Djerba is a big molar-shaped island lying off the southern coast of Tunisia, near the Libyan border. It is flat, flat, flat. It is littered with palm trees and resort hotels. The first time I went there, a friend and I flew down from Tunis together (we pretended to be married so we could get cheap tickets, and I hope someone at Tunisair is reading this, ha ha we fooled you!). We arrived at night and took a cab from the airport to the hotel, under a full moon, with those perfectly-spaced palm trees whisking silently by, and I thought: this is one of the most perfectly beautiful things I will ever see in my life.
The beach was very nice. We loved especially watching the Germans go splooshing into the water in the nude. It was wintertime, and the Mediterranean (while warmer than, say, Lake Michigan) is cold that time of year, so the Germans were pretty blue and shriveled when they came out of the water. But they always pretended they were enjoying it. Who knows? Maybe they were.
I had learned most of my meager Arabic in Morocco. All my Tunisian friends mocked my Moroccan vocabulary and accent, so I generally stuck to French. I was delighted to discover that Djerban Arabic was very similar to Moroccan Arabic, and – for the first time in Tunisia – I was more fluent than any of my acquaintances. I had long conversations with everyone, storekeepers and hoteliers and cabdrivers, and I was able to haggle like a tiger, yelling and waving my hands in the air, instead of whispering and simpering as I usually did.
There is a beautiful delicate old synagogue in Houmt-Souk, the island's main city. It's said to be the oldest synagogue in the world, and its Torah is one of the oldest in the world too. The building is plain on the outside but full of curvaceous intricate blue woodwork on the inside. For a few dollars, the Old Testament caretaker tottered over and brought the old Torah out for us to see.
In 2002, al-Qaeda blew up a truck outside the synagogue, killing several dozen people, mostly tourists.
But the old delicate synagogue still stands.
I hope I can visit it again someday.
And I hope it lasts another thousand years.
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