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| Sunset in Hammamet 25 April 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| Hammamet 22 April 2023. Nèdeem M. |
Please credit any text or photo: ‘by Nèdeem M.’ More photos in the album Sunset in Hammamet
Hammamet 12 April - 02 October 2023
Average monthly salary in 2022: 300 €. Minimum salary is 137 €
Population in 2022: 60000+ in the city and 100000 inhabitants in the whole municipality.
Tourism is the backbone of Hammamet’s economy..
An account by a Tunisian who had not stayed in Tunisia since 2000 for longer than a week or two. This stay in the seaside city of Hammamet is in no way representative of Tunisia, but a few common aspects of the life of Tunisians are there, especially that a few dwellers of the city have moved from the interior of the country. I arrived in the middle of Ramadan 2023.
A better area with better infrastructure is the one between Hammamet and Nabeul: 5/6 kilometres from Nabeul, around the known clothing store Hammadi Abid.
Yasmine Hammamet is not included in the following account.
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Contradictions and extremes are a reflection of the form of ‘capitalist development’.
The best time to visit if you can’t bear the heat is end of May/beginning of June. In July and August you leave home at 9 in the morning and the temperature is already 29/30 degrees.
The first things that grip you when you arrive at the city centre and walk on towards the seaside is the view of the sea/the Gulf of Hammamet, the sun and the clear sky in the summer months, the sunset, a walk on the corniche and a drink in one of the lined up cafés and café-restaurants facing the sea.
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| Yuman Café-Restaurant. Hammamet 02 May 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| Corniche Hammamet 02 May 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
People are generally so friendly and helpful. They are also very spontaneous; easy to talk to and even have a long chat with from the first time; comfortable with being photographed.
Warning: as of August 2023 – and it has been going for a few years — traffic lights do not exist. They used to.
Hotels charge a 2-dinar tax per night. It might not feature in your booking.
Taxis are all yellow and they are three three types: taxis with a meter, collective taxis, and big ‘Toyota’ collective taxis. The latter are the cheapest. To take a taxi with a meter from the city centre is no problem. A long queue of taxis would be waiting for you.
To take a small collective taxi, you will need to ‘fight’ your way in sometimes. People queue at the post office – they take a number from a machine, sit and wait for their turn – or at a bank, and they queue for bread because of the shortage of flour, but they don’t queue for a taxi!
There is a big bus that does Hammamet Sud-Nabeul. It might take 30/35 minutes wait before it passes. In theory, there is one every half an hour, which means it might be overcrowded. Ticket costs between 0.21 and 0.30 € for a destination within Hammamet.
Hammamet-Nabeul, Hammamet-Tunis and Hammamet-Sousse are major routes. The last two are served bu an air-conditioned bus. Yet there is no timetable, and the ticket window in Hammamet centre opens only before the coach arrives.
Never drink tap water. 1l of mineral water costs 0.20 € at the shops, but it may cost 1 € in a restaurant or café. Locals do not drink tap water. They used to when water was more or less drinkable. During most of my life in Tunisia from childhood to after graduation we drank tap water. Not anymore, and it looks that the situation now and availability of water is going to get worse. Agriculture and industries consume most of the water here.
Fruits and vegetables should be purchased at the shops and street vendors rather than from supermarkets. A supermarket tends to have refrigerated produce. Generally, the quality of fruits and vegetables has deteriorated and it is more and more expensive. Independent grocers street grocers have better quality, especially in the morning.
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| Hammamet, 02 May 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| Hammamet, 20 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| Occasionally, fish and seafood are sold on the beach. Hammamet 28 April 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
Alcohol is available at the Magasin Général and served at most of the 3/4 restaurants facing the sea in the city centre. There is no imported wine. (No shortages of bars and restaurants that serve alcoholic drinks in Hammamet Sud.)
One of the things you cannot miss to notice is the abundance of stray cats.
Cash transactions is still the norm on the means of transport, at small coffee shops, grocers and small shops. Supermarkets and some restaurants accept credit cards. An example of uneven development: In Yasmine Hammamet transactions are carried out digitally.
Signs of shops are mainly in French and English. Cafés are open until late. Magasin Général is open until 22:00 and its alcoholic drinks section closes at 20:00. The latter is closed on Friday.
Only an exceptional driver would give you the way as a pedestrian. The zebra crossings are not respected; most drivers drivers ignore it. A driver might stop if you looked a Westerner or a tourist or because exceptionally they are kind. In one instance, a 10/12 years old school girl was waiting to cross the road, but no motorist stopped to let her pass. She had to cross the road with me. People might just stand in the middle of the way on a pavement or park their motorbikes anywhere with no respect to pedestrians. In most cases where there is a café, the pavement is also taken over by customers. As a consequence, along the bad, very narrow or unmaintained pavements in a few area and the absence of law enforcement, it is very common to see people walk on the road along passing vehicles.
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| Barraket Essahel - Hammamet 15 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
Traffic accidents compared: In 2021 Tunisia had a population of 12.26 million and UK had 67.33 million. Tunisia recorded 1058 casualties in 2022. An estimated 1,762 reported road deaths in the UK in the same year.
It is mandatory for motorcyclists and anyone accompanying them to wear a helmet. However, for 4 months I saw only two motor-bikers putting a helmet on.
You might see three people or a whole family of 4 on a motorbike with not a single person wearing a helmet. Even Italians living in the city do not wear it. In 1986, the Italian government introduced a law that made the use of helmets compulsory among motorcycle riders of all ages and moped riders 18 years of age and under.
A street vendor showed me a road accident that had just took place in the city of Sousse. It was very difficult to him to understand that reducing the number of road accidents is conditioned by the general level of development of the whole country: infrastructure, quality of cars, implementing the law, awareness, etc. The richer a country, the better those conditions are met. He, like many others, was blaming the people although initially he invoked the stress and psychological state of people in general. Yet the lack of fear of the state was his main argument. It was the former president Essebsi (2014-2019) who was strongly advocating the re-establishment of the ‘prestige of the state’.
A collective taxi-driver and a passenger agreed that the situation is had because people do not respect the law and there is no law enforcement. The driver gave the example of a louage owner whose car is so deteriorated and old that must not be on the road, let alone carry 7/8 people. He said that such an owner could renew his licence by simply bribing someone with 100 DT.
Public transport is still affordable and very cheap when you have euros or dollars. If you are going to explore the city for a while or for say a month stay, use the collective taxi. A journey costs between 0.20 to 0.35 €.
According to the data available online, there are around 8,000 Italians in the city. Many, if not most of them, are pensioners. One of Italian women’s main daily topic is food! Between 60 and 80 years old, in 2023, and still talk bout whether ‘pasta normale’ is better than other pastas!
Hammami women are everywhere in the economic sectors – even as road sweepers and rubbish collectors. In fact, most road sweepers are women, and they look migrants from the interior of the country.
