Bouazizi's City Flame

On the 7^th January 2011, walking through South Kensington, I heard chants in Tunisian Arabic. On Kensington Road was assembled a party of around thirty people holding opposition banners and uniformly shouting against Ben Ali.

My companion, a Tunisian National, was visibly nervous as I spoke to one of the protesters, asking what was going on. One woman from the group told me about, the now Arab martyr, Mohamed Bouazizi. Her words ran so quickly from her mouth like flames, without hesitation, and my friend hung on to her words, as if hypnotized by the confidence with which she spoke against Tunisia's regime. 'It is enough, enough unemployment, enough turning blind to what they do … this student [Bouazizi] was taking initiative, making some income, like any man in this country [the UK] can do, and what they did closing him down is so typical, we have had enough'. The lady was Algerian, married to a Tunisian and both were now living in the UK.

What I noted about this encounter, and what comes into my head every time Tunisia hits the headlines, was the charge coming off this one lady as she spoke. Her words now seem relics: 'imagine doing something like this in Tunisia, standing and speaking against the Government the way that we are here'. As I looked at the huddled group of North Africans on a puddled January pavement on Kensington Rd, I imagined the same huddle on the tiled streets of Tunis, and I shuddered.

My companion stood on my toe and gestured that we move on, as we were walking away he said: 'that man, the one in the middle, is the biggest rebel against Ben Ali, he is wanted all over Tunisia. If he came back to Tunisia, and someone killed him, they would not even go to prison, that's how much the President wants him.'

I asked why he was so keen to leave the protest, he told me he was petrified in case one of the video cameras caught his face, 'It would be so dangerous'.

Who could have predicted that seven days later five thousand people would be on Avenue Habib Bourguiba in the Tunisian capital shouting 'degage' with fists hammering the syllables, whilst Bouazizi's flames set the whole of Tunisia ablaze.