Playing outside the national team


Hichem KAROUI
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Hichem KAROUI
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2002-07-21T11:50:00Z
2002-07-21T11:50:00Z
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21
9.35 pt
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Playing
outside the national team

 

By: Hichem Karoui (in Paris)

 

This is to be published in case I have any problem
getting the renovation of my passport again.

 That is what I
have thought first, but now I changed my mind. People have to know, and I have to
liberate my chest from the heavy stone lying upon it. My passport will run out
of use at March 2, 2003. I am writing in July. I have still 7 months to find a
good lawyer or a human rights association that would volunteer to defend my
right to be free.

 

In June 1998, I
seized the opportunity of the World Cup in France to flee Tunisia, where about
43 years ago I was born, although it had never been my intention.

 The pretext was unimpeachable: Tunisia
national soccer team will be playing against England on June 15. Nobody would
dare to hamper a Tunisian citizen from his supposed “duty”: supporting the
national team against the English!

            I
have never been much of a soccer’s fan though, and probably much less so if it
concerns Tunisian amateur soccer, albeit it happens that I enjoy watching some
good games of the World Cup. I have always been attracted by the individual
sports, where high-performances are the result of the person’s hard work and
will to win. Nobody can really control the collective games. Moreover, unlike
the individual sports they are the best way to exacerbate nationalistic
feelings and xenophobia to a hysterical level. If a boxer or a swimmer wins,
people would remember the name of the winner, and nobody would care really
about his country or his origin. But if it is the team that is playing, then
just watch the supporters on the terracing! It is hysteria.   Not an individual one, but a collective
nationalistic hysteria, of the kind that makes you shudder if you are, by
chance or naiveté, sitting in (or close to) the rival camp.

 If soccer gets peoples closer as it is said,
what a miraculous medicine then against wars! Why not to make Israelis and
Palestinians play soccer together to put an end to their interminable conflict?
I have to precise however that I am not against soccer (or against sports),
although I stand firmly against nationalism when it is synonymous with: war,
expansionism, xenophobia, injustice, autocracy or dictatorship, etc.

I foreknew
anyway that the Tunisians were going to lose against the fabulous English team,
not only because they are a bunch of amateurs, but also because the whole
contemporary history of the Tunisian people is – alas! - doomed. It can’t be
helped, but it is obvious that the country has been damned twice:

  First one, when it managed to get colonized
by the French, albeit the British Empire was there and seeking! What a waste of
time and energy! I put so many years to understand that the veritable
“Esperanto” of this world is well the English language, not the French as we
were told when we were kids.

 And second, when it got the so-called
independence at the hands of a little lawyer (Bourguiba), who should as well
have succeeded as a grocer in his village; and who was actually so plagued with
megalomania that he managed to get called the Mujahid al akbar (the supreme
combatant) by all means, while hallucinating about a nation in this little
country that has never existed but in his phantasms.

 Bourguiba was actually the man who destroyed
any hope for the Arabs of Tunisia to get democracy since he condemned the
country to be a little corrupt autocracy ruled from Carthage palace, with
remote control! (i)

At a time when
the Algerian revolution was trying to connect with Nasser in Egypt, Bourguiba
preferred to short-circuit that trend and to isolate the Tunisians, to the
satisfaction of his French allies. If the latter chose him as their trustful
man (instead of many other leaders, S. Ben Youssef included), neither the
Egyptians nor the Algerians will ever forgive him for that prank.

 So, I told myself that against England the
Tunisians had not a single chance. I was not willing thereby to support their
megalomania. I know the limits of the country as I know my own. Nevertheless, I
pretended exactly the contrary.

 Some days (or perhaps some weeks) before I
booked a cabin on the “Liberty” sailing to Marseilles, I spread around me the
news that I would be on the terracing of the stadium for the expected game
between Tunisia and England! I have never set a foot in a stadium to watch a
soccer game in all my life. Really. But I lied so truthfully, so sincerely, so
honestly that almost everybody believed that at last I turned nationalistically
fan of the national team!

 Hell! For a while, I would have believed it
myself!

 However, I do not think that I really misled
those who knew me very well. Yet, I did not unveil my intentions even to my
mother, albeit she understood everything and certainly felt what I was aiming
at. She did not try to obstruct my way either. She just wished me good luck on
the morning I left.

