RUMMAGE THROUGH

CARTHAGE

A great empire, smashed to pieces, lies strewn along the railway line that wriggles out of Tunis.

“Seventeen returns to Carthage,” requested Donal and herded together the little flock that Explore had sent him.  For two weeks, we would be his tormentors - giggling and bleating, flirting, bickering and falling over things.  Lesser guides would have fled - home to Belfast - but Donal survived on inexhaustible reserves of patience.

 We tried everything. Some fell out and some fell in love.  One of the Explorlings broke his wrist getting out of bed and another got bed-sores riding a camel.  Some of the stragglers even managed to corner a little passing influenza.  Donal never gave up; he found us banks, tickets, food - despite ramadan - and hundreds of lavatories.  We repaid him with several tons of excess luggage.  At first, we tried to squeeze it all into our bus until we realised that this left no room for oxygen.  After that, it sat on the roof and we travelled the country like a large, untidy lunch. 

 

But first, the train.  Carthage had seen worse invasions.  In 146 BC, Scipio’s legions had crashed through here and had reduced this superpower to pea-gravel.  The destruction was industrial; a superfleet was wrecked and the ground sown with salt.  We surveyed the few remaining crumbs with disappointment, as if we were just too late.  Catapult missiles were still lying around in the dust.  At the Sanctuary of Tophet, they had just found 20,000 little urns, each containing a burnt child.  The Carthaginians would have been intriguing hosts.

 

We followed the Roman legions south.  It was lush, well-muscled countryside, that must have reminded them of Umbria.  Here were their wheatlands and olive groves and, for a while, a fabulous aquaduct strode alongside us, once the conduit of refreshment into Africa Proconsularis.  Then suddenly, erupting from the plain ahead of us, was their most bizarre, most fantastic achievement of all; the colosseum of El-Jem.   In this stadium of red rock, thirty metres high, 30,000 spectators had once enjoyed free-flowing gladiatorial blood – “Wash yourselves well!” they roared.  We sat in the cells below the arena and fine spindles of haunted sand trickled down, through tiny air holes, onto our heads.

 

The grip of Roman imperialism loosened as we moved south.  We stayed in two gentle cities, much loved by the old French colonists. The first, Kairouan, was known for its holiness and the second, Sfax, for its cheek. Each had a walled medina which, to a passing crow, must have seemed like a great pink brain, all its lobes and vesicles pulsing with commerce.  The French had simply slipped their ville nouvelle in alongside, like the cuckoo’s egg.  There, among straight lines and glass, we’d eat Briq a l’oeuf with fruity draughts of Chateau Mornag before ducking back into the medina, to lose ourselves in the eleventh century.

 

At the southern tip of our adventure, we slept underground in a sort of giant rabbit warren, called the Hotel Marhala.  In summer a man could roast in his own skin on the hills of Matmata and, in winter – like now – he could freeze.  For centuries, the Berbers had excavated homes in the sandstone where, five metres down, the temperature was always 17 degrees.  That evening, we scampered for our burrows and huddled up just like bunnies – except that we had spicy lamb stew and a trogladytic television.

People really live like this, Donal insisted and the next day he took us to see some subterranean friends.  They shared their beautiful hole with three ginger cats and a dried goat.   It was decorated with corn dollies, a wolf-trap and a French Empire bed.  There was a dried fish-tail nailed to the door, bringing them all the luck they’d ever need.

 

At the edge of the Sahara, we turned round and drove west via Douz.  We crossed the Chott El-Jerid, a slab of salt twice the size of Luxembourg and, at the other side, found Tozeur, a city the colour of sand.

  I ought to have enjoyed Tozeur more than I did but somehow it seemed brash and slick.  Tourists flew in direct from Paris and the local salesmen imagined that they could get rich on dried scorpions and dogged persistence.  I couldn’t even enjoy the Bey’s Palace Museum with all his twinkly antiques.  That’s not quite true; I was cheered up by his wife’s silver-plated knickers.

         Before heading north we walked the gorge that led to Mides, on the Algerian border. The stars of The English Patient had tottered through here – more elegantly than us – in search of the Cave of the Swimmers.   One of our Explorelings was overwhelmed with vertigo but Donal reassured her that her death would be neither today nor would it be so spectacular.

 

         On our way north, we crossed Tunisia’s only year-round river.  The Nazis had heeded Hannibal’s advice to hold the Majerda at all costs and a terrible battle ensued.  The Commonwealth dead are buried at Medjez El Bab, where we stopped to reflect on those who had perished in this enchanted, Mediterranean landscape; airmen, sikhs, nurses, commandos, Jews, boys of 17 and guardsmen killed on Christmas Day.  At terrible cost, the allies had, like the Romans, smashed their way through.

 

         I like to think that, here, the Roman Empire found itself at its happiest, its most bizarre.  The mosaics that have been sent back to the Bardo Museum in Tunis are the finest in the world.  They speak from an age of beauty and perfect excess; a baby is riding a tiger, Venus naked and sensual, children fighting with axes.  Here, too, is Hercules’ statue - drunk, priapic and flailing his club at, well, anything.

         Our little bus nosed out their crumbled cities.  There was Sbeitla, the great administration centre, and Dougga, built on the hip of a beautiful, fertile valley.  There, we clambered around over the fallen blocks of civic pride – a giant map of the African winds, a magnificent colonnaded brothel and a parliament of lavatories, facing each other across the faucet.

Most intriguing of all was Bulla Regia, where the rich lived in sensuous, subterranean villas.  The survival of courtyards, fountains and living quarters was so complete that I felt the uncomfortable sensation of intruding.  At the end of the empire, St Augustine came here to rail at its depravity.  He was too late.  Archaeologists have recently unearthed a girl’s skeleton with an iron collar riveted around her neck.  “Adulterous prostitute,” it reads “Hold me because I ran away from Bulla Regia.”  They found her tied to a chair.

 

We spent our last days in Le Kef, a fortress town at the summit of Jebel Dyr.  Although the town was scruffy and a keen wind tickled up flurries of snow, I liked it best of all.  “We don’t get many visitors,” they kept telling us and then spoiled us rotten.  Stallholders refused payments and an old veteran of the French colonial army showed me round the fortress and the prison. “I liberated Tunisia,” he said, mounting a tricycle “and then Italy”.

His army papers described him as a “coiffeur”.  The Romans would have liked that.  First, the Carthaginians sent elephants and then hairdressers.  Tunisia, it seems, has been surprising people for well over 2,500 years.

        

          John Gimlette travelled as guest of Explore Worldwide Ltd (01252 760 100).  Their 15 day “Ancient Carthage and Camel Safari” tour costs from £595.  It includes flights, accommodation, all transport around the country and a three-day camel trek.  Tours run from September to April.

        

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