After signing the lease on a new apartment one Thursday evening in early August, I realized that the landlady was attempting to clean everything up for me before sundown.
Ramadan started a few days earlier, and I assume she had spent the entire day fasting. I remembered her hands shaking slightly when she handed me the key. Now she faced the prospect of delaying iftar – the breaking of the fast – to sweep some foreigner’s floor one last time before he moves in.
I hastily explained that I was not moving in tonight. The place looked clean already, but if she was set on cleaning more, it was not urgent. I wanted a few more evenings in the dorm, with the international crowd, before I moved downtown for good.
So we locked up and I left around 7:30 pm – sundown, early in the month of Ramadan. A young man about to close his street cart for the day sold me cashews for two dinar – not cheap, but I wanted to celebrate a new lease. I ate from the paper cone as I walked.
The streets of Tunis were deserted. Through gaps in fences and around corners, I could see groups of three or four people, usually men, breaking their fast, talking with their mouths full in the happy, universal cadence reserved for holiday meals. Everyone else was indoors, with family or friends and the human anticipation of a long-anticipated meal.
Turning onto Avenue de la Liberté, the emptiness shifted from interesting to unsettling. The tree-lined street is among the busiest parts of the city during the day and night alike. Traffic is constant and chaotic. But just after sundown during Ramadan, it was deserted. A snatch of conversation drifted over a high fence. I saw no cars pass.
Stopping by the Monoprix for bread and yogurt, I found the aisles empty and five male employees sitting down to iftar next to the entrance. Two minutes later, I had to interrupt their meal to ring up my purchases.
Back on Avenue de la Liberté, the feeling of walking through a post-apocalyptic city set in. This road that I walked at least twice a day for a month was strangely frozen and almost silent.
A lone, unhurried figure appeared in the street ahead. Walking toward me in the middle of the road, a young man in a red T-shirt raised his hand in greeting. “You are American?” he asked in French. Yes, I am. Excited, he pulled out a tattered business card. Someone in his family was studying management at UMass Amherst. That’s close to home, I explained, refusing to break stride.
Done with his buildup, his tone turned urgent and he asked for a dinar. I declined, palm up. Give me something for my brother, he said, and now I noticed the bored-looking young man in dark shorts and flip-flops lying on a piece of cardboard, surrounded by brick rubble from a construction site, raising his head to look with dull interest at whoever his brother was talking to.
“Donnes-moi quelque chose,” said the one on his feet, and again I raised my hand in denial.
“Ici,” I said, “des cajous,” and tipped some of my precious snack into his palm. They are salty, toasted – extravagant. I walked on and he shared the meager charity with his brother.
It was a relief to arrive back at the dorm. Busy, tree-lined Avenue de la Liberté had become a back alley. Just after sundown during Ramadan, the only people in the streets of Tunis are those with nowhere to go.
Allan in Tunis 