The cab drops us at our first louage station, basically a garage a couple of miles from the city center. We don't know what to expect, but when we say "El Jem" to the milling drivers, we're quickly directed to a white van that is bound for the city. The louages are all white vans of various sizes. We sit patiently and expectantly in the van, watching the seeming chaos resolve itself as newcomers are directed to the next vehicle bound for their destination. Within ten minutes, our van pulls out of the garage, with Lee and I sharing a middle bench seat with an older woman. It's nice if unspectacular drive through the Sahel countryside and it's endless groves of olive trees.
Once I've determined that we're going in the right direction based on the road signs, my relaxtion is tested only by our driver's tendancy to tailgate before passing. But within an hour and without incident, we're dropped off in El Jem.
I had thought we might see the amphitheatre looming over El Jem at some distance, but that proves not to be the case, at least at the angle from which we have approached the city. But when we start walking and turn a corner north, thar she blows. As we stare up the angling Rue de la Grande Mosquee, mainly whitewashed buildings on the left, brown and pastel blue buildings on the right, all of a modest single story, the towering curve of the amphitheatre looks like a Roman backdrop that has crashed into the end of the street.
As we walk, or more accurately are drawn down the street, the sky takes on a threatening, appropriately martial appearance over the amphitheatre, benign cumulus converging into a dark-bottomed, leaden mass. But as we continue, the clouds separate and light prevails for our exploration and picture-taking.
Lee decides to get an audio tour while I choose to rely on my rather more dubious inner narrator. We go wandering our separate ways.
One of the great things about the place is that we are quite free to wander. Safety railings have been put up here and there, sections have no doubt been shored up, but there is little evidence of the present day. It seems very much a ruin.
The ravages of past centuries - whether the hauling away of countless stones for the building of the surrounding town or the great mosque at Kairouan, or the fact the the building occasionally suffered cannon fire to flush pesky rebels holed up inside - has served in a way to offer up more comprehensive views of the structure inside and out. On one side just the lonesome, truncated curve of a large seating bowl, the rows generously proportioned, almost the entire backing wall obliterated. At one time, the amphitheatre appparently had a capacity of about 35,000, exceeded by only two other such arenas in the Roman Empire.
Perhaps the strongest visual motif of the amphitheatre is the convex curve. It it present not only in the shape of the amphitheatre as a whole, but in the multitude of tall, semi-circular arches that penetrate the various layers of the building, pathways for natural light from without and walkways for people within. In some sections, the arches sit clothed in comfortable perfection, nothing having been lost over time, while elsewhere they form a stark pattern of a few naked rings of stone against the sky.
Opposite the bank of seats, the entire wall of the amphitheatre is in place. On this side I'm able to climb to the upper levels. There are great views to be had of the the town beyond, the interior of the building, all the gradations of color due to weather and pollution, the stubborn patches of vegetation clinging to sections of wall and areas on the floor, most everything. I run into my lovely traveling companion and we sit for a few minutes, regarding the amphitheatre from on high before splitting up again.
Bread and circuses. Panis et circenses to you Latin speakers. The practice of providing handouts and petty amusements by politicians to gain popular support, instead of gaining it through sound policy. Sound at all familiar? But, of course, we're talking ancient history here. Keep the populace comlacent and distract them from obvious corruption and social inequities. A very effective tool, but the problem, as we have found out in our own increasingly, elaborately distracted society, such a populace requires more and more distraction to keep it satisfied.
After leaving Lee, I make my way down to the floor of the amphitheatre and then find one of the stairways that leads to the subterranean chambers. There's a long central corridor, basically an extended barrel vault, with numerous side chambers. From these subterranean reaches, those clever Romans would hoist gladiators, animals, even theatrical scenery. Skylights of a sort are cut into the floor to provide some light, at least in the central corridor.
Wild animals were in plentiful supply in Africa. No doubt, they died by the thousands at El Jem. They might be pitted against each other, but those crowds wanting more and more could also demand human life, abundant and cheap in its way. Criminals, prisoners, even those whose crime was nothing more than debt, were pitted against each other or against those wild animals, sometimes thrown into their midst unarmed. When a gladiator was on the verge of dispatching a victim, apparently a favorite cheer was "Bene lava!," "Wash yourself well in blood." to you non-Latin speakers.
As I wandered the central corridor beneath the amphitheaters floor, occasionally taking a tentative step or two into a dark side chamber, or looking up through one of the small openings in the stone above me, I tried to imagine what it must have felt like for a man awaiting his participation in one of those grand entertainments. As he heard roar of thousands, the cry for blood, how he must have wondered how his life had come to this.
I see a few boys lingering at the far end of the corridor. Even as a group, they certainly aren't large enough to pose any sort of threat. At worst, they probably would just cadge a few coins. But I'm adequately spooked by this subterranean darkness and my own reveries to make me want to avoid any sort of negative exchange down here. I walk back to the stairway down which I had come and return to the abundant light of the amphitheatre floor.
I join Lee back on one of the hard row of seats, wandering away briefly to snap a few photos of her. We observe a tour group down on the amphitheatre floor and are impressed with one of the guides, as his explanations seem to move effortlessly between English, French and German.
We've seen so much already in a few days in Tunisia, and it hasn't exactly been a string of disappointing experiences. But wandering around the amphitheatre at El Jem, sitting peacefully as we are, I feel for the first time in the midst of a fairly timeless, dreamt-of moment. I'm reluctant to leave, but it does seem time to go at last.
As we emerge from the great building and approach the shops and cafes across Avenue...wait for it...Borguiba, one of the cafe owners importunes us to patronize his fine establishment. It's not the place where we're going to have lunch, but we do agree to sit down and have some tea.
