Tender at the Bone

by Ruth Reichl

  The car came closer. “We know a hotel,” said one of the boys, leaning out of the window.

  “I bet you do,” said Serafina under her breath. I turned and looked at the boys. They seemed nice enough. “We are not talking to any men,” I said. One of the boys laughed.

  “Just follow us,” he said, smiling. His teeth were very white against his coffee-colored skin and dark hair. The driver brought the car up until it was right next to us and we went along that way, silently, for several blocks. At least they appeared to be leading us toward the center of town.

  The driver stoppped the car and got out. He unfolded himself from the tiny vehicle, and when he stood up he dwarfed it. Serafina giggled. I gave her a baleful look, but the harm had been done; he took the laugh as an introduction. The tall man held out his hand to her. “Taeb,” he said, shaking hers. The smaller one held out his hand too. “Noureddine,” he said. I took it.

  They followed us into the hotel and began talking to the man behind the desk in rapid Arabic. He looked from my pink, sunburned face to Serafina’s cool brown one and wrote something on a piece of paper. Noureddine glanced at it, snickered contemptuously, grabbed the piece of paper and tore it up. The man wrote another figure. Noureddine tore it up again. They both seemed to enjoy the game; it went on for a long time. Finally Noureddine shook his head and turned to me. “Okay?” he asked, showing me the figure. It came to about seventy-five cents a night. “We’ll have to see the room,” I said grandly, and the man behind the desk grabbed a key and led us upstairs.

  It was a fine room, much nicer than any of our rooms in Italy. We said we’d take it and dropped our bags on the bed. Then we went downstairs to thank the boys.

  “Come have tea,” said Noureddine. Serafina and I looked at each other, nodded, and squeezed ourselves into the back of the car.

  It was hot. Our bare legs stuck to the plastic seats and the air in the car was so heavy that each time I took a breath I could feel the heat moving through my throat and out to the very edges of my lungs. Serafina rolled down her window. Taeb put his foot on the gas and sped off so fast that he took the first corner on two wheels.

  I glanced nervously at Serafina. Why had we said yes? Who were these men? Where were we going? Noureddine pointed off in the distance and we could see the medina, a crazy quilt of stone buildings heaped together like some medieval city. The car headed toward it, turning off the broad, straight avenue onto small streets that wound around, becoming narrower with each turn. The walls of the houses came closer and closer until we could reach out on either side and touch them. When the car could go no farther, Taeb simply stopped and opened his door. He got out. We followed, silent and frightened.

  Little boys came rushing at us, chattering in Arabic, French, and English. Noureddine shooed them off impatiently, heading into a mysterious labyrinth that smelled like saffron, cayenne, mint, and cumin. I could hear the rustle of fabric and, way off in the distance, the high, wailing Arab music that sounds like cries of fear and joy.

  We passed dark shops filled with patterned rugs, woven clothes, and amber beads. The cool, thick walls closed around us. Serafina licked her lips and hissed at me, “We could get lost and never find our way out. We could disappear forever. Nobody even knows we’re in Tunis!”

  Then Taeb stopped, pulled aside a curtain, and motioned us into a shop. We both hung back. It didn’t look like any tearoom either of us had ever been in. It was dark. Low tables were surrounded by piles of faded oriental carpets on which men reclined, holding glasses of herb-filled tea. There were no women. The air was filled with moaning music and as the men listened, their eyes closed, they beat time with their hands. “It looks like an opium den,” whispered Serafina. “Let’s not go in.”

  It might be dangerous. I knew we were acting foolishly. But Serafina and I were together and I felt happier than I had in months. Besides, it was too late to back out of this adventure. We were already in the door and tea was being ordered. Noureddine nodded his head to the music and said reverently, “That’s Oum Kalthoum.”

  The tea came; it was achingly sweet and filled with mint but it did not seem to contain dangerous drugs. “Everybody in Tunis comes to the souk for tea,” said Noureddine, leaning back like a pasha. “It is a custom. You will see. Once you get to know Tunis it is impossible to leave.” I glanced at Serafina; it sounded like the beginning of an evil fairy tale.

  Taeb and Noureddine switched into French, which I could follow and then Arabic, which I could not. They waved their hands and the sounds grew harsher. As the debate became more intense I became more nervous. What were they talking about?

  I watched as they argued. The tall one, Taeb, had a lean face with sharply defined features and an aristocratic nose. He had a dangerous stillness. With his white shirt and dark pants he looked like one of those characters who stroll moodily through Antonioni films. The stocky one was more animated and less attractive. His square face was framed with curly hair and he looked strong enough to crack a skull between his hands. Now he stopped talking, suddenly.

  “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.

  We both dreamed about him. Serafina did more than that, but he hardly seemed to notice. “All this time and we’re still just friends,” she fumed. “I wish I understood this country.”

  Then Noureddine started talking about driving down the coast to Sousse and Mahdia and Sfax. “You must see the Great Mosque,” he insisted. “It was built in 851. And the Ribat, a masterpiece of Islamic architecture, which is even older.”

  “How exciting,” said Serafina, barely repressing a yawn.

  “No more monuments, please,” I demurred.

  It was Taeb who insisted. “The Sahel is more than monuments,” he said. “The beaches are the most beautiful in the world. We’ll be back in time for my sister’s wedding next week.” And then he clinched it by putting his hand on Serafina’s arm and urging, “Please come.”

  The road south was empty, or I remember it that way, lined with tall palm trees. Donkeys grazed along the side, looking up, ears twitching, as we passed. An occasional dromedary ambled into the road so that Taeb had to honk impatiently to get the rider to move over.

  After a few hours we stopped to swim. There was nobody on the beach and as we separated to put on our bathing suits I had a sudden moment of modesty, remembering that the boys had never seen us dressed in less than skirts and blouses. Looking at Serafina’s full breasts and tiny waist I regretted every bite of couscous. Indeed, both boys gasped when they saw her.

&
nbsp; Later we pulled off the road at a little whitewashed shack with blue awnings. We were the only guests, and the proprietor rushed about pulling chairs up to a table. There was a negotiation—Noureddine, of course, did the talking—and then the man left. We could hear him in the kitchen, rustling about and talking to the cook.

  I was surprised when a bottle of rosé wine appeared on the table; in Tunis the boys had not touched alcohol. It was crisp, icy cold, and heavy in the mouth. With the first bottle we ate peppered almonds and olives from the trees growing all around us. We had a second bottle with the mechouia, the spicy mixture of charcoal-roasted chiles and tomatoes. By the time we got to the grilled fish I could feel my cheeks start to flush. Across the table Taeb was feeding dates to Serafina, slowly, with his fingers. Then she picked up a slice of watermelon—the fruit was almost unbearably sweet—and devoured it with sharp, delicate little bites. Taeb watched so intently that for the first time she was the one who looked away.

  It was almost dark when we checked into our hotel, a few simple bungalows scattered between palm trees on the sand. Serafina hummed to herself, quietly, as she undressed, and I felt sad and empty. We didn’t talk much. I woke up once in the middle of the night and thought Serafina was not in her bed. But she was there in the morning, fast asleep. Had I been dreaming?

  We had rolls and coffee in the hotel and then went out to the beach, which was as fine as they had said it would be. It was empty and quiet. The sea was very blue and the sun was bright but not too hot. Fishing boats drifted along the horizon. We lay on blankets for a while and then Taeb jumped up and said he was going to visit his aunt. Noureddine said he would go along, to show respect.