I wrapped a scarf around my head before we went into the Great Mosque of Kairouan, and kept it on for most of the afternoon. Kairouan seemed to be the place for a hijab (or hejeb as you say in Tunisia). It's a very religious town. Plus, I dig the hijab. I think it looks classy, especially with some dark eyeliner and a hip-hugging skirt. Part of the problem with globalization is that people around the world start to dress more or less the same. At least in Tunisia, traditional clothes seem to be limited to tourist shops and few very old people. Jeans and sweatshirts seem to be the world uniform.
Back to Kairouan - other than the site of the Great Mosque (built by the Arabs in 800ish) it is the place to buy rugs and has a beautiful old city where we ate hot date-filled pastries and saw a camel ("a very senior camel", tour guide Mohamed said) pulling buckets of holy water up from a well. After an enormous bowl of couscous with fish (still working on getting those little bones out of the way) we headed to El Jem.
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| Great Mosque, Kairouan |
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| Kairouan's famous camel |
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| Kairouan |
El Jem is the site of the third-largest amphitheater of the Roman empire. It was built in 238 AD and held 35,000 people. Much of it still stands - the seats, the stairways, the concourses. It's easy to imagine the stands full while the gladiators battled wild animals below. You can almost hear a guy selling peanuts and hot dogs. Under the floor are the basement cells that housed lions and leopards in their cages, or prisoners awaiting battle. There's even an underground tunnel used for rolling the dead bodies of losing gladiators outside. Forget the Colliseum in Rome - just come to El Jem, the lines are much shorter.
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| El Jem |
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| El Jem |
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| El Jem amphitheater |
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| El Jem amphitheater |
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