On the southern edge of the city, the date palm oases begin where the streets give out. The palms here are tall and old, planted in the traditional three-tier pattern — dates at the top, fruit trees in the middle, vegetables in the shade below — that allowed oasis communities to extract maximum production from each square meter of irrigated ground. Walking into the oases from the city edge is a quick transition from concrete and dust to shadow and the sound of water moving through channels.
The Gafsa oases are working agricultural land, not a park or tourist attraction, and they feel like it: you may pass farmers tending their plots, children cutting through on bicycles, the occasional donkey. Several varieties of date palm are cultivated here, with the harvest concentrated in autumn. If you come in October you will see the dates being brought down, bundled, and sorted. Even in quieter months the contrast between the oasis interior — green, cool, productive — and the surrounding steppe gives you an immediate sense of what has sustained settlement in this part of Tunisia for thousands of years.