Tunisia | Toujane: How a mountain village in Tunisia stays alive

The traditionally made carpets from Toujane are sold as far away as the capital Tunis. Photo: imago/GODONG The serpentines meander elegantly up the rugged slope. With some effort, the small rental car fights its way up the last few meters to Toujane, which is around 500 meters above sea level. Toujane is a village in the Dahar desert mountain range, which extends to the south of Tunisia.

You get off at “Dar Fatma”, an inn in the small town. The inn is the former family home of the operator Fatma Ben Ahmed and was built in the traditional troglodyte style. This means that the house is embedded in the rock. Although many rooms do not have windows, the surrounding rock moderates temperature fluctuations: on cold winter nights, the rooms retain heat, but in summer they remain cooler when the sun relentlessly heats up the outside world. Here travelers can experience the silence of the desert village.

The walls of the property are decorated with traditional carpets, which break up the sand-colored monotony with their colors and patterns. Such carpets in different designs can be purchased along the village street. One of the carpet shops is owned by Salima Ben Mansour. It is covered from top to bottom with carpets, with more piled up rolled up in the corner.

With the help of development cooperation programs, Salima was able to open her shop and develop a business concept. She does her most important business at craft fairs, for example in the capital Tunis, because the shop alone is not profitable given the small number of tourists. "And I can do all of this alone as a woman. “We don’t see things like that very often here,” she says proudly. Tunisia's family law, passed in 1956, prohibits polygamy and allows women to file for divorce themselves.

However, they still encounter obstacles in everyday life. Some husbands want to have a say in where their wives go - supposedly there are many dangers lurking for them in public. It is often said in the capital that women have a particularly difficult time, especially in the south of Tunisia. Female entrepreneurs like Fatma Ben Ahmed and Salima Ben Mansour show a different picture.

Ben Mansour had moved back from the new Toujane down in the valley to the old village specifically for their business idea. Since the 1970s, the authorities under Habib Bourguiba, the first president of independent Tunisia, had pushed for such resettlements in many places in Dahar. The new housing developments in the valley were easier to connect to the electricity and water networks than the villages on mountain peaks and plateaus. At the same time, the policy followed Bourguiba's idea of ​​a modern state in which traditional cave houses should have no place.

While other towns in the region were largely abandoned and fell into disrepair, old Toujane remained inhabited, as evidenced by the village cafe, three grocery stores, the immaculate whitewashed mosque and shops like Ben Mansour's. Today there is running water in old Toujane, as well as electricity.

Back to Ben Mansour's shop: she pulls a few examples of her carpets out of the pile and explains the differences. The expansive Margoum carpets are given to wedding couples to furnish their living room. And woven wedding veils – typically in red – can also be found in her shop. Natural colors are used for coloring.

Ben Mansour says about the patterns: »I learned the traditional Toujane patterns from my mother. But now I sometimes look at pictures on the Internet and get inspired." The traditional motifs also include the fish as a symbol of life. The region also has a Christian past. The Arab conquest in the seventh century began a long process of Islamization and Arabization.

The whitewashed mosque stands out clearly among the beige stone houses in Toujane. Photo: imago/Helge Sobik Today, Dahar is one of the regions of Tunisia where the culture of the Amazigh, the indigenous population of North Africa, is particularly visible. In addition to carpet art, the Amazigh identity can be felt in the region's traditional weddings. However, the residents of Toujane no longer speak the Amazigh language.

Since the upheaval in 2011, associations have also been founded in Tunisia that promote the Amazigh language and culture. However, mountain guide Ali Bouhala is skeptical about the political emphasis on this identity: "The topic of 'Amazigh' is a sensitive topic. I have the feeling that people are always trying to divide Tunisia with this argument. I am against such tendencies," he explains.

Preserving the cultural heritage of his ancestors is still important to Ali. He created a small museum in his family's former home in the neighboring town of Zmerten.

Unlike in Toujane, the traditional houses in Zmerten are not embedded into the slope, but are embedded directly into the ground. A courtyard dug into the ground is connected to the front door by a short tunnel. One of the rooms dug into the ground from the courtyard is dedicated to traditional Dahar life. In addition to a loom, olive oil bottles and goat skin drinking containers, Ali is particularly proud of an arm-length piece of wood with three shorter wooden sticks embedded at one end: an old front door key.

Another room in the cave house is dedicated to World War II. An old Wehrmacht helmet lies next to a French Army tank canister. The Mareth Line, a fortification originally built by France, ran nearby. German and Italian troops used it in 1943 against the advancing Allies, who overcame the position in March.

About the Nazi presence in Tunisia, Ali notes: “In Tunisia we have a different perspective on history than in Europe. It was important for us that the Wehrmacht drove our colonial power France into a corner. However, the French protectorate had itself introduced anti-Semitic regulations under the Vichy regime, which collaborated with Nazi Germany. During the German occupation from November 1942 to May 1943, around 5,000 Jewish men in Tunisia were forced to do forced labor in camps.

There is a hiking trail between Toujane and Zmerten, but it is not signposted. Together with local guides like Bouhala, you can explore the rugged beauty of the mountain desert without the risk of getting lost. After a first breath-taking climb, the breathtaking view of the Dahar follows: gorges and desert mountains, not quite as far as the eye can see, because the Mediterranean can be seen on the horizon. On clear days the view even extends as far as Tunisia's largest island, Djerba. In the middle are a few inconspicuous smaller mountains. This is exactly what Bouhala points to: “There, in the Djebel Tebaga massif, there are marine fossils that are over 250 million years old.”

But these are not the only treasures of the region: further south, at Jebel El Mra around 50 kilometers southwest of Tataouine, an Italian-Tunisian research team made an important find in 2011. Bones of the dinosaur Tataouinea hannibalis, which are around 110 million years old, were discovered there.

As we descend into a desert valley we pass terraced areas, the so-called Jessour. Date palms and sprawling olive trees grow on even and neatly plowed areas, their lush dark green breaking up the ocher tones of the omnipresent rocks.

Thanks to the Jessour system, the trees can thrive despite the low rainfall. Small dams made of earth and stone hold back runoff rainwater and soil material that is carried along with it. This creates cultivated areas where the water can seep away and be available to the roots. The systems not only collect water, but also protect the fertile soil from being washed away. Spillways allow excess water to flow away and help protect dams from damage during heavy rains.

At the end of the four-hour hike there is tea on the roof terrace of the inn. A mixture of home-picked rosemary and green tea is typical locally - but it comes from a pack. For tea, Ali serves sweet “gazelle horns,” a pastry with a nut and spice filling that is deep-fried and dipped in sugar syrup.

The terrace offers a view of the mountain backdrop, over which the evening dawns in orange, purple and blue. In Toujane, a few lights flicker, and the white minaret of the village mosque shines majestically over the town with its green lighting, while the call to evening prayer sounds.

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