Hammamet Vacations

The year 2024 started well, but after three months my co-worker with whom I shared daily tasks found another better position and left. It took them 6 months to find a replacement. Finally, Adrian arrived from Transylvania. But it takes another three months to be able to replace me. Almost a year without holidays. I was really very tired and stressed. But my time had come and I took two weeks of vacation, in mid-December. I went to the travel agency and bought an all-inclusive vacation package to Hammamet in Tunisia. The first problem was right after paying for it. The agent of the agency told me that the flight was at 6 in the morning. I had to be at the airport by 4 a.m. I hate getting up early. All in the year I had gotten up early, at 7 a.m. But on vacation? That is masochism. I told myself that I will never, ever get up so soon for a flight. I prefer to change destination. I'm the one who pays. On the day of departure I slept almost nothing. I took a taxi to the airport and stood in line. It's incredible the number of people who took the same flight as me. The trip was quite pathetic. Children crying behind me and kicking me with their feet halfway through. On top of that, I was touched by a very fat lady who barely left me room. Three long hours of flight. But I didn't want to get angry, I was on vacation after so long. Upon arrival at Tunis airport, go through the entrance control. The border policeman was sick and wouldn't stop coughing. I gave him my passport and he coughed on it. He returned the document to me with a bunch of droplets full of viruses. I was enormously disgusted. I cleaned my passport as best I could and looked for the shuttle bus to my hotel. Already on the bus I started to feel bad. My throat hurt. I told myself that I only needed a few hours of sleep and a couple of orange juices to recover. I'm naïve. I slept until dinner time and went down to the buffet. Everything looked great. I had a nice dinner, several desserts and then a rum (it was all included). With a full stomach I went to sleep. Tomorrow my holidays would really start... Then my nightmare began, never better said. He was sick. The border guard had infected me and I had a fever. He coughed a lot. I slept almost all day in the midst of a delirium. I saw myself in a kind of prison with icy walls and I in convulsions. In my dream there were others with me, in better conditions than me. But all prisoners. One said: They have abandoned us, that is why we are prisoners until our death. Others did nothing but moan. I didn't know what to think. From time to time I would wake up and see my hotel room. But I would go back to sleep and return to that cold, damp prison. I sweated a lot and forced myself to go down once a day to the buffet to eat something. But what I really wanted was to go back to my bed and sleep. On the fifth day something changed in my delirium. I dreamed that my jailers came with some kind of saint. He was a monk who wore dirty clothes, but everyone had a lot of respect for him. He showed us three little strings that he carried in his right hand. One of the guardians who spoke my language said: Rare, are the three sacred hairs of the prophet's beard. I don't know why I did it, but I got up and touched all three hairs. Then I fell to the ground. he was still sick, quite sick. All my jailers began to scream and laugh. It seemed that they liked my act very much. They took me out of the cell and removed my chains. They took me to the guards' room and gave me food and drink. I felt my strength coming back. I woke up much better, hungry. Go down to the buffet and have breakfast like a king. Orange juice, eggs with Bacon, various cakes. I thought my vacation was starting now, once I had recovered from my illness. Besides, it was Christmas Eve. The day was perfect, I walked along the beach. I bathed in the heated pool. And to finish a spectacular dinner at the hotel. I had a couple of rums to celebrate my recovery. But since I'm prudent and still a little convalescent, I went to bed not too late. He had bought an excursion for the next day to the medina of Hammamet. My dream that night was very strange. My former jailers were like my friends. They taught me how to wash my feet, hands, mouth, and then they took me to their mosque. Someone told me that now my name was Yusuf Javivi. And they wanted me to start praying with them. That he was now a Muslim until death. I thought they were crazy. They wanted me to convert to Islam on Christmas Day. I shouted no to them. I was a Christian, it was the day of the birth of Christ the King, the baby Jesus. I was not going to convert to Islam and even less on this day. All the Moors were very angry. They yelled at me, beat me, and sent me back to the prison where I was before. The