2am to Tunis

Like a lot of things in Tunisia, the trains give the sense of a system that was once carefully constructed and maintained but now has been somewhat left to its own devices. This is a nice thing, one of the great charms of the country. There is a genuine and unalloyed feeling of freedom as the train snakes down through the arable, olive rich lands of the north to the vast deserts and salt flats of the south. This coastal branch I am speaking about (Tunis to Sfax) is the main highway of a largely underused network of railroads that was first established by the French in 1872 and currently under the guard of The Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Tunisiens (SNCFT).

The SNCFT is now a semi-forgotten mode of transport in Tunisia, still stranded somewhere between its colonial past and the widespread demand for modern infrastructure. The inconsistent service and ongoing structural problems mean that the vast majority of working Tunisians who are strapped for both time and money tend to travel by coach or shared private taxis. Unintentionally, the service has become one that caters to the country’s rural inhabitants who hop leisurely from one sleepy station town to another to visit family members and friends. There is a timetable of arrival and departures on the SNCFT website, but this is at best a rough indication of how many trains operate on each line during any one given day; extra trains often turn up while some scheduled ones never arrive.

Tunisia is split into two rough economic zones: the Dakhalia (the Interior) which is the poorer and more conservative western and central half of the country; and the Sahilia (the Coast), the wealthier and more cosmopolitan coastline stretching all the way from Bizerte to Gabes. To the inhabitants of the former (especially in areas near Kasserine and Sidi Bou Zid) the unpopularity of SNCFT’s has little to do with the superiority of alternative modes of transport — as is the case with the Sahilia. In the Dakhalia, passenger trains are infrequent at best, and even when they do pass through, they are of little use to this economically sedentary section of rural Tunisia. To this extent, it’s easy to see the Catch-22 facing policymakers at the SNCFT: ‘No-one will ride the trains because we haven’t expanded the service — but we can’t afford to expand the service because no-one currently rides them.’

Bar the interior of the locomotives themselves, which have been equipped with modern electric lighting and sanitized cream-coloured plastic baggage racks, little structural change has taken place since the SNCFT took hold of the network in 1957. A promised new line from Gafsa to Gabes is still under construction, while the plan for a new connection between the Libyan-Tunisian border town of Ra’s Ajdir to Gabes, agreed back in 2008, has gradually fallen to pieces following events in Libya.

Of course, this is not to say the trains are completely abandoned or unsupervised; there is still a suggestion of authority maintaining its control over the trains, but by the attitude of train-going public, it is seemingly taken as exactly that: a suggestion. For instance, ticket inspectors, anecdotally observed, never managed to go through a whole carriage without getting into a shouting match — which on occasion could explode into truly volcanic arguments — with someone sitting in the wrong class. To look into the face of a Tunisian ticket inspector as he prepares to make the rounds on the 2am to Tunis is to know an expression of the most profound gloom and resignation.

However, the notorious unreliability can, in its own way, be quite exciting; granted, this may not be so exciting or novel if you have to regularly rely on them. Some of the appeals are universal — scenery whizzing by, the sensation of being floated gracefully to your destination — while others are entirely unimaginable to individuals overfamiliar with the hyper-standardised and regimented British train system. For instance, the acceptability of smoking between the carriages; the ability to observe the driver go about his business in his cabin from the front of the train; outer doors that don’t slide closed fully, leaving a tall, narrow strip of unobstructed landscape to noisily speed by; and the uncanny realisation that first and second class are completely identical, except, bizarrely, for the more uncomfortable seats in the former.

It is easy to over-romanticise what are, in fact, pretty creaky and outdated trains. Unsurprisingly, the excitement of it all is in short supply after a six-hour delay in the middle of the night (perhaps even shorter when it is explained that it is because a train has derailed — not unheard of in Tunisia — further up the line.) There is nothing that will dispel your naïve illusions faster than sitting in cramped seats, silently negotiating out how to arrange your legs with the passenger opposite you under harsh strip lighting that won’t turn off at four in the morning. But even in an objectively miserable situation such as this, there is something quietly heartening to find, too. Because one way the constant unreliability of the service seems to have affected the Tunisian train-going public is that it has engendered a kind of stoic fatalism, completely alien to someone used to most British travellers. It is all too easy to imagine the hysteria that would accompany a six-hour delay on a train somewhere in the home counties. Tunisians, meanwhile, largely respond with quiet acceptance. This isn’t to say there isn’t anger or frustration, but that there also seems to be an acknowledgment that these emotions won’t add up to much in the face of life’s intractable problems — certainly not in the early hours, anyway.

If you have any specific questions and inquiries about the SNCFT you can visit the second floor of Place de Barcelone, Tunis’ main station. Passing by the security guard, who could not be less interested in any inquiry you may have, you will ascend a set of stairs and enter a maze of offices where a junior employee hovering in the corridor should be able to point you to door number 117. A smiley man named Fethi will greet you and sit you down at his desk but then regretfully inform you that his not authorized to answer any of your questions. For that, he will give you the fax address of the head of external communications, a figure unbeknown even to Fethi.

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