We flirted with the desert on the road to Douz, with its endless length. The light which we were expecting was different to the light we saw which besieged perception and eyesight. How can I describe what was created for all the senses? It was the light of the desert in Douz which deceives the eye and tries to delude it, and moves the sleeping dunes, as if they were bodies joining the spreading horizon to another which obscured the sun. the sands here still preserve the fingers of the wind which have played with the skin of their edges, leaving as traces wavy lines, like the traces of a caravan of cars. The difference is that the tracks of the tires of the wind dissolve to be formed again, as if they draw the features of time through the rotation of annihilation and life renewed. On the road to Douz small, dry bushes lay here and there, hiding under a golden dune or revealed suddenly by the winds, as if they were green creatures swimming in the hollow of the desert, with only their heads showing at times in order to breathe in a little air to help them against the internal world of the journey. It was a journey of secrets, a journey in the interior of life which is hidden under the outward appearance of death, a complete manifestation of the spirit of the desert, which thinks of the forms of life even under the pressure of arid, rough, harsh, unfavorable circumstances in touch with the last journey.

We see the first tree as if it is a guide, and soon other trees rose up behind it. We wondered, have we found the oasis, or has the oasis found us? Were we looking for it, or was it looking for us? Have we come to it with good news, to bring life to it, or have we found that it has fire, water and latent life awaiting radiance? I sighed. The questions were like the cacti and the palm trees, without number.

My friend the poet Noureddin Bal-Tayyib, talking to me about his birthplace, the gateway to the desert, Douz, said: It is the largest oasis in southern Tunisia. He pointed to the first palm trees, of which there are 150,000 140,000 of them of the famous Deglet Nour variety. When the Arabs entered it in the year 49 AH (671 AD), they found its name, which in Berber means Green Hill, and they found its inhabitants the Maraziq who originated in the Arabian Peninsula, and were the ancestors of the tribe Bani Salim.

Dr. Fawzi Ben Hamed, the Director of the International Festival in Douz continued the thread of the conversation: The name may be of Berber or Roman, or possibly Arab, origin. However, the importance is not in the name, but in the location of the gateway to the desert, which has been crossed by explorers, raiders and conquerors through the ages.

In spite of the cultures that have passed through it in succession, Douz has preserved its Arab character and its Islamic features, just as it has made its way of life synonymous with a city of desert culture. Its role has been to extend its hands to join the west to the east in winter and summer journeys and all the year round.

We passed by Al-Ghauth Religious Center, which was distinguished by a palm tree and its daughter which had grown out of its trunk. The presence of two religious centers, of the Sufi mystics Hamad Al-Ghauth and Omar Al-Mahjoub, in Douz was one of the reasons why the commercial caravans which passed between the east and west became attached to here, Noureddin told us. The management of the festival makes sure that its days do not end without the last Sunday witnessing zarda displays, which include Sufi celebrations, games and songs and displays of horsemanship and mahari (racing camels) around the two shrines. The purity of this culture has continued unchanged, and in its days it recalls the details that the ancestors lived, thus affirming both uniqueness and purity of origin, and the eagerness of their descendants to pass on its special characteristics from generation to generation.

At the gateway to the green hill and the rose of the desert I remembered an excerpt from a poem as if I had written it in Douz:

I dream of a cloud which has been dripping rain since the dawn of eternity

To moisten me with it,

I am the forgotten flower in the desert.

A Summary of the Desert

The desert of southern Tunisia is part of the great expanse of the Sahara in North Africa, whose area is nine million square kilometres. Desert in general represents about one seventh of the land surface area on our planet Earth, and is adjacent to the Tropics of Capricorn in the Northern Hemisphere and Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere. While sand covers between 10% and 20% of the deserts, the remainder of their area is highlands covered with pebbles and rocks. The scarcity of water in the desert is counterbalanced by wealth in other resources, some of them underground like oil and natural gas, and others close to the surface of its soil, like salt, uranium and other minerals. Violent winds reshape the sand dunes, which may be as high as 250 metres from time to time. Throughout the expanse of this desert oases develop which are mostly fertile, with streams and springs flowing under them.

The scarcity of rain on the body of the desert results from the fact that it is in regions of high pressure , in which cold air falls and becomes warm, and sucks up the moisture instead of freeing it to condense in the form of rain and dew. Consequently the average annual rainfall is no more than 20 centimetres. In the great Sahara the average annual rainfall is no more than 2.5 centimetres.

Some desert plants flower for brief periods. Their seeds await the rainy season, and then grow. They live for six to eight weeks after that season, while plants which live for more than a year draw the water on which they live from underground springs.

