Table of Contents Gay and Lesbian Theme Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of This Is Not For You Review of Potato Queen Crossword (Solution Posted in March. Printable version in pdf format of journal.) Creative Nonfiction Tunis, Forever By John Champagne Bisexuality 101 By Evelyn McFarland Poetry Blackouts By Steve Rydman Self Loathing By Steve Rydman A Boy Reads YM By Steve Rydman I Finally Found Me By Lucretia Randle Acorn Boy Above the Conclave By James Penha Fiction As If In Time Of War (1985) By Christopher T. Leland General Works Creative Nonfiction Stone Musings #5 By Mike Munsil Ascent Into Being By Holly Mitchell Fiction Come Winter By Sandra M. McDow The End of Stories By Sonia Vora Coal Blood By Tom Bennitt About the Contributors © 2006, River Walk Journal and respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Do not use or reproduce without permission. River Walk Journal, Inc. Board of Directors Chairman - Elizabeth Ross Vice Chairman - Joseph Koch Secretary/Treasurer - Geri Stock-Ross Editorial Director - Patti Kurtz, DA Literacy Director - Bill Mausteller Policy Director - vacant Advisory Board Chairman - Patti Kurtz, DA Asst. Chairman - Dan Lachenman, PhD Samuel Hazo Christopher Leland Edwin Yoder Joseph Bathanti Journal Staff Publisher - Elizabeth Ross Editor-In-Chief - Joseph Koch Sen. Fiction Editor - Patti Kurtz Sen. Poetry Editor - Neeldhara Misra Sen. Creative Nonfiction Editor - Brenda Coxe Contributing Editor - Robert Dittman Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/submission.html. Questions about promotions, subscribers' services, and advertising should be sent to publisher@riverwalkjournal.org. River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/volunteer.html.

Tunis, Forever By John Champagne My first evening, in Tunis, I am walking down the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the Nouvelle Ville’s main thoroughfare, when I hear a voice call, “Hallelujah!” I am at the corner in front of the Café de France, one of the most popular spots in the city and a place where my Parisian friend Jack has suggested I might meet a Tunisian interested in a romantic encounter. “Hallelujah!” the voice calls to me again. I look to see who might possibly be exclaiming this word in an Arab country, and I’m approached by a young Tunisian man. He is slender, a few inches taller than I am, and he wears levis and a black turtleneck sweater. He has the kind of face the Tunisians themselves might characterize as reflecting their country’s history, a true melange. His hair is black but his skin is pale for an Arab; as he later insists, he is Berber, not Moor, which means that, in his own eyes, he is White. His nose is smaller than my own, and his lips are full and sensual, though when he speaks they can’t disguise the fact that his teeth are crooked and discolored. The most startling feature about his face, however, is his green eyes, which are surrounded by long black lashes and eyebrows that extend in soft strokes to his temples. “Italiano?” he asks me. “Non.” “Français?” “Non.” “Anglais?” “Non,” I say, “des Etats Unis.” “Welcome to Tunisia,” he says, in English. “Are you here on business or vacation?” “Je suis professeur. J’ai un congé sabbatique,” I answer. “Why do you speak French?” “Parce que je suis ici pour parler français, pas anglais,” I answer. “But I could use practice with my English,” he says. “Can we talk for five minutes?” “Look,” I answer, “If you really want to speak English, I will be happy to talk with you. But if the conversation is going to end in a request for cigarettes or money, forget about it.” “What would make you think such a thing?” I cannot tell if his offense is real or just part of the con. “I’ve been to Marrakech,” I answer. “I understand how this works.” “But people from Tunisia are not the same as in Morocco,” he insists. “We are friendly here. We are not just interested in money.” “I have been here just a few hours,” I respond, “and already two people have tried to hustle me for money. Some guy claimed to be the electrician at my hotel, and another offered to show me a view of the city from a rooftop terrace.” My guidebook says that this is a ploy to get tourists to buy carpets, as the terrace is usually located above a carpet shop. “Do you think that just because I am from the United States, I am stupid?” “Okay, we are poor here. People must do many things for money. But Tunisian people are friendly. Sometimes, we just like to talk.” I begin to feel guilty about having come on so strong about money. He’s an attractive man, though clearly younger than I am, and I have no plans that evening other than to return to my hotel room to read or watch television. “Would you like to have a drink with me?” I ask him. We walk across the street to another café. Over coffee, he tells me his name is Nejib, but his friends sometimes call him “Zarga,” a word that means green eyes. He says he has learned his English from the street. Twenty six, Nejib is the oldest son in a family of two boys and three girls. He tells me about his friends outside Tunisia. He has a girlfriend named Bridget in Hamburg, and another lady friend in Australia, as well as a male Tunisian friend who has lived in Kansas City for the past twenty years, and another male friend in France named Thierry. All of them sometimes send him money. I offer to buy him a drink, but Nejib will not drink alcohol. “I need to have my mind clear,” he says. “When Tunisians drink, we don’t stop at two or three. Fifteen, maybe twenty beers.” “Why did you say ‘Hallelujah!’ to me,” I ask. “It is just something I say; sometimes, it makes tourists laugh.” “But why did you say it to me in particular? How did you know I was not Tunisian?” “It is obvious.” “Why did you think I was Italian?” I ask him. “The Italians, they do this with their ears.” He gestures toward my pierced ear lobes. I am enjoying our conversation, and so I invite him to have dinner with me. “It is too early,” he says. “If you want to buy me dinner, I would prefer you just give me the money. Excuse me, but I am from here. I know how much food costs, and so I can find a way to eat more cheaply.” I explain that I am cash poor and will be using my credit card for most of this trip. “But you can use your credit card to get money from the machine?” “I don’t know my code,” I explain. “The interest is higher on a cash advance, and so I don’t use the credit card to withdraw money.” “Don’t you have a bank card?” “Yes, but until my tenant back home pays his rent, I have no more money in my account.” Throughout our first conversation, I spend a great deal of effort trying to find out discreetly if he has sex with men for money. Not because I would ever pay for sex, but because I want to know his own attitude toward homosexuality, as it is illegal in Tunisia. A restaurant owner, his friend from Kansas City is about my age. In the past, he has taken Nejib on a tour of Malaysia and to Turkey. “Does your friend’s wife know about you?” I ask. “What is there to know?” “Does she know that her husband travels with another Tunisian?” “Why would she care?” When I ask Nejib what he does for a living, he tells me that he is a “middle man.” At various points during that first evening, he tries to sell me tourist packages: an evening’s dinner at a restaurant that features Tunisian women dancers, a day trip to Hammamet. Though he never offers me drugs, he explains that he sometimes acts as the middleman between tourists and suppliers of hashish. When I try to think of some way I could legitimately employ him, however-to accompany me to the Bardo Museum, for example-he says, “As your friend, I tell you. You don’t need a guide for this. You take the Metro Number 4, you get out, and you ask anyone, ‘Where is the Bardo Museum?’” I find myself wondering if I am being conned yet again by a handsome guy who needs me to rescue him. “Excuse me, I have something to say,” Nejib interrupts my thoughts. “There are times when your body stays at the table, but your mind is somewhere else. When Tunisian people do this, it is because they are worried about money. But you have a job and a flat. I think with you it is because you are lonely.” Somehow I manage to convey to him that I am gay. He says that his knowledge of homosexuality comes primarily from the internet and the few Tunisian gay men he knows. “But you are not like a woman,” he tells me. “Thanks, I guess. Why would I be like a woman?” “Here, Tunisians who are homosexual act like women. You can see by the way they walk and talk.” “I was in Marrakech,” I explain, “and, in the hammam, several very masculine guys touched themselves in front of me.” “Touched themselves?” “Their genitals. Like this.” With my hand, I imitate someone masturbating. “They probably wanted money,” he says. “I know some Tunisians who do this, but they are only active. I think in your country, homosexuals are both active and passive. Is this true?” “Some are; some prefer one or the other. It all depends.” I am a little surprised that his English includes these words, “active” and “passive.” I suspect that he might not be telling me everything he knows about gay life in Tunisia. “It is crazy,” he laughs. Pointing to his head, he says, “It makes my computer crash.” We walk back to the terrace bar of my hotel, where we continue our conversation. He tells me that if our visit extends later than 8:30, he will miss the last bus home and need twenty dinar in taxi fare from me, as he lives about seventy kilometers away. “What do you do when you miss the bus and don’t have money for a taxi?” I ask. “I sleep in the streets.” Though he sometimes misunderstands me-and I have difficulty sometimes with his mispronunciation-his English is not all that bad. On the terrace, he borrows cigarettes from the other customers. “Sometimes, you have to put your nose down. Do you know what this means? Not be a snob.” He means he is not too proud to bum cigarettes from other Tunisians. “It does not make you any less of a man,” he tells me. One of the young men he asks for a cigarette asks him how he can afford to drink in this bar and yet not afford his own cigarettes. At the end of the night, I give Nejib as much money as I can muster-twenty-five dinar and a ten Euro bill. I feel bad because, by spending the night talking to me, he has missed the opportunity to make money off of someone else. I worry that he will keep the money I have given him and sleep in the streets instead of take a taxi home. He tries to reassure me that he will not, that it is cold in the streets, and that if the police catch you, they will question you. “And in Tunisia, they don’t just talk. They do like this.” He pantomimes being struck. “How do you say this in