As waves of protest and revolution have swept across North Africa and the Middle East in recent weeks, waves of emotions have swept through me. Beginning in Tunisia in December, common people have risen up against dictators and despots to demand dignity.
Wonder—that is what I feel above all. But also in turn joy, relief, worry for people I love, anger at the arrogance of dictators, dread of violence, sorrow for lives lost, gratitude for the determination and ingenuity of so many people.
Thirty-one years ago this winter, I was a student in Tunisia. Habib Bourguiba was the president and Zine Ben Ali was a general who specialized in military security in Bourguiba’s government. Meanwhile, the world had been surprised by an upset in Iran, first a revolution, then the return of a religious leader, then a storming of the U.S. embassy in November 1979, hostages taken, a crisis stretching into weeks and then months. Embassies were on alert. Airport safety procedures began to change.
In central Tunisia near the end of January 1980, about 300 Libyan soldiers occupied the mining town of Gafsa. Nearly 50 people died in gunfire before the invasion was put down.
At the time of the Gafsa incident, I was in Egypt. My roommate had pressed a loan upon me to accompany her on a pilgrimage to honor the memory of her late father, a professor and linguist. As Americans, we were greeted warmly that week by Egyptians under Sadat, who with Menachem Begin of Israel, brought together by our president, had concluded the Camp David peace accords 18 months earlier.
Everywhere we went, the long history of agriculture confronted us. In Egypt, we were transfixed by the Nile, that great river of seasonal flooding and farming. I mulled over the story of Joseph, the seven years of bumper crops followed by seven years of famine, the invention of national granaries. In the news, we read about the Soviets in Afghanistan and the U.S. protest in the form of a grain embargo. Our daily meals were defined by the seasons. The backdrop of ancient civilizations and current events gave new meaning to familiar, common things.
When I see pictures on TV now of Tahrir square, I remember strings of little colored lights in Cairo’s night-time bazaars. It was the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday. I remember, too, a hotel terrace in Aswan where we couldn’t afford to stay but we celebrated my 22nd birthday with a cup of Arabic coffee in a porcelain cup under a cloudless blue sky.
I remember coming home to Tunisia, the plane touching down in Carthage, seeing the familiar double peaks of Bou Cornine across the Gulf of Tunis, that ancient volcano that formed the signature skyline of the country I had come to love.
Bou Cornine reminds me that fire can stay alive underground for a long time. Fire burns inside the hearts of people waiting so long for justice and freedom.
Events of the past weeks have revealed to me a vast movement of nonviolent resistance in which Tunisians have taken a role of leadership and great courage. Being a fellow Baptist to Martin Luther King, Jr., who brought this practice to the U.S. civil rights movement and changed America forever, you could say I came late to the meeting. It was only in the 1990s that I began to read about nonviolent resistance, thanks to Barbara Ehrenreich (Blood Rites), Walter Wink (The Powers That Be), Jack Nelson Pallmeyer (Jesus Against Christianity, and Is Religion Killing Us?), and Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker (Proverbs of Ashes, and Saving Paradise).
Now Tunisia has joined the company of witnesses, path breakers, and teachers. This afternoon I heard the nation opened its border to those fleeing the violence of the Libyan dictator determined to extend his 40-year rule. I am full of not only wonder but gratitude. I am praying for the people everywhere who are rising up, and I am praying that their spirit of innovation will persist and prevail. I am praying that my own nation will be faithful.
Photo: Bou Cornine, view from Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia, 1979, by Gayla Marty.
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