Women, Religion, and Amazing Hosts in Tunisia — Seeing (the world) 2̶0̶2̶0̶ 2022!

Before too much time passes, I want to write down some of the many thoughts I had regarding religion and women’s rights while we were in Tunisia. If you google Tunisia, you’ll see that it’s 98% Muslim. Being 98% anything is pretty amazing, and for our culturally-Jewish-recovering-Catholic-totally-atheist family, this was especially intriguing to us. For not having any belief in a god or gods, we very much enjoy learning about religions and belief systems. We also want our kids to be familiar with the various religions out there and to be respectful of others, regardless of what they do or don’t believe.

We had had very little time to research what to expect in Tunisia, so I tried to err on the side of caution. I told Story that we would likely need to cover our knees and shoulders in public, but it didn’t seem to be necessary to cover our heads. When we arrived at the airport, we pretty quickly discovered that we’d be fine in most of our usual clothes, but I still opted for basic modesty whenever we went out. I knew we weren’t going to blend in however we dressed but no need to stand out in multiple ways.

These women were more or less the average of modest dressers we saw around Tunisia. Right in the middle.

Anyway, our experiences in Tunisia were what formed most of our knowledge about the place, rather than stats online. I know that seems obvious, but it really stuck out in this case. We had very little knowledge of the country or culture to begin with, and then we had two weeks in two different AirBnBs with two quite different vibes. On the other hand, we also know that AirBnB hosts are a self-selecting group, so some underlying similarities will always be present. Nobody hosts unless they enjoy (at least a little) meeting and sharing with people from other places.

The part that I think was purely coincidental in our two AirBnBs was that, in both cases, the hosts’ parent or parents were the ones to actually greet us and help us settle in. I wrote about the first host-dad in a previous post, so I won’t repeat all of that. But in short, he was wonderful - curious, generous, wordly, and excited to spend some time with Americans for the first time in years. We also got some strong hints that he wasn’t particularly religious (A playful complaint: “The morning call to prayers don’t let me sleep. They always wake me up.”) or conservative in the American sense of the word. He’s divorced and remarried but maintains a good relationship with his ex. He’s very supportive of his daughters and grandchildren being educated and successful. It was clear he didn’t consider himself to be a strict male head of the family. If anything, he seemed pretty happy to be surrounded by strong women in his life. As he was our first real contact with a Tunisian, we weren’t sure if he was the norm or an anomaly.

When we moved to our next AirBnB - away from the resort area and in a more urban neighborhood - we met the next set of parents. I’m not going to mention their names here for reasons you’ll see below. They were also lovely, friendly, and generous. They lived in the downstairs apartment of a two-floor building/house. We stayed upstairs.

She speaks English quite well. Not perfectly, but plenty well to talk about all sorts of things. She worked for years for a large American corporation, so she may have been out of practice for a while but the foundation was there. And certainly her English is infinitely better than our French or Arabic (haha), so we were grateful to have a translator around. He understood some English but spoke very little. However, both of them were big fans (like us) of using translating apps, so we muddled through trickier words and concepts with the help of our phones.

I don’t even know how to describe how generous these two were with their time. Friendly and helfpul from the get-go, they stepped it up a notch our second night there. Sagan was wheezing a bit. We still aren’t sure why, but it was just enough for us to be concerned that he might need medical attention at some point. We were googling local emergency rooms and trying to have a plan in place in case he got worse in the middle of the night or something. The couple - I’m just going to call them Nancy and Bob here since those are typical Tunisian names (heehee) - just happened to send us a WhatsApp message as we were figuring things out. So I asked them if they had recommendations for us if we needed medical care. Within about 90 seconds, their son (our official host, who we had not met) sent me a sweet message with useful information, and Nancy and Bob knocked on our door. They wanted to be sure Sagan was okay and to let us know that they would drive us anywhere we needed to go, at any hour. One of their daughters-in-law was a doctor, and she could come help too, if needed. It was so sweet and so incredibly reassuring, I think any parent reading this can imagine how grateful we were. Also, the way their whole family jumped into action at once made me laugh and reminded me of a lot of my friends in El Paso.