About
twenty-four hours later, I was quietly strolling with my suitcase on the dock
of Marseille, and heading towards Saint-Charles station, where I would arrive
at the same time than Prince Andrew of Britain.

 

                                    
*************

 

            I
was expecting that day since ten years.

            It
may seem unbelievable that a thirty-three years old man had to wait for ten
years before he could travel abroad. That may be so anywhere but in the
“modern» Tunisia.

            To
begin with, I must emphasize first that I have no ties whatever with any
political party seeking power in Tunisia. I am not an opponent. I never
pretended to be one, which does not mean that I am a supporter of the
destourian party either. Far from it. Anyway, The Internal struggle for power
in this country has never been my concern, for quite a simple reason: I do not
think sincerely that there will be soon any democratic improvement. In the
absence of a minimum of democratic rules granted to the different players, any
political game is worthless. I am not a suicidal. Thus, you may say that I am
selfish, but nobody would ever push me to sacrifice my time and energy to a
system that I deem deeply and irredeemably useless. There will never be any
democracy in Tunisia as long as the destourian party is in power.

 Yet, though I respect the opposition and
think that it is the right of any Tunisian citizen to oppose the government, I
do not believe that I have the ability, nor the will, nor the ambition to play
this game. I have chosen to be merely an onlooker, or if necessary (for
professional reasons, since I am a journalist and a writer) an impartial
witness. I do not regret this choice, particularly when I see not only what has
become of some opponents, - for whom prison and /or exile are a logic result-
but also when I see how people in power are metamorphosed. I do not want to
live their life. I merely prefer the hell of Paris to the paradise of the
mother country. The desert of the Champs Elysées, the Quartier Latin, and a
seat at the corner of Boulevard Saint Germain and Rue de Rennes or a walk on
the banks of the Seine, to the splendors of the great and sophisticated
metropolis which is Tunis. I remain a simple man with very simple ambitions.

*******

 When I left Tunisia, I was forty-three years
old. So, what did I do during a decade? That’s the point! Sorry, I mean that is
the whole problem without which I would not be writing down this stuff today.

            Would
any of you consent to give 10 years of his life to a regime or even to somebody
he does not really appreciate? That’s what happened to me. But I was not
willing. I did not make some occult deal with Mephistopheles, for I did not
think I am Faust.

             During those years starting in 1989, I worked
when I was allowed to. I tried to continue supporting myself and my family
despite a painful and difficult divorce. It was not always easy mainly because
there is a child and because in Tunisia the “war” is not over with the divorce,
which is sometimes the cause of trouble more than its end. And above all I
dreamed, since I could not do otherwise! Yes, I dreamed of other countries, of
other peoples, and of other dreams. As I was exhausted, I thought that only a
trip abroad could make me feel better. Once divorced, I have stopped
elaborating plans for staying in the country. I did not feel attached to
anything. I was just seeking to breath another air. But I had soon to
disenchant.

            For
ten years (1989-1998), I was simply forbidden from traveling at the same time
that I was forbidden from writing for some independent Tunisian press:
Otherwise, I was denied my living.

 Since my old passport was out of use, I could
not renovate it!  And even when I
succeeded after a long strenuous struggle to snatch that right, my passport was
just useless. I could not go beyond the first police station at Tunis-Carthage
airport, nor could I cross legally any maritime or terrestrial boundaries. Each
time I tried, I was merely stopped.

            Of
course, I was a citizen, but not in Tunisia! No wonder that the country became
soon a real prison in my mind. However, that helped me better understand the
fight of the Palestinians for their rights, with a difference though: that the
Palestinians are humiliated by a foreign occupation force, whereas I have been
humiliated (and I don’t pretend to be alone nor the last) by the “ local
invaders”.

 I
do not wish for the Palestinians to have an independent state whose police
humiliate the citizens. Nobody is proud to belong to such countries. People
have not fought the French and sacrificed their lives to get colonized by the
local police. They fought for freedom, if not for themselves, then at least for
us, their descendants, as they thought. But since freedom evaporated with the
overlapping control of the Destourian party and its numerous parallel polices
on the destiny of the country, I thought that to live among the ex-invaders of
Tunisia might be perhaps more merciful than to live in a “sovereign state” that
has no respect for the rights and the sovereignty of its citizens.

 Why not? After all, for people who like me
were born at the dawn of independence, the French have never been foes or
invaders. They are just normal folk; numbers of whom moreover were our teachers
and professors in primary and high schools (later on in universities).

