lblanchard | Reading

Our surname is Grist- which is also a noun meaning the raw material out of which you make bread. It crops up most frequently in the phrase "grist to the mill". Yesterday GRiST was the solution to the NYT's Wordle game.....

And neither of us could quite believe our guesses were taking us there. At my second attempt I had "*RIST."

So the solution must be WRIST," I told myself.

And so missed getting the word in an impressive three goes and had to settle for a pretty average four.

poliphilo

You can't help noticing if you knock around with the Romans for a while that they had rather a different attitude to the erect penis. We think "Oo er, pornography!" They thought, well, something else....

Good luck charm? Defence against the evil eye? That's what the experts say, but I can't help thinking it's a bit reductive.

Anyway they had no inhibitions about displaying cocks- on walls, on floors, as personal adornment. Of course the phallus is about sex, but it's not only about sex or even primarily about sex.

I've already posted a pic of a fishy phallus from the Sousse Museum. Here's the one that hangs on the wall next to it.

Pity it's damaged- and we lack the full picture. Maybe we've lost things that would make its meaning clearer.

Charm against the evil eye or something more?

Something with layers of significance

The phallus, the eye, the two snakes- all of them potent symbols.

Also I can't help noticing that the snakes form the outline of a heart......

poliphilo

I dreamed I was invited twice to an evangelical Christian gathering and twice I stood up and said, "I refuse to submit to propaganda" and stormed out. I was sitting with my own people and we were massaging one another's hands when the Indian woman I was working with said she sensed I'd recently been in a place like the Tower of London. "You're right," I said. "Yesterday I climbed the tower of Hadlow castle along with the man who was standing behind you just now. I think his name is Cumberland." A servant came bustling up and said one of the Christians wanted to see me urgently. I went over to her, She was an old woman with coloured lines radiating from the centre of her face. I thought she was going to berate me for consorting with demons. Instead she said, "I see you too have strong connections." I thought of the Quakers and said, "Yes, I do...."

poliphilo

I took a lot of photos. Here are some I particularly like but couldn't find room for in the earlier posts

The tower at the corner of Sousse's Grand Mosque.

Ailz having henna applied to her hands in preparation for the wedding

A rather battered statue of the Emperor Hadrian

A detail from a much larger mosaic showing nymphs and satyrs having a bit of a romp

A feral cat taking a nap down by the harbour

One of the many handsome doorways in the Medina. How old is it? Mediaeval? Could be, I really don't know.....

poliphilo

We were flying home in the dark and the male voice choir inside the white noise of the plane's engines was singing. It repeated the same simple tunes again and again. They were tunes I liked but couldn't identify. Eventually a few words became attached to one of them. The words were "Under the broken arches".

Next day- or rather, later that morning- sitting in the silent Quaker Meeting, I realised a poem was forming.....

It's a Tunisian poem. I know exactly what it means and I haven't a clue. Also I haven't yet quite decided whether it's piffle or the best thing I've ever written......

For want of a better or more explanatory title I might as well call it Sousse.

Sousse

Wind stirs the golden tree
Growing tall beside the sea.
O, lover, come to me
Under the broken arches.

You are so fine to see
Me, I am nobody.
I am you, you are me
Under the broken arches.

poliphilo

I wondered in a post I wrote before the trip whether the stars would be any brighter in Sousse than they are in Eastbourne. In fact the light pollution was worse. Both are jolly little seaside towns but Sousse is much bigger.

Another thing that surprised me was the very few sub-Saharan Africans one sees. I mentioned this to John, who lived a long time in Ghana, and he said, "The Sahara is an enormous barrier. Very few people cross it in either direction."

Yet another surprising thing: I'd been told that due to Tunisia having been a French "protectorate" (meaning colony) from 1881 to 1956, the second language is French. I went round saying "Merci" and Au Revoir" to the locals but found that most of them seemed happier speaking English.

Our last full day we went to the Archaeological Museum- which is housed in the mediaeval fortifications in the town centre. It holds the second richest collection of Roman mosaics in the world- or so they claim- the richest being just up the road in Tunis.

We have plenty of Roman mosaics in Britain but most of ours look provincial beside the ones they have here. I deduce from this that Roman Africa was considerably wealthier than Roman Britain.

A number of the Sousse mosaics are to do with the sea.....

