There was a pleasant feeling of serenity in my morning-mind (uncommon when I wake up) as I opened my eyes in the darkened room to the blaring ring of a cell phone. The woman who answered, I., lay under a thick but airy comforter, beside me on the massive bed, as beautiful as iron is heavy and confident too. With the cliché sexiness of her scratchy morning voice, she responded slowly to the almost whiny-sounding American man's voice on the other end. "How aaaaaare you?" he said. "Exhausted." "Whyyyyy?" he worried back. More talk, and as her slender arms dropped the phone back beside her pillow, I pulled her in so that her head was resting in the crook of my neck, her stomach and red bellybutton ring rubbing up against my side, with one of her legs folded up over mine. Her body was firm and smooth, to a degree I almost couldn't bring myself to believe, her skin very lightly toasted in a way that made her look as though she hailed from north of the Mediterranean, not the south. She smelled like sweet and soft things, and though I knew it was the aroma of a rainbow of cremes and perfumes, I breathed it like someone drowning breathes sea air for the first time. Feeling complete (or as close as one can get to that), and fighting off darting thoughts of fear that this moment would not last, I fell back to the blackness where even insecurity cannot reach me.
How unusual this is, I think. This is not the first woman in this country with whom I've shared a bed, but this woman's comfort with herself and her surroundings was new. She didn't seem like she was trying to escape the world's troubles through sleep, as a previous partner had, nor did she seem to see in me her own gentle savior finally arrived, as another had. She was simply trying me out, but in a premeditated way, a way that had taken planning and preparation on her part. I had that to my credit. She had reached out to my roommate, Nicholas, on Facebook, the Tunisian make-friends-hook-up-find-a-spouse-seek-work-contacts all-in-one social network. Apparently it was while I had been away, in the US, and she boldly initiated with him, leading to a long back and forth Facebook chat conversation. Nick, himself no longer a bachelor, showed me their substantive conversation, including topics like photography and molecular biology, and told me I should connect with her, as it was obvious she was searching, as he put it. Not long into my flirt-filled Facebook chats with her she invited me to come see some live music and art at her university, which was supposedly related to my Master's research on local hip hop. Once I asked here where I would stay if and when I came down to visit, in the city of M., south of Tunis, and she said "Well we have our apartments ;-)" I gladly realized Nicholas had been right.
The night before had been a whirr of new. I had never visited M. before, though I had heard plenty of oft-repeated talk of its being the home of the family of a former Tunisian president. Yet, the rare rainfall over the small city, and the chipped and worn 1970's-looking campus that greeted me when I. dropped me off there, was underwhelming. A bunch of young men and women greeted me unsteadily, not sure what language to speak when I. introduced me in English but I greeted them in Tunisian Arabic. As it turned out, I had missed all the art, including a photography and graffiti expo, except for a final batch of bands. Sitting on a plastic folding table in the university's performance hall as the long equipment set-up went on, I chatted with a few young Rastafari-lookers who played in the bands, feeling thrilled by the body and calm presence of I. perched up against me on the table.
The music was good, mostly, prefaced by a one-man-show by a young guy in red face paint who imitated the Devil's voice, but who I couldn't understand at all because of the deafening chatter of the young audience. Three our four acts came to the stage, including a reggae band, some pre-teens and an old man singing "I'll Be There," and a badass rock group with a guitarist who had powerful chops on his instrument. It was all punctuated by I.'s touchiness, resting hands on my shoulder and thigh, and my wondering how to respond. The concert was drowned in covers of American--and Jamaican (Bob Marley)--songs.
When people finished dancing The Twist to Elvis Presley songs and the hall cleared out, we packed into cars and went to the city of M.'s reportedly only clean, almost-affordable, mixed-gender drinking spot. The menu was in French, they served BLTs, and the DJ played mostly really good hip hop, reggae, and local bands. Olives. Croutons. Tunisian beer in green bottles and rosé wine. I. disappeared and I remained seated next to a bunch of her rapidly chatting friends all sucking on cigarettes, me staring at bad Arab music videos on TV. Finally I found I. again at a different table and parked next to her, and her hands landed once more reassuringly on my thighs. Members of the bands--one a powerfully handsome guy with dark beard scruff and pony tail and another a fair-skinned fellow sporting a bowler cap--shot their opinions about good music at me, perforated with English phrases like "the blue note."