France was
dreadful and inimical only in the interminable speeches of Bourguiba, where he
never tired of boring people with his glorious fight. For the post-colonial
generation, France has become not only an attractive pole (for studies and
work), but also a refuge sheltering those who fled oppression and harassment
for their political opinions. This country – France- is actually our portal to
the West. It has been and will still remain the bridge between two worlds.

            The
last time I tried to abscond –legally- my jail in the boring streets of Tunis,
across the south towards Libya and Egypt – from which I was thus planning to
immigrate to Europe and possibly to the USA-, the cops confiscated my passport
and sent me back to the capital. No explanation was ever given to me. It was
not the first time anyway that the Interior Ministry confiscates my passport.
Not the first time that the cops stop me before I board a plane. Not the first
time that I miss some important event to which I was solicited to attend
abroad. I do not count the invitations I was forced to reject, coming from
varied cultural or political organizations, or merely from friends or parents.
Most time moreover, I had neither to pay for the plane nor even for the hotel.
As a journalist writing on international issues and (or) as then a member of
the “Union of Tunisian Writers” (which I am no longer!), I used to get many
invitations, which I could not respond to. For either I would be dissuaded from
traveling or my passport would be unavailable! Anyway, it was not I who
decided, but the police. More precisely, the secret police of the regime, a
legacy – I would say: a poisoned present- from Bourguiba to Ben Ali. (ii)

            At
last, exhausted and indignant at the passive position of the “Union of the
Tunisian Writers”, who cowered and did not even lift the little finger to
protest against such abuses, I told its secretary general, the poet Midani Ben
Salah:

 “ If you do nothing to stop this harassment
and to get back my passport, I do not see why I should continue to pay a yearly
subscription for my membership!” He knew the Union has a duty towards its
members, as it is stipulated in its pact: to defend their moral and material
rights. He reacted, promising to interfere on my behalf with the Ministry.

            I
was in his office, a little time later, when a cop landed from the Ministry. It
was Mr. Ben Salah himself who has arranged the appointment. He introduced the
agent of the DST (: the political police in Tunisia) as “our friend»...!

  All right! If he could help, he was welcome
as  “our friend”.

 But the DST cop did not sound very
cooperative. Without preambles he told me bluntly: “ What if we give you back
your passport and let you travel, then once abroad you shame us?”

            “
I…  would shame … you?” I repeated
astounded.

            “
Yes”, he replied with emphasis. “ You may do or say something that makes us
regret giving you back your passport!”

            It
was as if the passport was not my right, but only a “reward” the state gives to
those who are behaving according to the norms of the secret police! Of course, “this
passport is property of the Tunisian State”, it is written on its last
page. I concede it. But will the Tunisian State concede in return that I am
not its property? And since I am not the property of the State, on which
ground the police confiscates my civil rights and confines me during ten long
years inside Tunis? What if a political organization other than the police
sequestered a person for such a period of time? How would we call that? Is it
terrorism or not?

            I
accuse the Tunisian state of terrorism. I accuse it of hijacking me during 10
years, forbidding not only my right to move freely, but also to have a normal
life based on honest labor in the Tunisian independent press. (iii)

             Nonetheless, I refrained from reacting
impulsively to that injurious provocation of the secret police agent. I knew
that were we alone in some desert place, he would never have dared to insulting
me while staring at my eye, unless he is a black belt, and a good one too. Yet,
I wanted to tell him that I would be certainly proud to do something that
shames the political police of such a shitty system. I wanted to tell him also
that I do not feel myself the representative of the political police nor of the
Interior Ministry; and that should I have felt the vocation to do such a dirty
job as the one he was doing, I would certainly not have joined the Tunisian
Interior Ministry. Why not Pinochet for example or Milosevic?  But the time was not favorable for such
talk. Instead, I turned to the two other persons who were with us in the
office. Nobody budged. Mr. Ben Salah pretended not to hear, whereas the face of
his young secretary went crimson. She was silent, but her indignation was
obvious.

            It
was pointless to continue such a conversation.

            A
couple of days later, my letter of resignation was on the desk of Mr. Ben
Salah. I will never set a foot again in the Union.

 

*********

 

            Yet,
that was not to mean that I would give up. For in the same time, I was trying
to connect with other people inside and outside the country.

 I remember with great precision for instance
the indifferent face of the man who received me in the office of the so-called
then Amnesty International.