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| Road sweepers, Rue Taïb El Ezzabi, Hammamet 4 July 2023. Photo by Nèdeem M. |
As of 2023, the Prime Minister of the country (sacked in early August 2023), the Justice Minister, the Finance Minister, the Minister of Trade and Export Development, and the Mayor of Tunis are women.
Sadly, child labour is allowed/tolerated: children are often seen on the street – or approach customers in cafes and restaurants – selling tissues and flowers. In one occasion, 7/8 children vendors approached me in. café in no more than 15 minutes time span, trying to sell me something.That is another example of the absence of the state and law enforcement,
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| A boy trying to sell flowers to Italian residents. Hammamet 14 June 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
Some people collect plastic bottle to make ends meet. One told me that he sold them for 12 cents the kilo!
Uneven economic development has its paradoxes in people’s dress as well, behaviour and linguistic jargon. A paradox: During a visit to a dentist at the reception the Quran was played on a screen. In the operation room a it was Western song.
A few cafés are populated by men only, but many are frequented by all sexes. Men-women interaction in public spaces is smooth and friendly.
Smoking is allowed in all cafés. The exception I saw was Livre Plus Café Culturel – a very small mixed café in the city centre usually packed with students and youngsters in general.The façade of the cafés features photos of famous Arab intellectuals: the historian Ibn Khaldun, the novelist Naguib Mahfoudh, the reformer at-Tahar al-Haddad, the feminist and political activist Nawaal al-Saadawy, the poet Mahmoud Darwish, and others. The first president of Tunisia – Habib Bourguiba is also included. And two non-Arabs: Voltaire and Dostoyevsky.
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| Livre Plus café - Hammamet 03 May 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
There some of very small cafés frequented by young people of different genders. The Big Town Café and The Black Tag are two of them. The latter is usually packed with young girls and boys smoking and drinking tea and coffee.
You order a coffee/drink or you take a seat and order one. You pay when you leave. Most famous cafés/cafe-restaurants do not have Arabic names: Canari, My Wave, La Rambla, La Sirene, The Tug, Bello, L’Escale, Choca Moca, Le Pêcheur, Le Petit Pêcheur … Only few of them – Canari upstairs, Choca Moca and My Wave – have a few plugs to charge your device. Café Délice is a big café, but not in the centre.
Opposite Canari is the Association of the Preservation of Heritage. Sometimes there is a live classical music on. Below are a photo followed by a short video.
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| Hammamet 26 July 2023. A photo by Nédeem M. |
There are hardly any public toilets in the city centre. Foreigners should have no problem accessing toilets in cafes and restaurants. These ones are in the city centre and facing the sea, but have been closed for a long time, apparently. Ironically, it is just opposite the municipality (the council). The day before I left, there was a tourist showing that stinking filth to his partner.
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| Corniche Hammamet 07 June 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
From observation, most middle-aged and old women wear a headscarf; many young girls do not. Some girls reveal half of their bosoms, wear mini skirts and reveal their bellies, like in Western city. Women’s dress cut across class and neighbourhoods; there is no conformity. In the hot months, many girls/women wear shorts and look like Western ones, especially the Tunisians with fair skin. Many young girls wear shorts in summer. Ironically, a few of those who put on a headscarf also wear tight clothes and reveal body curves. Is woman’s hair the main source of enticement?
It is common to see girls with and without headscarves together or a mother wearing a headscarf while her daughter or daughters go without and are in shorts or skirts above the knee. a few girls smoke in public, teenage girls on scooters, some locals walk their dogs on the Corniche.
The city embodies diversity: a middle-aged woman wearing a headscarf and a long black robe in June and a few meters away another middle-aged woman wearing a short skirt; in some neighbourhoods a man can invite his girlfriend to his apartment, in some others a landlord would set the conditions of not bringing women to the house. Comes the swimming season, women and girls swim in shorts, bikinis, or with all their clothes on.
Around the secondary school Mohammad Boudhina, 98% of the school girls do not wear the headscarf. On the Corniche, you sometimes see young couples cuddling and hugging each other. In the neighbourhood where I stayed, the landlords wife a conservative and wear the headscarf. Her neighbour, a woman in her twenties, does not wear the headscarf and rides a scooter wearing right leggings. Others could be seen wearing gym outfits. A few women smoke in public. A girl in her early 20s wearing a dress with a long cleavage, sitting legs-crossed in a café. Two girls were wearing mini-skirts and taking selfies.
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| Tunisian girls posing for a photo. Sidi Bouhdid, Hammamet 05 June 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
Women with headscarves drive cars and motorbikes, go to the gym and cuddle on the beach. Once at a restaurant not on the seaside two young girls were in their very short shorts - almost showing their butt cheeks. Both of them were smoking, chatting about Instagram. In another café a girl was wearing very short jean shorts. The manager apparently knows her as ‘a hooker’, so she asked her to leave the café saying to her :”You are not dressed in a respected way.” Next door, a well-decorated café with big screens and signs and writings in English, accepts anybody, and unlike the other struggling café, business is doing much better!
It all reflects a sea of fluidity and a refutation of (cultural) essentialism. A ‘Western’ visitor staying for a weak might actually get their prejudiced reinforced, as they might see only the surface or would see very little. Many tourists navigate between the room, the beach and the swimming pool.
Like in any other tourist city in the country tourists wear whatever they want. No change has occurred to what was the norm in the 1980s to 2000’s. It is interesting to see how ‘Muslim’ women here are freer than the ‘Muslim’ women in France to wear whatever they want.
Wearing the niqab in Tunisia in general is very rare. Tunisians themselves find it weird when they see a woman wearing one. In a city like Hammamet, a woman wearing a niqab could be a tourist from the Gulf.
Deep down, a few men hold a patriarchal view of women, especially middle-aged man who have not finished their studies, let alone university studies. This is sometimes expressed openly in outbursts.
Hammamet is also full of many people who migrated from the interior of the country – from small towns and villages – and a few of them still hold the same views about women and women hold the same views about themselves. Yet contradiction exists: some girls have adopted behaviour and dress code different from their mother’s. Generational conflict can be easily noticed.
Something else noticeable among those who have moved from the interior is their use of masculine and feminine you in both pronouns and verbs. In contrast, on the coast and in the capital there is only one second person singular like in English or French. Tunisian Arabic is less gendered among the ‘natives’ of Sousse, Nabeul, Tunis, etc. They also use ‘g’ like in girl instead of ‘q’. Many of the ‘migrants’ wear distinct clothes.
A few women though also express assertive power and presence. One day on a main street I heard a woman swearing loudly at some on the phone using ‘go f***k your self’.
Men in cafes talk a lot about football. One hardly hear people talking about religion or world affairs. Occasionally, you hear people talk about Tunisian politics.
