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Updated: September 13, 2025
Likely enough, I would not have remained in Gafsa more than a couple of days.
The couplings of a train, climbing uphill from Gafsa past the Leila oasis, suddenly broke, with the result that the rear portion rushed backwards again, careered through the Gafsa station and up the artificial incline which leads towards the Oued Baiesh, crossed the bridge, and thundered at a vertiginous pace into the desert beyond.
I borrowed Sallust and tried to press some flavour out of his description of Marius' march to the capture of Gafsa. It was a fine military performance, without a doubt; he led his troops by unsuspected paths across the desert, fell upon the palace, sacked and burnt it, and divided the booty among his soldiers: all this without the loss of a single man.
"Gafsa ... Gafsa," he began, in dreamy fashion, as though I had proposed a trip to Lake Tchad. And then, emphatically: "Gafsa? Why on earth didn't you go over Sfax?" "Ah, everybody has been suggesting that route." "I can well believe it, Monsieur." In short, my plan was out of the question; utterly out of the question.
Arabs have a saying that Gafsa was founded by Nimrod's armour-bearer; but a more reasonable legend, preserved by Orosius and others, attributes its creation to Melkarth, the Libyan and Tyrian Hercules, hero of colonization. He surrounded it with a wall pierced by a hundred gates, whence its presumable name, Hecatompylos, the city of a hundred gates.
For the rest, only the dessus du panier of womankind goes veiled hereabouts a few portly dames of Gafsa, that is, who are none the worse, I suspect, for keeping their features hidden.
And the wind of Gafsa has this peculiarity, that it is equally bitter from whichever point of the compass it blows. For such things seem to be unknown hereabouts.
Mentally, too, I am thawing once more; the hotel life and solitary walks of Gafsa had begun to affect me disagreeably.
Sages will be interested to learn that Professor Koken, of Tuebingen, in a learned pamphlet, lays it down that these flints of Gafsa belong to the Mesvinian, Strepyian, Praechellean to say nothing of the Mousterian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and other types. So be it.
The inside appearance, once that portal has been passed, is quite different, and I was glad to have an opportunity of seeing the place, as it is one of the surprises of Gafsa, one of the few remaining town-houses that date from better days, being built originally for some Turkish grandee or governor for him, I daresay, who drove the god-fearing widow to the sylvan seclusion of Leila.
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