The Pillars of Hercules

So I bought a ticket to Sfax. The ticket was ten dollars, for First Class, and another dollar for the Comfort Section of First Class. Sfax was about two hundred miles away, down the coast, where I hoped the weather was better. My idea was to go there and convalesce until I felt well enough to continue my traveling.

I would have preferred to take the train west to the Algerian border, to Bizerte, then Jendouba and on to Annaba (Bône) on the Algerian coast. In a more peaceful time it would have been a wonderful trip, from Tunis to Tangiers, along the coast. Before I started traveling in the Mediterranean it had been my intention to take this route. But then I had discovered that Tunisia was an island. Some other time I would return, and go to Beirut and Algeria and perhaps to Libya. It was impossible to be exhaustive on any trip—even living in another country had not allowed me enough time to go everywhere, to see everything. After eighteen years in Britain, much of it was unknown to me. For example, I never went to Shropshire, and I had always wanted to go there. After a year’s travel in China I had failed to get to Hainan Island. In the Pacific I never achieved my goal of sailing to Pitcairn Island. I was not dismayed. I turned them into ambitions. It was something to dream about, for unvisited places inspired greater dreams than places I had seen. The existence of the unknown was the wellspring of my dreams. And I also thought, I’ll be back.

The train was almost empty. The only people in the Comfort Section were a Vietnamese woman and a chain-smoking Tunisian man who was trying to woo a young Tunisian woman traveling on her own.

We were out of Tunis, beyond the slums, the suburbs, the refuse heaps and scavengers in shacks, in a matter of minutes, and then it was all olive groves for sixty miles. Like so many other parts of the Mediterranean shore, olive trees predominated. There were more here, and they were more orderly and fruitful, than in Greece. They were organized on terraces, with cactuses and spiky century plants arranged around them as perimeter fences, and with so much space between the trees the olives could be picked mechanically.

I saw an old woman riding a donkey through a herd of goats, I saw shepherds strolling behind flocks of sheep, and stumbling lambs, and in the geometric settlements there were low square houses on grids of streets. I had known nothing about Tunisia before I had gotten off the Sicilian ferry, and so I was pleased to see how orderly and apparently self-sufficient it was. And it was another secular place—at least there was no state religion, either theological or political.

Greener and tidier as we continued south, the countryside was flat and agricultural. It seemed a very peaceful land, in spite of the stormy weather. Passing through Sousse—the railway line went right down Sousse’s main street, along the promenade, around the port—I was reminded of how it had been recommended as a nice place to visit. It was clearly a tourist town.

Thirty or forty miles south of Sousse we came to El Djem. The town was insignificant, but the Roman amphitheater in El Djem was impressive.

“It’s in better shape and there’s more of it than the one in Rome,” an American man said to me, at El Djem. He was Mike from Louisiana.

Mike’s friend Steve said, “This thing is real old.”

They could appreciate the handiwork in El Djem because they were in construction themselves. They had been living in Sfax for almost two months, living alone in hotel rooms—going slightly crazy, they said—supervising the building of an oil-drilling platform offshore.

Steve went on. “It was built in something like 1720.”

“Isn’t it Roman?” I said.

“The guy didn’t say, but I’ll tell you one thing. This sucker is well built.”

“That’s for sure,” Steve said, and leaned way back to admire the complex arrangement of arches.

“Is this A.D. or B.C.?” Mike said.

“What’s the difference?” Steve replied.

Exactly, I thought. Surely the point was that it was about a thousand years older than any other building in the town and yet was stronger, more handsome and symmetrical and would probably outlast all the rest of them.

I got a later train onward to Sfax, and was at first alarmed by the ugly suburbs and tenements, and at last reassured. It was a more somber and quieter place than Tunis, with just a few main streets, and a boulevard and a harbor. Mike and Steve told me that the medina—the bazaar—was worth seeing. There were some islands fifteen or twenty miles offshore but they had not been there. It’s kind of a quiet place, they said. And they added, We’re going nuts here.