"It's a great title," I said.
"Thanks. What I tried to do with the book was cast light upon some of the silent voices of history, the people we don't usually hear about or from, either because they lost some war, and the people who won got to write the account of it, or because they were simply regarded as unimportant and were therefore overlooked when the stories of their time were being told."
"Like women," Jamila interjected.
"Exactly," Ben agreed. "Women, the poor, or even whole nations who lost out in battle. The Carthaginians are an excellent example. The Romans by and large absolutely despised the Carthaginians. They'd make an exception for a few they admired, grudgingly, but essentially they described the Carthaginians as dirty, drunken, barbaric louts. There was a Roman expression, Punica fides, Punic faith. What do you think it meant? Treachery! Punic faith to the Romans was synonymous with treachery. They were particularly scathing on the subject of the child sacrifices in the tophet. So this is the view of the Carthaginians that has come down to us. The Romans won the war, wrote the history, and it is their side of the story we have. But you heard Briars on the subject of the tophet. It could be it didn't happen, or if it did, it was a sacred ceremony, not a game. The Romans, as we know, had peculiar ideas themselves about what constituted entertainment, and there is no indication the Carthaginians shared that. As for dirty, well, we saw the town of Kerkouane the other day."
"They had bathtubs," Chastity said. "We saw them."
"They did. Right in their homes, in addition to public baths. The archaeological evidence would indicate that they weren't nearly as dirty as the Romans said. As for barbaric, the Roman alphabet is based on the Phoenician one, and Carthage was a Phoenician city. Also, a Carthaginian by the name of Magon taught the Romans a great deal about the best agricultural practices. There are lots of examples one could give, but we rarely hear them."
"So are you trying to put some of these stories right?" Jamila asked.
"In a way, yes. I've been researching it for years . . ."
"Years and years," Ed interjected. "I keep telling him that at some point he just has to stop researching and writing, and start trying to find a publisher."
"Ed doesn't understand that the research is the best part of it. I'm trying to find old writings or even ancient works of art that depicted common people rather than the kings and queens or gods and goddesses of ancient times. I uncovered a number of examples, just really interesting stories about common people who did something extraordinary, to refute some of the misconceptions we have of the past, and give a voice to the many people who have been silent."
Group intellectual, I thought.
"This is a rather long-winded answer to your question, isn't it?" Ben said. "Dum loquor, hora fugit. While I'm talking, time flies." A good thing, too, from my perspective. Chastity had, for the moment, stopped her vamping.
"What language is that?" Chastity asked.
"Latin, of course. I teach classics. Would you prefer Greek? What about you, Emile?" Ben said. "Didn't you say you'd been born here but hadn't been back for years? Has it changed much?"
"It's changed a lot in many ways, but in others, it's very much the same," Emile replied, signaling the waiter for another brandy, and lighting a cigarette. "The countryside is as beautiful as I remember it: the sea, and then the mountains and the desert. Such contrasts in a tiny country! I used to come to Taberda as a boy during the summer to visit friends of the family. All these homes were owned by the French in those days. Now, of course, it is wealthy Arabs who live here. I enjoyed a rather charmed life while I was here, I'm coming to realize. A lovely home in Tunis, private school, a week or two every summer here, and my father had a large estate out in the Sahel, south and west of Tunis. He had vineyards and orchards. Pity, what happened."
"What was that?" Chastity asked.
Emile paused for a moment as another cheer went up from the Star Salvage team. The man I took to be Peter Groves stood up and raised his glass. He was a stocky man, but fit, about five foot ten, and maybe fifty years of age. "Here's not just to finding the treasure first," he said, a little unsteadily, the result of a few too many toasts. "But here's also to crushing the competition! Let's never forget they are the enemy, and we're not just going to beat them to it, we're going to blow them away." The group cheered again, and several banged their beer glasses on the table.
I had a sense of someone above us, and looked up. Standing on the terrace above was Briars, his face flushed with anger, his fists clenched. For a moment he stood there, staring toward the group, and then he stepped back from the wall and disappeared. I looked behind, half expecting to see him come down the steps to start a fight, but he didn't. I had no doubt, though, that this was going to be trouble.
"The Arab population started to agitate for independence from France, and the early 1950's were bloody," Emile continued, oblivious to the little drama that was playing out around him. "The country was formally granted independence in 1956, but the bloodshed did not end there. A lot of our fellow countrymen left for France during those years. But my father stayed on. He firmly believed it would all blow over. Then in 1961 there were riots again, and shortly after, my father's name appeared on a death list. We packed up and left the country overnight with only what we could carry. We lost everything. While some of the French who left earlier had managed to sell their properties, albeit at distressed prices, my father just had to walk away.
"It was very hard after that. The French government did negotiate with the Tunisian president, Habib Bourguiba, for some restitution for the lost farms, but it was too late for my father. He had trouble getting a job back in France. We had to live with some distant relatives who were none too pleased to have us. My mother died a few months after we returned. Ostensibly she died of a stroke. I thought she died of a broken heart. I had to drop out of school--I wanted to be a doctor--to find work to support the family. I have a younger brother and sister.
"I vowed I'd never come back, but I'll admit curiosity got the better of me when I saw your ad, Lara. I left booking the trip right up until the last minute, unable to make up my mind. But I finally called, there was a spot for me, and so here I am," he said. "It's stirred up a lot of memories, but not all of them are bad."
"Oh, Emile!" Chastity exclaimed. "That is so--"
"Tragic?" Ed interjected.
"Sad, very sad," Chastity said. She reached out and placed her hand on Emile's thigh. He looked startled, but not entirely displeased.
"Time to go back to the hotel," Ben said, his baklava not yet gone.
I couldn't have agreed more. I signaled the waiter for our bill.
"I'm heading home," Jamila said. "See you tomorrow."