COLOURFUL CARPETS on display in Kairouan. — Photos by Percy Rowe

Tunisia is a benign, safe and sunny land, but it wasn't always. After Hannibal, the country's best-known celebrity, brought his elephants to the gates of Rome, vengeful Romans sailed across the Mediterranean, defeated the Carthaginians, razed their city, then salted the soil to make the country barren forever. They failed. Quickly the land became the granary for the Roman Empire. And now, two millennia later, Tunisia has three zones -- a top east-west band abundant in cereals, fruits and vineyards, a second 100-km-deep grey-green sea of olive trees and a bottom third, which is the beginning of the Sahara Desert.

Tunisia is a country where illusions are quickly dispelled. It is the most open of Muslim countries with, for instance, beer and wine available to all in supermarkets, the veil only generally seen in the countryside and chatty teenagers in jeans allowed to hang out at seaside resorts during school breaks.

These resorts now attract seven million Europeans a year. Sousse alone has 90 modern hotels overlooking its golden beach.

DATE PALMS

And oases are an eye-opener, too. These aren't little Biblical clumps of trees in the desert around a single-bucket well. One at Gabes has 300,000 date palms stretching through a canyon to the sea. Another at Tozeur is so big there are carriage rides to see waterfalls and gin-clear streams, and pineapples and oranges growing.

Tozeur is where The English Patient was filmed. It's also the departure point for adventurous jeep safaris into the Sahara or half-day bumpy camel rides over tawny dunes, where the only sound is the rustle of windblown sand.

Elsewhere too, Tunisia is popular with filmmakers. Star Wars sequences were shot in one area famed for its moonscapes. And everywhere there is the photographer's main concern -- light.

It is abundant on Tunisia's two coasts. One sunny arm stretches westward towards Algeria. But it is the one south from Tunis where the main resorts of Hammamet, Sousse, Monastir and the island of Djerba have bloomed

Tunis itself, apart from the Bardo Museum with its perfect Roman floor mosaics, is easily forgettable. It has Carthage as a suburb, where a few Roman walls and arches stand next door to the gorgeous mansions of affluent Tunisians, who commute into the capital every day. Residents are almost as much European as African, perhaps because the area is so close to Europe. At nearby Cape Bon you can take a hydrofoil to Italy.

Golden beaches in the resort area of Monastir. — Photos by Percy Rowe

Hammamet is an $8, 80-km, train ride south of Tunis. It consists of the interesting old walled town (medina) on a peninsula and a stretch of holiday hotels 10 km farther on. Between them is one of Tunisia's most interesting buildings, built for a Romanian millionaire just before World War II.

Generals Montgomery and Rommel and Winston Churchill stayed there -- but not at the same time. And architect Frank Lloyd Wright called it "the pleasantest house I know." Today it is the site for an annual music festival and is open daily to the public who, after exploring Winnie's minute bedroom, can drink mint tea around the pool.

What a contrast to Matmata, in the southern Berber countryside, where for centuries caves were the places to live. Some still are, even in town.

At one small sparsely furnished hotel you can transform yourself into a Flintstone character. It is built around a courtyard and upper bedrooms are reached either by rope or ladder.

Surrounding country cave-homes consist of a series of small caves, linked by open sandstone corridors. Earthenware jars of grains, spices and drinking water stand in the "kitchens." Sometimes beds are merely ledges cut into the cave wall.

The Roman amphitheatre at El Djem (only Rome and Verona have larger coliseums). — Photos by Percy Rowe

Habib Bourghiba, who led the revolt against the French colonizers in the 1950s, to become the "father of modern Tunisia," built Soviet-like apartment blocks in the desert for the residents but within months, many had returned to their traditional troglodyte existence.

Monastir -- another beguiling seaside resort with a fine beach and fishing harbour, and only a suburban train ride from Sousse -- was Bourghiba's hometown. His presidential palace there is only exceeded in elaborateness by his mausoleum. But in other ways he was a humble man. Once I was in his office. Facing his desk were photos of the dozen comrade-rebels who helped him throw out the French.

Nevertheless, his shrine is nearly as big as the Great Mosque of the inland carpet-making town of Kairouan. Only Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem have bigger mosques but Kairouan's has the most carpets on its floor (2,000). Other sights to see include the almost complete Roman amphitheatre at El Djem (only Rome and Verona have larger coliseums) and the ruined Roman city of Dougga. The last is near the Algerian border, a three-hour taxi ride from Sousse, nearly all of it through olive orchards.

There are so many of these -- 60 million, or seven for every Tunisian -- that I finally asked the cabbie how much olive oil he used.

"Oh, we are not true example, only me, wife, two babes," he replied. "We order 100 litres a year. Most families get 200."

UBIQUITOUS OLIVE

If that figure seems extraordinary, get this: Many of the groves we saw were planted when Hannibal was alive. They still bear fruit.

If the olive is ubiquitous, so is the egg. The national fast food, bric, consists of a raw egg, salad greens and either minced meat or tuna wrapped in an light pastry envelope and cooked in olive oil for such a short time that the egg is still runny. Another popular dish, "plat Tunisian," is a salad over two fried eggs. These go down with orange juice.

Oranges are so abundant that at an outdoor Sousse cafe I counted seven being pressed for my tumbler of juice. It cost a dinar, which is about 96 cents.

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BOTTOM LINE

GETTING THERE: Some Toronto companies sell all-inclusive packages to the Tunisian seaside resorts. Independent travellers can fly to London and pick one of the frequent British Airways and Tunis Air flights from Gatwick to Tunis.

GETTING AROUND: Louages -- five-seater, multi-stop, inter-city taxis -- are cheap. A 90-minute drive from Kairouan to Sousse costs about $10. Arabic and French are the common languages. English is spoken in resort hotels and shops.

SHOPPING: Haggling is the rule in the souks (markets) but not in government-run tourist stores, where carpets, silver jewelry and leather goods are the best buys.