A 1960s postcard shows children diving into turquoise water, the banks covered with luscious palms. It is from one of the Earth’s only seaside oases in Gabès, a southern Tunisian city that used to be referred to as ‘the world’s paradise’. It’s not hard to see why, if you sit in the shade of the trees in the Chenini oasis sipping legmi, the local date juice delicacy.
But if you step beyond the palms today the oasis, once a hub for farmers and bathers alike, is dry. Since the 1970s the complex irrigation system has been redirected to an industrial zone housing phosphate refining factories, and its deep-water tables have been drilled by a collection of companies involved in the fertilizer industry.
