Cairo Magazine - Postcard from Tataouine

Despite the recent arrival of its most famous adopted son, Luke Skywalker, as celebrated in the latest episode of the Star Wars double trilogy, the city of Tataouine appears deserted. In all fairness, though, it’s a midsummer’s day at high noon, and the eponymous village is located in the desert wastes of southeastern Tunisia.

Actually, Lucas didn’t shoot any of his Tataouine sequences in the planet’s namesake township. While bits of the “Skywalker Homestead” set (used some 30 years ago in the premier installment), as well as troglodyte caves from the more recent Episode I, can be found 20 kilometers to the north, Tataouine itself contributed only its name.

Tataouine residents, then, can be forgiven their unfamiliarity with the films that had such a formative influence on the minds of America’s now-thoroughly disillusioned “Generation X.” Omar, who sits deep within his shady movie-rental shop on the town’s derelict main drag, can sense the film’s deep significance for the few foreigners who visit. Perhaps it’s the intensity of their questions. But has he himself seen it? Maybe, maybe not. “Actually, I don’t even remember if I saw the film or not,” he confesses. “I’ve seen so many,” he adds, pointing to the tens of thousands of videocassettes and DVDs lining the walls.

Sami, a local dealer in second-hand clothes, is more certain. “I never saw it,” he says of the revolutionary, six-part space opera. “But I heard a lot about it.”

These days, the land of Tataouine receives little attention from the Galactic Empire. The local regime is compliant with the demands of their imperial overlords vis-a-vis the interplanetary war currently being waged, and receives a free hand locally in return. Those who complain of repression on the Nile planet, with its regular protests and frank-speaking taxi drivers, should schedule a trip to Tataouine.