Gourmandise

The Gourmandise is as fancy as they come - sporting a large Lyons Club sign. Rihanna Gaga and I are actually just on our way to the beach and this place happens to be right opposite the road to the Marsa public beach, so we decide to have our breakfast here today. For such a fancy place it's curiously located - on a heavily crowded crossroads, with cars continuously passing by in front of its terrace, and hardly a view on the sea because it is facing in exactly the wrong direction. The house in which it's located fits, though: it's in the colonial style that many buildings around here have, including the residence of the French ambassador right in front of it.

It is said that the road on which the Gourmandise looks out was created as a kind of a middle finger to the French. At least, somebody once told me that Tunisia's first president, Habib Bourguiba, decided to build this road just to annoy the former coloniser, as it cuts right through the luscious parks surrounding the French ambassador's palace. I like the story, as nowadays it seems to be one of the few things that the Tunisians did to annoy their former oppressors. Apart from that, it is often unnerving to see how much Tunisia still seems to mimic France in almost everything - the France of about seventy years ago, that is: my dad told me, when he visited us, that the place reminded him of France as he used to know it, and I've heard that from more people. Colonialism is over, but many seem to not have gotten that memo around here.

The Gourmandise is a good example of all of this: its spotlessly white interior looks as if it's taken from some place on the Riviera in the seventies. We sit down at the terrace and order the set breakfast, that comes with coffee for me and a strawberry juice for Rihanna Gaga. Rihanna Gaga also insists on a bottle of water and ends up preferring the latter over the former, which is heavily laced with sugar.

Rihanna Gaga spots some children and walks up and down the stairs that lead to the lower part of the terrace. However, rather than going to the children, she prefers - as she usually does - to sit down on the stairs to watch them from a distance. In the meantime, I take my book and read. I have an incredible large stack of unread books at home - more than a hundred - and have decided not to buy new books until I've finished the ones I already have. For this, I've set myself the task of reading at least 60 pages per day, calculating that with that pace I'll be finished in about a year. Luckily, Rihanna Gaga is getting better and better at playing on her own, so that I can actually do quite some reading on a day like today. It's now late August and in two weeks time the classes will start again - I hope I will be able to keep up my 60 pages per day when they do. 

Her big thing these days is roleplaying. She enjoys pretending she runs a shop, or is a doctor, with either her mother or me as the customer or patient - or vice versa. Other than that, she enjoys playing with her dolls or animals, having entire conversations with them. I used to provide the voices for her, but nowadays she often does so herself in a comically high pitched voice. She does so right now with Ma, a little lamb that is one of her favourites. Alternately talking to the lamb and cuddling it enthusiastically, she's having a wonderful time. Then, she turns to another favourite: playing hide and seek. She has her own version of that game, in which she announces exactly where she will hide, after which she tells me that I have to go looking for her; I then can remain wherever I am and I only have to start wondering aloud where she could have gone, enumerating different places: "Is Rihanna Gaga behind te car? Or is she in the café? Or has she gone to the shop?" While I do so, she crouches behind my chair, shrieking loudly with delight.

In the meantime I eat the breakfast, which consists of tiny, tiny bits of sandwich and a croissant which I share with Rihanna Gaga. The ingredients are surprisingly good and fresh, but the size is a bit disappointing. Then, Rihanna Gaga's had enough and I oblige: it's time to go to the beach.