The African desert came to know camels through waves of migration from the Arabian Peninsula, which brought trade by caravans along routes controlled by the Berbers. White gazelles and rare breeds of antelopes are widespread in this desert. Like other desert animals, they remain in their lairs during the day, to avoid the harsh heat of the weather, waiting for the night to come out and search for food.

But before concluding this summary of the desert about the region which contains Douz, we should mention that the Republic of Tunisia (whose area is 165,000 square kilometres) is considered one of the leading countries in surveys of natural resources, projects to develop them, conservation of biological diversity and the establishment of nature reserves. Since early on, Tunisia has been using salt water for agriculture, and it has an atlas of accurate scientific maps of the distribution of types of vegetation cover. It is developing forests of pastureland in the south of the country, and combating erosion there.

The Birth of a Festival

It began 93 years ago, when the Mahari Marathon was launched in Douz under the name of the Camel Festival. It was organized and supervised every year by the French Resident-General in Tunis. The mahari are the racing camels known in the Arabian Gulf region as hajan. That festival in addition to the marathon in which the winner is awarded a stallion only contained some popular games derived from the customs of the Maraziq, the inhabitants of Douz.

The custom of the festival was only interrupted during the years of the First and Second World Wars. After Tunisia became independent, the activity was given its present name, the Douz Festival, and was opened by the late Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba in 1967. Since that time, year after year, there have been new additions, so that the Maraziq have written the story of their lives in the pages of the festival.

Tunisia of Transformation or Tunisia of Change two expressions that are often repeated here does not confine itself to architectural building or infrastructure, indeed its aim is to build human beings who make civilization.

Hence this festival, the Douz Spring Festival in the second half of March, the meeting of the poet Muhammad Al-Marzouqi in the second half of April, the National Desert Tourism Day on 12 November of each year, and other cultural activities in the south and the north of Tunisia, endeavor to search in the collective memory, not to return to the past but to recall what was resplendent. This is how it was expressed by Jamaleddin Al-Shabbi, the Regional Delegate for Culture, Youth and Entertainment in Tozeur, the neighbor of Douz whose International Festival of Oases begins after the end of the Douz Festival. This marks the end of the solar and tourist year. Tozeur is the home of Abul Qasim Al-Shabbi, the author of the famous poem:

If the people one day yearn for life,

Then destiny will respond without fail.

While we are on the subject of poetry, let us go back to Douz. There is hardly a house belonging to the Maraziq without someone who recites poetry or knows it by heart. The people of this tribe are brought up on the words of folk poetry, they repeat it for occasions. Perhaps the management of the festival allocates its mornings and nights to discussions and poetry evenings in order to revive that tribal poetic spirit, which derives its images from the nature and characteristics of desert life. Poetic contests also are a basic element in the days of the festival. Lovers of proverbs, sayings and ballads find their guidance when they investigate the roots of Maraziq poems and trace them back to their Arab origins and similar features.

Races

There are two main races in the festival. Since the history of the desert is indebted to horses and camels, recalling this history, reviving its values and establishing the origin of its customs must pass by these two racecourses. Hence the festival has allocated its first race to horses, known as the Douz International Race for Ability and Endurance. The racecourse is 100 kilometres long, and begins at six o clock in the morning. (There is another race which starts a quarter of an hour after it, in which beginners race on their horses for a shorter distance of forty kilometres). When the racers line up, you would think that they were getting ready for the starting signal from a film producer to film one of the scenes of Arab victories, or say that they were preparing for a real battle. Nothing competes with the splendor of the faces radiant with the desire to win and the light of the sun, except the bright colors of the saddled horses, ridden by the horsemen along a path whose course is obstructed by four veterinary gates constructed from the distinctive hair textile of Douz. The path is not paved, and runs across sand, through woods and in the desert, making it a rugged race.

The function of the veterinary gates during the race, and the veterinary clinic before and after it, is to make sure that the horses are healthy and able to continue. Consequently an international committee of veterinary surgeons decides to exclude any horse which cannot continue, after any lap, and during the rest period which lasts perhaps forty minutes. The winning rider is the one whose horse can run the length of the course in the shortest time. Among the titles which the race awards are for greatest competence and the condition of the horse.

This race in Douz is one of twelve races in Tunisia, ten of which are national and two international. There are 25,000 horses in Tunisia, which Berber or mixed Arab-Berber (the most common in North Africa), as well as 2,000 thoroughbred Arab horses. The Ability and Endurance Race has attracted considerable interest in Tunisia since 1998.

