The Coolidge examiner., 1938-02-17

and giant pipe of the mosque Of
SaberS. the teeming marketplace of
the Rue Saussier, or the relentless
irritation of street Arabs begging.
Good day. mister. give me Gig
arctic"
Once a year the word evidently
goes around that the little pests
shall cease to poster. And since
that luxury comes at a time when
Kairouan is at its best, a visit on
the last day of the annual Rug fair
is pleasantly memorable.
Soon after dawn. to receive pow
der for their salutes, the famous
Zlass horsemen assemble beside the
circular pool of the Aghlabites. Clad
in their best robes and wearing
sombreros whose broad brimS are
held up by ostrich feathers, they
seem a docile lot Bur when the
resident generals car arrives the
tempo Quickens.
BY afternoon these somnolent
horses will be racing at breakneck
speed while their riders stand in
their saddles. sweep the earth with
their heads, do a shoulder stand on
a galloping charger, and juggle gun
and saber in mimic warfare.
Among the whitewashed graves
where the dead huddle as close as
possible to the Great Mosque. veiled
women stand and cheer.
Eve has not lost her delight In
weddings. When the rider sweeps
down on cortege grouped about
the silken saddle-tent of the bride
to-be, and an Arab Lochinvar alb
ducts the angel of his dreams from
haf-hearted defenders, who are
probably glad TO have it over with,
the veiled women ululate their de-
light. The fact that the silken can
opy is empty doesn't spoil the fun.
Too Much Olive Oil Produced.
Between Kairouan and the south
ern oases stretches the eastern
plain, in which the French protec-
tors take just pride. for they have
restored fertility to a region long
barren. In neat rows. miles long
and 80 feet apart, stand olive trees
whose only fault is their fruitful
ness.
When Paul Bourde, a journalist.
convinced Of ancient olive produc-
ton here by the ruins Of Roman
millstones, brought back groves to
regions the Arab invader had laid
desolate. he failed to bring back
the little Roman lamp.
Even beauty parlors can't use as
much olive oil as did the Roman
athletes who rubbed it on thick and
then scraped it off in rivuletS with
the curved strigil Lands of corn
and cotton offer substitutes, and the
Philippine palm seeks its share of
the oil trade. Bourde succeeded all
too well. Tunisian olive oil. the
equal of any, begs for buyers at a
fourth its former price.
Sousse and Sfax are the big
cities" Of Tunisia's eastern plain.
Each has its neat European quar-
ters. each its interesting native
town.
Sousse, then Hadrumetum, helped
Hannibal fight Scipio and later was
carpeted with Roman mosaics. LIE
Bardo's little gem, found at Sousse.
shows Virgil writing the 'Aeneid"
between the Muses..
Sfax, second only to Tunis, ships
phosphates and fishes for sponges,
octopuses, and a variety of fnny
fodder. It's neat European quarter
seems like an exposition city. Ma
tive life centers in the mosque. On
raised benches covered with mat
ting, dealers sell frippery gewgaws
and a fortme-teller divines from
field beans.
Amphitheater of Ell Diem.
Between Sousse and Sfax a Ro-
man ruin dwarfs the modern town
for which it was the quarry. Ii is
the amphitheater of FL Diem. One
sees it from miles away and its
memory follows one for years.
In the Eighth century, when
Kahena, Berber queen, sought to
repel the Arab invaders, tais coli
scum served as her fortress. Ex-
cept for this and few other mar
tial interludeS the towering struc-
ture stood there. empty as the Yale
bowl or the Ann Arbor stadium be-
tween games, waiting only for
10000 spectators to swarm toward
the clouds and look down on the bar
barrie spectacles in the arena.
Then, at the end of the Seven
teenth century, rebels hid here,
bey broke through the wall to reach
them. and El Diem, each of whose
stones had been painfully quarried
and shaped, became a source of
ready-made building blocks for
puny huts.