It is 1967 and I am living in Tunisia, a small and very friendly country in North Africa, sandwiched between the two biggies, Algeria and Libya. I have been there for only 6 weeks, as a Resident Representative, or ‘Rep.’ for a British tour operator. This is the huge business of Brits going away on a ‘package holiday’. You pay one price, which covers flying you there and back, a hotel for 13 nights, full board. The only thing you pay for is the booze and things like excursions to wherever there is, but if you want to stay on the beach and buy two Fantas a day, that is okay.
I had seen an ad. for this position, (in the The Times (of London) no less) and thought it would be different. I was then employed by an airline that actually served Tunis and Djerba, the island of the lotus eaters, per Odysseus from Greek mythology, so someone knew it was there. I had been to Djerba several times, as it was our bolt hole for sunbathing for two days, so just had a 10% idea of what the job might involve. I knew the locals were friendly – what more do you need? I applied and was accepted. I spoke enough French to communicate … how wonderful. I will be there, to keep an eye on you, sell you excursions (for which I receive a modest mark up) and generally just be around as Big Daddy, to help/advise as needed. You were expected to cope with whatever happened, so anything from advanced sunburn to drunks to food poisoning to marital discord to a group of 14 of the gayest guys out to a guest dying the night before he was scheduled to return home, etc etc. All in a day’s work.
So, a week before my first guests were arriving, I was put in place. That way I could get the lay of the land, see the four different hotels under my command, which were the whole gamut … ‘family atmosphere’ right up to Four Star. Guess where I lived. And in the middle of the season, it went bust too, which was a whole other story.
I ran around all over the place, trying to absorb what I could pontificate about soon and tried to get some sun, so that I looked slightly ‘local’ and not just a pale and puny Brit like all my guests. And everything was fine. The charter flight arrived at Tunis every Monday and I met them and brought them back to the resort town of Hammamet. 50% of them belonged to me and the other half to my mate Robin, living in Sousse, further south. We met at the airport every week and compared notes.
In 1967, this was a far cry from how Tunisian tourism developed over the years. These were early days of mass tourism and Hammamet was just an overgrown village, with hotels dotted along the huge bay that stretched endlessly for hundreds of kilometers. No discos, no bright lights, just a glorious sandy beach, cheap local wine and tranquility. Little did we know, we were in paradise.
But the clouds of war were massing. And in early June, they started to thunder. We were almost oblivious, as Tunisia was the only Arab country that recognized Israel when it was first created, so they were much out of step with the others. Down south, on the island of Djerba, there was still an active synagogue and folks just went about their lives. My tourists were happy on the beach (being early June it was just heating up and this is what they had paid for – 14 days of nonstop sunshine). Nevertheless, it was 1967, no cellphones, no internet, no CNN or anything like that, just local TV and newspapers in French or Arabic; we were in a vacuum. We virtually knew nothing – we might as well have been living on the moon. Everything was just fine, so if someone else wanted to go to war, then let them, but just count us out. We had la dolce vita, Tunisian-style. Camel rides up a wadi or visits to some of the greatest Roman ruins in North Africa; El Djem, the Roman amphitheater in the middle of nowhere – bigger than the one in Rome and with no one there. The Bardo Museum in Tunis, with its magnificent Roman mosaics, very sensibly mounted on the walls, so you could really appreciate the detail. They were stunning. Come to the camel market on Friday and buy some ceramics in Nabeul, this is what the town is known for. For the Brits, and frankly almost anyone else, a totally different world.
This all came shudderingly to a halt late one afternoon, when I received a telex (viz, an enormously long piece of paper) which had vomited out of a machine. It was addressed to me and one of the other reps from another company (we could never work out just why only she and me were expected to action all that they were doing). This basically said “On the advice of the British Government, we are repatriating all British tourists in Tunisia, starting tonight”. Whaaaaaaaa? We were having a great time, everything was running as normal, NO problem.
All the tour operators in the UK, of course, knew exactly how any guests they had in which hotel, where and had therefore worked out how to fill the aircraft that were coming to rescue us. BUT .. we really didn’t need to be rescued.