English?” “They slap you.” “Yes, slap you.” He agrees to meet me tomorrow between eleven thirty and noon on this same terrace. Nejib arrives the next day, earlier than expected. I am pleasantly surprised. I remember what my French friends have told me about Arab men, about the many times they have been stood up; in North Africa, the men are so polite they would rather leaving you waiting for hours than risk offense by saying no to an invitation. And I half suspect that the previous evening was just a minor distraction from Nejib’s usual task of hustling tourists. From the terrace of my hotel, we walk through the busy city streets. “What do you normally do when you are not sitting in a café?” I ask him. He tells me he is a student in a program in engineering. From what I gather, the Tunisian system is partially based on that of the French. Nejib is studying for his diplome. He tells me that even the waiters at fast food restaurants have their diplome in food service. But in order to get a job, the degree itself is worthless unless you have connections, and the salary is low-two hundred twenty dinar a month. At the time I am in Tunis, the dinar is worth about $.80 of a dollar. “I need the power,” he says to me. “Do you know what is the power?” “I have no idea what you mean.” “The power, the power. It helps me to think.” He lifts his hand to his mouth. “You mean cigarettes?” “Yes! The power.” “Do you want me to buy you cigarettes?” Nejib smokes two packs of cigarettes a day. He holds the cigarette between his index and middle fingers, keeping the others spread apart as he lifts the cigarette to his mouth. Although I normally find smoking a disgusting habit, with his long fingers, Nejib looks elegant with a cigarette in his hand. When I tell him he shouldn’t smoke so much, he calls me papa and tells me that Tunisians are not afraid to die. “We are poor; we have nothing to lose.” Nejib guides me from the hotel to the Parc du Belvedere, where we spend the afternoon talking in a café on the edge of a pond filled with ducks and swans. He drinks espresso, and I have a sweet tea with pignola nuts floating in it. He shows me a slip of paper with his friend Thierry’s address, and the business card of a middle-aged British man who works at the Tunisian embassy. “These guys never made a pass at you?” “Of course not; why would they?” “Obviously, they were interested in you romantically.” “What makes you say this?” “Europe is not like Tunisia. An older European man taking you for coffee? Sending you money? At the very least, these guys are gay.” I reassure him that I am not accusing him of lying; I just think he doesn’t realize when another man is attracted to him. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” he laughs when I tell him that he is handsome. “Normally, I am not shy, but you make me shy.” When I stare at his face too long, he says, “Maybe I need to give you a picture.” “You know, many, many Europeans find men from North Africa attractive.” “Really? Then why do I never see Tunisians in Hollywood films?” When I ask him if he finds me attractive, he says he doesn’t know how to answer the question. When we talk about my family, he asks if my brothers and sisters are “normal” or gay, and I have to remind him repeatedly that it is impolite to imply that being gay is abnormal. He jokes that maybe one of my sisters might be willing to have a white marriage with him. When I ask him why he is spending all his time with me instead of in school, he tells me that he is tired of his normal routine. “How will you make up the work you miss?” I ask him. “I have friends who will give me the homework.” “And will they let you back in school so easily?” “I have a friend who can get me the papers: a note from a doctor.” I make Nejib a deal: if he has a meal with me, and we find a restaurant that will take a credit card, I will give him the cash I would have spent on the food. But we have sat in the park for so long, most restaurants that take credit cards are no longer serving lunch. In each place, Nejib asks, in Arabic, if they will accept my MasterCard. After we are turned away from the fourth place, I begin to wonder if the waiters are simply mistrustful of a poor young man who speaks Arabic rather than French to them. “You know, you can get cash from the machine with your credit card,” Nejib says. I give up trying to explain to him the high interest rate for cash advances, and instead repeat something equally true: I really don’t know the pin number for this particular credit card. “But if you go to a bank with your passport and your credit card, they will give you money. My friend from Kansas City did it.” “I want to use the credit card for food,” I insist. We finally find a restaurant. During the meal, he asks me if I want to go to a disco Saturday night. He explains that we can use a credit card to get in the door and to pay for our drinks, but we will have to have cash for the taxi fare to Gammarth, a playground for rich and famous Tunisians, and back. And then I will need to give him money for his cab fare home. “You can come and visit me in the United States, if you like,” I tell him. “I have more than enough room in my house. No funny business,” I tell him. “Seriously. I would never want you to do anything that would make you uncomfortable.” I don’t give a second thought to inviting him. In my own travels, I have