What about Bouazizi’s friend? 

I believe this is the fourth blog I am writing due to a topic we had previously discussed in class. I promise, our class discussions serve as Narnia doors to a new dimension. They stretch my world into 7D and inspire me to write, a hobby I thought I left some years back after a couple of disappointments. So, thank you for giving all of us an opportunity to put our thoughts on paper and share them with you. This blog was inspired by a person who seemingly might not be directly related to the Arab uprising (I hate the term ‘Arab spring’ as it was long coming and I’d rather call it ‘azma’ – crisis) – one of Bouazizi’s friends.

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Imagine that your name is Ahmed. You have been born into a secular Muslim family as the last of five children of a local spice merchant and a math teacher. Both of your parents have struggled to feed your four siblings and you. They have put you through school and wanted nothing but respect in return. The first three children moved to Tunis to pursue college. The fourth child tried his luck in France after obtaining a scholarship to study medicine. You are the only child your parents have by their side. All the other birds have left the nest. Your parents still struggle to put food on the table, but feeding three, as opposed to seven mouths, turns out to be far easier than anticipated. You finish high school and your father asks you to help him with his business. As the most obedient of the children, you accept. You start waking up at 5 am, go to work with your father, be kind to people every day all day long, come back in time for dinner and sleep as if you’ve never slept before. Occasionally, you play tarneeb (a card game) and smoke shisha with your friends at the local cafe for free, since the owner knows your family. You are occasionally stopped by the police and harassed, but as long as you have enough money in your pocket to rush them away – you’re fine. You hold no strong political opinions. Besides, why should you? Politics is not touching your life in any meaningful way.

One day, however, you find out that your family friend has set himself on fire as a form of protest against police oppression. Suddenly, you realize that all that surrounds you is politics. The world as you know it shatters and, all of a sudden, all you see is a power struggle of groups trying to win you over.
How did Bouazizi feel at the very moment he decided to set himself on fire? Was he that desperate? You just spoke to him about his mom and sister the other day. He has a very humble and beautiful sister that you had a secret crush on as a child. How are they taking the news? Why has his act become so political? And why on Earth is it spreading like an insidious virus to all other countries, affecting the very existence of your culture and identity as you know it? But, what is your identity exactly? Who are you? And who do you want to be after everything?

The available sides are the following:

One of your rapper friends comes out with an anti-ode to prostitues of Tunisia. God, you had no idea women can be such filthy beings without any self-respect and modesty. But what about Bouazizi’s sister, your secret childhood crush? She is not covered and yet you know she is the epitome of propriety. Does the song not apply to her, then? Where are all the whores of Tunisia? In coastal towns having shots with lustful foreigners? But what about women like your mother? Or your sister who is studying to become a lawyer? A first female lawyer in the family! Is she a whore?

You then look at your other friend who started wearing shorter, wider khaki pants and a long beard, Prophet-style. He almost looks like a Saudi import with a Tunisian accent. But he is Tunisian. What happened to him? He started receiving money from Tunisian diaspora to spread the word of religion that everyone around you seems to have lost. But you have been just fine without orthodox interpretations of Islam. Well, maybe you weren’t fine. Otherwise, why did Bouazizi put himself on fire? Maybe people just need more God in their life. But you cannot fully agree with with your salafi-like friend, since you don’t think imposing reigion goes with your way of looking at the world. That aspect of human agency is what you respect the most in others. Do you have the shame to order your mother to start covering all of a sudden? Do you have the knowledge to blame her lack of hijab for the revolution? She will probably slap you in the face and tell you that her lack of hijab did not set your friend on fire. What did then? If not whores and non-hijabi women? In other words, what did set your friend of fire if not the Sodoma and Gomora of the Tunisian society that made that police woman hit him shamelessly?

It was azma – a crisis. A societal crisis. A sticky sense of malaise. A lack of identity that kept keeping up in all houses and common areas. A constant suppression by the regime for people to abide by and bow to without thinking. It’s the politics of ‘as if’. The portrayal of an outward belief became more important than the belief itself. You started performing your nationhood. And your friends have done the same until the regime started asking for more, no longer satisfied with what you had been diligently offering ever since independence from the official, historical oppressor.

And they say in political theory that the revolution happens when the burden becomes the lightest between the lower and the upper class. The unbearable closeness of the elites and the peasants perhaps ticked Bouazizi off. The policewoman who smacked his head was no better than he was. And yet her power was the one of the law. Her hand could have put him in jail in the blink of an eye. Is that the country anyone should love?

No. And he protested. And he made everything in your life political with that act. You have been affected in the most profound ways. Your friends all chose different paths of understanding and owning the revolution. And here you stand between multiple choices. You don’t have to choose any of them, and yet you know that you need to as a member of the larger community. You have to find yourself somewhere. You have to say something. Believe in something. As Bouzazizi’s friend who had a crush in his sister years back, you have to pay your tribute to a friend that helped spark a revolution within you.

So, what do you do?

Sources:

Benyoussef, Lamia; “Gender and the Fractured Mythscapes of National Identity in Revolutionary Tunisia”