http://american-rattlesnake.org/2011/01 ... -meltdown/

By Marion DS Dreyfus

In the wake of the president fleeing his country, escaping the widespread ‘student’ riots, Tunisia is not what it, until very recently, seemed. Who knew the Tunisians were so repressed?

Wherever one goes in the country, those Ben Ali banners are everywhere. When I was there during 2010, we were told ‘enlightened leader,’ authoritarian regime head, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, after 23 years of peaceful rule–always smiling benignly, even affectionately, from billboards near the highways or larger streets–was elected by an overwhelming majority.

He had contemporary ideas about education, work for women, sports for the underprivileged, industrial privatization and so on. Ali has taken cover in Saudi Arabia from the mass protests and looting of Tunis as the ‘Jasmine Revolution’ (after the national flower) proceeds chaotically.

Schools and universities are closed and tourists have run, packing to return to their European nests. One had no idea the elections were fixed; one thought the people were content with their leadership, and that Tunisia was a working, democratic republic. It is decidedly Eurocentric, and I daily met and interacted with dozens of businessmen from France, Greece, Spain, Germany, Italy, the UK and Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Libya and Cyprus. None seemed to exhibit the least bit of stress or concern about freedom on any level.

Ali, for those who have forgotten, was formerly Habib Bourguiba’s minister as well as a military figure, in office since 1987, when he acceded to the executive office after an expert medical team adjudged longtime leader Bourguiba unfit to fulfill the functions of his presidency (Article 57 of the Tunisian constitution).

I was impressed by the level of education of even the middle class, and was unaware of the apparently high rate of unemployment. All Arab countries feature men in djellabas strolling along the pavements, or sitting genially, smoking a hookah pipe or drinking scalding espresso with a mud-like consistency; a normal sight all over the Middle East. In hindsight, I guess it was noted in passing that some highly educated professionals had left the country, seeking better opportunities, and these coffee-drinking denizens were unemployed, but I came away with the impression that life in Tunisia — at least in the bigger cities — was comfortable and actually progressive.

No one spat at me, gave me the evil eye, derogated my clothing or person, and hijabs were by no means universal, especially in the big cities. In tiny towns, of course, one saw niqabs and hijabs, but even there not universally. These women in colorful scarves and covering garments scurried along, water gourds on their heads, busy with their domestic tasks. Few women tarried to talk. None, actually.

One rarely even saw a policeman in the dusty backwater villages scarcely worthy of the name ‘town’ along their aged, rutted roads, some built by the Romans 2,000 years ago. In the major cities, one did see police, but the bustle and rush common to all metropolitan centers in any country echoes about the same level of traffic police and unexceptional order-minders.

So now, the police are gunning down anyone who breaks curfew? This puts that unassuming–and, one thought, peaceful–Mediterranean Sea-hugging sliver country, squished like a rough, dangly earring, between far-larger Muslim neighbors on both sides. On the map, its Maghreb slice of windy Sahara to the south is as parched and sandy, and as dune-rippled, as that of its larger neighbors on both sides. The Tunisian Republic is the northernmost country in Africa by a smidgen, bordered by huge Algeria to the west, unfriendly Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean to the north and, especially, east.

I was clearly not given an accurate picture, or absorbed a message very different from the one that was generally given to the resident Tunisians. A hint was available when I tried to find or attend a synagogue anywhere but on Djerba Island. Somehow, they were never ‘open’ for a look-see, or were ‘now closed for repairs,’ or some such, even when I could see one within a short walk. It resembled nothing so much as a non-distinctive stone war bunker, quite low to the ground, flat-roofed, with slits for windows to…minimize ‘distractions’ from ill-wishers? I couldn’t visit. Sorry.

Because in every conversational opportunity with (selected?) contacts there, and my own in various places, I had felt that the obvious Eurocentricity of the country, and the fact that they speak a pentagram of languages without inhibition, and trade so commonly with Europe, that they were a cut above the underlying foreignness and official froideur evident in other (less advanced/democratic) North African and Middle Eastern countries.

In fact, in Tunisia, when people learnt I spoke Hebrew, they pestered me to teach them the hors d’oeuvres welcoming phrases, though I tried practicing my Arabic and learning more from them: A friendly rivalry that they usually won, as a courtesy to my hosts.

I was under the impression that the leader was distinctly beloved. Evidently, that too was a mirage created for our sake, or it is a fluidly acted myth they advanced until it couldn’t be upheld any more. The country has now had three interim leaders in the space of two days, with no stable future on the horizon.

Perhaps that is a partial explanation for why Arafat in preceding decades was welcomed, and lived so comfortably there with thousands of his acolytes? And why there was violence against the continent’s most ancient synagogue, in Djerba, where visiting European tourists were shot down for no reason, visiting the site…? Without question, German Christians had not been the original targets of these bullets.

Now, I worry for all the Westerners who bought property there in the little alleyways and nooks that I traversed, in Carthage, ‘holy’ city Kairouan (supposedly third in line after Mekka and Medina, but I have my doubts), desert Tatooine and elsewhere, those unfixed-up medieval stone shambles with high, brick-relief-accented walls and ancient stones. But once they emerge into the souk, what will greet these foreigners with ‘summer cottages’ in this picturesque backwater? This could be a perilous time for anyone not local, if even the locals are being shot.

One hopes this is a popular uprising akin to the ‘green revolution’ in Iran, but we saw what happened there, didn’t we, as Ahmadinejad mowed down opposition, destroyed ballots, stole the election, shut down the Internet, then tortured, incarcerated, raped and killed thousands who opposed his ‘election.’ We so smugly fancied Tunisia far above such Neanderthal goings-on.

It sure does make our visit, via 20:20 rear-view hindsight, look peculiar. And now-defunct tourism will surely make those who managed to see Tunisia among the privileged few. It may take a while to re-assert its cosmopolitanism in any meaningful way for new visitors.

Marion DS Dreyfus . . . 20©11