met many people who have invited me to stay with them. Without their help, I could never have managed my first trips abroad. “I think you are clever and have a big heart,” Nejib tells me. “I have not laughed this much in a long time. But this is new to me. I have to take one step at a time.” “What do you mean?” I ask him. I wonder if he is suggesting that he might feel more than just friendship for me. “I mean you can’t go right from primary school to university. You have to go one step at a time. Primary school, secondary school, university.” I still do not know if he is implying that he finds me attractive, but to ask any more would be impolite. That night, I use another credit card I’ve brought to take out a small cash advance. I lock the card back in the hotel’s safe deposit box and promise myself that I will pay for all our meals with the MasterCard, and do no more than give him the money I would have spent on food. Nejib meets me again the next day, and every other day that week. Between eleven-thirty and noon, he joins me on the terrace for a coffee; then, we buy him cigarettes. “I think you put new idea in my head,” he tells me. “I go to U.S.A.” “I really meant what I said,” I tell him. “You can come and visit me whenever you like. I have a big house, with three bedrooms.” “But it is very difficult for Tunisians to leave,” he replies. Most Western governments assume that any visitor from a poor country is a potential immigrant, and so Tunisians have to demonstrate that they have ties to their nation that will force them to return-family obligations, significant savings, real estate, for example. Somehow Nejib lets me know that he would like a gold bracelet. Tunisia is famous for its gold, and I assume that the prices here would be cheaper than in the U.S. For some reason, I tell him that I will buy him a bracelet, but I will not spend more than three hundred dollars. I truly don’t understand my own behavior. On the one hand, I worry that Nejib is yet another man I am trying to save. On the other, he is someone who actually needs saving-- or at least is in far worse circumstances than even the saddest cases I have ever dated. Besides, to me, credit isn’t like real money. Despite the fact that I carry more debt than almost anyone I know, I am always able to make more than the minimum payments. As I have no children, I don’t worry about leaving anybody anything. Given the fact that I rarely donate money to charity, giving Nejib a bracelet seems like a small gesture. We go to a store in the medina that sells gold jewelry. The salesmen don’t speak English, so Nejib does all the talking. He picks out a gold bracelet, a series of rectangular-shaped links, and asks me to fasten it around his wrist. “Do you like it?” I ask. “What do you mean?” “Do you like it? I don’t want to buy you something you don’t really like.” He doesn’t really understand what I am asking him. “I will like it if you buy it, but I will also be fine if you don’t.” “If you can get it for no more than two hundred and seventy five dollars,” I say, “I’ll buy it.” Nejib and the owner of the shop talk a bit in Arabic, and then Nejib says, “He has already given us a discount. He cannot lower the price.” “Watch what happens when I get up to leave,” I tell him. “Merci monsieur,” I say to the shop owner. As soon as I get up from the chair, the man begins to speak to Nejib again in Arabic. We continue to play this game for a bit. Nejib tells me in English that he is shaking with nerves, but I am completely dispassionate, as I don’t care one way or the other if we buy this particular bracelet. Though the man has at first insisted that the government will not allow him to offer a lower price, eventually, we get him to agree to a price in my range. Nejib then asks the man if he will take my credit card. “He says he can’t take a card,” Nejib tells me. “He has to pay a commission to the bank, and at this price, he will lose money.” “Please. The fees to the bank are part of doing business. Look, I had to pay my plane ticket to come to Tunis. I have to pay for my food and hotel. That’s life.” “Merci monsieur,” I say one last time as I remove the bracelet from Nejib’s wrist. We walk into another store just a few doors down, where we find another bracelet Nejib likes. This salesman gives us the price we want, and I am able to use my credit card. “That first salesman, he was stupid,” I tell Nejib. “Okay, maybe he didn’t want to sell the bracelet for the price I asked. So instead of making some money, now, he makes none.” “But the difference in price was only twenty dinars,” Nejib objects. “It doesn’t matter. It’s the principle. The guy’s window says he accepts credit cards.” We are walking again on the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, and I playfully nudge Nejib. “Please do not touch me in the street,” he says. “Tunisian men hold one another’s hands.” I object. “They walk down the street with their arms around one another. And I can not touch you?” “Excuse me, I want to say something. You are not Tunisian. In the street where we walk, there are people who I know, and they are very clever. They know you are not from here. They will think ugly things about us if they see you touch me.” I explain to him that, in my country, the way Tunisian men interact with one another would be considered inappropriate. I point out to him that