Here's Neptune

And here's the lesser sea god Oceanus

Here are fishermen and and lots of fish

And here- very cheeky- is a fishy phallus set between two stylised vulvas. The most convincing explanation I've seen of the text "O Chari" is that it refers to an aphrodisiac called charisma. This is a long shot but I think it was displayed by a seller of the stuff and is therefore an advertisement.....

After quitting the Museum we went for a wander round town and ended up by the beach at a place where there's an artificial island within wading distance. And who uses the island? Why fishermen of course....

poliphilo

This was being sold as a key ring fob but I've converted it into a pendant- and am wearing it at this very moment

It's the Hand of Hamsa- the hand that looks like a flower with (sometimes) an eye in its palm. You see it everywhere.

Here's a version painted/printed on a tile- where the eye has become a fish and is superimposed on what I take to be a goat's head

(Lots of goats in Tunisia)

We bought both these things from shops in the Medina. One of them (I forget which because all the shops sell the same touristy stuff) was a shop where the owner kindly let me sit in the corner while everyone else browsed

The Hand of Hamsa is accepted by all three local faiths. The Muslims also call it The Hand of Fatima, the Jews call it the Hand of Miriam, the Christians call it the Hand of Mary. It is regarded as a good luck charm. Use it with the fingers pointing down and it means Blessing, use it with the fingers pointing up and it repels evil. Personally I think it's older that all three faiths. It may have been employed by the Carthaginians (Tunisia used to be Carthage) and by older cultures still. I showed it to Sam, our British Bangladeshi friend, and he said the Hindus have something very similar.

My theory is that the hand is a symbol of doing, making, creating and the eye is a symbol of seeing, understanding, knowing. Put them together and what you have is a symbol of the Mind of God.

poliphilo

The wedding took place at night in a a venue that had started out- in the 80s- as a TV studio. The room was huge and high, physically very warm and emotionally very cold. Lots of people had been invited, but not so many turned up. Why? Perhaps because Achref was marrying a furriner- outside the culture, outside the religion. A DJ sat on a stage and blasted music so loud that conversation was impossible. Achref and Wendy spent much of the time sitting isolated in their finery on a sort of throne, presiding like royalty over the carryings-on.

Here's the DJ. He also had a machine that constantly spewed out soap bubbles.

And here are Achref and Wendy

We made what I'd like to call a friendship with Achref's sister-in-law. Everybody hates her we were told. She had been married off- an arranged marriage because that still goes on- to Achref's brother who is simple-minded. We think the spikiness that everyone deplores is repressed anger and emotional need. Anyway, we liked her. She's a rebel. Here she is blowing a kiss- probably to Ailz- while acting as Wendy's train-bearer.

As at the street party the women are leading the festivities. The men sat at the back in their jeans and T shirts looking uninvolved and embarrassed. This changed as the night went on. Alcohol was being consumed (discreetly) and the men livened up. Wendy's friend Jemma- now our friend too- the only other guest from Wendy's side- had brought tequila and something called "firebomb"- or something similar- and I had a shot or two. I'd never had either before.....

There was dancing as at the street party and I danced. So did Ailz. So did Mary (our sort of granddaughter) who is very shy but on this occasion was persuaded to be less so.....

Here's Mary. The pillars in the background are, I suspect, props left over from when this space was being used to churn out TV drama.....

Achref hadn't expected it but his mother and father had employed some traditional drummers and flag-wavers and masked dancers. They didn't just perform, they interacted. At one point I was handed a drum and a fez and got to bang away. Shortly after this I got to wave a flag.

My camera ain't really up to taking action shots in low light but this one works I think.

When did the wedding party end? Sometime after midnight I think, but I wasn't watching the time.....

poliphilo

Here's Ailz with Wendy and Achref- bride and groom- at the street party thrown by his family on the evening of our arrival. We were very tired, we didn't let it show, Achref apologised a lot for all the traditional things that were going on in case we found them silly and tiresome. He needn't have done. The more traditional things became the more we liked them.

There were musicians at the party. One of them played bagpipes (very like Northumbrian bagpipes said Ailz) and the other two banged drums. They sounded just like a mediaeval European band. Achref got angry because they spent more time sitting round a brazier behind a screen, drinking the wine he'd provided them with, than they did playing their music. When they played there was dancing. Women led the dancing. Women were so much in charge at the party and at the wedding three nights later that I found myself thinking, "But this Islamic society is actually a matriarchy!"

Some of the women wear traditional dress, some of them don't. How Islamic is Tunisia? About as Christian as England, I suspect- at least in the towns. The religious traditions survive, the dogma has lost its grip.

