Going back on Mother’s Day of 1999, on the fourteenth of March, my family and I left Wales for a week to go to Tunisia. The name of the three-star hotel was “El Maraudi”. It was situated on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea just North of a small town of Port el Kantoui. This town was where my first memory of the holiday took place.
It was on the third day, I think, my family and I were walking around. The buildings had a typical Arab type structure with flat roofs; arches around the bottom, rectangular windows and white plaster with cracks running along the side of the dusty walls. Tall minarets, large domes, voices shouting, talking and calling in Arabic could be seen and heard everywhere, people rushing about, a market trader running after a group of children stealing a couple of apples. In the square there was an open market selling all kinds of stuff: fruit and vegetables, rugs, clothes, and there was one man using his camel and wooden cart as a taxi. The market traders wore long robes with different patterns, and head dresses to keep their heads cool in the hot sun.
The smell was not all that pleasant, in a hot, poor country; people’s hygiene cannot be that good, and with all the scent sticks and the smell of camel dung all over the place. There were also fumes coming from the traffic passing the road nearby. The smell of sticks, crowds of people, fumes, camel extraction, I wouldn’t be here long enough to get used to it, I thought!
There was a big crowd, and, unusually for this time of year in Tunisia, it was very sunny. We would have picked another time of year, but my father could not get time off, as he was working in Libya as a computer systems engineer for the Spanish oil company, Repsol.
We were walking around, looking in shops, seeing what to buy for our family and friends, and for ourselves. My brother, Cellan, bought a Tunisian hunting knife, Lloyd bought a large bongo, and I had bought scorpions in a frame but my parents were still looking what to get. We were walking up this narrow alley, sandy and dusty, with a step or two every few yards. We could hear the loud market noise echoing along this empty street. There were four or five shops scattered from the bottom to the top. My father and Cellan were ahead of us.
The rest of us (Lloyd, my mother and me) were passing this shop selling mats, fezzes and traditional clothes. Suddenly, a man, presumably the shopkeeper, ran out and waved his hands about like a frantic mental patient, and stopped us in our paths. As I can remember, he was a tall, young man with combed black hair and a tidy cut moustache, he was wearing a brown, leather waistcoat and a white, baggy shirt, trousers and black sandals. He excitedly started to speak Arabic to us, but soon realising that we were looking at him lie he just emerged from a the drain, due to the complete incapability to understand any word he said, he started to attempt speaking ‘English’ instead. Though it was poor, we could just about make it out.
“You buy!” he said.
“No, thanks. We already have a mat,” answered my mother.
“But you buy more mat!” he replied, trying to persuade us, as most Tunisian tradesmen were trying to do.
“We are fine with mats and have one at home very similar to yours.” He kept going on.
“They no expensive, they cheap. They made by hand. Buy from me!” he said. By now my mother was getting annoyed.
“I told you, we do not need any of your stuff!” muttered my mother in an annoyed voice through her gritting teeth. Cellan and my father had just come out of the shop ahead and were looking through its window.
The shopkeeper began to get angry with is; he grabbed Lloyd and tried to drag him into the shop. The six year old was, obviously, worried, so was my mother. It was a bit shocking to me, too. I didn’t have a clue what was going on when seeing this man grasping some kid’s arm and pulling him). Eventually, from a tug-of-war type scenario, Lloyd’s arm slid through the hands of the Tunisian and got free.
But Abdul didn’t give up. He really wanted to sell something from his shop, but we didn’t want to buy, certainly after what happened and what was about to happen. He didn’t realise that, though, so he grabbed my arm and started yanking me. My arm did begin to hurt. And unable to free myself, Lloyd and my mother tried to get my away from this guy, but they couldn’t. Frantically, she called my father over. They were beginning to walk away when they heard my mother’s cries; he and Cellan then came running down towards us.
When my father arrived, he pulled the Tunisian away from me, the shopkeeper and my father started arguing, and some of it was in Arabic. My father had picked up some of the widely spoken language, because he worked in Syria for a while a few years before and he was also working in Lybia. It finished as the shopkeeper said something, but none of us understood, apart from Abdul and also my father. Suddenly, my father made him fall to the dirty, dusty and sandy path like a sack of spuds.
It took a while for us to find out what he said. But it turns out that my father heard him say something, which was inexplicably unacceptable to anyone. I don’t blame my father for doing what he did; shopkeepers should respect their customers, not force them into their shop and insult them like that.
The week went by, and the weather was changing from day to day due to the unpredictable Tunisian weather, just like Wales. But, what else was a mood killer too, was that the best weather came on the day we were to leave (which was also the same day as Ernie Wise died, unfortunately). But, in all, the week turned out to be a really good trip. We met loads of people, we visited Dougga, an ancient Roman town nearby, and we walked around the city of Sousse. We also went to this Arabic club somewhere in the north, which the buildings were built out of slabs of rock and mud. There was also traditional Arabic and Tunisian food there, which wasn’t so bad. There was also a stable for camels and an arena for bull fighting.
I found Tunisia to be full of life, yet full of risks. But we saw and did a lot during that week, which made it somewhat really interesting. And hopefully I could return there sometime.
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