Something to remember me by.

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In as much as I’ve acquainted myself with four city blocks and a small slice of the medina, Sfax is the sort of town I can get used to. In fact, I already have, picking out the café, the sandwich shop, the reliable Publinet with DSL, that will constitute my daily routine. Strange to be making myself at home in this city; by day two, I’m all but soaking my underthings in the marina and padding around in a bathrobe and slippers on the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. Here I am, reading beneath the medina’s ancient, crenellated walls; here I greet the shop owner next door - his face small and wrinkled, slightly suspicious - with a friendly “Assalamu lekum.” The looks I get are not unwelcoming, a bit bemused: my smile is broad, my intentions enigmatic.

I’ve gotten a warm reception around town. The country’s industrial powerhouse, Sfax isn’t on Tunisia’s well-worn resort track, and the foreigners who make it here are greeted with kind-hearted curiosity. The locals want to hear about America - or, more frequently, this American’s impressions of Tunisia. They receive my compliments with a sort of concentrated ecstasy; I can picture them - like the tourists taking the summer sun in Hammamet - reclined, basking, lapping it up. “What do you think of Tunisian girls?” asks a student from the university, prompting a long, rapturous soliloquy. “What is your opinion of Islam?” asks another, his smooth young forehead creasing with anxiety. I’m not entirely sure how to answer this, though his consternation makes plain the situation’s gravity. “I think it’s a great religion,” I say - as if I’d just tried it on and taken a twirl in front of the mirror - and his relief, if it could be measured in miles, would be stretching half-way to Mecca.

The city’s medina - stripped of the souvenir stalls, the well-placed rugs and water pipes framed for a photo op - is a busy, congested, work-a-day place. Men with sour faces and thick lenses weigh out red peppers on a brass scale. Old women in chadors tuck loaves of bread under their arms. Fruits and vegetables are stacked everywhere, fresh fish sold in a huge, echoing market where slats of sunlight drop from the ceiling. There are dim, narrow artisan’s shops that look like they haven’t changed since the Middle Ages. A man works the pedal of a sewing machine with a shoeless foot; a cobbler hammers away at the sole of a boot, two nails fitted between his lips. Another man crawls out of a subterranean nook, blinking in the afternoon sun; in the shop behind him, leather belts dangle from the ceiling and sit in coils on the dusty floor.

On a pedestrian promenade outside the medina I meet Fadhel, a nervous, smiling teen who warily approaches with a pack of friends. He’s in his final year of high school: slogging through three hours of English lessons each week, eager to test out his skills. I’m the first American he’s met, and he takes a sort of proprietary pride in me, implicitly telling his friends to go find Americans of their own. We spend an hour walking around the city, the streets a veritable vocab drill for Fadhel to run through. “Workers,” he says, pointing to a group of men in paint-spattered overalls. “Policeman,” he says, as a severe, uniformed guard fingers his gun outside the French Embassy.

Literally, figuratively, we cover a lot of ground: Fadhel feeling out my opinions on the Middle East, me testing the limits of free speech in a country not known for the appreciation of it. It’s an informative afternoon. On an empty stretch of pavement, Fadhel’s candid about the president and his notorious nepotism; but at a busy intersection he draws his lips tight, glancing over each shoulder, not entirely sure who can and can’t be trusted. “In Tunisia, nobody cares about politics,” he says distastefully, though I wonder if replacing “cares” with “talks” might be a bit more accurate. Then he says solemnly, “Before I am forty, I will be president,” imbuing the office with a dignity I’m not entirely sure it deserves. When Big Ben Ali rakes in 99.44% of the vote in popular elections - which are “popular” in exactly the same sense that they’re “elections” - he’s fooling nobody. But look around Tunisia and there’s more grumbling than outrage.

