Saturday, February 3, 2018

Shower of Frogs - Chapter 4: Kairouan


On June 15,  I drove my jeep into a wobbly C-47 and was flown a thousand miles over the Atlas  Mountains. The flight lasted about five hours. When not asleep, I watched the green-and-brown moun­tains, some with small white patches of snow. We flew over the golden cultivated fields of Algeria. From the small window in the plane I could make out grove upon grove of what I later learned was a part of the main crop of Tunisia-the olive. We landed near a great walled city of white adobe houses with blue shutters.

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A few days after arrival, I drove into the large walled city with a huge mosque towering high above the wall and over all other buildings. Approaching the city,  we whiffed the strong smell of sul­phur coming from the graveyard near the edge of the city.  Later we understood that this was a holy city and that many bodies, alive and dead, were brought here for burial, some above ground. The bodies were covered with sulphur. The city itself,   with the walls, was, I now realize and did to some extent then, straight out of the Middle Ages. It  is called Kairouan,  a word  derived  from the Bedouin word caravan.  The streets  were unpaved  and  are still almost entirely unpaved. The whiteness of the houses, the white­ness of every single house, was, in the brilliant sun, a stunning sight, indeed a near-blinding sight. Blue had been adopted over the years as the best color to both match the cloudless sky (an aesthetic choice) and ease the eyestrain (a practical choice). A spot of red or yellow here or there came from clothing, rugs, or flowers. There were a few patches of green trees, that were remarkably cooling, both aesthetically and practically.


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