Thankfully Sagan’s breathing improved on its own, so there was no need for a midnight run to a hospital. We kept them updated and thanked them again for their offers of help. At some point during one of our conversations, they asked if we would like them to show us around a bit that coming weekend. They would drive us to some cool places and play tour guide. We loved this idea, so we settled on doing it Saturday.

In the meantime, we explored the area within walking distance around us. We figured out groceries, found a couple restaurants, discovered a shoe store with a wide variety of knock-off Nike Dunks (Story and I almost caved on the Dunks that have pigeons on them!), and explored this weird old park that felt like a set for a Scooby Doo episode.

Driving laws are just a tad more lax than back home. I won’t even post the picture I took of how we drove around Tunisia for a full day, because American CPS would come knocking on our door immediately.

All things traffic are more lax. This intersection of three streets had no lights or stop signs. Just a lot of honking, praying, and running for it.

Just gonna fix this swing(?) real quick and give it a try. What could go wrong?

Story was desperate for a haircut that week (so many “dead-ends” as she calls split ends), so I asked Nancy if there was a place to get a haircut anywhere nearby. Better than pointing us in the right direction, she offered to have Bob drive us and said she’d stay with us for it in case we needed her. Amazing. I like to think this was fun for her since she has a husband and two sons and maybe got a kick out of having a little girl to dote on for a while.

By the way, the salon was more chic than anything we go to in the States. We’re a Supercuts family at best, and this place was fancy pants by our standards. I’d also like to note that we went on a Friday night, which I’d assumed might be a sacred time for Muslims, but that place was hoppin’. I also noted that the majority of the stylists were men. This caught my attention for two reasons. 1) I’d wondered if perhaps women could/would only go into salons run by other women, for modesty reasons. 2) I know I shouldn’t stereotype, but so far in my 46 years on this planet I don’t think I’ve met a male hair stylist that wasn’t gay. It’s technically illegal to be gay in Tunisia, from what we read, but let’s just say I’m fairly confident nobody in that salon gave a shit about that law. (Rock on!) So once again, all these vague pre-conceived notions I might have had about Tunisia were being thrown out the window one by one. Oh! There was even one young woman there who was getting her long hair cut quite short. The first few cuts where long strands fell to the floor, I thought, “Well, look at her getting sassy!” And then they kept going shorter and shorter, until ultimately she had what most people would consider a men’s haircut. It was cool to see, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this signified more than a haircut in her life? (More on that in a bit.)

When Saturday rolled around, Bob and Nancy were ready to hit the town bright and early. And it turned out “town” was inaccurate. “Towns” plural was where they took us. We’d envisioned a couple hours of sightseeing in Tunis, but these two rockstars had their car gassed up and picnic foods loaded in the trunk for a full day of exploring a big chunk of the whole damn country. I think by the time we were done, they’d had us out for about 12 hours and had covered something like 300 miles. We were wiped out, and they were still going like Energizer bunnies!

Not only did they drive us everywhere and provide food and drinks, but they had arranged and paid for English-speaking tour guides at two different historical sites - Dougga and Bulla Regia. While we’d already seen our fair share of Roman ruins on our trip, it was very cool to see the dots connecting for all of us on just how far the Roman Empire had spread. The similarities in details between ruins in York, Rome itself, and now on an entirely different continent were fascinating. Think Starbucks locations across the globe (same signage, same drinks offered) but built 100s of years apart from each other, before the days of wifi or even the Pony Express. Fascinating in another direction was being able to see the local touches and technologies that the Romans added (folded in like cheese, David!) along the way. While I’m sure the kids were not super excited to tour more of these sites, this really was a turning point in the learning of this stuff in a real way, which was the main point of this 6-month adventure to begin with. (Odd, funny note about Bulla Regia: Mike and I joked about how we were sure there weren’t a whole lot of Americans who had been to this place in the world. Not ten minutes later, we met two Americans, one of whom was from Wyoming. One state away from us back home. What the hell are the chances of that?!)

