Going home

On 20th August, I began my long journey from Edinburgh to Tunisia, stopping in London and Paris. When the plane finally landed in Tunis, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia and as the doors opened, I took a long, deep breath.

Home.  I was finally home.

How I had longed for that day, to have a Tunisian stamp in my new passport, to be greeted with 'peace be upon you', to hear Arabic again, to travel down streets called 'Rue Pakistan' & 'Rue Palestine', to disregard seatbelts and queues and to throw myself into the busy crowd and get lost forever, in jasmine and sunshine.

It's strange to go back somewhere you never really left.  Tunisia has become such a part of who I am, I can't ever leave it behind.  This time, I was there for a wedding and to visit friends and a very important little girl.  But I was also there to see if everything I felt remained.  Was 2012 merely a happy period of my life or could I have new stories, new love and life in Tunisia?

As soon as I seen Lucia, the Italian other half of me I felt myself again, maybe for the first time since I left.  We hugged in the street outside the big mosque in 'Passage' and I grabbed a fistful of her lovely little curls as I always did.  She'd stayed on after I left and was making a new home with her Tunisian half :)  As she had to work, I made plans to catch up with old and new friends in Tunis before we would travel to Sousse together.

I made the decision to meet up with someone I knew only via Facebook due to our shared love of Palestine.  I was a little apprehensive but oddly, less so than I would be in Edinburgh.  Wrongly or rightly, I have always felt safe in Tunisia.  Jihed met me with gifts of jasmine and flags from the greatest countries on earth - Tunisia and Palestine, ofcourse.  We met his sister, a writer and had a fantastic lunch in a rooftop restaurant in the medina.  They invited me to a concert at night in Carthage, Roman ruins overlooking Tunis.  To my delight, it was Shadia Mansour, a rapper from London and I was lucky enough to meet her at the end of the night.  In less than 24 hours, two people who had never met me before, gave me one of the most special days of my life.

Returning to Sousse where I spent the best year of my life was extremely emotional for me.  In one city I found myself, found soul mates & family, found love and the life I had always dreamt of.  I guess I was a little scared that my feelings would have changed, that maybe my city had become too intertwined with my feelings for the man I fell in love with there.  But very quickly I remembered that actually, my heart belongs to Tunisia, before anyone else.

I will always have a reason to go back and it's not because of one person, it is because of every person.  Jalel, my dear mentor and his wonderful family who always welcome me like their daughter and sister.  AJMEC and its members - the association who took care of me and even gave me a place to stay this time around.  My sister Mariem, who makes such a difference to this world, breaking barriers and prejudices simply by being her wonderful self, she inspires me everyday.  The beautiful little girl living in SOS children's village in Akouda, who threw her arms around me and brought peace to my heart.

Until next time, n7ebbekom (I love you all) x

'' Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is."   - Louis de Bernières

Tunisia 2012: A Transition Period

I know that physically, I look like a completely different girl to the one who left Edinburgh in March.  My level of attention to my appearance is probably about 10% of what is was.  Gone are the days of fake tan, false eyelashes and skyscraper heels. Gone, and good riddance I might add! 

Even in my personality I'm told there is a change, but it's been harder for me to recognise.  I've always known who I am on the inside, it was being comfortable enough to reflect that on the outside that was difficult.  

The pressure I felt as a young woman in the U.K was not only about aesthetics, although that in itself is enough to make anyone crumble quicker than a dropped compact.  It was the daily rat race to perfection, to have a dazzling night life, dream job, dream wardrobe, planned holidays, sporadic weekends and of course, not forgetting to photograph every single moment for Facebook, just in case others were in doubt that you do in fact love your life.  Or not.   

I probably fooled most.  Thank God I didn't fool myself.  Coming to Tunisia was one of the best decisions I've made in my life.  

One of the first things that struck me about Tunisia, is the lack of advertisements.  Where on earth was all the stuff I HAD to buy?  And where were those perfect half naked women that were put on this earth to make the rest of us mere humans feel bad about ourselves?  Everything that was so real, so part of my everyday life at home, had dissolved somewhere between the North Sea and North Africa.  There also isn't the same culture of celebrity and gossip magazines.   After 6 months without it, when I was faced with a copy of 'Heat'  magazine, I remember feeling genuinely offended by what was being said to me, both implicitly and explicitly.   Telling me 21 ways to have higher self-esteem whilst humiliating the poor reality TV star who has put on a few pounds.    

Now it goes without saying that there are pressures on women here too, each society has it's own problems. However as a 'westerner' coming here, it's like a cleansing of the mind.  I feel like I've regained a human sense of reality, with real human values at the core.  So what's important?  The same things that deep down we all care about in the U.K, family, friends and being a good person.  The difference is that here, these things take priority, without exception.  The western world teaches us to focus on the things on the surface and that that will make us happy on the inside.  In Tunisia, it's the contrary.

I watch teenage girls here going to school, in their trainers, jeans and blazer, looking liked fresh-faced children, which is what they are.  They're not plastered with make-up and dressed like girls in their twenties.  We need to take a good look at our youth in the U.K, at our young women and ask ourselves, how does our society nurture them?  Because as long as we continue to churn out images of unrealistic beauty and scathing attacks on women deemed 'too fat' or 'ugly', the '21 ways to better self-esteem' will be lost in the bottom of the make-up bag.  And I think, they deserve better.


This post is dedicated to my dear friend Lucia Spata.  'Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not discovered until they arrive.'


Interestesed in doing something similar?

Useful Links  - British Council - European Voluntary Service
                      - AJMEC Association, Tunisia
                       - Xchange Scotland