Examples:
Four young women – one wearing the headscarf – their chats for more than an hour revolves around the sea and swimming, a new song has been just released, an earring, daily or old stories/incidents, the mundane in general. Apparently the one with the headscarf is married.
‘Globalisation’: it is common to hear young girls speak about Instagram. Some Italian men are married to Tunisian women and some have Tunisian girlfriends or female friends.
A young girl with her boyfriend: passionately expressing her like about Shakira, she seems to criticise her or whoever invites her to Tunisia as well.
Another example: four women learning German on their own in the Tug café. Western music was being played. The café is exactly opposite the Jabli Mosque on Avenue Habib Bourguiba.
Internet access is very open, including sites with adult content. Capitalist ‘modernity’ with all its contradictions in a society like the Tunisian one is so obvious. Overall, most people do not observe the daily prayers and their belief is mainly expressed in Ramadan. In practice, Western culture is dominant here, even when you see women with headscarves. Daily life is governed by capitalist relations. One could imagine someone watching porn while the neighbourhood mosque is calling for prayer or reciting verses from the Quran.
There are a few gym centres and a few pet shops. There is no shortage of dentists and compared to London or Paris they are cheap. A session with a hygienist costs less than 30€/£26.
There is a big contrast between the nice looking and well-constructed two-storey villas and very bad pavements and and a few dirty streets. The further you go from the touristic areas, the dirtier the streets are. In the city centre and the tourist zone, there are bins, but in the neighbourhood expect to find rubbish everywhere. There are very few public bins. In fact, most streets and alleys do not have the bins the council is supposed to provide. There is no recycling either. From to the big wheeled bin of the neighbourhood, all rubbish is put in the same container. Nothing changed from when I left Tunisia in 2000.
If it happens you are visiting during the Eid of Sacrifice, you would be shocked by the absence of the state and lack of responsibility – or of ‘civility’ as a French woman put it – of a few Tunisians, littering the streets with the waste generated after slaughtering the sheep. It is very similar to what I saw in Fes in Morocco. Again, the culprit here is the absence of the state and the local authority in particular. In the capital the municipality banned people who live in apartments to slaughter the sheep in their residence or in the block of flats in general. The municipality allocated areas in the city where such an operation must take place. In Hammamet – ‘the best city in Tunisia’ according to many Tunisians – no such ban was passed.
In some areas of Hammamet, where there are villas with garages, for example, the slaughter of the sheep is hardly noticed and the neighbourhood is kept clean.
Shopping at a grocer people grab a small plastic bag for one vegetable or fruit then another bag for another vegetable or fruit, etc. In the old days we would use the same plastic bowl then we carry everything in the shopping bag or bags we brought with us from home. One grocerv claimed that the plastic bags he provides for customers costs him a 1000 DT per year! There is a culture of the use of plastic bags that spread from the West globally a few decades ago and there is a business that profits from such a use.
Apart from the two main high streets, Avenue La République and Avenue Ettahrir where there plenty of shops and restaurants, there many shops of all sorts in the neighbourhoods.
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| An antiques shop in Avenue Ettahrir. Hammamet 05 May 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
A few people have a shop as part of their house. And as part of the informal economy, one cannot fail to notice a stall or van selling groceries, mainly fruits and vegetables.
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| Loads of garlic. Hammamet 04 May 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
Avenue Taeb Azzabi, lined with villas, leads to the beach. There is also a big supermarket, Al-Anouar on the Corniche and next to La Sirene Café Restaurant, where you find all what you need, including local and imported foods. This side of the city is called Bel Azur – a touristic area of hotels, apartment for rent, bungalows, restaurants, etc.
On the same street there a sports centre. The photo below features a match of handball between two Tunisian women teams.
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| Hammamet Sports Centre 01 July 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
In May the African Wrestling Championship was held in Hammamet.
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| Hammamet Sports Centre May 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| Karaté girls. Hammamet 08 June 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
On 18 July between My Wave café-restaurant to Sidi Bou Hadid, there were 5 broken rubbish bins – more than half of the bins available. I reported that the municipality. To this day I have not received any response. It is part and parcel of a state on the verge of financial bankruptcy, mismanagement and lack of priorities even in one of the supposedly best city and a very touristic one.
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| A photo by Nèdeem Mahjoub |
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| A photo by Nèdeem Mahjoub. |
South of the Jabli area and towards Baraket Essahel through Avenue de La Paix and the round about that bears the same name, the streets are generally much cleaner and there are some nice villas in contrast to the area around the hospital, for example.
I don’t watch TV. When I sinned and put it on it was the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad. Here is what was on at the same time on two of the Tunisian channels: a guest of a weekly show and the famous movie The Message.
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| Tunisian TV channels 27 September 2023. Photos by Nèdeem M. |
Baraket Essahel and Moncef Bey – Hammamet Sud
It is an intersection that takes you Hammamet Sud, to Sousse via the motorway, to Hammamet centre and to a high street with many shops as well as the louage station. The bus station is next to the petrol station.
Transport could be frustrating here, especially taking a taxi towards the city centre. There is a bus, but you might wait for half an hour.
The high street of Baraket Essahel enjoys a wide range of shops and stores also has a few cafés. I saw about eight cafés and, unlike Hammamet city centre or Hammamet Sud, for example, they are all occupied by men only. The high street is dirty.
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| Barraket Essahel 01 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
15 minutes walk and you see a line of stalls selling fruits and vegetables. If you want to taste the traditional bread and the healthier one, ask for the bakery that sells ‘khobz tabouna’, which is on a street off the main one, the left hand side.
Take the opposite direction towards Hammamet Sud. If you are walking, use the left side of the road, for it is cleaner and the pavement is much better. There is Anuar supermarket on the right hand side, a bakery on the opposite side, and a bit down the road, there is Alimentaria – alcoholic drinks selling point.
You might smell a strong stench of a sewage off the roundabout. I asked a resident about it and he said that the smell had been around for “20 years”! Is that possible? The smell does not seem to be permanent.
Before you reach Pain D’or, turn left at the roundabout. You will pass by a big hall for parties, including wedding parties, called the Palladium. In August I saw almost everyday tens of women dressed in heavy traditional dress joining the wedding party or parties of the day. Café-resto Aloha on your left – with its indoors non-smoking area! It is a big café and plays ‘Western’ music all the time.
Gradually, you notice that Hammamet has become cleaner, and how ‘capitalist modernity’ is centralised: better pavements, better wheeled rubbish bins, but no small bins, larger roads, nice and expensive apartments, hotels and other amenities. Cafés tend to have mixed-gender customers.
Café of the People and Café Bobo are down the road. The street is Moncef Bey. It is a long street that hosts clubs, cafés and restaurants. The Pacha Club then the famous Calypso night club and restaurant are here. Reportedly, Calypso night club is the most famous discotheque in Tunisia. The apart-hotel Lella Halima is on the opposite side of the road. There is Casa Mama resto-café, and a sushi restaurant further ahead.
