Tender at the Bone (22 page)

“Attention!” he said. I sat upright. “We have decided where to take you to dinner.”

Serafina and I looked at each other in surprise. They had been arguing about dinner?

“Naturally,” said Noureddine. “Your first taste of a new city is very important. We want you to like Tunis. Tonight we will go to a small restaurant in the souk. Tomorrow night my mother will make couscous for you.”

“What is this?” murmured Serafina. “Are you the Welcome Wagon?”

“Excuse me?” said Taeb, “I do not understand.”

“Me neither,” said Serafina.

By the time they dropped us off I felt dizzy, as if I had been holding my breath for hours. The release came in a rush and we babbled as we climbed the stairs to our room.

“What were we thinking of,” I said, “going off with two strange men?”

“For the first few minutes,” said Serafina, “I thought we were going to be swallowed up by the medina.”

“What do you think they want?” I asked.

“Oh, just our bodies,” she replied.

“We probably should count our blessings and forget about dinner,” I said.

We both knew we would go.

The restaurant they had chosen was in the old Arab quarter. Following their directions, we walked down narrow lanes, past scarred buildings, and turned into an impasse ending in a door made of hanging beads. Inside was a small crowded room with pictures torn from magazines taped dizzily to the walls. Noureddine jumped up when he saw us and started waving energetically, as if we might have trouble finding them. They were sitting at a table covered with plastic and daubed with splashes of brick-red harissa. Nobody spoke for a moment and then we launched into one of those surreal conversations you have when you are with strangers and able to reinvent yourself. We said we were graduate students. They told us they were engineers who had studied in France. I wondered.

As we talked, a pretty woman with shiny black hair piled on top of her head set a platter of triangular pastries on the table. “Attention!” said Noureddine, reaching for one of the pastries. “This is the national food of Tunisia. I will now show you how to eat a brik.”

Serafina never liked being told how to do anything. Before he could say another word she picked up the nearest pastry and took a bite. There was a spurt and a gasp; Serafina had egg all over her face.

Noureddine and Taeb both laughed, and after trying not to for a second I did too. “I will tell you a thing,” said Noureddine, “it takes practice to eat a brik. I will demonstrate.” He held the crisp, flaky triangle by the two top corners, gently took the third one between his teeth, worried it a little, and began to suck. Swallowing, he said, “You see? You must eat the egg first.”

I ate two for practice, enjoying the sensuality of eating something so rich and dangerous, and then a third because it tasted so good. The egg was sitting on a bed of vegetables mixed with chile-rich harissa, and each time the yolk came shooting out between the crackling layers of pastry it created an incredible sensation.

“Tomorrow you will do better,” Taeb said gently to Serafina, handing her a plate of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and olives, and a basket of bread. She gave him a long look under her lashes and bit into the bread.

I was jealous. Taeb had the distant charm of a man who knows that he is attractive to women and doesn’t care. He didn’t talk much. Noureddine talked enough for both of them; despite his looks, he was earnest and bookish. And extremely patriotic. Now he launched into the history of the Hafsids who once ruled his country. “In the thirteenth century Abu Zakariyya built the souks and his wife created colleges all over North Africa. Tunisia was the most enlightened part of the world and people from all over Europe came to live here,” he said proudly.

“Really?” drawled Serafina. Her hand darted out and picked up a brik. Delicately holding the top corners with her fingers she put the bottom corner in her mouth. As she inhaled the egg, slowly, she never took her eyes from Taeb.

“Bravo!” he said. “You must have Tunisian blood.”

“He never even touched my hand!” Serafina moaned later. “Even when we danced he kept his distance.”

“I wouldn’t let Noureddine touch mine,” I said, already depressed. After dinner they had taken us to a large nightclub in the new part of town. Noureddine was surprisingly light on his feet and he pulled me energetically around the floor while I looked yearningly at Taeb. I wasn’t positive we had paired off, but if we had, I’d lost.

“And he insisted on sitting out all the slow dances,” Serafina continued, ignoring my comment. “The best-looking man I’ve seen since I left home and his idea of a good time is the twist!”

“Eight hours ago,” I reminded her, “you were terrified that he wanted your body. Now you’re terrified that he doesn’t.”

