January 28th: Algiers to Malta
When we get to the airport early the next morning for the flight to Malta we lose Norbert and spend fifteen minutes trying to track him down in the terminal. A flight has arrived from Mecca and as the passengers make their way through the arrivals area in long robes of white and black the terminal resounds with the long ululating wail of the women - the Zaghareet, a call Muslim woman make to express joy. The quavering song echoes off the high walls and ceiling of the new terminal, cacophonous in the morning sun coming through the glass. For us, it signifies a surreal send-off, a farewell to Africa.
We cross into Tunisia and overfly the ancient seaside sprawl of Carthage, site of one of the most notorious massacres in history. The city was founded by the Phoenicians and conquered by the Romans during the Punic Wars in the second century BCE. After the Romans sacked the city, murdering and raping their way through its burning streets, legend has it that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus razed the city to the ground, plowed it over, and sowed the ground with salt.
But the city survived. Resurrected, it gleams below us in a broad bay on a cusp of the Mediterranean shore.
We cross the Tunisian coastline south of Carthage and leave Africa behind, boring out into the Mediterranean. We have GPS and an FMS that will find Malta. I try to imagine the ancient Phoenicians accomplishing the same feat of navigation in their open square-sailed ships, the round wooden hulls sleek and cutting the waves, and the rows of oars rising and falling in unison as their captains gazed towards the unknown horizon. Somewhere beyond it, a small island, strategically located, surrounded by all this water. It is humbling.
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