Emperors died so often, they stopped building entire sculptures of them and just replaced the head. All hail Emperor Sagan!

Story picked her bedroom in the naturally-air-conditioned basement of this fancy house in Bulla Regia.

Whoever built this was so smart. They had natural lighting all day, but kept cool living underground. What a shame that they wasted their skills building ruins.

After Dougga and Bulla Regia, we wound up and through some pretty mountain scenery, stopping at the (to us) most random place you could pick. In what felt like the middle of nowhere, there was this guy who makes cheese and runs an AirBnB and is starting a restaurant. Of all the things we bought in Tunisia, his cheese was the most expensive item. Very boutiquey and froo-froo. Also very good. No complaints at all on our end - it was yummy food and a cool experience. We were just very curious who his normal customers are and where he could possibly find them. We chatted with him for a while and saw his wife nearby with their little baby. (More on them in a bit, too.)

We worked our way back towards Tunis and saw other cool spots along the way. Throughout the day, we had a lot of time to talk. Bob and Nancy were very open and honest about all sorts of things. We talked about their children, their marriage and parenting style, how they met, their upbringings, and their extended families. Since Nancy was the English speaker, obviously we heard a lot more about her, and it was fascinating to me. Here was this woman who is older and has lived her life in a very religious country (by statistics, at least), and she was so proud of her work, travel, education, and her marriage to a man who clearly treats her as his equal. It took a little while to get to the fact that she’s atheist. Perhaps she wouldn’t use that exact word, but she’s definitely more of a science-minded person than a religious one. It came out gradually, as they both felt more comfortable around us and gained confidence that we wouldn’t judge them on this. I asked if she was raised in a Muslim house, and she was. I asked if her parents knew that she felt disconnected to the faith, and she said they did. I wish I’d had a recorder going while she was talking because I don’t remember the details, but basically she was young when she told them (late teens/early adulthood or so, I think?) and they seemed to accept it without any drama.

To us, this was all wonderful to hear. Both from what we’d seen out and about and from what Nancy was telling us about their life, it was nice to know that there seemed to be a lot of religious freedom in Tunisian society.

But there was also another side to this. Nancy, who is the friendliest, warmest person you could hope to meet, told us multiple times that she doesn’t really have any friends. This seemed crazy to us. Both she and Bob were clearly active and social. We also met one of her sons briefly, and he was immediately likeable as well. These are not wallflowers. We’d be happy to hang out with them all the time if we lived nearby. So why no friends?

Nancy explained that it’s to protect herself. Some of it was something universal that I think everyone can understand. She gives 100% to every relationship (I have no doubt this is true) and there’s only so much time and energy she can devote to others. But also, despite her openness with us, she doesn’t really feel comfortable sharing her views on religion with others in her community. I don’t think she worries about it being dangerous, but she knows there could be some subtle ostracizing that might occur and make life less comfortable. Again, I think anyone can relate to that somewhat, but I’ve never felt it to the same degree as she does. Tunisia is currently pretty stable and moderate, but they still aren’t very far removed from some of the theocratic societies in the Middle East.

Now, while these hours and days of conversation were taking place within our small group, the international news was filling up with images and videos of women in Iran staging huge protests because of the killing of Mahsa Amini for wearing her hijab improperly in public. The juxtaposition of these led to many conversations with our kids. It was all a lot to take in, and our thoughts on the matter were scattered and contradictory. On the one hand, Story found the headscarves to be beautiful and had decided to choose one for her souvenir from Tunisia. (She’s allowed one very small souvenir per country.) On the other hand, we saw women who were several levels more modest than a simple scarf, and that seemed oppressive and…so many adjectives…impractical, unfair, hot, and if I’m being honest, weird. I do try hard not to judge, but I simply cannot wrap my head around a god who would create beautiful bodies only to require that even the hands and ankles and mouths on those bodies be hidden away and considered shameful to show in public. In case I sound Islamaphobic here, rest assured that I think most religious traditions, rules, and rituals are super weird regardless of the faith. I’m an equal opportunity judgemental skeptic. So, god wants you to only eat fish one day a week for part of the year, or to cut off part of your child when he’s born, or to never cut your hair or take medicine or drink caffeine? Doesn’t god have better things to do with his/her/their time? But anyway, for now I’m just talking about head coverings.