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| Calypso night club. Hammamet Sud 15 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| Moncef Bey. Hammamet Sud 17 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
The rent above is equivalent to a monthly rent of a studio flat in London.
Nearby you might try the traditional bowel of ‘lablabi’: you are given old bread, you use your fingers and fill a bowel with small pieces of the bread then hand it to the one behind the person in charge, who add boiled chickpeas, one or two eggs depending on your choice, cumin and salt, and the famous chilly paste harissa. You can ask to opt out of any of the ingredients you don’t like.
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| Lablaabii. Hammamet Sud 05 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
One Thousand and One Nights on the same road offers an ‘oriental’ dancing show. Food and beer, wines, whiskey and liqueurs as well as soft drinks are served.
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| Mille et Une Nuits, Rue Moncef Bey, Hammamet 03 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
Off Moncef Bey there is a huge bar – Latino, a huge place for drinking and it is a also a DJ venue. On Moncef Bey I observed the very ‘Westernised” Tunisian teenagers (girls and boys): their clothing, the cars they drive, the language they use, etc. All to be contrasted with the other youth occupying the cafés in Barraket Essahel where there are no gender mixing, high level of unemployment, etc.
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| Latino. Hammamet Sud 05 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem. M. |
Centre Culturel area and Oued Baten: Modern and cleaner.
A few minutes drive or by a collective taxi from the city centre takes you to Oued Baten area where restaurants/bars and clubs. Restaurant l’Opera, near Theatre Hammamet, for instance turns into a disco after 11pm, where Tunisians are like Londoners or Parisians drink, dance and more. Becks sell for 6.5DT/less than 2 €. Further a head is the Opium, with heavy security at the door, but it is for a special category of people, and it is pricy.
Opposite Hammamet theatre Costa [not the chain], Café Theatre, La Palma café. Exceptionally, La Palma has a non-smoking area downstairs. They play Arabic and ‘Western’ music. Massimo café: big, terrace, two screens, music. There is a gym as well. Further down towards Hammamet, there is All for Animal pet-shop, Blackwood and Big Ben cafés, among others.
Further down, direction Oued Baten/Baraket Essahel, turn right and you may try Tunisia cuisine, including fish and octopus at ‘Macarona and Kammouniya’ – the name of this small restaurant is written in Arabic only.
The long road is full of shops and restaurants. And even here, and in contradiction with the modern cafés and restaurants, there are hardly any rubbish bins except the big ones, which are far from each other.
A few minutes drives in the direction of Baraket Essahel and before the bridge, there is the famous restaurant Mashawi el Golla that serves Tunisian dishes, including couscous but also grilled fish and meat.
I tried it once, but because hygiene might be compromised, I did not think I should go back again. One of the servers picked up 5 fish from the fridge with his hands. Then he immediately put the fish aside, took a plate and picked up meat for the grill with the same bare hands that had just touched the fish. It was a very busy day for the workers who kept running to serve customers. I do think though that that was not the reason of the lack of proper handling of food. It is the lack of training and awareness. When I pointed out the incident to the line manager, he asked the server to listen to my remark, then asked him to go and wash his hands. Ironically, the same line manager who had been in charge of the till, went to finish filling the plates. He did exactly the same thing: touched the fish and then then meat with his bare hands. I commented on the act again while leaving. The line manager went silent. They must have hated me.
Summer 2023: From the beginning of July until mid-August, the Civil Protection in Tunisia counted the death of 73 people by drowning.
Cost of living
There are shortages of food such coffee, milk, sugar, butter, flour, vegetable oil, and hundreds of medicines. The country has been in an economic, financial and political crisis. The main reason is that the state does mot have the financial resources to certain commodities, especially the subsidised ones. People queue for bread. Very few traditional bread bakers left: you need to ask people where to find ‘khobz tabouna’, which is a healthier bread made of semolina, sometimes mixed with flour nowadays because of the high price of durum flour. Semolina is the basis of couscous – the ‘national’ dish.
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| Couscous. Hammamet 03 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
“Tunisia only produces 10-30% of its bread flour and is therefore heavily reliant on foreign imports and vulnerable to market fluctuations. Rather than increasing production of grain, a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture notes that the amount of land seeded to grow grain has been falling. According to a 2021 report by the academic climate consortium Cascades, “Tunisia is considered to be one of the countries most exposed to climate change in the Mediterranean."
https://www.mei.edu/publications/tunisias-food-shortages-shine-spotlight-its-core-economic-failings
About half of Tunisia’s grain imports come from Ukraine, and according to a recent report from the International Crisis Group, Tunisia is in debt to Ukraine to the tune of $300 million (274 million €).
By the second half of August it appeared that the shortage of flour and semolina was easing.
The Dinar is weak due to trade deficit, where Tunisia spends more on imports, and lack of investments. Inflation is high.
As Reuters reported in June, according to the head of Tunisia's Syndicate of Pharmacies “the Central Pharmacy owed about 1 billion dinars ($325 million) to suppliers. The officials there said it owed about 800 million dinars, adding that public insurance companies and hospitals were delaying paying their bills by up to a year. The body owed large sums to foreign suppliers, which had restricted their sales to Tunisia in response.” https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/tunisias-financial-crisis-leaves-sick-struggling-find-medicine-2023-06-01/
Tunis-based journalist Elizia Volkmann argues that “what we are seeing is the net result of a much deeper problem: an economy that has stagnated due to family-based monopolies facilitated by the state and compounded by both internal tariffs and external unfavorable trade deals.” https://www.mei.edu/publications/tunisias-food-shortages-shine-spotlight-its-core-economic-failings
The same applies to coffee beans. Tunisia through the Office of Commerce has a monopoly on the importation of coffee, and recently of poor quality coffee. Coffee production has been recently affected by droughts in a few countries. Countries like Brazil has seen a big drop in production. That has impacted on the ability of countries like Tunisia to import good quality of coffee. Furthermore, coffee, like bread, is subsidised by the Tunisian state.
In August there was even a talk about whether Tunisia can avoid bankruptcy.
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| Graffiti. Hammamet Sud 08 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem. M. |
Average salary is 271€ a month, which is at least 9 times lower than the average salary in the private sector in France and the UK. Should I retire tomorrow on a full state pension and live in Tunisia. My monthly state pension alone – assuming I did not pay into a private pension fund – would be slightly higher than the monthly salary of a Tunisian university teacher.
The price of nuts such cashew and almonds are like in the UK. Pistachio is more expensive in Tunisia. Same for banana: 2-3€ the kilo!
You can get a local beer in a restaurant facing the sea for 1.25€.
I fixed a nose pad and a fallen lens of my glasses for 1.50 €. In fact, the optician did not want to charge me for putting the lens back.
