My Tunisian Hometown — Forgotten Once, Forgotten Still

The popular protests that toppled Tunisia’s former president Zine al Abidine Ben Ali, ended decades of tyranny, and launched the Arab Spring started in the country’s rural interior before spreading across the nation. Before Tunisia became an independent state in 1956, it had spent half a century under French colonial rule. Then, too, resistance started in the neglected interior. It seems that Tunisia’s revolutions arise from forgotten places, where frustration builds up after long neglect by elites in the capital.

My hometown of Siliana is just such a place. Even many Tunisians have never heard of it. It lies in the the country’s northwest, about 80 miles south of Tunis. And though its people are down-to-earth, warm, and generous, the town won’t make anyone’s list of Tunisian tourist destinations. It is rural, conservative, and boring. And — despite Tunisia’s 2011 democratic revolution, which promised a new start — it remains forgotten and under-developed.

I’ve lived in the capital, Tunis, for about a decade now. When I go home to visit, I notice that not much has changed in Siliana. There are no malls or big clothing shops, no private hospitals, no movie theaters, no cultural venues. Sometimes I run into former classmates who are also visiting but live somewhere else; they’ve built lovely families in more promising places. Others are still in Siliana and have become deeply religious — they now refuse to shake my hand. Still others recognize me, hug me, and talk to me for hours about how they’re miserable and unemployed. I hear stories about former classmates who, apparently seeing no other prospects, have decided to become extremists, supporters of the Islamic State. Some of them have been arrested; others left for Syria and were never heard from again.

In its exhausted infrastructure, its poverty, and its unemployment, Siliana is typical of the desperate, underdeveloped hinterlands that launched Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. (Mohamed Bouazizi, the man whose self-immolation sparked the first protests, was from Sidi Bouzid, another depressed rural town.) And Siliana’s citizens, too, called for the toppling of the regime in December 2010 — before the wave of unrest made it to the capital. But — also typically — Siliana’s people quickly felt forgotten by the revolution (and the revolutionaries) after its success.

In November 2012, fed up by unemployment, underdevelopment, and a lack of meaningful change, Siliana’s people took to the streets again to shout to the new government, “stop ignoring us!” Though Tunisia’s first free and democratic elections had been held just a year before, police used birdshot against Siliana’s protesters, blinding many. Human Rights Watch and other civil society groups condemned the brutality. Today, three years later, Siliana remains forgotten.

Most of those who protested during the infamous birdshot incident were unemployed young men. Hamdi, a 27-year-old man, took part in a government training program that teaches repair and construction skills for two years after graduating high school. Then he spent years looking for a job, applying to anything he came across and taking whichever public administration exams he was qualified for.

“I am now a construction worker,” he told me on a recent visit. “I get paid 140 dinars [about $70] a month to work five days a week.” Hamdi took advantage of a government program that finds people work at construction sites. This program was already in place before 2011, but consecutive post-revolutionary governments have tried to improve it since then. But it hasn’t done much for Hamdi. He complained about rising prices and said that the new government hasn’t done much for people like him.

“I lied to my girlfriend and told her I make more than I actually do,” he told me. “I didn’t want her to look down on me. It’s devastating to feel so small. I feel like in Siliana, we’re like that one guy who spent his entire life making a tire but never actually owned a car.” Hamdi’s voice cracked. “It’s a terrible feeling to feel ignored in your own home. Tunisia is our home, but it’s like we don’t exist here.” It’s striking how much Hamdi’s laments echo the famous demands for “dignity” that defined the 2011 demonstrations.

Rim, a forty-something mother and wife, is struggling to support her husband and children by working extra shifts at a German factory that produces car cables. Before becoming a mother of three, Rim dropped out of high school to marry her husband, a fruit and vegetable seller at the local market. She was a housewife at first, but was forced to find work after her husband ran into debt and had to give up his shop. The couple say they were never fans of former President Ben Ali, and they expected the revolution to end the marginalization of their region and promise a brighter future for their children. But they feel abandoned still.

“My youngest daughter is about one year old,” said Rim. “I can’t afford to leave her at a daycare; not that there are good daycare places I could trust around here anyway. We don’t have the simple things for a decent, simple life in this town,” Rim sighed. “I was in tears when I asked my sister-in-law to babysit my daughter for me. I’m glad I have her, but others don’t have anyone else.”

Rim’s husband has been working irregularly as a farmer, but hasn’t managed to secure a stable income. His brothers helped him pay back most of his mortgage so he doesn’t lose his house. The couple’s oldest daughter just started attending middle school, and her son just started primary school. “I keep getting complaints from the teachers about my daughter’s performance at school. She was also caught cheating a couple of times. I can’t afford private tutoring.” The six-year-old is dyslexic and needs extra attention that neither parent can offer.

Rim came from a large, poor family, and hoped moving out of her parents’ house to her husband’s would provide a better life. “I dreamed of having my own family, and now that I do, it’s hard. I would do anything for them. I’ll keep working and taking extra shifts. I can’t sleep, my back hurts. But what else can I do?”

Rim and Hamdi are among the unlucky ones have not had an opportunity to leave a forgotten place. All of my childhood friends who are now successful have left Siliana years ago. Every time I visit, I feel guilty for not wanting to stay; besides family, there’s not much to do but witness other people’s misery. And it breaks my heart to feel that way.

Tunisia’s civil society has been doing a tremendous job since 2011, hence the recent Nobel Peace Prize. And there’s no question that the country’s democratic new government is the most successful outcome of that year’s many popular uprisings. Still, the fact that the interior of the country is still referred to as “the regions” (les regions in French) is an acknowledgement that the marginalization of Tunisians living there hasn’t ended. And if Tunisia’s new government fails to address this problem, perhaps “the regions” will one day again remind the capital that they will not tolerate being overlooked.

In the photo, protesters demonstrate in Siliana on November 29, 2012.

Photo credit: FETHI BELAID/AFP/Getty Images