The myriad facets and charms of Tunis, through its scents, colours, food and culture
It’s not a guidebook; there are no recommendations for restaurants or hotels, no star ratings or reviews. But even if you hadn’t planned to visit Tunis, soaking up the atmosphere of this new book by Leonardo Martinelli – a journalist and, above all, a traveller and citizen of the world – makes you want to pop the book in your suitcase and set off. To seek out the colours and scents described in the streets and on the beaches, with the barely concealed hope of bumping into one of the people interviewed by the author, who has lived in Tunis for some time. The dirty Tunis, the poor Tunis, the Tunis grappling with intense migratory pressure from sub-Saharan countries, the Tunis that dreams of Italia as if it were California? All this can be found in the pages of *Tunisi mon amour*. A journey through the city of a thousand souls (published by EDT), yet the author’s gaze prefers to rest precisely on these thousand souls, each shaped by the many cultures, peoples and religions that have inhabited the city and whose destinies remain intertwined there to this day. Peoples, religions and cultures that have learnt to blend, and the cuisine is a prime example of this: s’han tounsi (which literally means ‘the Tunisian dish’ and is a salad with a pungent flavour), bambalouni, fried doughnuts akin to our own bomboloni, and fricassè, inexpensive fried rolls that ‘fill the belly and bring satisfaction’, to quote Martinelli. Tunis is an imperfect city, just as its history is imperfect: from French colonisation to the failure of the 2011 Jasmine Revolution.
So, with the map at the start of the book in hand, you can find the neighbourhood where, even today, the statue of the Madonna of Trapani is carried out of the church of Sant’Agostino and San Fedele – no longer carried by the Sicilians, who are no longer there, but by sub-Saharan migrants, and greeted by the yùyù, the cries of joy typical of the Arab world. Then you can wander over to the Goletta, the beach where children and families go for a dip during the day, but which in the evening also hosts venues such as the Rock’n’Rolla (described in the book as ‘third class on the Titanic, where Rose really lets her hair down’), which hosts bands such as Seltika, capable of blending rock with Berber and Celtic sounds, but also of performing a reworked version of Toto Cutugno’s song ‘Sono un tunisino vero’ with everyone shouting at the top of their voices. And the night can also take on a queer atmosphere with the club’s dancer Ahmed, who blows kisses and poses for selfies. Martinelli introduces us to a very feminine side of Tunis: the writer Amira Ghenim, who lives in the Medina and gets angry when anyone suggests that women’s rights in Tunisia are the result of the country’s Westernisation; the singer Bouthania Nabouli, a young star of the Tunisian music scene; the women of Carthage painted on cement sacks by the artist Adel on Avenue Bourguiba; DJ Astrid, who lets her hair down because she ‘feels’ the Tunisian sun in the people; the filmmaker Erige Sehiri, born in Lyon but who has returned to live in the Bhar Lazreg neighbourhood so she can play with ‘a light that speaks’. And then there’s Salwa, who defends the UNESCO site of Carthage against property speculation and urban decay. Osmosis and cultural fusion in the words of Tunis’s inhabitants. Lucky Boy lives on the beach. He’s a SUP instructor (stand-up paddleboarding – a board similar to a surfboard, but on which you stand and paddle) as well as a mental coach: on the board, he teaches tourists to find their balance, letting their thoughts drift away. And duality, like that of Moncef, who puts up the Christmas tree in December but fasts for Ramadan. And every evening, from the highest point of his home, he takes a photo of the sunset, thinking of the love of his life who is no longer with him.