The cafe is actually a good vantage point from which to take a photo of the amphitheatre. Just as I'm starting to get the entire arc of the south side of the structure into frame, a camel pulling a cart moseys into the shot and stops directly in my line. In a further gesture of disdain, the poor beast, laboring in some sort of camel purgatory and way beyond self consciousness, lets loose with an impressive stream of urine. Ah, the majesty.
The admission to the amphitheatre also admits us to the town's archeological museum, which is supposed to contain mosaics quite "fresh and vigorous" according to my guidebook, so here we are before the simple though fairly elegant white edifice.
The white-washed building is surprisingly lovely and sprawling, highlighted by an open-air cetral courtyard with mosaics on the walls of its colonnade. Most of the mosaics originally decorated second and third century Roman villas in Thysdrus (the name of the ancient city on the site of El Jem). And I'll be damned if the mosaics aren't both fresh and vigorous, spectacular in fact. Generally they're more complete than the mosaics we saw at the Bardo and the colors do seem amazingly fresh, even while most are in rendered in earth tones against white or off-white backgrounds.
My favorite is in the room, strangely named the Genius of the Year Room, just behind the courtyard. It's a hemispherical mosaic over a doorway depicting a peacock, though very nearly abstract, its tail feathers fanning out in triangles of muted green, yellow and red. I've never seen anything quite like and am transfixed for a time. I would have made the trip from Mahdia for this alone.
Lee's as thrilled with the place as I am, perhaps more. The happy spell is for a while challenged by a loud group of German tourists, the worst of whom is droning into his cell phone. It's a rare instance when someone on one of the infernal devices actually has something to report, but somehow I'm don't think he's gushing about the transcendantly beautiful mosaics.
We manage to lose the tour group by the time we get to the Maison d'Africa, over three thousand square meters of Roman Villa transported and rebuilt in its entirety from a location in the middle of present-day El Jem to the back of the Archeological Museum. The villa comes complete with a courtyard, small pool and even more great mosaics. This museum is a none-too-small treasure trove.
After we poke through the Maison d'Africa, we start our loop back by strolling through small field of excavations between the villa and side entrance to the museum. While examining some stray sculpture, a man approaches me and begins to hold forth on whatever piece I happen to be facing. I can't quite place his accent. Italian perhaps? Or maybe he's just Tunisian, with an odd accent speaking English. He's of medium height, and pretty well put together. Is he a docent? A lonely man with a lot of knowledge to share? Does he expect a tip? Whatever the case, I decide to break away when his attention is caught by another museum visitor. I make a break back for the museum building. As we walk back toward the town center, we see him unlean a bike from a wall outside the museum and ride off. Godspeed mystery docent!
The old ladies in the store are laughing at Lee. Just up the street from the museum, we have come across a row of shops and Lee's attention was caught by some smimple wooden kitchen tools. After she purchases one such spoon, the women working in the shop chuckle at her purchase. Whether this is because she bought just a spoon, or whether they wonder what sort of god-forsaken country we come from where a simple spoon can't be head, we really don't know. But it's always nice to leave 'em laughing.
We have found that the Restaurant du Bonheur, right at the convergance of two of the more major of El Jem's streets, bears an appropriate name. We're quite happy with our lunch, thank you very much. It's been a simple meal, sandwiches after the usual preliminary of olives, harissa and bread, but the sandwiches are delicious and the restaurant has a light, salubrious feel about it. We were distracted by our satisfying meal only by a large party that came in after us, assembling at a long table opposite us. It's a motley, seemingly international crew, perhaps some of whom are filming a segment for a travel program, if the large, professsional video camera sitting at one end of the table is any indication.
We have decided to round out our day by walking all the way around the Mahdia peninsula, to the Cap d'Afrique and back around the south side. Out along the Cap d'Afrique, a walking path leaves the road behind, but that's not nearly good enough for me. After mounting a squarish pedestal of stones which appears to be the remnant of some watch structure - Lee photographs me assuming both the arms akimbo pose and that of the great explorer, right hand shading my eyes as I regard seemingly infinite sea - I clamber out toward the end of the Cap, dodging openings in the rock.
Well, not quite all of the openings. In my excitement at getting to the very edge of the tawny rock ledge around the Cap, I slip and my left leg gets dunked in the sea up to the knee. Lee is looking on from some distance; I'm not sure if she's seen me fall in, but a salt stain on my left shoe will be an emblem of my folly for all to see for days to come.
But, in my defense, the ridiculous, fairly idyllic beauty of the scene is enough to make most any man act the fool, or at least the child. The calm sea and sky untroubled by clouds form an ebullient color field, sort of like a Rothko, suffused with contentment: the deep, deep blue of the Mediterranean vying with the azure of the sky, a hazy line of demarcation at the horizon. Sort of like my now two-tone jeans... only more satisfying.
Lee and her wet-legged consort are now on the south side of the peninsula, a short walk at this narrow end of the Cap d'Afrique. The sea is now at our left, a modest graveyard to our right. It seems to spread without border across the hillside, uniformly small and white upright markers and (in some cases) large horizontal slabs over individual graves.
Atop the gentle slope are a couple of marabouts, the white-washed cubes that contain the tombs of holy men, with their tell-tale koubbas (the ubiquitous little hemispherical domes that dot the country). I can't think that it matters to the bones in the ground either way, but as final resting places go, it's hard to imagine a better spot.
We'll probably walk back to the Place du Caire, check in with our mysterious friend in the burgundy jacket and do a bit more postcard writing over mint teas. After a rest back at the Phenix, we'll find some place for dinner, perhaps try more of the local seafood and even sip some of the demon liquor, if it can be had. All very good and necessary things in their way, but this walk has been like the perfect dessert, delicate and sublime, after the meal substantial of the day, El Jem and everything else. I can't speak for Lee, but I'm pretty sated and happy.
