A year ago, to the day

Sabrina Zouaghi

A year of events no one thought possible, that seemed to float out of that people’s reach, like a utopia waking up the senses, making one dream with excess. Yet, it took only one man to give that sweet dream an echo in reality, to incrust that dream in wounded hearts, thirsty for hope and better days where their voices, breaking spirits and borders, strike at the perplexity of those who had never thought it possible.

You, who come out of nowhere, how is it that the entire world knows your name, loaded with symbols of deliverance, of popular uprising, of freedom? How is it that in Mohamed Bouazizi one finds joy and sadness, hope and uncertainty, change and inertia? How is it that History will remember your name, but not that of those who followed your path toward liberation?

Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, cradle of the revolution with two names. No need here to further tell the story of the events, for all know it, at least in its outlines. I never stop wondering how far up your courage and your distress rose, so high as to have you go beyond the point of no return, to set your feelings ablaze and pour out the fire burning in you. What thought gleamed in your spirit when you were burning your rage? Did you think your action would unite all your brothers and sisters against adversity, against the illusion of impossibility? Or did you think you were giving your family one less mouth to feed?

Whatever the answer, you found yourself in the Center of Traumatology and Severe Burns of Ben Arous, where the very icon of your torments dared inquire about your face. What joy must you have felt at the news of his hurried flight!

In one year the story of a decade unfolded itself: popular uprisings, a dictator fleeing, a contagion from this Arab Spring to the other bled, a purge – more or less completed – of Ben Ali’s ex-sympathizers, the birth of a hundred political parties, elections, a Constitutive Assembly... Who would have deemed it possible in that State with the highest ratio of policemen per citizens?

One must not minimize the impacts of sacrifice – which consequences are still being felt, when the conditions of freedom demand to be effected, and when social choices are being made. The intellectuals are still dazzled, but everyone can now speak out.

My speech does not seek to discuss the sequence of events following your act, Bouazizi, but rather what led you to that extreme. Being witness to the ostentatious wealth of a handful of men who are rich because of their connections with Men, without any connection to Mankind, devoid of those qualities which allow us to transcend the mere state of beasts. Knowing they’re filling their bellies replete in one of their sumptuous palaces, while you struggled to find enough food to make your family live, while you sadly kept on toiling for a meagre few dinars without those crooked men wanting it. The rage, the hatred, the despair... Knowing those feelings were shared by the whole people, yet to know the people to be ungrateful and ignorant of their own fellow countrymen. How to accept the unacceptable and live muted by one’s earthy gag, kept on by the batons of some of your brothers and sisters in the bouliss? Probably did you want to vomit forth your disarray toward those who, out of self-interest, collaborated with Shaitan and spilled their disgust on the innocents who had to open their wallet and give their few dinars earned through toil to those hands covered by the shame of the people. Corruption... a blistering word, fuelling the fire that heats up shame.

A year ago, to the day.

No matter Tunisians’ perceptions as to effective or nominal change.

No matter the agreement, or lack thereof, around your act.

No matter that Ben Ali is still hiding away, sheltered from justice...

No matter...

Tunisia mourns one of her own, gone a year ago, to the day.

No matter. A family wears the veil of mourning today. All of Tunisia shares its grief.

Today, I think of you more than ever, Mohamed Bouazizi. I cry with your family over your sacrifice, I know your despair, your cause is mine, I thank you for the door you have opened to your people, to your brothers and sisters in the Arab world. May they remember your rage forever and protect the bled against any steps backwards, against all those who seek to lay their hands upon the people’s rediscovered pride.

Allah yarhmou.