The first incident was in Azzaba. While eating lunch, I snapped two photos of a mosque that had orginally been a Catholic church. Within minutes, plainclothesmen and a uniformed officer were escorting me to the police station. After about 45 minutes of questioning, I was told to hand over the roll of film. However, I somehow managed to convince the police that I'd been photographing children in front of the moque, not the building itself. (The truth was that I'd suspected all along that photographing the mosque would be illegal, and so I'd purposefully had a group of schoolchildren "pose" for my camera in front of the building. Ever so slightly I'd raised the camera, so that the mosque filled most of the viewfinder. But, so closely were the police watching me that it was for naught.)

The second incident was in El Kala. Very naively I'd photographed a picturesque harbor that (unknown to me) had two small military patrol boats docked in it. The plainclothesman who arrested me had been at my side the past hour, telling me all about his job as a local "hotel manager" and how he wanted to be my friend.

My frequent brushes with the ever-present (and ever-suspicious) Algerian police authorities also had their lighter moments. Some would ask to see my "national identity card," in addition to my passport. When I'd explain that, unlike in Algeria, we in the USA don't have such a thing as a national identity card, the police would always cast doubtful looks at me. So, to satisfy the more skeptical of them, I would "sheepishly" produce my Ohio driver's license. Since the police couldn't read English, they'd always be so sure that the very official-looking license, with its snapshot of my head, was the national identification card I'd said America lacked.

My most unusual encounter with the police was when, in El Kala, a police officer at the station demanded to know what I was writing all the time in my notebooks. It was all I could do not to smile: It just so happened that I'd been making notes about police surveillance! Of course I didn't tell him that.

Later that same day, at the Algeria-Tunisia border area, the Algerian border officials nearly flipped when they found 60 rolls of film in my backpack. It was demanded that I turn over to them any film I'd shot back in El Kala. I knew better than to argue, for they could just as easily confiscate all 60 rolls if I angered them enough.

The roll of film I handed to them was taken to a back room, where the officers talked with someone out of my sight. As luck would have it, a television news crew from France just happened to arrive at the post at the same time, and when I told them of the film being taken away from me, the reporter instructed his cameraman to start filiming as he asked the officers why I was under suspicion. Surprisingly, the roll of film was quickly returned to me. Perhaps the officers thought their jobs were more important than appearing on television as harassers of some odd American traveler.

After all the dangers of Morocco and the perplexities of unforgettable Algeria, Tunisia was to seem like a playground. This tiny nation of windswept meadows and pine-covered hills allowed me some peace in the eight days it took me to cross its width. While also poor, Tunisia has nevertheless been much cleaner, quieter, and more modern than the other two nations. Only when I reached the capital, Tunis, on March 8, did I again find stark poverty.

Even though the Tunisians are perhaps the most westernized of the Arabs I've met in northwest Africa, they are also some of the harshest critics of America that I've met on the worldwalk thus far. Most of the young who've come up to me haven't wanted so much to ask questions as to preach about Islam. All thought of the United States as a racist country currently on some anti-Arab, anti-Islam campaign. There has been a fundamentalist tone to their exhortations. The "pro-Islam, anti-American government" theme was voiced by all of the many Tunisians I had long talks with. They have included all kinds of Tunisians, from the old caretaker of a British war cemetery with whom I shared a pot of tea to the many schoolchildren who followed in my footsteps each day.

In each of the four homes I stayed in while crossing Tunisia, I was constantly told how holy Islam is, and how evil such a permissive society as America's is. The young were anxious to know my feelings about the Islamic upheavel in Iran. Curiously, none of the families had a television, even though they were upper class.

Still, there was that unmistakable fascination with the individual American. As in Morocco and Algeria, I sensed a desire to be close to the American people, but they couldn't quite bring themselves to trust such a "liberal" society.

In many ways, their questions revealed the sort of things they have, unfortunately, been taught about our society. Thay had questions like: Is Chicago still a place of constant Al Capone-like mafia gangster shoot-outs? How many bottles of whiskey do I drink every day? Do we believe in God? Why is the U.S. government so intent on killing all the Indians? Are we Americans trying to make Lebanon into a colony? Was it true that poor people in America are starving to death? Why are we so racist?

Perhaps an experience I had near the village of Tebaba sums up vividly the feelings the northwest Africa Arabs seem to have towards us. And, for that matter, perhaps it sums up, too, the Africa part of my worldwalk:

Kalad, a bright and curious 11-year-old boy, took me by the hand and led me from the "Garde Nationale" police post, where I'd just been through another interrogation session, to the enormous farm of his grandfather, in whose house Kalad's family also lived.

The main home of the farm was squat and concrete and straddled a large hill that was pockmarked with the smokey, cave-like stick-and-rock shacks of the farm's serfs. (Yes, serfdom is still practiced in parts of Africa.)

As it turned out, the grandfather was not only a large landholder but was also a member of the National Assembly and quite powerful politically. His name was Abdelaziz El Bahri.

As with many other times in Africa I was led unannounced to the home by the child, and yet the large family welcomed me inside without hesitation and treated me as an equal. All that rainy day, and into the evening, I was fed and entertained. I was even allowed to sit in on a fascinating Koran prayer chant session done in loud and rapid voices by four Muslim holy men.

However, the next morning, as I heaved my gift-heavy pack onto my back, one of the men relatives came to me and handed me my hunting knife. The others watched knowingly, and smiled. I hadn't realized anyone had been into the pack and taken the knife out. As each member of the family stepped forward to plant the customary kiss on my cheeks, the message of the knife flashed all too clearly through my mind: As close as they and the other North Africans had tried to be to me in these past three months, there was no denying that our pasts lie in totally different worlds.

Steven