It’s not really a surprise. Compare them to any of their neighbors - in turbulent Algeria, in luckless Libya - and Tunisians have it pretty good. The economy, if not entirely robust, is mercifully stable; literacy rates are high; and in spite of the complaints I’ve heard from undersexed guys - “You can’t even touch a girl on the street without going to prison!” moaned one kid in Tunis - women’s rights here are probably a good thing for everyone. Old Habib Bourguiba - a shrewd cat by anybody’s standards - had quite a few lessons to teach the world’s iron-fisted rulers. Give enough comfort and stability to enough people and they’ll happily - if, at times, grudgingly - maintain the status quo. And if that means a certain president gets re-elected with something approaching unanimity, well, so much the better.

At the Jazz Café - a swank place in the Ville Nouvelle, its walls lined with portraits of Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong - I meet some young guys who are happy to talk about anything other than politics. One kid makes a weary face - What’s the point? he implies - and shows me pictures of his wedding last year. His visa’s been processed, his young wife is waiting in Paris, but Imed’s still dragging his feet. “I’m happy here,” he says. “My friends are here. I have a nice job. It is comfortable.” He doesn’t like to think about the new life that’s waiting for him in Paris - trying to find work, struggling to pay the rent. Melek, the café’s manager, shows me pictures of young, available girls on his cellphone. He wears jeans and a neat, collared shirt; his hair is swept back and moussed into submission.

“Five minutes ago,” he says, leaning across the counter, “a girl sitting upstairs comes to me. She says, ‘Please, come home with me. Please have sex with me.’ I tell her I can’t, I’m too tired. Every night, the same thing.” It’s a heart-wrenching moment: this poor, wounded soul - exhausted by torrid nights between the sheets - calling out to me from the abyss of his promiscuity. What can I do? I ask him. I’m a simple man. My father comes from the mountains, of sturdy, peasant’s stock.

“These girls,” I say, “do they like Americans?”

I visit the place again the next night. Melek gives me his number - to look him up, should I decide to come to Hammamet this summer. “The girls in these clubs,” he says, making a face that adds: “In my heart I’m a decent guy, but I’m often tempted to do indecent things.” I offer hopes, but no promises. A waiter scribbles his name and number down, though he doesn’t speak a word of English. His smile is bright and hopeful, his thick, wavy hair all but spackled to his head.

The next afternoon I meet Fadhel for coffee. My short stay in Sfax is already at its end. “You will come again to visit?” he asks. What began with such promise, his eyes suggest, I’ve decided to dash into a million irretrievable pieces.

“I hope so, buddy,” I say, something about me turning - in his moment of need - quintessentially American.

He heaves a mighty sigh, leaning forward with his hands just above his knees, the enormity of our parting weighing down on him. “Oh boy,” he says, his voice straining. “It is tough.” I think back to five months ago, to the goodbyes I said to old friends and family, when you would’ve thought for all the world I was just popping out to buy some condoms and a box of Ritz crackers. The moment is tinged with pathos and self-loathing. Fadhel takes some gifts out of his bag: an English magazine - an old family heirloom - priced at “one shilling”; a CD of assorted jpegs and mp3s; and - in a monumental leap of faith - a French translation of the Koran. It’s clear that this gesture is more than just symbolic; and really, when a guy offers to pull you back from the precipice of eternal damnation, you’ve got to be a bit touched.

But it’s the CD that really tugs at my heartstrings when I get back to the hotel. On it he’s collected pictures of Hollywood starlets and sports cars, fighter jets and footballers, rappers and Kawasaki bikes. There’s a snapshot of the Taj Mahal, and another of the New York City skyline, pre-9/11. It’s exactly the sort of torrent of yearning you’d expect from an 18-year-old anywhere on earth, a cocktail of hormones, hopes and material longing. Wouldn’t we all like to jump into a cherry-red Corvette with Angelina Jolie by our side, her pouty lips begging, “Ravage me beneath the Great Wall of China!” There are even two snapshots of Fadhel himself: grave, earnest, thin wisps of moustache sprouting beneath his nose, a teenager on the cusp of life, with all its joys and heartbreaks.

The next day there’s already an email from him waiting in my Inbox. “Hello to my friend Christopher,” he writes. “It is already a different city without you here.” I suspect - trooper that he is - the poor kid will tough it out without me. If not, I’ll offer the advice that’s gotten me through many a difficult night: close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think sweet thoughts of Angelina.

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