A Book Store in Tunis

I forget the name of the store and the street but it was on one of the main shopping streets and had lots of customers. About half of the books were in arabic so I have no clue what they were about. Most of the rest in French. A few in English seemed to be deeply remaindered and just for people who want to work on their English. One of these was the poetry of Robert Burns, so I expect to meet Tunisians who speak English with a strong Scottish accent.

The books in French included translations of The "Da Vinci Code" (of course) next to "Da Vinci for Dummies" also "plan of Attack" and "The Clash of Civilisations" By Samuel Huntington. I was rather impressed by the open mindedness demonstrated by the sale of this last book in a Moslem Arab country. I don't think you would find a symmetric case in your average Barnes and Nobles.

Also there were childrens books (le Disney) and Romances by Cartwright translated into French (imagine having to spend ten times as much time translating a book as the author took to write it). I would have dearly liked to see Cartwright translated into Arabic but, hey, maybe I did for all I know.

The owner of the store struck me as extremely ecumenical in outlook. There were books on Islam, Christianity, Buddhism (by the Dalai Lama)a book on Science replies to the Bible and the Koran and not one but two atheist tracts (again look for those in an average book store in the USA). Actually I'm not sure the second was an Atheist tract. It is the latest be Regis Debray and is about religion somehow, but for all I know he's born again or something.

Speaking of Regis (and see earlier post) a big picture book on Che Guevara illustrated by *the* photo (I once saw on TV an interview with the guy who took that photo).

All in all impressive open mindedness. I see an attractive aspect of small not too rich countries which are more open to thoughts from outside than a certain huge rich country.