In the above photo, a protestor hurls a piece of concrete near riot police in the southern Tunisian port of Sfax three weeks ago.
This city is less in open conflict - or at least less armed - than Zawiya or the military checkpoints at the border, but it feels grim and sad. Hundreds of people are in open protest against the seven-month-old government, which they see as little different than its predecessor. Blocs of waving and chanting people, visions of white and brown tinged with red and green, assault the air in the main streets. Some face the waiting lines of police officers, standing at a lackadaisical attention and toying with their truncheons. They appear to be waiting for orders, but they are most likely waiting for dusk.
The event is so common that its climax has the practiced ease of a dance. The tear gas will be thrown into the center of the mob as its voices crescendo in anger and alarm. After the gas has weakened them, the police will storm into the melee, striking people at will, cursing, spitting, pushing, downing. The crowd's power will be broken and scattered to the hive of streets and alleys where the lucky and the brave will regroup to attempt another weaponless assault on the establishment. A hundred or more have been arrested and then released. Dozens have been injured and a few have been killed, yet no one has reported the injury or death of a police officer in this new round of protests, weeping entreaties for justice.
What do they want? They want what the other nations of Arab Spring fought for. Egypt's former president and his family sit in a cage in a courtroom, broadcast on television as a humiliated criminal. Yemen's president was nearly killed in a shelling. Ghadafi seems set to burn as his foes close around him. But Tunisia, the land where it all started, had its president escape to Saudi Arabia while much of his clan remained untouched. The revolution that ousted him began when a street vendor, younger than myself, burned himself to death to protest the unfairness of a regional bureaucrat. Now, the followers of his posthumous example bash their bodies against the interim regime's batons just to see their impotent former dictator in jail.
How great and horrible is the power to believe in something more than life! From what part of the human animal comes the will to risk death for such a principle? Is it the knowledge that others died for things to be better and that sacrifice cannot go unfulfilled? Is it the dark force that gives us strength beyond what our muscles and bones can bear? And how is it so restrained that it harms none except itself - that its impassioned foe remains nearly untouched?
The fight is gone from the policemen. They seem to ache from the blows they land on their own people. Empathy can rise from such pathos and devotion. Gandhi, Dr. King, the mythical Antigone - they knew this. Perhaps it is at work here as well.
We cannot fly to Tunis; it is apparently too dangerous, as protests there are larger. Dani and I share a wry smile. Here we are, outlander witness to the fall of Zawiya and we are kept away from a protest more than four kilometers from an airport we won't leave except by plane. But we accept: a flight to France is available from here, and it is at times like these when it is best to avoid any risk, no matter how small. Exhaustion and relief have diminished our guard and we would just as soon stay safe in our epilogue.
Youssef, still visibly shaken by the rage of battle, is returning to Tunis. Ayesha, wrested by uxorial duty from her beloved class of refugee children, is going with him. Their son must be terrified and will be comforted to see them. I try not to think about what is happening to the city in which I met them all seven years ago, the rough-hewn yellow metropolis that first drew me unstoppably towards the beauty of the desert and other Muslim lands. My friends are probably trying to ignore it as well.
We share a ceremonial goodbye, splitting a saltine in half and trading pieces of it to eat (salted bread between men is a lifelong pact of nonaggression). I tell him we could have done none of this without him; he may have preferred it that way, but he still smiles and thanks me. Ayesha smiles, her eyes moist in the dry breeze. I think I feel a tear on my face and find only a drop of blood flecked with sand under my nose. Even the desert, with this last bitter kiss, is saying goodbye. They wave from the ground as we board the plane, slowly turning back to face the noise and the smoke of their wrecked nation.
Another view from the ground: Paris, France
The airport feels like a different planet: its cool sterile look, its refrigerated air, its pronouncements of schedules in voices bouncing off the walls as loud as the Libyan calls to prayer through metal minarets. I rest in a plastic chair, forcing my body into an upright sitting position for the first time in days. I finish sending the last stories and quotes to the newswire at the appropriate length and in the right formatting, vulgar abbreviations of a complex undefinable truth. Our best hope is that the stories will excite some Americans and Europeans to concern, possibly action. The tingling of my fingers after using a keyboard, stretching my writer's grip out of its claw, reminds me I am about to reenter the digital age in full.
And all this because I left my broken computer in the States. The process of writing this all down has bound my hand and turned my heart like decrepit soil for planting. My hands are cut and weary from having them in cars, guns, and bodies, not to mention the damn water filter. They have been exercised back to a manly strength and my whole being feels energy despite my exhaustion. Not energy, precisely. Wakefulness. Like I finally started reading a book and it grabbed me, or I finally got something right for the first time after so much practice. I feel capable yet restrained, interested yet ignorant. I feel like a journey is beginning more than ending.
My skin feels suddenly thick and filthy. I had been pouring sweat through reddened skin until I held no more salt water to lose into the wind. I went days with hands dried to boards by alcohol yet I stank of corrosive dirt and grime on the rest of me. Slightly cleaned and thoroughly cooled, I finally feel how rough the last week has been on my body.
Dani is the first to say farewell, as he is staying in Paris for a few days. How odd to have been surrounded by the vestiges of French Africa and now have green, golden Paris just a short road away. Dani is curt, or perhaps just unemotional, but kind as he leaves us as early as possible. Arthur and Mark seek out the nearest equivalent to an Irish breakfast that the airport can offer us. I join them with a sandwich, not yet ready for meat to perturb my system. We say goodbye with long British handshakes and the offers to come visit. It is nice to have made such friends and have the expectation that they will grow old.
That's the view from the ground.
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