worst thing was that one of the guards said to me: So you don't want to be a Muslim, now you will be a slave until the end of days. He picked up a hot iron and burned my right hand. It left me a crescent-shaped mark. I woke up drenched in sweat. But not so much because of the disease from which he was already coming out, but because of the memory of the burn. I don't believe in coincidences. But that morning the impossible happened. I went downstairs to breakfast, meditating on my strange dream. As usual I made myself three pieces of toast. The first two came out fine, but the third got stuck in the toaster. I tried to pull it out with a fork and unfortunate myself, I burned my right hand. Right in the same place where I was marked in my dream. It hurt a lot, I went immediately to the hotel infirmary and they put a cream on me that relieved me somewhat. The nurse said to me: It doesn't look good, it may have a scar. How lucky I am. I had booked the excursion the day before and I didn't want to miss it. I got on the bus to Hammamet. The medina was nothing special. White alleys that looked like a labyrinth and a lot of shops and Tunisians wanting to sell anything. Buy a carton of tobacco for a friend for 33 euros, 3 packets of spices and a couple of fridge magnets. There was nothing that interested me. I was missing a bottle of olive oil, but one of the people on the tour took the last one before me. I wasn't very lucky. The tour ended at the fortress of Hammamet. He appears in all the photos of the city. It is beautiful but small and cold since it is next to the sea and all the humidity sticks to the walls. When I entered one of the rooms my blood froze and I got a strong stomach ache. The guide asked me if I was feeling okay and I said yes, it had already happened. I went back to the hotel and rested for a few hours. I went downstairs for dinner, it was Christmas Day and the hotel had prepared a special menu. A very tasty fish soup and salmon. I love this type of food, but I didn't feel very well and I barely had a bite. I went up to the room early and slept again. The nightmares returned. He was back in the same cell, but worse than before. My guards beat me for no reason, they had taken off my blanket and I only had a handful of rotten dates to eat. I woke up several times at night with horrible stomach pain and diarrhea. I spent another three days fatally. Everything I ate lasted a couple of minutes in my stomach and I had to go back to the bathroom. I ran out of toilet paper and I had to use a hose that all the services in Muslim countries have. The day of my departure was approaching, and I wasn't quite sure if I would be able to travel. But I didn't want to stay in that hotel. That same night I had a hopeful dream. I saw an old monk with a white beard. He was not a Muslim because he had a white cross on his gray cloak. I was talking to my jailer. He told him that he was sick and would die soon. A dead Christian is not worth money. Nor was it worth the 30 silver dinars that the guardian demanded. I would give him only 3 dinars or nothing. The Moor accepted. I woke up better. My belly was still hurting but I no longer had diarrhea, now I was constipated. The bus came early to pick us up, at 7.30 in the morning. At 7 o'clock I went downstairs to get a coffee. Nothing entered my stomach because of the nerves. If I'm honest, I was afraid that something else would happen to me and I wouldn't be able to leave Hammamet. Next to me an old lady was having breakfast with her husband. I went up to the reception waiting for the bus that would take me to the airport and from there back to my house. It was at that very moment that the curse of Hammamet passed me and I looked for a new victim. The old lady's husband came running to the reception and said that his wife had fallen and that he thought her hip had been broken because her leg was as if dislocated. The receptionists became very nervous and called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived soon and within three minutes our bus to the airport. I quickly got on the bus and from the window I saw how they took the lady out on the stretcher. Indeed something had broken. The leg was in a strange position and she suffered a lot because she did not stop moaning and sobbing. The whole trip I thought about how lucky I was. If I had broken my hip, I would now be in the hospital until I had surgery. And perhaps he would never leave Hammamet. Only when I pass border control will I calm down. The policeman told me: I hope you enjoyed your holiday, come back to Hammamet soon. I will never return, that is very clear to me. That is how my vacation in Tunisia ended, after a year of hard work with hardly any rest. I still think about what lessons I have learned from this experience.