Here's a picture of one of the old traditions being enacted. This old woman was going round dobbing people's hands with henna. Women get henna dobbed on the centre of the palm, men get it on the nail of their little finger. Why? "Good luck" was the answer but there must be more to it than that......

I danced. I danced with the women, I danced with the men. I danced with anyone. There was a character referred to as the drunken uncle who was properly Dionysiac. There's video- which I don't have- of him grabbing me in a bear hug and
us going round in circles. This was at the stage of the night when Achref- sick ofthe non-compliance of the traditional trio- asked a cousin to drive a car up close, open its doors, and blast out music- less ancient-sounding now- from its speakers. I was asked to name a favourite Western piece and I said "Hey Jude" which was found and duly played and eveyone found hilarious. When the women are particularly excited they ullulate in chorus (is that the word?) like they do in Lawrence of Arabia when the tribal army leaves the desert encampment to begin the advance on Akaba. In Tunisia time is all mixed up. You're listening to Paul McCartney or Celine Dion (very popular) and then suddenly the women will loose this sound that goes back thousands of years......

Towards the end of the evening there was fire. Here's Achref holding up a flaming torch.

poliphilo

I told Jill about the flight. "The seats were really uncomfortable" I said.

"So you flew Easyjet," she said.

How could she possibly have known?

The holiday was an all inclusive deal- and from the moment we showed up at their desk in Gatwick Easyjet looked after us carefully- so I can forgive them the seats on their planes.

Here's our hotel in Sousse

Here's a tree in its garden

Here's the beach it backs onto. The figure standing on the right in the first picture is one of the hustlers who patrol the shoreline trying to sell you things. They aren't nasty but they're persistent and get to be annoying. I think he's selling pashimas.

And here's the feral cat (Sousse is full of them) who hung out on the roof under our balcony.....

You take one of these holidays and you can if you choose live in a bubble and never leave the hotel. The food is good and plentiful, the beer's nice, (though the wine's pretty dreadful), there's loud evening entertainment, there's a shop that sells all the tat you can get downtown in the Medina (but for higher prices) and the staff are friendly. We were friendly back and tipped generously- because they're not well paid- which made them even friendlier......

Guests are mostly European. Did I hear any American accents? I can't remember doing so. These books, left behind by guests who had done with them and were willing to share, give some idea of the range. (The Ruth Rendell is the Dutch translation of her Wexford novel, Kissing the Gunner's Daughter)

We didn't stay in the bubble of course because we were there for a wedding.....

poliphilo

The wind is blowing hard.....

The temperature has dropped by over ten degrees......

And we're not in Tunisia any more.

This morning instead of a late breakfast and lounging about by the bar or the swimming pool I'll be taking myself off to the Quaker Meeting.

*******

Tunisia was never a country I'd thought of visiting. I knew the Allies had fought the Germans over it's rocky territory, that the poet Sidney Keyes, whom I love, was killed there, aged twenty, fighting, according to the most recent accounts, back to back with his batman- and that was about it. But then our sort of daughter got herself engaged to a Tunisian citizen and we were invited to the wedding. Now I think I'm in love with the country.

*******

We flew out by daylight and came back at night. I took pictures from the window of the plane. We were seated at the front so the bloody wing didn't get in the way. Here's a picture of us leaving England, with Brighton and Hove down below

And here we are crossing the African coast two and a bit hours later

poliphilo

Lots of silly little jobs to do before we go away for a week.

Waking as early as I do I get to see Orion most mornings, except when there's cloud. I wonder what he'll look like when viewed from Tunisia. I assume he'll be hanging out over the desert. Could well be they'll have less light pollution there than we have in Eastbourne.

I asked Ailz, "When was the last time we flew anywhere?" "92 or 93" she said. So never this century. Neither of us like to fly. The one or two foreign holidays we've taken since the nineties we've exited our island by the Channel Tunnel. I don't mind actually being in the air. Nice view! What I dislike is airports and having my sleep patterns disrupted.

I don't expect to be online for the duration or posting anything more on LJ or DW until we get back home.

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lblanchard

September 2026

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The News from South Philly

and other points of interest

Reading

No, It Can't Be....

Phalloi

"Yes, I Do"

A Few More Pics Of Sousse

Tunisian Poem

O, I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside

The Hand Of Hamsa

The Wedding

Street Party

The Bubble

Back From Tunisia

Off To Tunisia

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September 2026

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