 I would put years before discovering, here in
France, the fake of that masqueraded office of the Political police claiming to
represent the famous Human Rights institution. I was not surprised at all to
read the warning made by Amnesty International against  “Tunis office”, for I have experienced it at
my expenses when I went to see the people out there. It never dawned on me that
the infamous political police could on the one hand, harass and torture people,
and on the other claim to representing Amnesty International! This is something
quite new in the records of the dictatorship! And it was while surfing on
Amnesty International site, years later, that I discovered it.

            The
man who received me in the office of Amnesty was an ex-journalist! So he
pretended, and I don’t need to cite his name, although he will certainly
recognize himself.  I don’t think he
cared much about what I told him either. He was so bored that he could barely
answer my questions.

 “Would Amnesty act?”

Well. He will
see what he can do! That was all I got from him!

 But out in the street, I discovered that I
have talked for almost half an hour for no ear! The guy sounded completely
unhooked. Nothing of what I could say seemed to impress him. He knew all that,
indeed! He was hearing dozens of such rant about harassment and torture every
day perhaps. All right! But as a journalist, or a former journalist, couldn’t
he at least pretend to listen to a colleague? I was expecting some sympathy,
and I was really in need for help. That was precisely what I missed in that office.
So, I decided not to come back.

            My
other contact was with Mr. Salah Eddine Jourchi, then vice-president of the
Tunisian League of Human Rights. I know Jourchi from the high school. We used
to have some long and complicated discussions together mainly about books,
philosophy, metaphysics, etc. But though we did never agree on the conclusions,
- I was then in full skeptical phase while he was already not only a true
believer but also politically committed- I think we both appreciated arguing.
Jourchi was then close to the beginning Islamist movement led by Rached
Ghannouchi and Abdel Fattah Mourou. At that stage, they were focusing on the
cultural front, since they were not yet recognized as a political movement.
(iv)

 Mr.
Jourchi was writing for their magazine, and I recall that he asked me to
contribute something, although he knew I was more caring about literature than
about ideology.

 But some years later, when I went to see him
in his office at the independent magazine “Réalités”, rue Palestine, he was the
editor-in-chief of the Arabic section (: a post I had occupied well before him,
since I was the man who actually launched the Arabic section of that originally
francophone magazine during that early period of multipartism- under Mzali-
that did not last). (v)

 He welcomed me and promised to do everything
he could to get the release of my passport. To begin with, he got me an
appointment with the lawyer of the League. But in order to make me aware of the
limits of their action, he emphasized that they have several similar dossiers,
and that while they do not save any effort to convince the Ministry, they have
no power of coercion whatever. Thus, I was warned not to expect a lot. I think
he has been honest with me. I went however to the appointment with the lawyer.
But it was vain.

Another contact
I made was with Article XIX organization in London.

 I mailed them whatever I could write about my
plight. Mr. Sellimi who was then in charge of the Middle East and North Africa
affairs, phoned me one day to ask whether I wanted my report to be published
with my name, which would perhaps harm me, or did I prefer not to.

After
reflection, I said: don’t publish please.

I had some good
reasons behind that position.

 First, I did not seek to be a consenting
victim for the sadism of the Interior Ministry. I am not a violent person. But
should I have had a bomb within my reach at that time, I would have probably
thrown it on the face of any representative of the secret police.

 Second, all which counted for me then was how
could I be able to flee the country that has become my prison. I was not sure
that the publication of my report could help me achieve that goal. I was
perhaps naïve, but I was really afraid that instead of being delivered I would
be still forced to stay in the country a longer period.

 Third, it seemed to me then that I had
another choice. Rather than clashing with the system, I would obtain what I
sought with peaceful means.

I was then
waiting for an event:

 Each year, on November 7 (the day of the coup),
the Destourian party invites some foreign personalities to attend the
celebration. I was not invited to be sure, but my boss, Hajj Ahmed al-Houni,
editor-in-Chief of Al Arab (the London-based newspaper) was going to
attend.

 

******

I have joined Al
Arab in 1993, as a columnist, after a period of four months sojourn in
jail. I was paid $ 200 by month. It was even under the first salary I was
getting from “Al Mouqif-al-Arabi”, with whom I have started as a journalist in
Beirut about now 21 years ago. But I was forced to accept it, for I had to pay
a monthly alimony to my ex.

 The judge has put me before an impossible
choice: either to pay I don’t know how many months of accumulated pension to my
ex, or to be jailed.

