As the curtain was falling on North Africa's peak tourist season, more than 300 people were butchered in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, 20 km south of the Algerian capital, Algiers.
The slaughter continued throughout an oppressively hot Friday night while thousands of bleary-eyed Europeans touched down in airports dotted throughout neighbouring Tunisia for idyllic sunshine holidays in what has been described as Africa's Cote d'Azur.
Despite the fact that, historically, these two former French colonies have much in common, the current preoccupations of both populations could not be more different. In her report in this newspaper on the Sidi Moussa massacre, Lara Marlowe reported that "every Algerian now knows someone who has been killed or wounded in the violence". In Tunisia they prefer not to dwell on such things.
Tunisia has the richest and most complex ancient history in North Africa and sights of stunning beauty compete with the sprawling beaches for the hearts, minds and money of the tourist rabble.
There are the ruins of Carthage, the third great city in the Roman Empire, the sleepy Berber cave dwellings dotted throughout the silent white sands of the Sahara and the strange phenomena of the 500 km wide Chatt-el-Jerid salt lake in a country no bigger than England and Wales.
Carthage, the erstwhile citystate heart of Tunisia, was razed and rebuilt by the Romans, destroyed by the Vandals and restored by the Byzantines in a turbulent millennium until finally, in the 7th century, the Arabs levelled it. The stones which had built and rebuilt the religious, cultural and political centre of North Africa over many hundreds of years were carted to Tunis and used to build the new capital's medina.
As a result, the once great city is a disappointment. Dougga, however, situated at the base of the Atlas Mountains to the north of Carthage has become known as the Pompeii of North Africa, and more than 100 years of excavation have uncovered a 55-acre city complete with a theatre, capitol, baths and brothels. The mosaics have been removed to the safety of Tunis's Bardo Museum, the one-time home of the Beys of Tunisia.
Tunis, where the souks of the Arab Medina sweep down on to the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, named after the autocratic lawyer who negotiated the country's independence, is a microcosm of the country's seamless fusion of modern European culture and the ancient world of the Arabs.
Towering office-blocks and eight-lane motorways encroach upon the Great Mosque and Islamic University of Zitouna, shielded from the modern world by a maze of blue and white homes draped in pink bougainvillaea. New money meets old world charm and a Faustian pact is made.
Strangely, for a country that is 98 per cent Muslim, local women are treated, politically at any rate, as equals, have been granted the right to wear European-style clothes and command a certain degree of respect in a country which proudly proclaims its liberal credentials.
However, due to the widespread availability of British, French and German tabloid newspapers and the proliferation of satellite dishes beaming seedy Euro-trash into hotels and many homes, the morals of Europeans are considered dubious and less deserving of such respect. As a result it is not uncommon for female holidaymakers to be repeatedly groped and propositioned.
Although tourists do not attract scores of emaciated children holding out pleading hands, as is the case in Morocco and Egypt, they do act as an all-powerful magnet for every hawker, flower-seller and unsolicited guide in the state.
The medinas throughout Tunisia are home to thousands of people eking out a living from the foreigners who regularly get lost wandering through the labyrinthine alleys of these ancient structures. The presence of each westerner is seen as an implicit invitation to make money. You take a photograph - that's one dinar. You look at some old-style wedding dresses - that's another dinar.
They sell junk and guided tours and appear insulted when one refuses to show any great interest in either. The souks, or flea-markets, are similar, and the ritual is much the same: hawkers harass and hassle you by pressing their wares into your hands, as if this in some way concludes some unspoken deal.
Returning such items ensures a stern rebuke in Arabic, French, English, German or possibly Italian. The quest for hard currency has created a nation of polyglots.
And then to the Sahara. Trips of two days to a week are organised from major urban centres and take in panoramas of the endless horizon of the Chatt-el-Jerid salt lake and sprawling oases which have become the incongruous homes to enormous five-star hotels.
Due to its inexorable shift northward it is a constantly moving menace of extraordinary beauty. For now all is quiet on Tunisia's socio-political front and one hopes that this land of contrasts is built on sturdier foundations than the vast sweeping sands to the south.
For the fundamentalism and rigid ideologies which sandwich this burgeoning democracy could so easily trigger a cataclysmic shift the like of which the country has not experienced since the last days of Carthage.
