Climb your way through history in the old war fortresses (ribats) in Monistar or Sousse, dating back to 796 and encounter some ghostly energy, if you want, as you overlook sea views. Eat your hearts way through shwaramas and don’t worry about the extra pounds. Rest into the sunsets and do nothing. As a tunisian citizen I knew, for all of 3 minutes, said to me, “ This is your moment, relax into it, you’re in Tunisia.
End of Act 1-Lateisha
First appeared in Ayme Magazine