 Since I was jobless for about two years,
because the Ministry of Information (or of the Interior, or both) has forbidden
me from writing in the press, it was impossible to me to pay anything. (vi)

Usually, when I
talk about my Tunisian adventure to friends and intimate here in France, I am
asked with some naiveté: What about the unemployment allocations? How could a
journalist with at least 15 years of experience in reporting and editing stay
about two years in his own country without a job? In fact, it was not two years
but ten that I remained out of business in Tunisia, considering the fact that Al
Arab – which hired me in 93-, is a British publication.

Sure, it is an
enigma for my French friends and relatives. But when I tell them that I have
worked during all those years without even having a number of Social Security,
they fall from the high moon where they were contemplating Tunisia. I
understand their amazement and their shock. This is quite unimaginable in
France where even a free-lance journalist or writer must have a social security
cover and a pay slip, which both I have never seen in my hands during 20 years
in this business.

 I don’t know even how I survived.

 Indeed I had other income sources: the
royalties of my books. But if you don’t keep publishing at least each year a
new book, your royalties are not going to last forever. Now, it is not always
easy to focus on writing something long and good, when you are in trouble,
because you lost your job or because you divorced or because merely you don’t
feel it.

So, when I came
before the judge, I told him: I can’t pay because I am jobless.

4 months jail!

 No problem! It was an occasion to observe the
Tunisian judiciary system from inside. Nothing like the prison or the war could
awaken and sharpen the sense of observation, dear to any writer or journalist.
I have known wars. I had then to know jail! I will not go far as to advise both
experiences to young journalists.

 

*******

 

 I don’t know how the Al
Arab editor-in-chief, Mr. Ahmed al Houni, or Hajj as everybody calls him,
knew my story! May be I have told him something about it. But he has been
likely briefed by his daughter, Mrs. Fawzia, who was in the early nineties
running Al Arab Tunis office. It was thanks to her that I started
writing a daily column in the newspaper.

Tunis is a little city, where people in the same business know each
other. When I began to frequent the old office of Al Arab in Bab al
Khadra, close to the Mechtel luxurious hotel, I often met writers and
journalists with whom I was well acquainted since years. They knew what
happened to me. So, even if I did not speak myself, Fawzia knew a lot.

 I perceived that Hajj Houni
was aware of my Kafkaesque story when one day he told Ben Ali’s Minister of
information bluntly before me:

“ You threw him
in jail instead of allowing him to work! You have been unfair!”

Indeed, Hajj did
not mean the Minister personally. That was just his way of speaking. He likely
included in “you” the whole apparatus and nobody at once! He has never
considered himself as hostile to the regime, though. Quite the contrary.

 But the Minister did not reply. What would he
say? Moreover, he knew me very well because before being appointed at his post,
he had been my boss as Director General of “La Presse”. The government-owned
company, which publishes “La Presse” (a francophone daily) and “Assahafa” (an
Arabic newspaper, for which I was writing a daily column on international
affairs, before I was ejected). (vii)

I went to see
Hajj Ahmed in his suite at the Hilton hotel on a green hill overlooking Tunis,
a couple of days prior to the celebration of the coup (called out there: the
reshuffle!)… The lobby was full of Arab journalists and other guests coming
from Europe and the Arab world. It was an additional reason for me to be sad,
for I was seeing my colleagues – and some of them knew me – free to travel and
to get anywhere, whereas I was hijacked in my own country! It was unbearable.

Hajj Ahmed told
me not to worry. He was going to see the President, and he would ask him to
interfere in order to give me back my passport. Yet, I had to write him a
letter explaining how the police took away my passport and forced me to return
to Tunis from the southern boundaries. Which I did.

Some days later,
I went to the Hilton to see Hajj Ahmed again. He had been received by Mr. Ben
Ali and had evoked with him my problem. The President objected that I was in
trouble with the court-law and that he could not interfere as long as I was not
cleared! However, Hajj Ahmed who knew that the judiciary had absolutely nothing
against me, since I was paying regularly the pension of my ex, replied that he
granted that I was perfectly clear. Mr. Ben Ali then promised to solve the
problem.

I was relieved
and kept quiet.

About a week
after the departure of my boss to London, I got a telephone call from the
Ministry of the Interior. I had an appointment with the cops in their house! I
said O.K. I will be there.

