A woman sitting at a working-class café in the central Tunisian governorate of Kairouan is still something that customs and tradition refuse to countenance. This region abides by rigid social conventions that regard the café as an exclusively male space.

You will only rarely encounter women at these cafes, and then only a few of them together, and not for long. Because the space is a male monopoly, women make for the tea halls where they can escape the censorship of social convention, but even there the stinging arrows may reach them.

A woman sitting at a working-class café in the central Tunisian governorate of Kairouan is still something that customs and tradition refuse to countenance. This region abides by rigid social conventions that regard the café as an exclusively male space.

You will only rarely encounter women at these cafes, and then only a few of them together, and not for long. Because the space is a male monopoly, women make for the tea halls where they can escape the censorship of social convention, but even there the stinging arrows may reach them.

Outside a shop-front of frosted glass stands a muscular young man, scrutinizing the faces of all who enter. He never leaves his place, peering at the faces before him and allowing some to pass and stopping others, like a captain picking his team.

Inside the place soft music plays, half-concealing the whispers that run back and forth between bodies that sprawl across the sofas scattered throughout the medium-sized room. Only a few are chosen. The décor is elegant and attractive and the low lighting seductive. Whispers here, laughter there, and always the cigarette smoke curling from slim fingers that have no fear of privacy. In one corner a pair of sweethearts seize their chance to flirt.

 The tea halls of Kairouan are a relatively recent phenomenon. Ayman Al Miladi recounts the story of the first tea hall to provoke controversy in the conservative town. Its male and female customers poured in, prompting rumours and scandalous gossip. It didn’t last long before bankruptcy and incessant criticism forced it to close down, becoming a store for one of Tunisia’s new communications companies. This was before the revolution which gave so much impetus to religious extremists.

Nor did the tea hall run by an Italian lady do any better when it came to criticism and whispering campaigns that damaged its reputation and that of its customers. It was raided by the security forces shortly before the revolution in 2011, in response to neighbours’ complaints that they had noticed suspicious behaviour and sexual activity taking place through the establishment’s top-floor windows. It closed down, then the new owner rebranded it as a “restaurant and café” hoping to escape its former “scandalous” reputation. Such slanders also put paid to the Asrar (Secrets) tea hall owned by a Lebanese investor who was divorced by his wife for conducting a relationship with one of his female patrons.

One young woman recalls the steamy gossip about a tea hall located near the world-famous Bab Al Jaladin gate. Though the place was converted into a branch office of the Ennahda Party the rumours have not been forgotten.

Kairouans tea halls compete to attract customers, offering a diverse array of appealing services: some provide free Internet, or host private parties with live music, or aim to provide the most romantic atmosphere with private booths and low lighting (or even giving their drinks sexy names like ‘Lovers’ Cocktail’).

The youth on the door is vetting customers for this newly opened tea hall. In the ear of a white-haired man he whispers loudly: “This place isn’t for you, sheikh,” and the man can only back off to avoid embarrassment.

Waitresses between a rock and a hard place

The tea halls permit a lot of privacy and secrecy between their frosted glass exteriors, something that gives young women space to relax and be intimate, as well as allowing them to work there as waitresses, unlike the working class cafes outside, where employing females is a taboo. That said, they have no protection from the gaze of male customers, which Nesreen—a student who works during the holidays to cover her expenses at university—describes as arrows fired at her body. The “problems” caused by male customers flirting with her and trying to go out with her led the owner to fire her in order to “safeguard his establishment’s reputation.” Nesreen decided to go to work in Sousa, and she talks about the difference in “mentality” between conservative Kairouan and the touristy seaside town of Sousse. She is not the only woman to have left Kairouan for Sousse after working in a tea hall, nor the only woman to have been driven to leave the city or change jobs by the hassles of working there: hassles from family and from the society in general.

Café activism

When Olfa, an executive director at a civil society organization, wants to meet with friends and colleagues she takes them to one of the many tea halls that have sprung up in recent years, now numbering more than a dozen. She does so to challenge stereotypical attitudes. Olfa would have much preferred to take her colleagues to a working class café like men do, but she confesses, uneasily, that “customs and traditions underpin this patriarchal mindset and have ensured the cafes are only for men.”

Olfa tends to interpret these customs which refuse to countenance women sitting at cafes as a “male refusal to share public space with women,” something that, in her view, contradicts “talk about gender equality” and entrenches the discrimination against women. This is despite great strides that have been made to enforce gender equality in Tunisia, especially in the electoral process.

Olfa, who wears a hijab, believes that the conservative mindset makes a direct association between women’s morals and their sitting at cafes and tea halls. She is repelled by descriptions of women who sit at cafes and tea halls as “dishonourable,” since the term becomes a label that not only impacts the woman’s family but also her own enthusiasm and openness.

Doha Ayadi, another young student and an activist with Dustourna (Our Constitution), feels the same fears. Despite her activism and her modern outlook she defeatedly admits that she is afraid of how people look at her in cafes, and says that “modesty and customs” deny her and her friends their right to sit at the pavement café Taqtaq, even though the café is on the tourist itinerary. It was this that tempted her to sit and drink a coffee like the hundreds of men who spent their time there, but to date, she is “not yet brave enough” to carry out her plan. The idea strikes her whenever she passes the place but she soon runs up against the wall of traditions, which extinguishes the faint desire within her, and she makes for the tea hall, pursued by poisoned looks and the fear of harassment and violence which are never far away.

“In Kairouan, our customs don’t permit women to sit at cafes,” Doha says.

Meanwhile in a nearby café, the clatter of young men dropping into dilapidated chairs rises into the air. The café’s interior resounds to the sound of someone protesting at a severe loss at the card table, full of filthy words and abuse. In another corner nargileh smoke curls up. A blend of smoke and noise and activity spills out from the pavement and into the narrow street.

Women rarely come here. The sound of them in cafes is the stuff of myths.