In the birthplace of free North Africa, Tunisia, the late summer air is still humid and stagnant. Yet, when a refreshing breeze blows through, the locals say that that wind is like revolution. Invigorating, calming, freeing, yet ephemeral.The graffiti outside the media reads, "Freedom is something that you practice everyday" (in Arabic this is a not-so-clever rhyme [Hurriyya, inta lazm tumarisha yomiyya]). More graffiti campaigns for public vigilance. Seeing the precious revolution as endangered, it proclaims, "Qaddafi at large, is a threat to the Tunisian Revolution."And yet wandering the streets all is as it once was. The cats paw at piles of reeking garbage. The soldiers inside the barbed wire barricade at the Prime Minister’s office wear their same uniforms and continue their service merely for different masters. I overheard them talk of sex and cigarettes–I asked if they had been conscripts under Ben Ali, and all said yes.At 5pm, young soldiers in flowing red and white capes emerge from the Ministry of Defense accompanied by a 10-piece marching band. Amidst pomp, circumstance, and some off-key playing, the young men in their outlandish capes proceed to the huge ceremonial flagpole in the center of the Place de la Gouvernement. After lowering the the large flag with laudable efficiency they have difficulty folding the flag in the wind.After the recessional, I approach an Arab man in business casual attire who I have noticed filming the whole ceremony on his iPhone 4. I ask him in my ridiculously American-accented French, "Isn’t that the same hymn and ceremony from before the revolution?" He answers me in perfect Parisian French, defending the need to preserve the culturally authentic Tunisian traditions.I ask him, "but didn’t these traditions only start with Bourgiba and the independence regime [ie, from the late 1950s] and isn’t it essentially a colonial vestige to have a flag lowering ceremony daily with a French hymn played on bugles and drums?"Impassioned he answers, "The flag is our heritage and we need continuation or we will be swallowed up by globalization. We must cling to our traditions. If we change our flag or our hymn we would have nothing to replace it with and it would surely be replaced by some Hollywood-inspired farce. We are proud to be Tunisian and we must not become cosmopolitan and abandon our roots merely because we seek freedom."Either he has elegantly hit the nail on the head demonstrating the cultural authenticity of the Tunisian revolution, or he has inadvertently revealed that there has been no revolution at all. My guess is the people at the top know that they had to change their figurehead to save themselves. Amazingly, they haven’t tried to conceal that development by at least changing the country’s slogans and ceremony a little bit.This episode revealed to me that the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings represent only small change at the top of the social pyrimad while the libyan revolution represents a much larger inversion of social and political order. How exciting that I happen to be studying Libya!!!
Tunisia