Serafina was still shaking her head. “Coming here,” she said darkly, “may have been a mistake.”

The next night Noureddine took us to his mother’s house. Orange blossoms gleamed silver in the garden, capturing the moonlight as we passed. The air was heavy with perfume, and bees throbbed in their hives. Noureddine bent to remove his shoes, his bulk filling the small entrance, and then led us into a dark, low-ceilinged room. Carpets were everywhere: scattered on the floor, tacked onto the walls, thrown over the furniture. In the center stood Noureddine’s mother, veiled from head to toe, her hands together in greeting. As I looked into her eyes I felt I was stepping backward a hundred years.

Later Noureddine told me that his mother couldn’t read, and I tried to imagine what it was like for an engineer who spoke three languages to have an illiterate parent. I couldn’t, but just the sight of this mysterious woman made me feel awkward and tongue-tied. Then Noureddine’s sister bounded into the room wearing a straight navy skirt and a white silk blouse and rescued us. “Mina teaches at the university,” Noureddine managed to say before she took over, asking where we had been, where we were going, and why we had come to Tunis.

As she talked her mother was setting platters of food on a round, low table in the corner. There were shiny beets the color of garnets and grated carrots perfumed with orange-flower water. Cucumbers were dotted with olives, oranges sprinkled with rosewater. The food glistened. As their mother left the room Noureddine and
Mina began helping themselves, using their fingers to pick up the food.

“Will you be offended,” asked Mina in her lilting voice, “if I ask about your backgrounds?”

I wondered if I should say that I was Jewish. I had a quick fantasy that they would all leap up, turn the table over, and demand that I leave the house. But Mina just nodded graciously and said, “Tunis has been home to many Jews.” She turned to Serafina.

“It is unusual, is it not, for a white woman and a brown one to be friends in America?” asked Mina.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” said Serafina simultaneously, “it is.”

We fell silent again as Noureddine’s mother reappeared with a large loaf of bread. Taeb tore off a piece and dipped it into the spicy green peppers mixed with tomatoes. Serafina imitated him, but when she ripped the bread from the loaf and dipped it into the rich eggplant salad the gesture suddenly became seductive. She licked her fingers.

“Attention!” said Noureddine. “This is only the first course.” And he began telling us about the agriculture of Tunisia. By the time he got to annual date production I was having trouble stifling my laughter. I caught Serafina’s eye. “Stop it!” she said, and then we both exploded in uncontrollable waves of mirth. There was a tense moment and then the corners of Mina’s mouth turned up, she giggled too, and it was all right.

We couldn’t eat more.

We did.

Platters came and went at a dreamlike pace. Each seemed to leave the table as full as it had arrived and I wondered what was going to happen to the leftovers.

The pièce de résistance appeared, a triumphant pyramid of grain, fish, and spices large enough to feed a small city. Noureddine
held up his right hand. “I will show you the proper way to eat couscous,” he said, dipping delicately into the platter. He brought some of the grains toward him, rolling as he pulled, and then popped the ball into his mouth. “You will notice,” he said, “that my fingers do not touch my mouth. Now you try.”

I tried. The grains went spinning out between my fingers and all I got was a handful of air. “Try again,” he insisted. This time I got three grains of couscous and a piece of fish. “Better,” said Noureddine, “but you touched your mouth. Again.”

I kept trying, forgetting how full I was. I finally mastered the technique, but by then Serafina was urging Taeb to teach her to eat, inching closer for the lesson. As he showed her how to grasp the grains, she leaned against him. He edged away. But once he unconsciously took his fingers and brushed some couscous from her cheek, then snatched them back as if her skin were on fire.

We had intended to spend a few days in Tunis before going on to Algiers and Meknes. But more than a week had passed and neither of us had mentioned leaving. The boys were always with us and our bones seemed to be filled with sweet Tunisian honey that slowed us down, changed our rhythm.

We walked and danced. We spent twilight sipping cool lemonade on the terrace of the Café de Paris and in the evenings we ate spicy tajines and grilled merguez sausages. We wandered through the alleys of the medina, catching glimpses of fountains playing in sun-drenched courtyards. Occasionally Noureddine took my hand, like a brother or a cousin. And then there was Taeb.