The audience did
not last, although – as expected- they made me waiting an hour or more in the
corridor. The man who received me gave me my passport as if à contre-coeur!
I understood him: it is not easy to lose when you are in the political police!
But it was not the end of the adventure. Before I left his office, he let me
know that I was still wanted by the police. According to him, there was still a
lawsuit against me, and he added emphatically: “for theft”! He thought it
advisable that I go to the police station of my quarter to check that on. “ The
sooner the better”, he said. If not, my passport would not be of any use!

But in my joy
for recuperating my passport, I did not give his warning any importance. I
thought he was trying to trick me or to impress me with a new threat. How could
I imagine that even with the direct intervention of the President of the
republic against the abuses and the outrages and the violation of the law, the
political police in Tunisia always win? That was what I will discover a few
months later.

By a sunny
morning of March 1998, I was at home working on an old typewriter, which I had
bought, rue de Pacha, in the medina, some years ago.

 I
was still many light-years away from the computerized world then. I was
expecting nobody and relishing the quietness of my loneliness, when suddenly I
heard someone knocking at the door. It was not the courteous knocking of some
friend or relative of mine, but either the frightened sign of someone about to
die and wanting an urgent help or the brutal manifestation of an
ill-intentioned person. It turned out to be the last thing!

I was surprised
to see the police car when I opened the door. One of the two cops, both in
civil clothes, asked me to follow them to the police station, whereas his
colleague was waiting behind the steering wheel. He did not want to explain
anything. He was carrying out an order, he said. I had just to comply!

I know by
experience that arguing with them is useless. With such people ruling the
country, you have either to obey – otherwise to be a sheep- or to be ready to
get into trouble. You would argue if you were living in a democratic country. You
would have a lawyer. You would have your rights checked. But out there, in
Tunisia, either you “behave” or you accept to be expelled from “paradise”!
Well, for my part, I have accepted to be expelled from “paradise” many years
ago. The point is that they absolutely wanted me in paradise, not
outside it! And the following story was going to prove it, if I had still any
doubt.

Meekly, I
accepted to climb into the car, without violence. We headed towards the police
station of Bab Souika, which is also adjoining the compound of the District
National Security Headquarter. The two cops accompanied me to the office of the
superintendent. After a while, I was asked to enter. It was the superintendent
Walid Shaaban who received me. I remember his name because it was merely
inscribed on the door, and because I can certainly not forget what he told me
then.

Mr. Shaabane
asks me whether I am well Hichem Karoui.

I say: yes, of
course.

Then he asks me
to mention the name of my mother, my father, and my ancestors, which I do.
Meanwhile, he checks on my sayings on a register on his desk. Once that little
check-in is over, he tells me bluntly that since I recognize that I am well
Hichem (ben etc…) Karoui, he will send me to jail!

I thought he was
kidding. I was even almost ready to smile at that “kind” joke of him! I began
to convince myself that even the Tunisian cops could also be endowed with some
sense of humor! For a while, I would even have found him a nice guy! But
something was wrong. He would not have bothered to send me a car and two cops
just to tell me a joke! I began to worry.

“ Why would you
send me to jail?” I ask.

“ You are a
thief”, he replies.

“ A thief?”

“ Yes, a thief.
The law-court has sentenced you to eight months jail.”

I was going from
a surprise to a nightmare. We were by then fully sinking in Kafka!

Kafka? I am
probably beyond the reality. Kafka was only writing about an imaginary world.
His works were and remain fiction. But here, I am not talking of fiction or
literature. These are facts I am reporting. It is simply the reality thousands
of people, maybe millions, are living in Tunisia.

“ Where was I
when the court convicted me for theft?” I ask. “ When did that happen? Where?”

“You tell me”,
he says. “ For us you are a fugitive.”

“ A fugitive at
some yards away from your office?”

“ I am not going
to argue with you”, he replies. “ You are a wanted criminal. Come and read it
yourself”.

He pushes the
open register towards me on the desk, and with his forefinger he pointes to my
name in the middle of a list, so that I can read that I am wanted to serve an
eight months jail sentence for theft!

Candidly, I ask:

“But what did I
steal?”

I should have
remembered if I stole money or a car or robbed someone or raided a bank or
something! These cannot be things one may easily forget. If you are a thief,
you are a thief, and you are well the person who knows it better than anybody,
unless you are also a somnambulist and an amnesic! Trouble that to my knowledge
so far I never suffered from somnambulism or amnesia, and I did not recall
having stolen anything. So, how did they found me guilty?