Tunisian men touch one another’s legs sometimes when they are talking in a café. I explain to him that, in the U.S., this would be considered a sexual come-on and inappropriate in a public place. I tell Nejib I want to wear a tank top to the disco Saturday night so that he can see that I am in good shape, but he is shocked that I could be so immodest. “Do you want people to know you are homosexual?” he asks. “It is better not to let people know about your life. I would feel shy around you.” I have to keep reminding myself that my body does not interest him, that despite the fact that he admits that he can recognize Tunisian men who are more attractive than their German female companions, he will not say that he finds another man physically desirable or even handsome. What makes the events of September eleven all the more difficult for me to understand is the fact that Arab people are some of the friendliest I have ever encountered. When someone is in a hurry on the crowded streets and wants to pass you, he will place his hands gently on your shoulders and guide you around him. When I visit the ruins of the Antonine Baths at Carthage, I buy postcards of the view of the sea. It is lunchtime, and three Tunisian workers-a middle-aged woman who wears a cleaning smock, a man my age, and a young, smartly dressed woman who is obviously the sales clerk-are eating from a common bowl. When I say “bonjour” and place my postcards on the counter, the young woman asks if I would like to join them for lunch. “Non, merci,” I say. In order to avoid offending them, I add, “Je suis vegetarian.” The man responds, “Mais, c’est vegetarian!” I notice that they are in fact eating spaghetti with tomato sauce. “Non, merci,” I say. “C’est très, très gentil, mais j’ai un ami qui m’attendre”-I have a friend who is waiting for me. And Nejib is right-Tunisians love to talk. While sometimes this talk is an effort to cadge a few coins out of a tourist, just as often, it is motivated purely by curiosity. At the Bardo Museum, a guard asks me where I am from, and how I like Tunisia. He reassures me that tourists from the U.S. have nothing to fear in his country, and he is proud of the mixture of peoples-Phoenicians, Romans, Berbers, Arabs-that make up his country’s patrimony. After describing some of the nearby museums, he gives me his address and asks me to write him some time. Saturday night, we eat in a crowded restaurant. From upstairs, I can hear someone playing the electric piano. The music is a crazy collection of Western songs- everything from “Silent Night” (despite the fact that it is February) to “Perhaps.” When we try to order, the waiter explains, in Arabic, that because it is Saturday night, we must order both a first course and an entrée. “Let him charge me double for the pizza!” I say to Nejib, in English. I can see that, while the waiter has not understood my words, he has detected the anger in my tone, so I try to redeem myself by politely ordering a tomato salad and a pizza. “I hope I did not embarrass you,” I say to Nejib. “I just get irritated because I don’t want to waste food.” “No, you are right,” he tells me. “They don’t care here if the food goes to waste or not.” The tomato salad is excellent, as it contains a local mozzarella much more flavorful than what I usually find in the U.S. While we are eating, a large group of people enters the restaurant, seven or so men with a single woman. “These people are not Tunisian,” Nejib tells me. “How do you know?” “You can see by their faces. They are either from Kuwait or Arabia Saudi. You know,” Nejib tells me, “Tunisians hate the Saudis and Kuwaitis more than we hate the Jews.” No Arab has ever actually admitted to me that he hates Jews, let alone other Arabs. “Why?” I ask. “Because they are rich, and they share nothing with us. Americans don’t understand.” “But what about what the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, Sadam. . . . “Excuse me if I crash your sentence,” Nejib says, “but you don’t understand. The Iraqis are very nice people, very friendly. Not like the Kuwaitis. I don’t like these people.” Nejib assumes all American politicians are Jewish. This is how Arabs make sense of U.S. foreign policy. In the Arab world, only the tie of brotherhood that religion provides could explain the amount of aid the U.S. gives to Israel. Eventually, we get into a taxi and head for the disco. Nejib rides in front with the driver. Somewhere along the highway, we are stopped at a checking point by the police, who question Nejib in Arabic. They look at his i.d. card. The policeman does not say a word to me. “Why did they stop us?” I ask. “To check my identification and ask where we were going.” “But why?” “Some people, they do crime. The police, they check to see your identification card.” “But why? What are they looking for?” Nejib cannot seem to understand why I find the behavior of the police unusual. “They look to see if I am who I say I am.” At a club called the Globe, we stand in line at the door with a small group of young Tunisians. We are near the sea, and so a cool breeze is blowing. Occasionally, the doorman comes to the door, and Nejib talks to him in Arabic to see if we can get in. “If they don’t want my money, we can go somewhere else,” I say. “Do not forget that many people here speak English,” Nejib warns me. I recognize that I am turning into the