‘Everyone in Al-Hamma knows me’, said my friend and host Saida as we hopped out of the louage which had redirected to stop directly outside her front door.
‘All these houses’, she pointed to a row which seemed to make up about half the town ‘belong to my cousins.’
‘And these’, she pointed to the remaining half ‘Are the Hammams.’
Indeed in the five days we spent in Al-Hamma, a small oasis town roughly 30km from Gabès, we rarely managed to walk more than a few steps without calls of ‘Aslama, enti labasa? Omik labasa?’ (‘How are you? How’s your mother?’) usually followed by an invitation into the house for coffee, bseesar and the obligatory mountain of couscous. This was accompanied on a couple of occasions – and to my initial surprise – by the host turning the speakers in the house to full volume, blasting out some music and getting everyone up and dancing.
On our third day in Al-Hamma, while having the usual tea and coffee at Saida’s aunt Su’ad’s house, I was shuffled into a side room and dressed in full traditional Tunisian wedding clothes for more dancing and a photoshoot in the garden. Since I was already dressed for the occasion, Su’ad’s husband took the moment to offer me a house in return for my hand in marriage.
As our visit coincided with Eid Mulad, I was able to help in the preparation of two types of asida (both of which are delicious), which friends and neighbours traditionally exchange on the anniversary of prophet Muhammad’s birth. The first was made from hazelnuts and the second was zgougou, from the seeds of pine cones. We prepared the asidas the evening before eid and decorated them in the morning, with powdered almond and pistachio and topped with more nuts and sweets. Once completed, we drove from house to house distributing our asida and being very careful not to spill any (asida has a fragile, jelly-like texture and the real challenge is making it to each of the houses with all the asidas intact).
My visit to Al-Hamma was, of course, not complete without a visit to one of the many hammams, which Libyans drive 5 hours from their home country to reach and which Saudi Arabians regularly visit the town for in the summer, spending two weeks in Al-Hamma and visiting the hammam multiple times each day.
The hammam itself consists of a large tiled basin filled by a jet of boiling hot water which flows up from a natural spring. While Saida and her cousins consider the water too hot to be enjoyable, I have to side with the Saudis, happy to be boiled like a bowl of macrona.
In our time in Al-Hamma, we were passed seemingly continuously from one kind, welcoming home to another. If one wants to experience first-hand the famous Tunisian hospitality then Al-Hamma is surely the place to do it. I hope to be back soon, for the kindness of the people, the deliciousness of the food and, of course, to accept Su’ad’s husband’s offer and move into that house he has waiting for me.
