Word: tunisian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Although I knew that most Tunisian women still covered themselves from head to ankle in the traditional "safsari" robe, I was startled just the same as I stepped off the plane in Tunis Airport to see a mass of white-sheeted figures on the airport's observation deck. The sight of these women waiting for their husbands and sons, probably laborers in Marseille or Munich or Milan returning home for a vacation, instantly created an exotic mood, despite the modernity of the airport. I suddenly felt myself in the Middle East...
...doubtful that any Tunisian women are strictly confined to their homes, as were the wives of many wealthy Muslims in the Middle Ages, but their spheres of movement, especially in their social life, are limited. Weddings are segregated by sex, although the merriment is not denied the women. They celebrate with dancing, clapping, and shrieking to live music inside, while the men sit quietly on the porch...
...innumerable lively open-air cafes, where it seems the majority of Tunisian men spend the majority of their waking hours, are exclusively male territory. The sex ratio of the audience at movies is not very different from that at the cafes. Few women are seen in public places without some errand to attend to; they are either shopping or walking briskly or waiting for a bus, protected under a safsari and bags and bundles...
This environment affects the way Tunisian men see Western women. Female tourists in Tunisia often encounter the behavior that stereotypes of Arab men promise them. A conversation that starts in a friendly tone frequently ends with the woman abruptly walking away, or even shouting to be left alone. Tunisian men often cannot cope with women not submitting to their will, and a polite "no" from a Western woman is akin in this respect to the rebellion of an adulterous wife...
...what most people think, the Algerians lost the war. After subjecting them to a steady onslaught of pillage, bombs, napalm and the most unspeakable, systematic torture, and after smashing the core of the FLN's leadership, the French clinched their victory by building an enormous electric fence along the Tunisian border. The fence cut the lifeline of the revolution because nearly all of the FLN's arms were smuggled across this border. However, the fence cost a fortune to guard and maintain, and there were problems of inevitable future insurrection and French public opinion. De Gaulle weighed these problems against...