SOUSSE
The country through which the train passed from Kairouan to Sousse was
bare and desolate, with scarce scattered Bedouins’ tents now and again
that seemed to blend with their surroundings like the nests of wild
birds. A few grazing camels wandered near them, herded by ragged children
who turned to stare at the train. The plains stretched as far as the eye
could reach to the feet of distant hills. We passed one or two shallow
lakes, obviously rainfall collected in depressions of the ground, that
would dry up as some we had already seen which were now nothing but
stretches of cracked and seamed mud, looking like jigsaw puzzles.
Sousse proved to be a picturesque little town on the sea, built about
the base of the old Kasba or fort, whose walls stand on a hill above it,
looking out over the flat-roofed white houses of the modern town to the
waters of the Mediterranean. From the fort itself there was a magnificent
view: on one side the curving coastline with its dotted white villages
and the gentian sea fading to a pale mist in the distance, on the other,
vistas of olive groves and orchards.
The great local industry is the cultivation of olives, and there are
factories for the making of oil and soap on the outskirts of the town.
The actual care of the trees is almost entirely in the hands of the
Arabs, to whom the French owner usually sells the crop in bulk, unpicked.
A tree in full bearing is worth three to four hundred francs a year, and
an orchard may contain thousands of trees. The Arabs are so improvident
that they often spend all the money they make during the harvest, in six
months’ time, and then are forced to realise in advance on their next.
Frequently they get into the hands of the Jews in transactions in which
it is certainly not the latter who suffer.
Beyond the Kasba are the Christian catacombs, which are interesting, and
cover a large area. Passage after passage is tunnelled out, with poor
little skeletons neatly stowed away on either side as a careful housewife
stocks her store cupboard with jam.
The Souks are not so picturesque nor as extensive as those of Kairouan
and of Sfax, but the crowd was enthralling to watch. In the native cafés
grave men in picturesque draperies were seated along the broad stone
ledge on either side the room, sipping coffee or playing a kind of chess,
whilst the owner bent over his charcoal fire at the far end, and the
assistant sped about on bare feet carrying sheaves of the long-handled
coffee holders, just big enough to fill each minute cup. To this is often
added a drop of orange flower water or some sweet essence.
[Illustration: I. M. D.]
In the brilliant sunshine outside the arcade a peasant squatted on the
paved path whittling at flutes made from a cut piece of cane ornamented
with red and green paint. He played a few sweet husky notes to show his
skill. Opposite to him sat a vendor of oranges, and a seller of the
brown flat loaves of native bread sprinkled on the top with seeds, and
beyond them a man with a tray of sweetmeats, slabs of toffee, cakes of
chopped nuts, brilliantly coloured strips of pink rock, and sugar birds
striped red and green and set on wire stems to attract children. All
these huddled on the ground, their wares spread round them, whilst at
the end of the steep stony street one saw the frowning battlements of
the Kasba rising sheer against the sky, and looking downhill caught a
glimpse of the blue of the sea and the white sails of fishing boats like
drowning butterflies in the harbour. Across the bay were the houses of
the little fishing village of Monastir. The country just round Sousse
is all olive groves, with huge hedges of spiked cactus, and when I was
there in January, shrivelled prickly pears still hung along the edges
of the leaves. There had been so many that year that they had not all
been picked. The whole country teems with Roman remains, and one sees
fragments sticking up out of the ground wherever foundations are being
dug for a house.
I went from there to spend the day at El Djem to see the wonderful ruins
of its amphitheatre. To reach it, one again travels through a great
stretch of bare country. The engine of the train broke down and we were
delayed for about two hours en route. We first ran over an Arab, and in
his efforts to avoid this, the driver had put on his brakes so suddenly
that he injured the mechanism of the engine. None of the passengers
seemed to be much perturbed when they heard afterwards of the Arab having
been killed. Indeed the man must have been a confirmed suicide, for the
country is so bare that a train can be seen coming two miles off, and its
progress is deliberate enough to give the most dreamy of pedestrians time
to realise his danger. Perhaps it is like the Trans-Siberian railway,
where compensation used to be given to the family of the deceased, till
it was discovered that the peasants were driving a lucrative trade in
aged relatives.
Before reaching El Djem, I saw the huge ruins of the amphitheatre against
the sky. They looked immense, with a small Arab village about their feet.
In colour they were a warm brown, built of enormous blocks of stone; and
the size of the building took my breath away. I am told it is as fine
as the Colosseum at Rome, and of course it gains in grandeur from its
isolated position. Forlorn and ruined as the building is, with its arches
like empty eye-sockets staring into space, there is still something
magnificent and defiant about it. Most of the tiers for spectators are
still there, part of the Imperial entrance and ranges of arched openings.
Below, in the centre, are the prisoners’ cells and the dens for wild
beasts, with the openings by which the latter were released into the
arena.
I sat on a large block of stone. Pigeons flew in and out of the galleries
where Roman ladies used to sit and watch the gladiators and the fights
with savage animals below. Grass grew along the edges of the walls, and
a tuft of wild thyme waved in the breeze. It was a grey day, and against
the sad sky the great edifice seemed to stand brooding over its past
splendour.
I went with the Arab custodian across fields, by narrow footpaths edged
with spiked battledores of prickly pears, and was shown vestiges of a
paved Roman road and the remains of a villa. We passed an old well, used
still by the villagers, at which a young girl was drawing water. These
village people go unveiled and she stared at us, a slender brown slip of
a child in a ragged blue robe caught across her smooth shoulder by silver
brooch pins. Her face was pointed, a tiny trident was tattooed on her
forehead, and another mark on her chin. She gazed at me with her bright
dark eyes the underlids of which were darkened with kohl, and then turned
again to the filling of the red amphora-shaped jar she carried. I watched
her walk away, graceful and erect, bearing the earthenware vessel of
water on her head, her bare feet moving noiselessly along the dusty path.
Numberless children ran out to meet us in the village, laughing merry
little things in tattered burnous and blue gown, incredibly dirty and
cheerful, with a constant flash of white teeth. Even the tiniest girls
wore thick metal anklets, and tots of five or six carried baby brothers
astride their hips. The children’s playtime is a short one; at seven or
eight years old they are already at work herding cattle or collecting
fodder and fetching heavy jars of water from the wells. I have often seen
a small girl almost weighed down with the weight of a jar of water. They
crouch down whilst an older one lifts it on to their back and passes a
cord round their forehead to hold the jar in place. Then, staggering, the
poor little thing gets to her feet and starts off, almost bent double.
The Arabs are very fond of their children and good to them, but they
never seem to realise what heavy work they put on them.
Later, from the small station, I watched the day fade and dusk settling
on the countryside. Slow-pacing camels were making their homeward way
driven by young boys, whilst here and there a little group of workers
was returning from the fields. The sky turned to a clear translucence in
the West, the amphitheatre blurred to a formless mass of grey girdled
about the knees with a blue haze of smoke from the Arab village. Dogs
barked from behind its mud walls, and the pale stars began to peer from
between the clouds. First here, then there, the warm flicker of a fire
showed through an open doorway; and all these homely signs of village
life seemed to make ever more and more remote the great outline of the
ruins. For a time I could still see the sky through the top arches of the
building, but even that faded by degrees, till at last night folded her
mantle about the vastness of its desolation.