Travel, Talk, Tell

"You want me to talk surre?" He rolls his rrrr emphatically and looks at me with piercing eyes. Yes, I want to know the truth, that is why I came to Sidi Bouzid and to Tunisia after all. "Well," he laughs a little. "Sorry. But: Fuck Bouazizi!" And this is someone who has seen him burn.

On December 17th, Mohammed Bouazizi couldn’t take it anymore. A fruit and vegetable seller in a city in the middle of Tunisia had had enough of economic hardship and political corruption. “If you don’t see me, I will burn myself,” he said to his city’s governor. An hour later, he was burning, and one month later his country’s dictator was history. Just the country’s economic hardship wasn’t.

The sight of suffering and burning was extremely painful, Mahsen, who I talk to now, admits, but he can't say that likes the outcome of the sacrifice. Under Ben Ali, he says, maybe there was a lack of freedom, maybe that was bad, but at least, he says, there was security and certainty.

"Now, I want to go to Sousse, but I can't, because buses do not come here anymore. Now, I want to buy a drink, and I can not, because the people…" He makes the internationally known bear-drinking gesticulation, then shakes his head.

“The Islamists they closed our shops!” He’s yelling now. “But Tunisia used to live because of tourism and drinks! Now what?" Like ordered, two men with beard in white long dresses drive past us on a moped. "You see. People in the city used to drink a lot. Now they all are Islamist! "

Two years after kicking off the Arab Spring–arguably accidentally–Tunisia is at once in perfect unity, and perfectly divided. They all want progress, better politics, but their ideas of them are different.

Yet it’s the contrasts that that make the country so attractive: It’s the Mediterranean in Middle Eastern Africa. Turkish coffee spiced with cardamom fights Italian Espresso here. Women dressed in tiny tanktops walk with women who are covered top to toe. Men wear polished shoes, or dusty dresses, sometimes both. There’s no one Tunisian flavor, the country is a charming mesh of almost everything. And: it had a revolution! But it doesn’t really mind that, though it also wouldn’t mind a little more attention globally.

“Fuck it,” Mahsen swears a lot. “I am leaving. I’ll get married. She's Welsh, I do not her. I met her in a hotel here. I don't care.”

“We love our country. Times are difficult right now and things take time, but we will make it work,” said almost everybody else I spoke to.