Head out, pack seven humans into a car that's only supposed to fit five, and we glode (past tense for glide) through the depressingly empty streets of the seaside city, slick with drizzle and lit here and there by the neon glow of local banks. After a few blocks one of the band members hopped out of the car and popped open the trunk, allowing the only other woman in the car aside from I. to step out and slip smilingly into the side street where she lived. I was nervous by then, not knowing where I would be spending the night, but hoping it would be with I..
"Sharp right here. Now go slowly. Now left. Great, this is me," I. said as the car headlights fell on a naked, bone-colored building with a small gate in the front. I pushed out of the car's back right door to let I. out of the pile of bodies in the back seat. "Whatever man, just take it as it comes. Don't get too attached," I told myself, trying to keep my hopes from climbing too high. The I heard I. say, "O Sam? He's coming with me," to the crew in Tunisian dialect. Excellent.
Mounting the smooth white steps on the front of the building, following I.'s leather jacket which glistened slightly in the rainlight. Into her pale white apartment, clean as a dentist's office, and holding my breath, I readied myself to meet the roommates. As it turned out, incredibly, there were none. I. had the whole fresh-smelling dentist's office to herself. This brings me to a few important points: Tunisian women, despite some appearances to the contrary, are significantly bound by a web of constraints on their personal and sexual freedom, mostly having to do with community and family pressures around ideas of honor and dishonor, womanhood, obedience, and membership in the community (I as an American non-Muslim am not fully part of "the community," a concept we can talk about later). Most young Tunisian women are not free to choose their sexual or romantic partners at will, and many, it seems, don't try overtly to create such relationships. As far as I can see, this is usually out of fear about how their family and the community in which they live will react to premarital sexual relations, which usually involves some degree of at least covert shaming through gossip, with community members subsequently interacting differently with the woman out of a feeling that she doesn't deserve their full respect.
However, Westerners like me, especially after having lived in "more conservative" Arab Muslim countries, are often surprised to observe a greater freedom of expression of physical affection among higher-class Tunisian women (the ones who we tend to spend the most time around) towards men. Further, because of the numerous burdens on women that are lightened the world over by greater financial and material resources, there are less intense pressures on upper-class Tunisian women to submit to societal norms by which their honor tends to be judged; thus having one's own private living space, in a middle-class neighborhood less beholden to conservative gender and sexual norms, and living in a neighborhood or city far removed from one's family (I.'s family lives in Tunis) are all factors which ease the constraints on a Tunisian woman's sexual behavior (by my general and humble estimation). These circumstances set the stage for the rainy night sleepover with a woman I had only met a few hours earlier.
My right hand between her back and the pad of a couch, my left hand under her lightly-toasted neck, I. says "I shouldn't be doing this," with a groan like somebody who was just woken from deep sleep. "Why not?" I ask. "Ughghgh, 'cuz I have a… boyfriend," she said, with eyes squeezed shut as though drawing back from a blow.
How unusual this is, I think. This is not the first woman in this country with whom I've shared a bed, but this woman's comfort with herself and her surroundings was new. She didn't seem like she was trying to escape the world's troubles through sleep, as a previous partner had, nor did she seem to see in me her own gentle savior finally arrived, as another had. She was simply trying me out, but in a premeditated way, a way that had taken planning and preparation on her part. I had that to my credit. She had reached out to my roommate, Nicholas, on Facebook, the Tunisian make-friends-hook-up-find-a-spouse-seek-work-contacts all-in-one social network. Apparently it was while I had been away, in the US, and she boldly initiated with him, leading to a long back and forth Facebook chat conversation. Nick, himself no longer a bachelor, showed me their substantive conversation, including topics like photography and molecular biology, and told me I should connect with her, as it was obvious she was searching, as he put it. Not long into my flirt-filled Facebook chats with her she invited me to come see some live music and art at her university, which was supposedly related to my Master's research on local hip hop. Once I asked here where I would stay if and when I came down to visit, in the city of M., south of Tunis, and she said "Well we have our apartments ;-)" I gladly realized Nicholas had been right.
The night before had been a whirr of new. I had never visited M. before, though I had heard plenty of oft-repeated talk of its being the home of the family of a former Tunisian president. Yet, the rare rainfall over the small city, and the chipped and worn 1970's-looking campus that greeted me when I. dropped me off there, was underwhelming. A bunch of young men and women greeted me unsteadily, not sure what language to speak when I. introduced me in English but I greeted them in Tunisian Arabic. As it turned out, I had missed all the art, including a photography and graffiti expo, except for a final batch of bands. Sitting on a plastic folding table in the university's performance hall as the long equipment set-up went on, I chatted with a few young Rastafari-lookers who played in the bands, feeling thrilled by the body and calm presence of I. perched up against me on the table.
