Tunisia: Holidaymakers express solidarity with locals

Forty-eight hours after an apprentice electrician named Seifeddine Rezgui pulled a Kalashnikov assault rife from a sun umbrella and began mowing down sunbathers on the beach in Sousse, a pile of roses and lilies marks the place where they were murdered.

The bouquets are interspersed with handwritten messages asking why the atrocity happened.

An Irish Tricolour is stuck into a corner of the makeshift shrine. "Dia libh go léir" (God be with you all) and "Céin fáth?" (why?) is scrawled in ballpoint on pieces of cardboard. A copy of Francesca Brown's My Whispering Angels – "The Irish Bestseller," reads the cover – abandoned on the beach in the pandemonium last Friday, lies atop the flowers, its pages turning brown in the sun.

The flag, inscription and book are reminders that three Irish citizens – Lorna Carty from Robinstown, Co Meath, and Laurence and Martina Hayes, a husband and wife from Athlone – died in the carnage.

David Cooney, Ireland's ambassador to Tunisia, who is based in Madrid, and the head of the Madrid embassy's consular services, Caoimhe Ní Chonchúir, returned to Sousse late on Sunday to collect belongings of the slain Irish people from the Imperial Marhaba Hotel, where they were staying.

They then returned to Tunis, to try to speed formal identification and repatriation of the remains.

Tourist industry

On arrival in Sousse, one feels one is witnessing the death of Tunisia’s tourist industry, which accounts for 15 per cent of the economy. How could it ever recover from those images of sunloungers transformed into stretchers, of blood dripping into the hotel swimming pool, of sprawled corpses covered with beach towels?

The gloomy, marble foyers of the luxury hotels along Sousse’s beach are empty. Even before two gunmen killed 22 tourists in the Bardo museum in Tunis in March, the low-cost, package tour model, which offers a week’s sun holiday for as little as €200, was in difficulty.

A surprising number of tourists remain, despite the slaughter. Affection and loyalty to the Tunisians are one reason. Like Mrs Carty and the Hayeses, many Europeans tourists return time and again. Others stay out of defiance. “It can happen anywhere in the world,” shrugged a British cement worker arriving on Sunday at nearby Enfida airport. “If I cancel my trip, the terrorists win.”

Now tourists and Tunisians weep together before the memorial flowers on the beach. All day, there are little demonstrations of grief and solidarity: a 15-strong delegation from Douar Hicher, 250km away; French speakers holding hands in a circle around the marker.

Massacre

A mother and daughter sob in each other’s arms beside the flowers. They are Chrissy (40) and Caitlin (17), the eldest of five Hamley children, from Cornwall.

On Friday, one of their Tunisian friends rang to say, “They are shooting tourists on the beach. Hide.” Nine members of the Hamley family huddled in a room at the nearby Riviera hotel while the massacre took place.

“The hotel staff turned the televisions off so we couldn’t see,” says Chrissy. “That made it worse because we didn’t know what was happening . . . People were shouting at the staff in our hotel, ‘You’re all terrorists’, and the staff were crying.

“We went to the marina this morning, and strangers came up to us, desperately wanting us to believe they are peaceful people, which they are,” Caitlin continues. “We’ll come again, because you can’t let a minority of evil people dictate and instil fear in you.”

Volker Schumacher (59), a tax collector from Stuttgart, was sleeping with a book over his face when the shooting started. He and his wife ran to an adjacent spa building, where they hid for an hour. “I didn’t see the killer,” Mr Schumacher says. “I have no eyes in the back of my head. I was afraid he’d shoot me in the back. I didn’t turn to see other people falling.”

When Mr Schumacher returned to fetch the belongings he’d abandoned, he found two bodies by the poolside and another 10 or 12 on the beach. Why didn’t the Schumachers fly back to Germany? “My wife wants to go home,” he admits.

“But I’m determined to stay until Friday. The people here are fantastic. They’re the reason I’m staying.”