Like many in the MENA region, Tunisians eat a lot of bread. The staple is heavily subsidised. A small baguette costs only 0.055 €. Yes, 0.055 cents, and that is not a typo. A wholewheat/multigrain small loaf, however, costs 0.30 €. Since most people eat a lot of bread, a better quality is unaffordable. A waiter in a café in Hammamet earns 20 dinars (less than 6 €) a day, and most waiters in the country do not get tips.
“The government-subsidised bread is nutritionally poor. It is made with low-quality, highly refined white flour and so-called bread improvers, and uses the highest amount of salt in the Mediterranean region.”
As of 28 of September, bread was still rationed. At a bakery the woman behind the counter refused to sell 10 subsidised baguettes to a man, saying everybody had to ear. Some people go around the restrictions by bread from more than one bakery.
Apple iPad 9th generation (2021) 10.2'' 64GO WIFI + Cellular costs 1769 dinars (526 €). That is three months salary of a waiter or a net month salary of a secondary school teacher, short of 200 dinars.
I am a graduate as a secondary school teacher. If I stayed in Tunisia, I would be living with the parents or sharing a home with two or three people to survive in a big city. It is different for those who work in the interior of the country where rent and the cost of living in general is cheaper. A classmate of mine spent a few years in the Gulf teaching. He is now over 50 years old, rents, and his house in Nabeul is still under construction.
For a visitor to Hammamet like me whose income is in Pound Sterling, it costs me less than the price of a small cappuccino at Costa in London to take a return collective taxi, another return taxi from Barakat Essahel to Centre Culturel de Hammamet and have an ‘express petit dejeuner’ (breakfast) at La Palma – a medium rage café – including leaving a tip.
A young waiter of 25 years old told me that he wanted to leave the country and he did not want his corpse to go back to Tunisia one day. I knew a friendly cashier that I used to exchange a few words with whenever I went for shopping. He usually showed a grim face. In one instance he said that he was thinking of selling one of his kidneys! These are workers who earn between 600 and 800 DT a month.
A receptionist at a hotel told a couple of stories: a man having a phone shop overnight took a decision to flee the country ‘illegally’. He took his wife and daughter with him.
Rent
Very expensive in July and August.
A two-bedroom apartment by the sea costs between 1500 € to 3000 € / month. A villa with a swimming pool far from the sea costs between 1000 and 3000 € / month. A saying goes like this: “In summer anyone who has a hole, lets it out.” Here is a sample: Bel Azur apartments – price according to the guards of the building and a waiter in a café nearby.
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| Apartments overlooking the beach. A photo by Nèdeem. M. |
If you are renting for a long term, and you are not a observent Muslim, a home close to a mosque might bother you, as the call of the prayer is five times a day – one of them is at dawn. Recommended areas are Mrezgua, Hammamet Opera area, and there are good apartments 5 kilometres before Nabeul.
A few landlords ask for cash payment so they avoid declaring income snd paying taxes.
Common expressions:
Ilhamdillah/ilhamdulla الحمد لله socio-linguistically could mean ‘OK/alright’ (literally ‘thanks be to God) or to express a sense of resignation and submission to circumstances, as well as an expression that reflects patience despite one’s state or conditions; it could be worse. When a person is in a good health and has no problems they would use it too. Thus the double function of ‘religious’ belief. The expression is commonly used by observants and non-observants alike.
‘God provide’. الله يجيب القسم. A common expression used when people looking for a job or when their business is not doing well. Although people are aware of the reasons of not finding a job or why the business is struggling, ultimately, it is All who decides on such matters. The counter-revolution maintained a significant deal of nepotism. One wonders how does the expression ‘Allah provides’ apply when someone gets a job through a friend or a relative or a bribe. Lack of power and control of such matters reinforces the belief in the intervention of a supernatural force. Even welfare benefits for the unemployed in Tunisia are non-existent. One would imagine how many would use the expression if there was full employment, i.e. finding a job was guaranteed or taken for granted.
When I asked a waiter in a coffee shop why it seems that the business is not doing well, he said: “Allah provide.” I remember when I asked an Iranian who manages his own coffee shop in London the same question, he said: “There is too much competition.” Both the Tunisian and the Iranian believe in Allah!
‘Rabbii yehdii’ ر بي يهدي ‘May Allah guide’ is often said when others do wrongs or bend the rules. It is also another way of resigning before the wrong. It is a passive reaction that annuls punishment. I might sound blasphemous if I would argue that for decades the same wrong actions, which could have been dealt with by applying the laws and ruled and abiding to them, have persisted despite people always saying ‘may Allah guide’ yet no guidance has materialised. People feel powerless: weak institutions and people do not abide by the law when it exists.
In reality, weak institutions, which are part of a weak political economy of the country, are the ones responsible. Leaving change of behaviour to Allah means perpetuating the wrongs. Fortunately, not everybody believes that way: those with higher education and those who live in affluent neighbourhood would deal with such an issue in rational and institutional manner.
‘Ilkhobza morra’ (literally meaning: the loaf of bread is bitter). It is to express how hard to make ends meet.
Allah yenoub a response to a Beggar asking for financial help. It literally means ‘may Allah gives you instead of me’.
A few Tunisians – as well as Algerians and Moroccans – still call any European or Westerner in general ‘gowrii’, meaning ‘infidel’. Most Tunisians do not know its meaning though. It is a remnant of the language used at the time of the French colonisation of Tunisia. The word is in fact Turkish, which means it goes back to before the French presence in North Africa, and it mean infidel, describing all who are not ‘Mohammedans’, with especial reference to Christians. During the Turkish Tanzimat (1839-1876), the use of the term by Muslims for non-Muslims was prohibited to prevent problems occurring in social relationships. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giaour. A few people do use ‘fransāwy’ and ‘fransawiyya’ (French) for masculine and feminine respectively. Similarly, ‘inglizee, ingliziyya’ (English), ‘talyēnee, talyēniyya’ (Italian) are also used when people know the nationality of the person.
Anecdotes and incidents
A mother with her daughter in a cafe. The mother is wearing a headscarf, the daughter is not, but T-shirt and jeans and working on her laptop. A Tunisian came in wearing tight leggings and a tight top. Her ‘big’ arse floating all over the place. The mother looked at her and cringed. Wearing tight leggings is not uncommon here. I wonder how many times a day the mother would react that way.
A grocer - a man - attacked a woman who complained about the price of banana saying “this is the type of woman who votes for the Annahdha – the Islamic Party. A few Tunisians put the blame on this party for the deterioration of their living standard, for they dis not solve the country’s economic problems when they were in the government.
The owner of the house I rented admitted that he did not know how to use the washing machine in his house. His 19/20-year old son said that only his mum does the laundry!
In the first place where I stayed for a week, the landlord mentioned online that guests as unmarried couples are accepted. My current landlord had set the condition of not bringing any woman in. He is a petit bourgeois observing Muslim, owner of a shop in the old town.
