"A Walk in My Neighborhood" by Skander Ben Ahmed
The weather was perfect! Walking along my street, one can notice several apartment buildings with various colors, ranging from off-white to different shades of beige.
Across the street, there are many villas with gardens decorated with tall pine and palm trees. As I keep walking, I can see the bakery to my left. Further down, there’s a café with a couple of tables and a few chairs arranged on the sidewalk. Along the street, there are more trees and flower bushes.
On the main road, there’s a constant buzzing sound from the cars, trucks, and motorcycles. Two pickup trucks park on the same spot every day, selling fruit out of plastic boxes full of cherries, strawberries, apricots, and flat peaches. As I move further along the avenue, I see warmly lit furniture shops displaying indoor plants and laundry baskets perfectly woven out of palm leaves.
There’s a yoga studio that looks calm and inviting, the walls are painted in a very warm shade of green. About 20 meters from the studio, there’s a workshop that restores old furniture. The artists decorate the pieces with hand-painted ceramic tiles to recreate beautiful Tunisian-style furniture. Inside the workshop, there’s a studio with many paintings that reflect a Picasso influence.
Not too far away, there are a few stores that specialize in selling antique treasures, such as old chandeliers, sculptures, lamps, and vintage rugs. On the opposite side, there’s a man selling food out of a bright red food cart with purple drapes, and next to him, there is a ‘Hammas’, a gentleman in his 70s who wears black-rimmed glasses and sells nuts and sunflower seeds in his tiny store. Behind the store, there’s a light brown wall with a giant entrance, and beyond the brown walls, there’s a private garden with many tall trees peaking from beyond the walls.
Moving in the same direction, I see a white horse with gray freckles pulling a man on a cart. Walking further down, there’s a hospital next to a very busy roundabout, I stand there and see a pack of stray dogs resting in the middle. There’s a white-chested black dog that I always see there when I drive by. Next to me, a lady is sitting on a plastic chair selling ‘Mlewi’, a bread similar to Indian naan. About 10 meters away, a young man is wearing black jogging pants, sitting at a plastic table with a pile of fresh almonds for sale, and on the side of the pile, he keeps a plastic digital scale to weigh the goods.
Skander Ben Ahmed is a learning partner at Amideast Education Abroad in Tunisia.