I found Annie, the other rep and showed her this mile-long piece of paper. We were young, both 24 and suddenly we were expected to find all the hundreds of visitors and round them up and the first flight would be in Tunis airport, 50 miles away in a few hours and we had to get them there. We just looked at each other and gasped. How were we ever going to do this? We even thought about throwing the whole message away and denying that we had ever seen it. But of course, we could not.
She had her guests and I had mine, between the two of us scattered over eight hotels. And there were several other British tour operators too, with their own guests, who were also included in the numbers, but NOT in the telex. Their reps found out about this from us. It was daunting to say the least. The first bus to the airport needed to leave in 6 hours. Annie and I divided up the hotels where we both had guests and I said I will do these and you do those. Okay. How the hell do we contact them at 4pm, especially the numbers of guests I had in this hotel and the numbers she had in that hotel, who were now going to be checking out at 9pm? Some of them had only arrived the day before. The more we thought, the worse it got. What about people who had hired cars and driven off somewhere – we had no clue where? Forget them.
We went to the hotel General Managers and told them this is the situation and we need your full cooperation and they all did, without blinking. When did we need a coach ? What time? How many tonight and tomorrow (this was an ongoing evacuation). Our brains were in meltdown.
In the end, Annie and I ran around hotels, at dinner time, trying to find the other reps and the guests. This was the one moment to find the maximum numbers. Just remember now, in 2020, this was 1967 … not a cellphone in sight. We were closer to semaphore flags, if anyone alive now knows what they are.
I stood on tables in dining rooms and wished I knew how to do a two-fingered dog whistle. Listen up Brits, you are going home and I am going to read out a list of names and YOU need to be in the lobby at 10pm… many of you will be leaving tomorrow, but first off, I need the following ….. Result, mass chaos by everyone who was NOT being evacuated. There were hotel guests from many European countries, mainly Germany, France and Italy, who immediately felt that their governments had abandoned them. But I had three more hotels to rush to and break the news. I took a taxi and told the driver I would pay him 10 times the fare if he sat there and waited for me. It was only way of getting around, as the hotels were not all next door to each other.
The great thing was the total discipline of the Brits. This was the generation which had been brought up during WW11 and knew when the chips were down, we follow orders. Not one of them complained. One man came to me and said the last time he was evacuated was from France, where he stood up to his neck in water at Dunkirk for eight hours. I recruited him immediately as a helper. But the Germans, Italians and French now lost it. People ran off to their rooms and came back, brandishing wads of money … how much for a seat on your plane ? Sorry, we are sold out. The bids kept increasing. It was very surreal.
I then shot around three more hotels and repeat my spiel …. “On the advice of the British Government….” while the time was getting shorter. The Italians everywhere were in best Italian meltdown. Tearful women certain they would never see their bambini again. Could they come on the coach to the airport? How much? No.
At 10pm, in the end, we set off with several coaches from different hotels for Tunis Airport. I am not sure just HOW we got them processed but they were. They all had valueless charter tickets for dates in the future, but it did not matter and amazingly Tunisair, as the handling agent, went along with the flow. We dispatched 130 guests on a Laker Airways Britannia that night and would be back four more times tomorrow. And most bizarrely, I was told that I had a seat on the last flight, at midnight tomorrow, as I had ‘to report on the situation’. It didn’t exactly say to whom I would report .. perhaps 10 Downing St?
We did it over and over again next day, in scenes of even more chaos. I didn’t know there were Russians and Turks there and saw many wads of currencies I had never heard of, but the story was the same, in best airline reservations-speak, which I spoke fluently, “Waitlist closed” .. I was suddenly Henry V at Agincourt with my Brit troops. I just needed a sword.
I got home, to Coulsdon, Surrey, at 6am three days later, having been running virtually nonstop. This much to the surprise of an unflappable mother “Hello dear, I didn’t know you were coming … are you hungry ?” Thank goodness for a WW11 mother.
I reported to my office and practically yelled at them, as an employee of about two months. We were FINE until you all got cold feet. And 10 days later I went back and took up from where I left off. As I had few guests to begin with, I developed a good tan.
timothyvalentinestravels 