The Walls had Ears
Three Colonial Empires, Two Dictators, and Lunch South of Tunis
The trouble with reporting on Tunisia is that almost no one will speak on the record. The academics, the old ladies, even the ex-pats, have demanded I not name them, or in some cases, even quote them at all. A woman in her 60s, I will call her “Halima” came rushing up to my car as I was leaving her house after an interview with her and her family. She was worried, and asked that I not use their real names. I sighed, but agreed.
Until three years ago the name of Ben Ali was was not to be spoken in the house I had just left, for fear that neighbors might hear talking about the government and report it. The saying was: “The walls have ears.” People went into the Ministry of the Interior for talking about the government, sometimes they came back tortured, and sometimes they just vanished. The daughter of the house, who was my translator, told me that she’d said the name at a wedding once, and her aunt had slapped her to silence her. “Shut up,” her aunt told her, “Or you’ll have problems.”
This was not a thing that was true in the lives of these people for a few months or years. Autocratic dictatorship was a fact of life for decades that stretched into generations of paranoia. After the French left their colony, Tunisia was run by Habib Bourguiba, and then Ben Ali. Neither of them were so great on civil rights, but they were pretty good on providing working infrastructure, as far as the kind of people who think countries are their own little playgrounds go.
During all of this, everything everyone knew, you never said his name. Even if you liked him, which these poor aunties mostly did. He was stable, and in the 1990s he brought in the electricity and running water. You just didn’t talk about him.
Ben Ali was like living with a real live Voldemort who happened to build infrastructure and services, and then handed them over to incompetent relatives to run into the ground.
It’s been a strange three years for Tunisians. Many people I talk to are furtive and confused about life after the revolution. They often seem suspicious, though never committed to it, like suspicion is more of a habit than a considered stance. No one is ever quite sure what they are suspicious of, now. Nobody is happy, but no one seems sure who to blame. Tunisian paranoia is diffuse and undirected. So when they all ask for me to leave their names out, I sigh, but I agree.
The father of the household, “Lofti,” is 76, and remembers the French. Before the French were the Ottomans, and before them, the original Islamic Empire came roaring through as the Umayyad Caliphate. Each of them left their mark on what it means to be Tunisian, but only the French dwell in living memory. Halima, at 66, can only remember the moment the French left. “Day and night people were having a party, because the country was independent,” she says. But Lofti remembers the French still as masters of the country.
“Life under the French — it was very bad.” The French colonial adventure in Tunisia was one of extraction. “The French were stealing all the resources, and they wouldn’t let you have a position other than as a simple worker,” Lofti said. Management was always French people, and Tunisians had no hope of rising above poverty. “Ennadha is using the same technique,” Lofti went on, “In these positions they want to have their own people, then all the other people cannot get a chance to have any power. It’s the same patterns as the French.”
Ennadha, the current ruling Islamist party, took power after an election where they got roughly 40% of the representative seats. This is a household of religious Muslims, in fact Lofti steps out of our interview to pray. But this is not a household that supports Ennadha at all. He went on:
“They are making the same mistake as the French, because this government is temporary. All these people they are putting in place, they are not qualified for the job. If you know how to read and write and you belong to Ennadha you’re going to get the job.
When Bourguiba first started… to hire policemen, (they) didn’t even have to read or write. If you wanted to be a policeman and you were not against him you could have the job. That’s it. And that’s the same thing that Ennadha is trying to do. But now if we change government tomorrow it’s all going to fall down. All these people will have to leave.”
When Lofti was done, we all sat down for lunch. They asked about my family, I asked about their fantastic food. They had a small debate, which was translated for me. “We think the Americans are worse than the French, because of how you treated black people.” I considered this for a moment, and replied: “Haiti.” An appreciative nod went around the table.
America had survived this round.
All interviews were conducted through translation.