I met a divorced woman. She was very friendly and helpful. She works in message. We kept in touch. One Saturday evening she suggested we went to the bar-restaurant Opium in Hammamet Sud. I was there with her and her two teenage age daughter. They both smoke and drink. The music was so loud and smokey, and a few men, women and teenagers dancing on a variety of songs. It was not my cup of tea.
She asked whether I wanted a bath and message in the hotel where she works. One day she phoned me wondering whether I wanted a message. She said she would give one at my place.
A man, apparently French but speak some Tunisian Arabic, with his partner were doing their shopping at a small shop of spices, cereals, nuts, olives, etc. They filled around 10 small plastic bags with different things. The shop keeper weighted all of them on a scale that displays weight and price. Before paying the man asked whether a receipt could be provided. There is no machine that provides receipts. The shopkeeper said that they did not provided receipts.
Once the man left without buying the goods, the shopkeeper said: “Some people think that all Tunisians are cheaters.” I intervened and said that the man has the right to ask for a receipt.” The woman at the counter still argued that she did not have to provide a receipt. Then I gave her at least three reasons why a should must be provided and that In France, for example, you are entitled to ask for a receipt even when you purchase a coffee. Then she understood. This is not the case in supermarkets, restaurants and cafes receipts are provided. She is an old woman who, like many other small businesses, has been running the shop for decades in the same way: customers pay only in cash, and no receipts provided.
Like a few landlords, shopkeepers avoid paying taxes. An owner of a restaurant told that it was better to stay like that: paying in cash only. That has had a long going impact on the state revenues.
I met an old Tunisian who has lived in Britain for more than 45 years. We had a few exchanges. He believed that the revolution of 2011 was ‘a mistake’ and dictatorship was better and could even bring ‘development’. He cited Singapore as an example! He believes that wearing the headscarf in Tunisian must be banned!
He is critical of Tunisians who are religious or conservative, but he, for instance said that an owner of a hotel who was making an extension in his hotel, but some of the people he knew accused the owner of being a ‘thief’ and they asked where he got the money from. My Tunisian-British interlocutor believed that “Allah provided him with money.” Yet he is critical of what he called the ‘bourgeoisie’!
His interest in the news reminds me of many Brits. For instance, he twice mentioned the news of a man in Nottingham, England, who killed three people. The following day he wondered whether I read the news about a submarine that was lost while in its visit to the wrecks of the Titanic. The news of the drowning of around 500 people in the Mediterranean in the same week got almost as much of his attention as the two other incidents. Paradoxically, he is very critical of Western hypocrisy and the Tunisian state. He is dismissive of the Tunisian opposition though.
Apparently, a man was beating his wife at home could be heard from the street. The woman was begging the man to stop. That is what a passer-by and I concluded, but we could not interfere. I later told a grocer about the incident. He expressed his disgust saying that he would have interfered and beat the ‘husband’ although that would mean he would be charged for entering a house uninvited and assaulting someone.
Two couples in their 50s and 60s at a table in café. For 10 minutes their chat, evolved around a couple of songs – both in praise of the motherland! One of the women was constantly showing clips and photos on her phone. The other woman interjected: “I always listen to that song before I leave home.”
Francesco is an Italian pensioner who has been living in Hammamet for three years. In our chat I asked him whether Italians find it difficult to adapt to life in the country. He answered with a definitive no, stressing that Italians “had been brain-washed in the years before they moved to Hammamet. They were constantly told by the media that Muslims and Arabs were terrorists, among other things…” I said to myself: Yet they moved in, and was it only the Italians who were brain washed?
Italians in Hammamet do not pay taxes in Italy, but pay only 20% of of income is subject to tax, with the tax-take 0-32%, depending on income levels. The other 80% of income is tax-free. Thus, as Francesco stressed, Italians are in Tunisia because the cost of living is much cheaper than in Italy. According to Donato Ladik, the president of the Association of Italian Residents in Tunisia, “Those with not particularly large pensions can have the lifestyle of a retired bank manager or senior official back home. They can have a beautiful villa, a cleaning lady, a lovely garden.”
A French believes that “the problem in Tunisia is a problem of administration” and not the form of capitalism as whole. He also believes that there were no religious wars in Germany before the advent of capitalism. An Italian who had lived in the city for a few years believes that the problem is lack of ‘free market’!
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| 'Against football capitalism'. A graffiti near Rude de Jasmin – Hammamet 25 April 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
The moment I entered the shop where I usually buy chicken, ricotta and cheese from, the woman behind the counter expressed her anger at the ‘riots’ rocking France in the last week of June 2023, describing Algerians as barbarians and blaming the 17-year-old boy shot dead by the police: “what do you expect when you drive without a driving licence,” she asked. “I don’t like Algerians,” she said more than once. My counter-argument did not do anything to make her change her view. Then I recounted what the woman said to a grocer. He merely said that “Algerians are better than Tunisians.” An issue that involved French citizens was turned into Algerians vs. Tunisians and a nationalism, reflecting again the ongoing long legacy of fragmentation and the way Arabs view each other.
However, that is not exclusive to Arabs. I remember a Spanish colleague calling those who ‘rioted’ in August 2011 in England as ‘uneducated youth’. It os a typical argument among many; one divorced from sociology, long term marginalisation, state violence, discrimination and institutional racism.
An old Muslim woman was not surprised to hear that I was still single although I was a middle aged man. Even when I told her that it was my choice not to get married she said: “you gained your peace.” That was not the first time to hear such a reaction. Another woman, a divorced in her late 40s also reacted in a similar way upon hearing I was single. Twenty years ago the reaction of my family members and others was totally different. According to the old woman, the material pressures of modern life is the cause of change in the attitude to marriage.
“Wealth and children are the adornment of this worldly life, but the everlasting good deeds are far better with your Lord in reward and in hope.” (Quran, 18:46)
Marriage.
In a chat with a Tunisian living abroad the man defended the IMF and supports the ‘reforms’ the financial intuition imposes as conditions for obtaining loans. In a discussion about ‘development’ and Turkey, I mentioned how many Kurdish in Turkey and outside Turkey have been oppressed and repressed. He said that he didn’t like the Kurds (!) I insisted on ending our discussion.
A waiter in a famous café by the sea has been given an extra task: making crêpes in front of the café. He said that instead of hiring a new worker, the task was allocated to him, and with no increase in salary. “See why people take the route of the Mediterranean toward Italy,” he asked rhetorically. If that is the case with a waiter in a full time job, one can only wonders about the unemployed and other low-paid workers.
A Tunisian who has lived in Sweden for 21 years told me that “they don’t want foreigners in Sweden.” I think he meant Muslims and others, but not Germans or Americans, for example. He is returning to Tunisia for good.
