Café el Ali

After three days in Sidi Bou Said, we’re spending two nights in the Medina, staying at a small apartment rented out by a French-Tunisian couple that was once recommended to us by a colleague of my partner. My daughter, Rihanna Gaga, is still amazing us with how much she is at ease in Tunisia. It’s great fun to see her stroll through the busy markets of the medina, unfazed and self-assured, not what you’d expect of a Dutch girl who is not used to this kind of hustle and bustle. Billie Stormzy, on the other hand, is really quite overwhelmed, to the point where we have to take it very easy to not put too much pressure on him. It’s probably not just Tunisia: it’s also the fact that he is not used to crowds, has just taken an airplane for the first time in his life, and in general has not had holidays that were anything else than staying with just his sister and parents in holiday homes or quiet hotels.

When we just arrived in Tunisia and got into the taxi that took us from the airport to the hotel, he asked if the driver could play Kinderen voor Kinderen – the well-known children choir singing progressive songs about the need to exercise and take care of the environment that generations of Dutch kids have grown up with, and which he is a big fan of. The request underscored how strange this country must be to him – he simply cannot imagine a world where they don’t sing Dutch songs. Luckily, we visited an old friend of Rihanna Gaga yesterday, the daughter of a Tunisian-American couple we knew when we lived here. There, he was indulged when our hosts helped us to search for Kinderen voor Kinderen on Youtube on their big television screen, after which he spent the better part of an hour singing along and watching the video clips he loves so much.

Now, he’s sitting on my shoulders, playing with his calculator, calling aloud the numbers that appear by him repeatedly pressing the button that calculates the square root – weird sequences, because he only reads up the final three digits on the screen. It’s early in the morning and we are walking towards Café El Ali, where we’re planning to have breakfast. When we arrive there, he insists climbing the many stairs to El Ali’s rooftop café by himself. It’s another place we regularly visited when we lived here – it’s an ideal spot to take visitors, located in an old Medina mansion, the walls lined with colourful tiles and with a high Arabian Nights flavour to its decoration.  Upstairs, there is a chic room with colourful divans and comfy chairs, before you reach the roof – but we discover the roof now is covered by a glass roof, which seriously hinders the once magnificent view from here. Much to Billie Stormzy’s chagrin, we retreat back into the café, because what’s the point of sitting on the roof if there is no view to speak of? For some reason or the other, however, Billie Stormzy has decided he prefers the chairs located on the highest platform and it is difficult to convince him otherwise.

Back inside, we sit down at one of a group of divans and chairs around a low table, and Billie Stormzy cheers up when he discovers our table has a number. Apparently there is one, but you can only see it when you look underneath the table – leave it to Billie Stormzy to spot it even there. A small army of very friendly and competent waiters in traditional clothes stands to attention, and we order a set breakfast will all kinds of sweets, toast, honey, an egg, croissants and Madmouja – a sort of pudding drowned in rose water. Breakfast is served quickly – the waiter has taken the liberty to add hot chocolate for the kids to the breakfast, and to the bill, something that happens more often at more touristy spots like this.

Billie Stormzy climbs on my lap and starts eating one of the croissants, then tries the hot chocolate but recoils and says it’s too hot. This surprises me: I tried it earlier and I thought it was fine, but apparently for him it is not. We’re out of luck as far as the juice that’s included in the breakfast is concerned. In the right season, that would have been delicious fresh orange juice, but the oranges aren’t ripe right now, meaning that citronade – a lemonade made of lemons and sugar that is too bitter for the kids’ taste, and too sweet for ours - is all there is in most cafés when you ask for fresh juices.

We’re enjoying the breakfast, when I spot Rihanna Gaga fishing ice cubes with her bare – and quite dirty – hands from her citronade, slobbering them into her mouth and spitting them back into her hands with lots of saliva added, then repeating the whole unsavoury act. I tell her to quit, but she continues, then quickly runs to the rooftop where I can’t see her. A little later, she returns again, and continues her slobbering, looking at me, challenging to repeat my warning. When I tell her to stop again, she runs away again. I follow her and give her a stern warning, which leads to full on breakdown. She shouts at me she didn’t know I wanted her to quit, and I tell her to cut out the fake naivety. The mood, unfortunately, sours. I know Rihanna Gaga feels I am too stern sometimes, but I am not willing to let her get away with something so blatant as this. On the other hand, I know it’s better to just let it go when emotions run so high, and return to it when everyone is calmer, but am incapable of doing so. I guess both our tempers get in the way sometimes, which both saddens and annoys me. It’s moments like these when I somewhat fail myself as a parent, especially because I cannot think of alternative ways to approach such a situation.

The breakfast is great, albeit a bit too sweet to my taste. There is a savoury alternative and I wonder whether I should not have opted for that one. I’ve also ordered a Turkish coffee, which goes really well with all the sweetness. However, although the breakfast includes coffee, the Turkish coffee has to be paid for separately. Apparently, the waiter just failed to mention that when he asked us which coffee we wanted, and when we replied we’d like Turkish coffee, it would be added to the bill. Given the cheap prices here, though, that is one thing I fail to get bothered by at all.

Rihanna Gaga remains sullen, but Billie Stormzy is having fun. First, he enjoys eating his hot chocolate with a teaspoon, then he sits down in front of the glass refrigerator with pies and cakes in it to gaze at a digital screen showing the refrigerator’s temperature. As the temperature fluctuates somewhat, the digits on the screen change every now and then, much to his delight. I know from similar situations in supermarkets, this can keep him captivated for ages. It’s time to go, however. The waiter packs the sweets we couldn’t finish in a small plastic bag and we make our way through the medina; we want to buy some Tunisian dresses for Rihanna Gaga and I want to see if I can get some nice coloured scarves. Walking through the busy covered streets of the Medina, holding Rihanna Gaga by the hand, the mood soon improves, and before I know it, Rihanna Gaga is chatting happily again about how much she enjoys being here.  

Also on Breakfast at the Beach: Jump back in time to when I visited this place with Rihanna Gaga in 2016.