The music was good, mostly, prefaced by a one-man-show by a young guy in red face paint who imitated the Devil's voice, but who I couldn't understand at all because of the deafening chatter of the young audience. Three our four acts came to the stage, including a reggae band, some pre-teens and an old man singing "I'll Be There," and a badass rock group with a guitarist who had powerful chops on his instrument. It was all punctuated by I.'s touchiness, resting hands on my shoulder and thigh, and my wondering how to respond. The concert was drowned in covers of American--and Jamaican (Bob Marley)--songs.
When people finished dancing The Twist to Elvis Presley songs and the hall cleared out, we packed into cars and went to the city of M.'s reportedly only clean, almost-affordable, mixed-gender drinking spot. The menu was in French, they served BLTs, and the DJ played mostly really good hip hop, reggae, and local bands. Olives. Croutons. Tunisian beer in green bottles and rosé wine. I. disappeared and I remained seated next to a bunch of her rapidly chatting friends all sucking on cigarettes, me staring at bad Arab music videos on TV. Finally I found I. again at a different table and parked next to her, and her hands landed once more reassuringly on my thighs. Members of the bands--one a powerfully handsome guy with dark beard scruff and pony tail and another a fair-skinned fellow sporting a bowler cap--shot their opinions about good music at me, perforated with English phrases like "the blue note."
Head out, pack seven humans into a car that's only supposed to fit five, and we glode (past tense for glide) through the depressingly empty streets of the seaside city, slick with drizzle and lit here and there by the neon glow of local banks. After a few blocks one of the band members hopped out of the car and popped open the trunk, allowing the only other woman in the car aside from I. to step out and slip smilingly into the side street where she lived. I was nervous by then, not knowing where I would be spending the night, but hoping it would be with I..
"Sharp right here. Now go slowly. Now left. Great, this is me," I. said as the car headlights fell on a naked, bone-colored building with a small gate in the front. I pushed out of the car's back right door to let I. out of the pile of bodies in the back seat. "Whatever man, just take it as it comes. Don't get too attached," I told myself, trying to keep my hopes from climbing too high. The I heard I. say, "O Sam? He's coming with me," to the crew in Tunisian dialect. Excellent.
Mounting the smooth white steps on the front of the building, following I.'s leather jacket which glistened slightly in the rainlight. Into her pale white apartment, clean as a dentist's office, and holding my breath, I readied myself to meet the roommates. As it turned out, incredibly, there were none. I. had the whole fresh-smelling dentist's office to herself. This brings me to a few important points: Tunisian women, despite some appearances to the contrary, are significantly bound by a web of constraints on their personal and sexual freedom, mostly having to do with community and family pressures around ideas of honor and dishonor, womanhood, obedience, and membership in the community (I as an American non-Muslim am not fully part of "the community," a concept we can talk about later). Most young Tunisian women are not free to choose their sexual or romantic partners at will, and many, it seems, don't try overtly to create such relationships. As far as I can see, this is usually out of fear about how their family and the community in which they live will react to premarital sexual relations, which usually involves some degree of at least covert shaming through gossip, with community members subsequently interacting differently with the woman out of a feeling that she doesn't deserve their full respect.
However, Westerners like me, especially after having lived in "more conservative" Arab Muslim countries, are often surprised to observe a greater freedom of expression of physical affection among higher-class Tunisian women (the ones who we tend to spend the most time around) towards men. Further, because of the numerous burdens on women that are lightened the world over by greater financial and material resources, there are less intense pressures on upper-class Tunisian women to submit to societal norms by which their honor tends to be judged; thus having one's own private living space, in a middle-class neighborhood less beholden to conservative gender and sexual norms, and living in a neighborhood or city far removed from one's family (I.'s family lives in Tunis) are all factors which ease the constraints on a Tunisian woman's sexual behavior (by my general and humble estimation). These circumstances set the stage for the rainy night sleepover with a woman I had only met a few hours earlier.
My right hand between her back and the pad of a couch, my left hand under her lightly-toasted neck, I. says "I shouldn't be doing this," with a groan like somebody who was just woken from deep sleep. "Why not?" I ask. "Ughghgh, 'cuz I have a… boyfriend," she said, with eyes squeezed shut as though drawing back from a blow.