An Italian who has lived in Hammamet for only 18 months said he was happy and leading a comfortable life. “Italy for me as a pensioner is too expensive,” he explained. He is married to a woman from the Ivory Coast. He said with pity that Tunisian girls might have sex with you for as less as 20 €!
Half an hour before I met the Italian, the police raided the street vendors on the Corniche – Berber area. I said to a group of three teenagers that the state didn’t allow them to do informal work, but did not provide them with dignified jobs either. One of the boys said: “the poor ones cannot afford bribes.”
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| Graffiti in Arabic: ‘Do not steal, for the state hates any rival’. Hammamet 25 April 2023. A photo by Nèdeem. M. |
A poor young man of a 20-years old at the taxi station in Baraket Essahel: He asked the fruit vendor of the prices of peach, melon and water melon. Every time he got an answer, he said: “it’s too much.” Then he took the taxi and stat next to the driver – a man of between 50 and 60 years of age. The young man expressed his feelings about how hard life is. The driver started speaking about what is promised in the after-life! Then he asked the young man about his age and the month he was born in. The driver took the liberty to speculate about the young man’s life, even about the colours he likes. The driver was acting like a soothsayer! Both the young man and the driver appear to have dropped school at an early age.
One morning it was so busy and hard to find a taxi. When I got into a collective one, half way, the driver started browsing facebook with hand and driving with another. Since it would be hard to find another taxi, I could not say a word.
At a fruit seller the radio is on and someone from El-Nahdha Movement – an Islamist party that was in the governing party between 2011-2014 – is speaking.
– Customer to the seller: Aren’t tired of listening to this guy?
– I don’t listen to any of them [the politicians]. I have this new bike and I enjoy riding, and when I want to relax I enjoy a bottle [of wine].
At a grocer a poor old woman, a customer, was complaining about the living conditions, referring to Allah and His deeds, etc. I intervened saying we shouldn’t resort to Allah because the current social and economic conditions are caused by human beings and their policies. The grocer kept insisting that the problem was the politicians who lack credibility. I asked him: “Where does credibility come from?” “From the inner self,” he replied. “How is credibility installed in people,” I asked. He went silent. Then I tried to explain to him, with the woman listening attentively, that the general economic ‘development’ of a country brings with it organisation, more education, stronger institutions, accountability … and credibility. I stressed that Tunisia did not have the resources/was unable to generate them; Tunisia today as before survives on loans and meagre investment… The previous regime, for instance, was important for stability thus there were more loans flowing in… The grocer seemed convinced.
Women standing at a bus stop. A Tunisian woman passing by wearing a mini skirt. One of the women said: “This is is forbidden.” There are very few women in Hammamet wear the niqāb – that covers everything except the eyes. I wondered: Would she say the same about a woman wearing a niqāb? Has she seen the Tunisians girls swimming in bathing suits and shorts or has she ver been in the city centre and Hammamet sud? Has she not seen women in a similar outfit on the Tunisian TV. I guess she said that because it is not something she is familiar with in her area. Obviously, she has never been in Hammamet sud, or in Calypso, for instance! Again, another example of the extremes and contradictions in Tunisia.
A young woman fainted in a café. Some people managed to bring her to conscience. I was surprised that the firefighters services was called in and came fairly quickly. It was because the nearest hospital to call an ambulance would take longer to arrive.
In a café opposite Le Centre Culturel de Hammamet: a beggar approached an Italian for money. The Italian, apparently a resident in Hammamet, burst with anger in Italian and Tunisian Arabic before even the man finished his sentence: “Go fuck yourself. Damn you” [in Tunisian: Damn your God’s religion]. And added in French: “Go get a job.” Then turned to the waiter standing next to him, speaking in Italian but making the cutthroat gesture by drawing his hand across his throat, meaning : “I would kill him.” He pointed to the beggar’s bad teeth. The waiter did/could not say a word. The Italian is a regular customer. Another waiter told me that the Italian guy had lived in Tunisia for 30 years!
I think that was the worst incident I witnessed during my stay. Tunisians usually say when they are approached by a beggar: Allah yenoub – response to asking for financial help. It literally means ‘may Allah gives you instead of me’. Here is what the Quran says: “So as for the orphan, do not oppress [him]. And as for the petitioner, do not repel [him]. And proclaim the blessings of your Lord.” (Quran 93: 9-11)
The collective taxis at Baraket Essahel were unusually scare at lunch time. I asked the manager – a man of about 60 years old – of the cause. He said it was the traffic delaying the return of the ‘Toyotas’, because everyone was coming to Hammamet. I said because there was honey in Hammamet. He interjected with a sharp tone: “There is only nudity and depression.”
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| Collective taxis in Baraket Essahel. Hammamet, 20 August 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
A group of young girls and boys in their early 20s in a café: One of the girls was having a video chat with another girl. She was arguing with her about why why she lied about her age and another thing she said about her. A typical argument one could hear between any youngsters in any country. Endless gossiping. In one instance they called a girl they know ‘pills-taker’, hèrbēshè, meaning she is addicted to some sort of soft drugs.
A discussion with a waiter in a café: I think it was the most rational exchange I had with a Tunisian. We talked about the form of capitalism in Tunisia, political and economic dependency, migration, scapegoating, leadership, contradictions in people’s characters, etc. He though expressed his disgust of the young who wear tattoos.
A woman in a taxi drive towards Hammamet centre kept talking about the cost of living and how now there are only two classes. The driver gave more of than one example of how the rich live, singling out those who spend thousands of dinars in Sindbad hotel in Hammamet. The woman said: “it is from the taxes we pay and our labour.” I almost asked her whether she was a communist! We were four in the taxi. None of the three mentioned a single religious word or expression during the whole conversation. The other woman talked about how “some people eat gold and others queue for bread.” She did not look like someone who heard of Marie Antoinette! When I arrived at Choco Mocha café they were playing Barbie song so loud.
A ‘femme de chambre’ in the hotel where I stayed has three children – two at school and one at university. She told me how hard and costly nowadays to bring up children.
I had an appointment with a dentist. I was more than 15 minutes early. The dentist did not arrive yet. I waited for more than 20 minutes then I asked the reception when the doctor would arrive. I was told she would soon. I waited for another 15 minutes and still the doctor did not show. I left the clinic. During all the time while I was waiting there was no attempt to keep me updated so my patience did run out.
A boyfriend was arguing with his girlfriend on the street. She apparently accused him of being unfaithful. He said: “If I wanted, I would fucked all the girls you knew.”
Myths
A shopkeeper: “There was no Covid-19. It was a fake scare to make you get the vaccine” and “The Quran contains everything.” A few days before, a young woman was discussing with me how the historical origins of the Quran!
A grocer asked me: “Where do you actually live? In Germany? “In West or East Germany?” He lives in the year 2023! He is also nostalgic to the dictatorship of Ben Ali, and he is not the only one. A few people believe the country needs a dictatorship. It is a stark example ‘reverse essentialism’.
