Louise and I were in Gammarth, Tripoli, after escaping Saudi Arabia after a harrowing (but utterly fascinating) four-year-long residence in Jeddah. The reason? Something there was destroying Louise's health, but the excuse was that I had been ordered to stop practicing my religion. The long version of that story is here.
We spent a week on the southern shore of the Mediterranean... which was beautiful to look upon, but when we swam briefly in it we realized was quite polluted. There are very few seafood restaurants lining this sea, and if you want fish in a regular restaurant, you must request it days ahead.
We took long walks along the beach, and at one point saw four men throwing a football around. An American football? In Gammarth? One of them homed in on my belt buckle, something normally worn by US Marines as part of their non-dress uniform. We learned that they were Marine guards at the Tunisian US Embassy in nearby Tripoli - and they invited us to a party in their compound the next day. We took them up on it, and they made us feel very welcome, indeed: Americans tend to bond while living in foreign countries. They even taught us what Armchair Quarterbacking is: you sit in a ratty, old, over-stuffed, discarded arm-chair in the backyard of their compound, and throw a football through a tire-on-a-rope swinging (and spinning) from a tree. Like the ancient Olympics, the winner earned only the respect of his peers.
The day after that we took a tour of ancient Carthage. We were shown the ancient city with multi-story houses that seemed like modern condos... and where running water and a managed sewer system predated anything like this anywhere else in the world. We were also shown a sewer where archaeologists had excavated several hundred infant skeletons... human sacrifices. This was one of several reasons why the Romans detested the Carthaginians, and eventually destroyed the greatest ocean-commerce civilization in the Mediterranean Sea during the Punic Wars about 2,250 years ago...
Louise and I were in a minivan with several other tourist couples. At one point we started talking privately (we thought) about our various kids scattered all over several continents. I noticed that the couple behind and to our right had stopped talking and were listening. We switched from English to Spanish, and then noticed that a couple in front of us stopped talking and tilted their heads in listening mode. Um. We tried French, and noticed that yet another couple stopped talking... then we even tried our rudimentary Arabic. I noticed that the driver looked up at us in the rear-view mirror. I was amazed.
I sat for a moment, then recalled a friend from the hills of western North Carolina, and how hard it had been for me to understand him years earlier.
"Mon. We gonna try wesrn nor C'lina, K? Noan gwine uherstah' a thang we'un palaverin'. Foo on theysefs, silly snoops."
The effect was satisfying, as people all around the minivan looked quizically at each other. In several languages I heard the muttered equivalent of "What the heck are they speaking, anyway?"
If you were born and raised in the United States, and especially if you ever knew someone from Appalachia, I won't need to explain what that sentence - of course spoken very fast - really means.
A week or so later when we landed at Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia. I knelt down on the asphalt and kissed the good ol' U-S of A, whar ah come from.
I love being an American.
We spent a week on the southern shore of the Mediterranean... which was beautiful to look upon, but when we swam briefly in it we realized was quite polluted. There are very few seafood restaurants lining this sea, and if you want fish in a regular restaurant, you must request it days ahead.
We took long walks along the beach, and at one point saw four men throwing a football around. An American football? In Gammarth? One of them homed in on my belt buckle, something normally worn by US Marines as part of their non-dress uniform. We learned that they were Marine guards at the Tunisian US Embassy in nearby Tripoli - and they invited us to a party in their compound the next day. We took them up on it, and they made us feel very welcome, indeed: Americans tend to bond while living in foreign countries. They even taught us what Armchair Quarterbacking is: you sit in a ratty, old, over-stuffed, discarded arm-chair in the backyard of their compound, and throw a football through a tire-on-a-rope swinging (and spinning) from a tree. Like the ancient Olympics, the winner earned only the respect of his peers.
The day after that we took a tour of ancient Carthage. We were shown the ancient city with multi-story houses that seemed like modern condos... and where running water and a managed sewer system predated anything like this anywhere else in the world. We were also shown a sewer where archaeologists had excavated several hundred infant skeletons... human sacrifices. This was one of several reasons why the Romans detested the Carthaginians, and eventually destroyed the greatest ocean-commerce civilization in the Mediterranean Sea during the Punic Wars about 2,250 years ago...
Louise and I were in a minivan with several other tourist couples. At one point we started talking privately (we thought) about our various kids scattered all over several continents. I noticed that the couple behind and to our right had stopped talking and were listening. We switched from English to Spanish, and then noticed that a couple in front of us stopped talking and tilted their heads in listening mode. Um. We tried French, and noticed that yet another couple stopped talking... then we even tried our rudimentary Arabic. I noticed that the driver looked up at us in the rear-view mirror. I was amazed.
I sat for a moment, then recalled a friend from the hills of western North Carolina, and how hard it had been for me to understand him years earlier.
"Mon. We gonna try wesrn nor C'lina, K? Noan gwine uherstah' a thang we'un palaverin'. Foo on theysefs, silly snoops."
The effect was satisfying, as people all around the minivan looked quizically at each other. In several languages I heard the muttered equivalent of "What the heck are they speaking, anyway?"
If you were born and raised in the United States, and especially if you ever knew someone from Appalachia, I won't need to explain what that sentence - of course spoken very fast - really means.
A week or so later when we landed at Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia. I knelt down on the asphalt and kissed the good ol' U-S of A, whar ah come from.
I love being an American.
~~~~~
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