stereotype of the ugly American, but I am cold and tired of this ridiculous waiting, and uncomfortable because everyone is speaking Arabic and so I have to rely on Nejib to explain what is happening. Eventually, Nejib asks me for twenty dinar in cash, and we are allowed to enter the club. It looks like any other upscale disco: plush furniture, a dance floor, a bar. But it is empty. “This is why your country is so poor,” I tell Nejib. “We wait outside in the cold to get into an empty club.” Nejib protests, “You don’t understand. First, the security people, they don’t care how much money you have. To them, it makes no difference whether or not you come in. Second, the club will get crowded later in the evening.” When The Globe finally gets crowded, around one a.m., I am one of less than a handful of Westerners in the club. The music is a combination of Western techno and Arab dance re-mixes. The atmosphere is far friendlier than that of most discos I know, gay or straight. People dance alone, in couples, or groups. Strangers strike up conversations with one another, and even couples switch partners on the dance floor so that it is difficult for me to tell who is with whom. In the restroom, a young man Nejib meets at the bar introduces himself and welcomes me to Tunisia. Despite the “liberal” policies of the Tunisian government, I am still surprised at the number of young women whose midriffs are exposed in this Islamic country. Some of them are amazing dancers. They move their hands and hips to the Arab re-mixes in a skilled parody of a Bollywood musical. Nejib and I dance, both together and separately. At the end of the night, drunk and feeling sorry for myself, I cry when I try to explain to Nejib how I feel. “I know your life is very hard, much more difficult than my own,” I say. “But you are twenty-six. Going home alone is not a big deal for you. But I am forty-one, and I still go to sleep alone.” “Please don’t cry. You must be strong. People will think I make a crime.” I try to talk, but I can’t stop myself from crying in the deserted street in front of my hotel. I feel like a fool, crying over this boy I barely know. “I do not want to make you sad. Be strong. You are a man.” “I knew you would say that,” I answer. Nejib has done some research. After hinting to me that he would like a stereo, he has discovered that you can use a credit card at Carrefour, a French department store with a branch in Tunis. We take a taxi to the store, which is located in a shopping mall that looks like it could be anywhere in the U.S. So that we can hear the sound system of the stereo, the young sales woman puts on a c.d., some American rap star chanting obscenities. “The words of this song are very vulgar,” I say to the woman, in French. Once again, I am embarrassed at what the U.S. exports to poor countries like Tunisia. We tell her we’ll take the stereo, and she disappears to retrieve it from the stock room but returns empty-handed. “They are out of this one,” Nejib tells me. “They will have it in a week.” “Can we pay for it now, and you can come back?” “Do not play with Tunisians like this,” Nejib tells me. “They will take your money and leave you with nothing.” We look at two other models, both Thompsons. One is almost fifty dollars more than the other. “Would you be happy with either one?” I ask him again. “I don’t want to waste my money on something that you will not like.” “Listen to them both,” he tells me. “Which do you think is better?” We hear a bit of another c.d. on each of the two machines. Sure enough, the more expensive one has a better sound. Still, it is only a bit more than two hundred and fifty dollars, the price I had set as a limit in my head. In the taxi on the way home from the mall, I ask Nejib if there is free dental care for poor people in Tunisia. As he has told me that he has problems with his teeth-he can’t eat sweets, for example-I assume he will not find my question rude. Nejib looks at me as if I am crazy. “If you have a job, yes,” he tells me, “You get some social security and it pays for your teeth.” He explains to me that his girlfriend in Hamburg once gave him one hundred seventy-five dollars to have his teeth fixed, but she left before he could get an appointment, and so the money went for something else. “I tried to see in my guidebook if I could use my credit card to pay for a dentist,” I tell him. “Excuse me,” Nejib answers. “I want to say something. I think it would be better if you just send me money. I don’t care about my teeth. What is the use of having good teeth if I have no food to eat?” I try to explain to him that an infection in his mouth could make him very sick, but I have trouble arguing with his logic. “But you yourself have just told me that, when one of your friends gives you money for one thing, you sometimes spend it on something else.” “I think you know me better that I know myself,” Nejib laughs. In the evenings, in my hotel room, I try to figure out what it is I want from Nejib. I am self-conscious enough about our relationship to remind myself that he is not my vacation project. But I also realize that the situation is emotionally complicated for me, too. I tell myself that he is not just another man trying to hustle me. I am caught, not wanting to ask for things he can’t possibly give, but also wanting to express my feelings. I know that he has to live here