The racers strive earnestly in the last lap, and lift their rifles out of their sheaths in order to fire in the air, with a movement more skilled than those of cowboys in the American West. You see them swirling their rifles round once or twice in the air like a dancer in a game of singlestick fencing before returning them to their sheaths with their horses galloping under them, until they cross the finishing line, singing: Anxious as if the wind is beneath us! The horses also had a star role in the dancing displays, competing within the skill of their riders.

Before the second main race, namely the camel race, and after it, eyes paused on other skills of the ship of the desert. There are games known as farjawiya which means that they are worth watching that begin with a fight of the most skilled male camels, in which each male camel tries to use his neck and body together to throw down his opponent, at the center of a circle of supporters.

While another camel displays his skill at sipping a glass of juice without dropping the glass, blossoms of joy are growing in the orchards of small and large faces at the same time, and there were unceasing rhythms from drums decorated with the two colors (red and white) and two symbols (star and crescent) of the Tunisian flag.

In another corner of the square, I followed a hunt with a siluqi (a breed of hunting dog). The trainer let loose a wild rabbit which the first dog pursued and failed to catch. A second siluqi chased after it and missed it, while the small animal which had memorized the layout of the place ran round the well. I might not follow it to the end, as if I wanted the rabbit to escape.

The matter was no more than a message that the festival had not forgotten anything of the rituals of seriousness and joy, and that these activities can be of benefit to many of our oases to rediscover the beauty of the deserts of our Arab homeland.

So there were the siluqi hunt, the camel fight, the singing round the well, the sword dance, the game of a ball with a curved stick which has a surprising resemblance to hockey, the wait for the malla bread to bake on a round metal plate over a fire of burning palm branches, the traditional wedding procession in Douz, as well as the new things in the 35th festival this year, which has invited artisans of traditional industries, not only from Douz but also from other Tunisian provinces and Arab and African countries also.

With all that and other things in the garden of wishes that the square has become, adorned with posters, desert life is renewed. It crosses thousands of years in a few brief hours, in the square of the festival, Haneish Square, with a daily attendance of 70,000 spectators, as if there were World Cup matches in the desert games, of which the camel race represents the climax. The loudspeakers in the square begin calling the racers to get themselves to arrange themselves in an orderly fashion, in preparation for the big race: a white canvas colored by the sun and the clothes, you discover the details the closer you approach.

The success of this sport made the Ministry of Youth, Childhood and Sport in the Republic of Tunisia establish the Regional Association for the Sport of Camel Racing last year, to develop the sport of riding racing camels, organize races all the year round, participate in national, Arab and international tourist celebrations, and more important, to participate in the International Marathon Camel Race in the Douz Festival.

The previous year, eighty racers had taken part in this festival, and their camels had raced for a distance of 42 kilometres. The Egyptian team had won first place and the Gold Racing Camel, while the Silver Racing Camel had gone to the Algerian team and the Bronze Racing Camel to the Libyan team. From Tunisia delegations representing the Tunisian sport of camel racing have traveled to Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Libya and France. The festival also helped to establish the Arab Federation for the Sport of Camel Racing.

A Raw Film of Scenes

In Douz there are natural scenes which are very suitable material for a film. The scenes not only abide by the décor of a living market, they are also transported to other horizons in which the sun represents their natural lighting, as they try to escape between imaginary gateways made by the trunks of palm trees. The sun will cast a last glance before its farewell while we ourselves wait for it on the dawn of the following day.

The eye may return also to an ornament of palms embellishing the sandy orchard, which extends like a carpet between one distance and another. Or it sees little girls wearing traditional clothes watching the race when the wind carries the horses, and eyes and hearts together cling to their edges. Or it passes through stone gateways in the ghouls palace which grow in the desert, and with them grows the memory of history among the layers of civilization. And if it reaches the dome of the shrine, where the tomb of the mystic Al-Ghauth is, you see in the dome half the globe of the Earth and the whole of faith, while the corners of the religious center indicate the four points of the compass. You do not miss the sight of the three-dimensional figures on the roads and roundabouts of the town, which observe the racing camels and the frightened gazelles, and keep them calm in an uncustomary way.

These scenes, and the background of the sand dunes which surround them, have made them appropriate locations to film some scenes of international cinema. The film crews of The English Patient, Star Wars and other films, and filmed songs by musicians from Europe. Hence it is natural to find stars in the sky at night in Douz, and on the ground during the daytime. And if there is no filming, they might come for a visit. Many people in Douz keep their photographs of the French star Jean-Paul Belmondo and the Italian star Claudia Cardinale. Also 17 Arab and foreign television channels have visited Douz to convey the activities of the festival.

