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Updated: July 13, 2025
He thought that in the matter of suicides, as in that of remorse, we were too "spectacular and altruistic"; that we lived in a rather unwholesome atmosphere of self-created and foolish ideas concerning honour and duty; that the Mektoub practice of the Arabs pointed to an underlying primitive sanity which we would do well to foster within us. Gafsa, even Gafsa, has its enigmas.
Sidi Ahmed Zarroung that is the name of the miniature oasis visible from the Meda Hill, at the foot of those barren slopes. It is a pleasant afternoon's walk from Gafsa. The intervening plain is encrusted with stones stones great and small.
At Gafsa, if I may judge by certain indications, it would probably be arranged to commence still earlier." I have been offered far more fearful wild-fowl nearer home certain ornithological wrecks, I mean, that have been kept beyond the feather-adhering stage, and then reverently held before a fire, for two minutes, wrapped in a bag, lest the limbs should drop off.
"These are the criticisms to which we are exposed, because we introduce an enlightened and progressive policy." "Progressive policy be damned! We have held Gafsa for the last thirty years, and what have we done to improve the place? Nothing." "Pardon me! We have planted twenty-seven pepper trees. Tunisia exists for needy people in search of work. If you can't make it pay, leave it alone.
But the excellent spahi, whom my letter from head-quarters had considerably impressed, busied himself meanwhile on my behalf, and at seven in the morning a springless, open, two-wheeled Arab cart, drawn by a moth-eaten old mule, was ready for my conveyance to Gafsa.
These stones are scattered all over the plain, and Monsieur Couillault has traced the site of several workshops ateliers of prehistoric weapons near Sidi Mansur, which lies within half a mile of Gafsa, whence he has extracted or rather retrieved, for the flints merely lie upon the ground quantities of instruments of every shape; among them, some saws and a miniature spade.
This is another feature which they have in common with the beasts of the earth: never to pause before the memorials of their own past. Goethe says that where men are silent, stones will speak. If ever they spoke, it is among these crumbling, composite walls of Gafsa.
They are merely depressed; they are not deficient in mother-wit or kindliness; a little good food would work wonders. The oasis people are milk-drinkers, and would be healthier than the townsmen but for the agues, fevers and troublesome "Gafsa boil" to which they are subject.
There are interesting walks in the neighbourhood of Gafsa, but I can imagine nothing more curious than the town itself; a place of some five thousand inhabitants, about a thousand of whom are Jews, with a sprinkling of Italian tradespeople and French officials and soldiers.
It was a marvellously clear day, and not many miles before reaching our destination we looked back upon the downhill route traversed which, so far as one could see, might have been a dead level. At a distance of nearly twenty miles Gafsa was plainly visible white buildings piercing a dusky line of palms an hour's walk, it seemed.
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