Tunis

Tunisia is a small country that, like Morocco, lies in Africa only in body; in spirit, it’s the Middle East.

Tunisia is well known for two things: the crappiest resorts imaginable for tourists on a shoestring, and the fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi, who in 2011 doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire — and then the whole Middle East, together with NATO and Russia, had to put out the blaze.

Still, the Tunisian revolution itself had little effect on the country and was fairly peaceful. The economy collapsed later, in 2015, when ISIS carried out as many as three terrorist attacks in a single year. That’s when tourists began to avoid Tunisia, and the country still hasn’t really recovered.

The City of Tunis

The capital of Tunisia is the city of Tunis.

Once, the state of Carthage stood where Tunisia is now, and next to the city of Tunis stood the capital of the state of Carthage, the city of Carthage.

Today, Tunis is a sorry sight. The city is overgrown with garbage, street vending, and broken roads.

The French architecture barely peeks out from behind the signs and peeling plaster.

The city is roughly divided into two parts: Arab and French. The Arab part, also known as the medina, is the old town with narrow streets and caravanserais. The French part is a sort of European city with African flavor.

The medina of Tunis is nothing compared to Fes or even Casablanca. It’s a rather dreary, small, and foul-smelling quarter of old houses.

Of course, it has its beautiful spots. Here and there you come across an arch overgrown with ivy — and it’s instantly lovely.

Unfortunately, these are rare islands. Most of the medina is unbearably dirty. A typical sight is either a pile of garbage or the stain it has left on some corner for good.

The piles of garbage aren’t necessarily big. If anything, the opposite: there isn’t that much garbage overall. But it’s usually rotting food scraps, which in the heat smell like a village outhouse.

All this compost is eaten by the local cats, which you really don’t want to pet.

The streets of the Tunis medina are narrow, long, and labyrinthine. That’s actually a plus: it isn’t too hot here even in summer.

Driving through such streets is extremely hard (although Tunisians manage), so people get around the medina either on foot or on two wheels.

Surprisingly, even so, the medina is extremely dusty. Do people bring the dust in their pockets or something?

The only interesting feature of the Tunis medina is the columns built into the walls here and there. As far as I can tell, it used to be much more beautiful here, and the columns were part of the architecture. Then everything was built over with concrete dumps, and the columns were left for decoration.

Tunisia is so poor that there isn’t even a proper Arab bazaar here. If you just walk the streets, all you come across is utter junk you don’t even want to look at.

The big local bazaar is a little better, but still incredibly dull. It’s nothing compared to the copper and gold treasure troves of Fes and Marrakesh.

In the very center of the medina stands one of the oldest mosques in the world, built in 698 — just 66 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. The mosque is also home to the oldest Islamic university.

Surprisingly, none of it is of any interest. The mosque can’t even be photographed properly, it’s so squeezed between houses. Only the Moroccan-style minaret is clearly visible.

Next to the mosque there were a couple of decent shops, probably the only ones in the whole city.

The passersby mostly look gloomy and tired. No wonder: the country lurches from one crisis to the next.

A couple of decent streets in the medina.

Of course, if you search really hard, you can find a few unusual details. Here’s a house with an absolutely wonderful paint job.

Here’s a pretty street with awnings.

A morning glory vine hangs overhead.

A cool map made of tiles right on the wall.

Somewhere among these streets is what Tunisians claim is the oldest café in the world, called M’Rabet. It was supposedly founded in 1628, and it’s where all the progressive Tunisian youth hang out.

I don’t know how to explain it. But neither the oldest mosque with its university, nor the oldest café, nor even the house where Kandinsky lived leaves any impression at all.

Tunis looks abandoned to its fate. The small gems you can barely dig out amid the stone monotony are purely nominal. Even from a rooftop, the medina of Tunis looks completely uninteresting.

From a rooftop, though, you can at least see inside the houses. In fact, all these boxes are classic Arab caravanserais. So inside, things are more interesting than outside after all.

The French Quarter

Only at the very edge of the medina did I find a couple of cool Arab houses and a low arch.

This is where the Arab part of the city ends and the French part begins. It’s also, to put it mildly, not in the best shape.

Above the trees, a sign appears in two languages: General Store. The inscription is repeated on the sidewalk in broken tiles from the middle of the last century.

Inside, the enticing store turns out to be a dreadful village shop, with half the shelves stacked with pasta and the other half with canned food. This is a top supermarket in Tunis.

On the whole, the French part is okay. You can feel the remnants of past colonialism.

I’m not sure about the justice of it, but colonies always had good architecture.

The French theater, built in 1901, still stands and is still popular. In the evening, lines of local intelligentsia form in front of it.

The largest hotel in the city (said to have terrible service).

A green avenue in the center.

All is well in the French part.

Indeed, in some places it’s almost Paris.

The French colonizers weren’t fools after all. They miscalculated in just one thing: unlike the medina, it’s incredibly hot here.