The scenes are also completed by the facts of daily life of some of the inhabitants of Douz, like those who climb up the palm trees to pick the dates. We have seen that spectacle repeated in more than one place. From the Martyrs Square to the Desert Museum in Douz, from the Sultan s well to the shrines of its two mystics, from the traditional industries market to the animals market, Douz attracts more than 400,000 visitors in the course of a year, from abroad, and also from within Tunisia after the agencies in charge of domestic tourism gave great attention to it and made the facilities for Douz to receive visitors. In 2001 tourists spent a total of 430,000 nights, in the hotels of the town which contain 3,000 beds. The number of tourists who made desert excursions on camels came to 5,000 each one of which spent between seven and fifteen days on the trip.

While there is no international airport in Douz, there are four airports in the vicinity, at Tozeur, Gafsa, Djerba and Sfax. In the south west of the Republic of Tunisia there are 74 tourist establishments and 30 travel agencies.

Our guide to the Douz festival accompanied us between a loaf of bread and ardent love, a sip of water and captivating beauty, a date from a palm tree and overwhelming yearning. There you will erase what you learnt from the slate of your life, to write new letters through looking and examples, since Douz is an island of noble origin in a sea of sand. It is not impossible to reach it as long as there is a camel of love in one s heart. I sing: On the road to you / I distribute roses on tombs and gravestones, / All of which bear my name. / With you / I shall be revived anew.

You will recognize that the poem which is in front of you does not recognize rhyme or scansion, and that it has its own magic and its unrepeated sound. You will see with the eye of an artist the sleeping yellow color awaiting the awakening of the sky with its blueness, while a white cloud smiles as it searches for a green airfield on which to land. As a human being, you will repeat with the Moroccan poet Abdullatif Al-Laabi in his anthology And the Desert Is Near, some of which was portrayed in Douz by the artist Anne Marie Rose: Sad they are, / Storing up joy for the guest / When they share with him / A loaf of bread, olives and a glass of tea. / But their sadness is humble, / It is irresistible, / It is the sadness of stones, / The sadness of the moon, of sheep and of the wind, / The sadness of sands which the sun has betrayed, / The sadness of emaciated cows in springtime.

Carpets in Douz Market

In Douz, life is quiet throughout the week except for the days of the festival but it wakes up at sunrise on its market day, Thursday. This is a picture which is colored by tranquillity, or almost. It moves, and then there is silence, which wraps it in stillness, or almost. It speaks, and the limbs of the body of Douz radiate colors of joy that the eye does not mistake, and forms of movement behind which description pants in a place which is regarded as one of the oldest markets in the world.

The market in Douz is like a theatre which is preparing to present scenes from the story of Arab commerce. Within moments the curtain will rise on a discussion here, and a movement there, but you pass the day without the curtain rising or falling. The stars of the play have left their acting roles and you are one of them in order to take photographs of the vendors, or to take a look at their wares, those Tunisian carpets with their details and decorations. They are one of the woven woolen products (like striped blankets, cloaks and woven head-dresses) which Douz offers.

The carpets which are spread out here are made in more than one Tunisian town, but in Douz they are brought together in an open showroom, where you can move your eye among the representative icons, to rediscover their symbols distributed between the place and its creatures.

The dark red color which is distributed among the backgrounds of the carpets and the elements of their design indicates warmth of meeting, and blood, and is diffused with the spread of generous desert warmth.

The red contrasts with the presence of the other colors, or corresponds to them all. By degrees which may be equal the palette of the other colors is distributed, the rare green, the blue which reaches the sky of the oasis with its eyes, the yellow reminiscent of the desert when you take the woven materials away, it is like a rare metal. The weaver of the carpet hides this color as much as he can among the subtlety of the other colors, while white, black and dark brown are there as geographical designers of the formative areas, like the political lines on a deaf map.

The carpets begin with a framework (or more than one). It is thin with one or two colors, or thick and becomes a river in which are swimming multiform decorations which abbreviate things and creatures. The threads in the carpet extend in an instinctive manner, in the measurements of lengths and breadths, to arrive at the heart of the fabric, as if you are arriving home after a long journey in the wilderness (is it not the oasis in the desert?). In the house the colors become more generous the details become more numerous and life pervades, as if the eyes must rest a little after crossing the long borders.

The map of the carpets: roads and signs, words and decorations, in which you see arrows, wells and palm trees. Then you bring back your gaze twice, and see gazelles grazing on the red carpets, or racing camels running along the racecourses of the Douz festival. The strict system of defining lines in the carpets is demolished by the softness of the edges of color, just as the eye fondles those patterns which are based on magic numbers in the repetition of their icons three, five and seven times.

Carpet weavers inherit the art and pass it on. The genealogy of these carpets extends like the caravans crossing the desert and history together. They are unsigned canvases, but the artist who fashioned them is the collective conscience of this nation.