after I return home. I also know, however, that I have needs. I have to trust his affection for me, since he cannot show it to me as another man-someone who self-identified as gay, for example-might. I remind myself that Nejib has never suggested our relationship will be anything but a friendship. Or rather, he said we will take one step at a time, a phrase I do not know how to interpret. Yes, if he were gay, I would say he was hustling me. I am also worried about inconsistencies in his story. When I question him, he gets defensive: “Why do you ask me this same question?” he says. “If you ask me something today, and then you ask me again tomorrow, you will get the same answer.” But one day, he says he will not go back to school, that he has a better chance at life outside of Tunisia. The next, he talks about his future as an engineer. Our days develop a routine: he meets me at the hotel, and then we walk a bit somewhere. One day, he takes me through the part of the souks where the Tunisians themselves shop. He points out to me both genuine levis and cheap knock-offs with levis labels sewn in. We walk past an open plaza containing a series of tables piled with used clothing. “These clothes, they have been donated to poor people,” Nejib insists. “Instead, they end up for sale here.” He says he never buys anything used, as he is afraid it might have belonged to someone who died. Another day, he takes the train with me to Carthage. He refuses to let me pay his way into the ruins-“I have seen these things already; it is not interesting to me”-and waits for me instead in the coffee shop. He tells me that any Tunisian found wandering in this neighborhood at night will be taken in for questioning immediately, as it houses many embassies and government buildings. The ruins of the Roman baths are located alongside the Forbidden Palace, a government building. No one is allowed to take photographs in the direction of the palace. After the morning’s trips, we have lunch at one of the restaurants that will take a credit card-I eat vegetable tagine or couscous and brick, a kind of Tunisian burrito filled with a fried egg-- and then we go our separate ways for a few hours. I return to my hotel to rest a bit, or visit something nearby, like the Great Mosque or the Tourbey el-Bey, a huge eighteenth century mausoleum whose painted walls are still gorgeous, despite the disrepair; Nejib goes to meet some friends. I don’t ask him much about these meetings, as I know he believes that being a man means keeping some things from me, but I am a little exasperated that they always require him to spend the money I have been giving him. He shows me how to give him money in a public place without drawing other people’s attention. I fold the bill up, place it in my palm, and then shake his hand to say good-bye. I don’t know what he does with this money, but he never seems to be able to hang on to it, despite the fact that I am paying for his food and cigarettes. We meet again in the late afternoon to have coffee on the terrace of the same café we went the first night we met. Most nights, Nejib leaves me at around 8:30 to eat on my own, as I cannot afford to give him the twenty dinar bus fare. On the ride back from Carthage, we are standing close to one another in the crowded train. I normally don’t like jewelry on men, but alongside the sleeve of his black turtleneck and the black hairs covering his pale skin, the gold bracelet is handsome, emphasizing the elegance of his hands. The window is open, and the breeze from the sea blows through the car, and I think, I want this moment to continue forever. I want to spend the rest of my life riding the train from Carthage to Tunis, standing next to Nejib. The last night, he keeps joking with me. “Maybe you will surprise me with an envelope.” I tell him that he has to be patient. I can probably send him levis or shoes from home, but I will not be returning to the U.S. until June, and there is no more cash in my checking account. On one of our walking trips through the city, he has pointed out the kind of shoes he wants: black suede. I have deliberately worn a tight shirt because I can’t stand feeling so unlike myself. I start to remove my jacket so that he can see my chest. “Stop, stop!” he laughs. “I think you do a strip-tease for me.” We exchange telephone numbers and addresses, though the address Nejib gives me is that of his sister. “She is settled,” Nejib says. He also explains to me the process for wiring him money via Western Union. “You send me a fax with the secret code,” he tells me. “You are sure you can’t give me any more money?” he asks. “I don’t have any more dinar.” I have explained to him repeatedly that the trip has already cost me far more than I anticipated, but, in a moment of weakness, I tell him that I am expecting a check from the U.S. government, my income tax refund. Perhaps I can give him part of this money. “We can share it,” he laughs. “What about your credit card?” “I left it locked in the safe deposit box of my hotel,” I tell him. “I was afraid of what I might do with it.” “I think you are very clever,” he tells me. Nejib is worried because he has until the middle of the month to pay his rent and his school tuition. “If I don’t pay for the flat, I sleep in the streets,” he tells me. “But if I don’t pay for school, they put me in jail, and I stay there until I