In 2009, Ben Ali had taken office again with a ridiculously low and humiliating number of votes. (He, though, claimed that more than 89 percent of the citizens elected him. The people felt mocked and held in contempt.) According to a reliable source, only 24.7 percent of Tunisian voters went to the polling locations. The petition, signed a few months later by important people in the eyes of the regime, encouraged Ben Ali to run again in 2014. It was really grotesque. We now know more precisely the extent of harm that Ben Ali caused. According to the February 7, 2011, edition of the Tunisian newspaper, La Presse, the regime hid from the people the real rate of unemployment, immigration, academic failure, and so on. According to the same newspaper, the unemployment rate among college graduates was 44.9 percent, while the rate among the youth of age eighteen to twenty-nine was 29.8 percent; more than 1 million high school students dropped out between 2004 and 2009. Finally, 70 percent of young Tunisians admitted wanting to emigrate by any means.
More important than the Ben Ali regime’s abuses, which continue to be uncovered, is that Bouazizi’s death helped establish Tunisia as an exemplar of political change in the Arab world. People were justified in describing this event as a conflagration with contagious effects. In the weeks following Mohamed Bouazizi’s death, Egyptians took up Tunisia’s example despite their more powerful and fierce Raïs.
Inside Ben Ali’s Head
While Mubarak has a headache, what is Ben Ali, the Tunisian, who fled from his country on January 14, doing? He exiled himself in Saudi Arabia. European banks froze a part of his wealth, as well as all his real-estate holdings in France (his own and that of his clan); he must prove that they were acquired with clean money, such as his salary, for example. One of his private jets was also detained in France at the Bourget Airport.
What does he do with his days? He watches television. He just lies around. He doesn’t feel like coloring his hair. He is depressed. He lives in a gilded prison. He is not able to go out even for a coffee in the nearest shopping center. He would like to cry. He sees again Mohamed Bouazizi’s bandaged body and curses him. Ben Ali doesn’t believe in God anymore. It’s because God sides with the poor at present, with people in Mohamed Bouazizi’s condition. “It took that idiot to get carried away by anger, set his clothes on fire, so that I, who brought prosperity to Tunisians, today find myself in this palace, alone, without friends, without my toys, without anything! Also, these television channels around the world will say anything. My head is filled with all sorts of images, but the journalists care only about fawda, the disorder and panic. Revolution? In reality, it’s just chaos. They’re going to destroy everything in this beautiful country. At least, I managed to bring millions of tourists; I created a middle class; I got rid of the Islamists; I worked to reassure the West, and now everybody’s turning away from me. Human beings are ungrateful. I hate humanity. I hate this palace, this excessive air conditioning, and these Kleenex boxes with golden covers. I hate this yellow and white landscape, and I don’t like the food. But I couldn’t care less; I’m not hungry. This son of a bitch Bouazizi has destroyed my life. The country wanted chaos; well, they’ve got it. If this is what they like, let them enjoy it. These people are ungrateful and cowards. They bent over backward when they came to me for a job or favor. Today they swagger! Poor guys! They’re pathetic! Doing this to me, who has sacrificed myself for them! They have been slow to wake up. Assholes, men without balls. If God exists, if the last Day of Judgment exists, there will be an extraordinary confrontation.
“People think a leader of a nation is made of iron, of stainless steel. I have a heart; I have feelings. I love gardens and rose bouquets. I love the sweetness of life and the sunset on La Marsa.
“I wept with emotion when my grandchildren were born. Yes, I, the Raïs — I have cried. Today, my tears have dried up. I feel rage and hatred inside me. I made a mistake. I was ill-advised. I should have fought like Gaddafi. He’s crazy, but he doesn’t shed tears; he doesn’t abdicate.
“Gaddafi has ruled ten years longer than me. He has become richer than Mubarak and me together. He stands up to the entire world. His madness leads him to victory. Killing hundreds of Libyans means nothing to him; what matters to Gaddafi is saving his own skin and not ending up in front of a court, as did Saddam Hussein. I’ll never forget Saddam’s face on the day when he was found hiding in a hole. He looked like someone awakened in the middle of the night, running his hands through his hair as though looking for lice, checking the condition of his teeth… What humiliation!
“As for me, I could never imagine leaving my country and begging for asylum. At least, I escaped a humiliating capture in front of the CNN and Al Jazeera cameras. If we have fallen, it’s because of the undermining propaganda of the Muslim Brotherhood, who took hold of Al Jazeera from the beginning. The emir of Qatar is clever, or, rather, it’s his wife, Sheikha Mozah. She’s the one who had the idea for this TV channel. She’s the one who has killed us. Obviously, there was never a word on this channel about the situation in Qatar. On the other hand, every little incident in other Arab countries is exposed and televised over and over again. The whole plan came from this channel. By repeating that this or that person is a dictator, people ended up believing it. I must admit that my sons-in-law, sons of the nouveau riche, didn’t help my situation. As for my wife, she went overboard and wanted to possess and control everything. No man in Tunisia is capable of saying no to his wife when she decides to take over. I’m speaking from experience. I kept telling her, ‘Be careful. Tell your nephew not to overdo it; someday it’ll end badly…’ But no, like me she believed that this life in which everything is allowed is eternal. Everything was going well. The country was calm. The police headquarters and officers did their work discreetly. Foreign press couldn’t enter the country. Tourists loved Djerba and Tozeur. But now, a gang of thugs, agitated by the unemployed, the rascals, and the loafers, has come to destroy all this. The elders used to say, ‘The Arab must be crushed, or else he will crush you.’ I hadn’t been attentive enough to their wisdom.”
The New Tunisian Constitution Is Revolutionary
The tree of the Arab Spring has yielded its first fruits in Tunisia. This is the first time that an Arab and Muslim country has included in its new constitution equality between men and women (“male and female citizens are equal before the law without discrimination”). At the same time, the country has managed to put aside the Sharia law by establishing freedom of conscience (“the State is the guardian of religion. It guarantees freedom of conscience and freedom of worship”). The state also guarantees freedom of expression and prohibits physical and mental torture (“torture is an imprescriptible crime”).
Not only has Tunisia — thanks to the commitment of its civil society, especially through the struggle of women — managed to drive the Islamist party Ennahda into mosques, but at the same time it has opened the country to a modernity that is sorely lacking in the rest of the Arab world. Equal rights means that there will be no polygamy or repudiation (the unilateral right of a husband to verbally divorce his wife); it also means that inheritance law will no longer follow the Islamic law that systematically gives the woman half of the man’s share. Sura 4, verse 12 says: “As for your children, God commands you to assign [the male] a share equal to that of two females.”