How is Tunisia?

Here, the fresh bakery bread is life and olive oil is just "oil".  Here, everybody hand washes clothes and it doesn't matter what you wear- unless you're going to a wedding party, in which case, nothing is more important than the dress and makeup.  Here, it doesn't matter how dirty the baby's clothes get.  Here, we drink water from the same big mug and eat, with many spoons, from the same big dish.  Here, the hot mint tea is sweeter than southern sweet tea and the strong black coffee is served in a glass the size of a bathroom dixie cup.  Here, the husky women take care of the cooking and children and houses.  The men work like mules, then sit in roadside cafes and smoke and chat over coffee.  Children play in the streets, in the dirt, with countless cousins, with anything they find... a ball, a stick, an empty bottle, the mile-long innards of a cassette tape.  Here the spicy couscous is the main meal and it is judged.  They will ask you how it was at so-and-so's house.  Here, the relief from the sweltering summer sun is to sit in the shuttered house or go to the sea.  Here, the religious label is "Muslim".  Islam is the way of life.  The name of god, Allah, is seen and heard everywhere:  in large print on the middle of a windshield, twisted in wire and hanging over the threshold of a door, repeated in the chorus of a poppy children's song, and broadcast in the call to prayer five times each day.  Here, delicate white jasmine flowers grow on bushes in front of houses and you can smell them as you walk by.  After a nice rainfall, even more flowers bloom.  You can pick a flower and put it in a child's curly hair or behind an ear... or, if you're Nejma's daddy, you can pick a handful and stick 'em down my camisole when I least expect it.