get the money.” Normally, his friend from Kansas City sends him his tuition, but he hasn’t received a fax from him in weeks, and he can’t seem to reach him on the telephone, either. “But I thought you aren’t going back to school?” “I have to pay them anyway,” he tells me. I read in my guidebook that tuition in Tunisia is free, and so I ask him why he has to pay. He explains that when he lived with his parents, in the south, he went to the free school, but once you leave the free school, you can’t go back. “My school now is privé,” he tells me. We say good-bye on a busy street so that I will not cry. “I will never forget you,” he says to me. The next morning, I take one last walk along the Avenue, where I see many young men like Nejib. Sitting on park benches, they smoke cigarettes and joke with one another. Like Nejib, they have given up trying to earn a legitimate living in Tunisia. It just takes too long, and too many obstacles lay in one’s path. Instead, they try to gather together the two thousand dollars or so that will allow them to buy the false papers that will get them to Copenhagen or some other place where the immigration authorities are less strict than France or the U.S. When I return home to Paris, my French friends tell me that I have made a mistake by giving Nejib presents and money. My friend Jack is particularly irritated. “By buying him these things, you are taking away what little self-esteem he has,” Jack insists. “If you were going to see him again, if he was your lover, fine. But now he will behave this way with someone else.” “But he is poor and jobless,” I protest. “That is not your responsibility.” A week or so after I have returned, Nejib telephones me. He can only speak for a few seconds before he runs out of coins. He tells me that he is desperate for the money for his tuition and that he is afraid of going to prison. But Jack and my other friends have planted in my head the suspicion that I am being conned. I wonder why, for example, Nejib never wanted to speak French with me. Once, when I tried, he told me that he had difficulty with his French. But several times during our conversations, when he didn’t know a word in English, he would say it in French instead. And during one of our last conversations, Nejib asks me to play a game with him: he tells me he will try to guess the pin number of my credit card. After one or two attempts, he gets the number exactly right, though it is for the credit card I keep locked up in the safe deposit box in the hotel and not the one I have been using for our meals. Thinking that the pin for the two cards might be identical, I tried using it one day to get some cash from a machine. Nejib was with me that day. I try simply to ignore his guess, but I worry what he might be able to do with this pin number. During one of our many conversations, he asked me if it were possible to use someone else’s credit card. Assuming he was just curious, I told him no, that once a credit card was stolen, it could be cancelled immediately, just by picking up the telephone. I think about contacting the school directly in order to pay his bill, perhaps by credit card, but I am afraid to admit to Nejib that I suspect he might be lying. So I call his bluff and don’t send any money. A few days later, a young woman calls claiming to be Nejib’s sister. In perfect French, she tells me that, although he is in prison, the school has agreed to give him five more days to pay his bill. The conversation is so brief and I am so nervous that I fail to ask what will happen if his bill goes unpaid. She asks me to send her whatever I can. Once more, I call his bluff. A few days later, a young man calls me claiming to be a friend of Nejib’s. He asks me to call him back in Tunis, but I hang up the telephone. Nejib himself calls a few days later, explaining that he pawned the bracelet and stereo in order to get out of prison. He is irritated with me for not having sent him money. I try to explain that the situation is complicated for me, that I have never given another man this much money, that he is not my responsibility, that friendship has to involve some measure of reciprocity. And I tell him that my French friends have suggested he is lying. “I told you not to talk about me to your French friends,” he says. “I hate the French. I think you are old enough to make this decision on your own. You don’t need to listen to your friends.” But everything Nejib now says to me, I am able to read in two ways: either he is telling me the truth, or he is a very skilled liar who knows how to manipulate me. I think of the things I should have done: I should have told him to sell the bracelet back to me so that I could keep it for him, I should have told him that I will pay the school directly if he gives me the name, address, and telephone number of the bursar. But either option would let Nejib know that I do in fact now have enough money to help him. Either would have required me to admit that I didn’t trust him completely. I feel guilty-for giving him presents and money in the first place, for not continuing to give him money-and I feel guilty at my own guilt. Because maybe he really is a poor boy running out of options, a poor boy who thought he had found a friend who could help him escape his poverty. Or maybe he is just another hustler who recognizes an aging guy with a savior complex.