Sagan felt like Tunisia seemed pretty free about all this stuff, so he was in full support of the women choosing to wear or not wear whatever felt right to them. Yes, definitely. But that did also lead to a discussion of what is really choice versus what you’re told all your life is your choice. It makes me think of something I read about girls a couple years ago. It was something along the lines of, “A girl choosing a pink shirt to wear isn’t the problem. The problem is when she’s only offered the choices of salmon, magenta, hot pink, or rose.” Obviously there’s no way to know how each individual woman feels on anything ever (it’s almost like we’re all unique!), but we wanted Sagan to at least keep in mind that there are always underlying pressures coming in from your family, neighbors, spouses, and religious community. That goes for all of us that live in societies, but certainly some feel this far more intensely than others. It’s important to keep in mind. Our kids are no different than other humans, in that they will make a lot of choices based on societal pressures that may never even register consciously for them. But one very big chunk of that won’t ever exist for them, at least not coming from us. They’ll never have a parent, priest, rabbi, etc. telling them that god wants them to dress, eat, or act a certain way. Growing up without that kind of limitation in their lives is what we want for them, but we realize it does make it harder for them to fathom what it might feel like.

Now I can circle back to the cheesmaker’s wife and the woman getting the short haircut. We had asked Nancy if she ever wore head coverings and/or if she ever felt uncomfortable not wearing one anywhere. Her early answers were polite variations of “no.” But as she loosened up with us, she let us know that she hates the head coverings and all that they imply. We started to notice her bristle when she saw certain things. As we left the cheesemaker’s place, she said in a sort of sad and angry voice about the wife, “She wasn’t wearing a head covering the last time we were here.” We all understood that she felt like the husband was pushing this on his wife, and Nancy was very disappointed in that. My guess is that was the last time Nancy and Bob will make that trek to the mountains for the fancy cheese.

Mike also pointed out that the woman getting her hair cut so short at the salon was doing so at a time when Iranian women were cutting their hair in protest. There, it’s hugely symbolic for women to do so. We’d been learning this from news reports that week. So we wondered if maybe that young woman was taking a stand, and we just happened to be there to witness it. There’s no way to know. It just as easily could have been nothing more than a haircut. But the timing sure seemed interesting.

I don’t have any way to sum up this long post. No defined thoughts or lessons learned. I’m just grateful. Grateful to have been born in a country that - despite what many of its citizens might say - is not run by one religion. Grateful to have been raised by a family that was somewhat religious but not so much that they locked me into certain beliefs or closed off their lives to others with different beliefs. (Quite the opposite in my upbringing. We loved learning and experiencing any new traditions people were willing to share with us.) I’m also grateful that our little family unit was able to spend some time in a culture so different from ours, but to ultimately find that people everywhere are more similar to us than they are different. We can look at stats and websites, but nothing compares to getting out in the world and meeting the Nancys and Bobs and Ridhas and waiters and hair stylists. I wish it all felt less messy, but each human is unique, and half the time we don’t even know what we want for ourselves, let alone what others might want. All we can do is keep talking, listening, learning, and empathizing. I plan to stay in touch with Nancy and Bob. If nothing else, I’m happy to let her vent the opinions she usually keeps to herself. Hopefully it’ll also let her feel like she has more friends, too. If we could get her to America, I have no doubt she’d be surrounded by eager friends in no time at all.*