After exploring the female world, Noureddine Khayachi turns his observant gaze on male society. This has given us some remarkable paintings, and a more complete view of Tunisian culture.

Most of the paintings in this chapter remain faithful to the master’s dictates: very little light, lots of people. An extraordinary host of characters peoples these scenes, and Khayachi shows great technical prowess in handling them.

“Koffet el Hammel” is a street scene. A wealthy bourgeois follows his servant, who is carrying his shopping basket. Following comes a dervish, who sprinkles his passage with incense to ward off the evil eye. But the evil eye has already been neutralized by the three enormous fish the hang from the heavily-laden basket.

Karakouz (in Turkish, kara göz) shows a puppet show of the kind that the Ottoman Turks introduced into Tunisia. Obviously, Khayachi was fascinated by this shadow show. In the deep gloom, the room, black with the throng of people, was just waiting for him to catch the spectacle and set it down in paint for all eternity.

Very similar is “The Kharja in Sidi Bou Said”. This procession of Sufi dancers from the Aissawiya brotherhood is a very important part of the spiritual life of this little seaside town, Sidi Bou Said. Khayachi captures the mystical fervour of the dancers in the dark night, reducing the effect of the light to two lanterns and a few windows from which hardly any light comes.

Though the darkness is almost total, Khayachi paints the dancers – “the bendirs, naqqarâts”, “snajaks”, “bdens souf” – with great clarity as they dance in procession through the streets of Sidi Bou Said. The work is a total success; Khayachi has done once again what he does so well – has made the invisible visible and made light emerge from the shadow.

The same spirit informs “The Hammam of La Hamma” , which takes place almost entirely in the obscurity of the Turkish baths. A tiny window allows a glimmer of daylight in.  Khayachi’s technical prowess is again at work, struggling in the dimness, painting in the deepest gloom, bringing his own light to illuminate the painting.

In “The Gloomy Market”, which is just what it purports to be, Khayachi succeeds again in bringing light and dark together. There are about a hundred people in this street scene, in the shade and in the light. Making good use of the chiaroscuro technique, Khayachi distributes warm and cool tones to wonderful effect. This painting could well illustrate the book by Ketel Bey, On a Persian Market.

The same holds good for the paintings of “Tabbal El Bacha”, though these are masterly works. Unlike most of Khayachi’s work, these paintings radiate with light. But though they seem to present male society, in fact their grace and beauty comes from the female element portrayed therein.

The same beautiful light can be found in the superb “Go-carting in Our Childhood”.  Although this painting is dominated by adults, it imparts a sense of happiness, showing children playing with go-carts as they used to in earlier times in Tunis. The extreme realism with which the cracks in the ground are rendered gives the painting a Quattrocentro air, something like a fresco. This is perhaps one of Khayachi’s most charming paintings. 

At the end of this journey through traditional Tunisian society seen through these paintings, we are left with a profound sense of gratitude that Khayachi focused his total attention on this civilisation, one which needed to be interpreted and which found in Khayachi such a refined translator. His pictorial sense, his rich brushwork, and his dense style were all martialled to set down for all eternity certain aspects of traditional Tunisian life. He never treated his subject with a patronising, orientalist approach, dwelling on its quaintness, nor was he a voyeur, nor was he facile. In an act of memory he committed to canvas these elements of a past civilisation.

No slapdash worker he; Khayachi applied the rules of classical composition with the sternest rigour, to depict Tunisian society. He bore witness, as a true bourgeois, jealously protecting his cultural identity and social status, to his vision of Tunisia, untroubled by inner doubts or complexes.

Of course, he could have painted flower paintings, landscapes, marines, could have gone out into the country to breathe its air and hear the song of the birds, used the strong light and blue skies of Tunisia, traveled from town to town and souk to souk to shower the public with ephemeral ‘pretty postcard’ pictures. But Khayachi was not like that, he wanted to reach and express the deep truths, the feasts and ceremonies of the traditional Tunisian bourgeoisie. This was his main theme, this his mission and his triumph.

He wanted to transmit a message along with this honest act of witness. In every one of his pictures there is this conflict and reconciliation of light and darkness. To capture the subtlety of this light, he had to go to the shadows, in his case the shadowy life of women from the Tunisian bourgeoisie. From here he could study women’s society and simultaneously understand the phenomenon of light. It is as though he set up his easel in the harem. In the protective shadow of Tunisian women, he stood forth as the man of light. And with every woman he painted, Khayachi tried to recapture, in colours full of joy, the tender memory of his mother.