Roommates

My roommates in the youth hostel in Tripoli were an Egyptian construction worker and a Turkish restaurant owner.  The Egyptian earns about 600 dollars per month, and came here because it's easier to get work than in his hometown, Alexandria.  He stays up late each night reading, and says he's a big fan of Toni Morrison, Tennessee Williams, and Ernest Hemmingway.

In Tunis, my roommates included a business student from Cameroon and a man from Bangladesh who had just gotten laid off from his IT job and decided to explore Tunisia a bit.  One evening, my dinner table at the hostel consisted of a German man in his 60s who is cycling around Tunisia, a Brazilian man who deals in semi-precious stones and teaches dance class, and a French bricklayer and former literature student who came to Tunis to study Arabic.