A leftist at a grocery: “People are not aware and that is why the situation in Tunisia is the way it is.”
One might see all contradictions on one day if not in a couple of hours.
A man on the Corniche was adamant: “Tunisia is not a poor country.” I felt that he began to doubt himself only when I asked him: “What does Tunisia make? What does it make in comparison to industrialised and even semi-industrialised countries?”
An Italian from Naples, who has lived in Hammamet for only 18 months said he was happy and leading a comfortable life. “Italy for me as a pensioner is too expensive,” he said. He is married to a woman from the Ivory Coast. He said with a pitiful tone that Tunisian girls might have sex with you for as less as 20 €!
Half an hour before I met the Italian, the police raided the street vendors on the Corniche – Berber area. I said to a group of three teenagers that the state didn’t allow them to do informal work, but did not provide them with dignified jobs either. One of the boys said: “the poor ones cannot afford bribes.”
A waiter as well as an estate agent yearn to Ben Ali’s dictatorship. The estate agent has a big villa and let out part of it. He also complains of emigration from the interior of the country to Hammamet.
Both forget that the ‘stability’ of Ben Ali regime was maintained through the inflow of foreign loans and repression, not through real development. “In the Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali years, the public debt represented only 40% of the GDP. The sound management of the Tunisian economy, underlying the much-vaunted “Tunisian economic miracle,” dear to the hearts of the “friends of Tunisia,” was an argument that carried weight when it came to justifying the dictatorship that ruled the country since November 1987. But the uprising of the winter of 2010 stripped away the illusion masking the “Tunisian miracle.” The disparities between regions, the mass unemployment affecting in particular university graduates, blew up in the faces of all the advocates of the status quo.” https://orientxxi.info/magazine/tunisia-our-dearest-financial-friends,2759
“The friends of Tunisia” is often to be heard from the country’s leaders. Ever since 2011 these “friendly countries,” investors in the country and often enough its creditors, are awaited with bated breath by a government which never tires off repeating the necessity to come to the aid of the region’s “democratic exception” in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis. However, beneath the veneer of diplomatic language, relations of power and dependency are at work, more or less openly.
Today, when both Tunisians and Egyptians are bearing the full brunt of the austerity programs imposed by those international bodies to which their governments are indebted, the issue of the link between debt and colonialism looms larger every day. Indeed, these organisations never cease to urge the authorities of both countries to “step up the pace of their economic reforms”—the nature of which need hardly be specified—as a necessary condition for the disbursement of the successive instalments of loans which have become absolutely indispensable for the governments involved.”
Qatar, allied as it is with all the Islamists of the Arab world, lent 500 million dollars to Tunisia when the Islamist-led Troika was in power, while “the Emirati boycotted Tunisia and Nidaa Tounes” when it announced it was entering a governmental coalition with Ennahdha,” the political analyst Youssef Cherif explains. Moreover, the repayment of the Qatari debt has recently been adjourned.
Indebtedness has been at the core of the Tunisian political economy for a century and a half. It has been a way for the local elites to get rich. Today they control the political economy of the country’s dependence, juggling with the two new windfalls, ‘democratic’ and ‘geopolitical’ [illegal migration], but also through a rhetoric of rapprochement with the West which involves showcasing ‘Tunisian exceptionalism’ compared with the rest of the Arab world” as Hamza Meddeb puts it.
My brother agreed with the following when I mentioned how a few people want a dictatorship back. All of them blame the ‘revolution’, forgetting or not knowing that the counter-revolutionary forces won and they themselves are the ones to be held responsible.
لماذا يحن الكثيرون إلى نظام بن علي الديكتاتوري؟
من ناحية، الفشل والهزيمة يُوَلِّدان مثل هذا التفكير. الثورة المضادة بإعلامها وسياسييها روجوا إلى الحنين إلى الماضيوغسلوا والأدمغة بالخداع والتضليل.
تردي الأحوال المادية جعل الناس يردون الأسباب إلى الثورة وليس إلى الثورة المضادة.
الشخصية الإنسانية عامة محافظة، ونشاهد تفكيرا وحركات مشابهة في بلدان أخرى، اليوم وفي الماضي.
الإيديولوجيا المهيمنة، من قبيل 'هيبة الدولة' وغيرها، تجعل الناس تنسى أنه إذا كان الوضع سابقا جنة، فلما وقعت الانتفاضةمن أساسها، ولماذا وقعت أحداث قفصة من قبلها، وانتفاضة الخبز قبل ذلك، إلخ.؟
ولا ننسى عامل الدين. الكثير وليس جميع المسلمين يعيشون في الماضي، الماضي الزاهر ، ولو تمسكنا بالدين و ووو.
فالماضي أقوى من الحاضر لأن الحاضر أقوى منهم ولا يمتلكون حلولا له.
A middle-aged woman: “Tunisian Arabic is the closest to Standard Arabic.”
That is another myth.
A taxi driver thinks that people do not work and the problem in Tunisia os production. “You employ someone, but they dit and do nothing.” Why, I asked. “It is a mentality,” he replied. I asked him what determined the mentality. “It is their nature,” he added.
A common refrain – a myth– you hear from people when you mention the disrespectful behaviour in parking cars and motorbikes or throwing rubbish, for instance, is that it is all due to ‘mentality’. Once you mention developing infrastructure and enforcing fines, providing the example of England and how they dealt with litter and waste in the 1970s, or how for every house today there is more than one wheeled-bin, they stop arguing that the cause is ‘mentality’. The same goes for parking and how fines are issues and at the same time more parking spaces are created.
In England, by the 1970s, “disposable products were intrinsic to our daily lives. Littering had become a widely accepted social norm because there were no good means of dealing with huge volumes of widely dispersed waste.
In an attempt to tackle the issue, the 1971 Dangerous Litter Act set the maximum fine for dropping litter to £100.”
A few people believe that a few families have too many kids. It is a question of mentality, they argue. They though do not the demographic fact that Tunisian fertility stood at 2.06 in 2022. Neither are they aware of factors like investment, economic development, productivity, etc. According to the CIA, as of 2021, Tunisia had a population of 11,811,335 inhabitants. The net population growth in 2020, 2022 and 2023 was negative. According to Worldmeter, 69.3 % of the population is urban (8,630,933 people in 2023).
Nabeul
As of May 2023 Nabeul bus station does not have toilets. There are public toilets behind it and to the louage station, but they are filthy and smelly toilets.
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| Café Hajji in the centre of Nabeul, 26 April 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| A café in the centre of Nabeul , 26 April 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
Yasmine Hammamet
On my way to the airport I two photos that reveal more of the contrast and uneven (unequal) development.
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| Yasmine Hammamet, 02 October 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| Yasmine Hammamet, 02 October 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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| Yasmine Hammamet, 02 October 2023. A photo by Nèdeem M. |
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