Funnier was the
rest: thus, I learned for example that not only I was considered a fugitive
since months, but the police was even looking for me everywhere in the country
and outside it! (Yet, about a month ago, I went to the police station and
applied for a renovation of my identity card, without which I could not apply
for a new passport).

To tell him that
I was actually at home, or that I have not left the capital even for a weekend,
because I was so depressed that the landscape of the country disgusted me and
made me feel like a bird in a cage, was definitely vain.

Scared? I
wasn’t, because nobody is scared by clowns. And it is not my fault if I see
clowns everywhere in power. But I was depressed. It was too unbalanced a fight.
At that moment, I saw how an individual, a citizen, a human being is simply
stripped of his identity while confronted with the machine of the police-
state. At that moment, I was no longer the journalist or the writer I claim to
be, but merely a vulgar thief, a “wanted criminal”, as he put it! A “run away
thug” who did not even know that he was a run away! If the Absurd has a face,
would it be different from Mr. Walid Shaaban’s?

Resigned, I told
him: “ Do what you have to do”. I prepared myself to go back to the civil
prison, boulevard 9 April.

When he called
the two cops who have brought me to the police station and told them to take me
away, I thought they were going to jail me right away. So I followed them
outside that sad place, and found myself again almost in the street facing the
crowded coffees. I prepared to climb into the car, but to my surprise they
asked me to follow them to the adjacent building, which shelters the
“Administration of the National Security”.

I climbed the
stairs with them, and found myself soon into another corridor. They asked me to
wait before a great padded door. That was the office of the Director of the
District.

After a while, I
was ushered into the office.

The Director was
busy talking on the telephone. Two other men sitting there near the desk looked
at me quizzically.

When he finished
his telephonic conversation, the director told me bluntly that I was rather in
a bad situation. He repeated the same silly scenario accusing me of theft etc,
but added something new:

“ We can do
something to get you out of this mess”.

Ah! So, it was
not as dark as it sounded.

As I have
definitely nothing to blame myself for, I remained unmoved. However, my silence
encouraged him to go on.

“ You have
applied for the renovation of your identity card,” he told me.

It was true.
That was since at least a month. Theoretically, this kind of service is granted
to the citizen in 24 hours…In the worst of the cases it would not bypass a
week. But each time I went to the police station to check whether my new card
was ready or not, I was said it was not yet.

Without the
identity card, I could not obtain a new passport as I intended to do, since my
old had run out of use.

It was not
amazing anyway. I have ceased to be amazed by the hypocritical behavior of the
Tunisian administration long ago. I knew those people were not civil servants,
for the simple reason that we – not them – were deemed to be the servants and
even the servitors. For them, to have a post in the police or even in the town
council was merely the way to torment their fellow-citizens. That’s all.

“ Yes I have
applied for an identity card, so what?”

“ You’ll not
going to get it, neither are you going to obtain a passport unless you are cooperative”.

We started
entering the heart of the matter.

“ What do you
mean with cooperative?” I asked.

The two other
men were listening silently.

“ Well, you’re a
journalist. You know what I mean.” He replied.

So I was still
enough lucky to be recognized as a journalist. I was going to forget it.

“ You said I am
a thief. A court has condemned me. And now you tell me I am a journalist and I
know what you mean. I think we should begin by clearing up the situation
first.”

He agreed.

As to the
charges and the sentence, he swept the air with his hand as to wipe them out,
and said:

“ This not a big
deal. You should not worry”.

But at these
words, I began really to worry. I knew since the first moment that all this
play had been thoroughly prepared. I was now going to know the denouement.

“ Lately”, he
went on, “ the President of the Republic had meddled in the dispute between
Mauritania and Libya. You did not write about it. Why?”

I was going from
a surprise to another.

I acknowledged
that I did not write about the matter. For me there was nothing to say. I did
not judge it was really important when the Middle East was so inflamed. I said:

“ It was on the
front page of the paper. What do you want more?”

“ No”, he
replied. “ We want you to write your column about this subject.”

I wanted to push
the absurd to its extremity. I asked:

“ Well, and what
do you suggest that I say?”

Then he began to
develop the official rhetoric about the Maghreb Arab, and all the bla bla we
hear on the radio and the TV, about the sagacity and the wisdom of our leaders,
etc. And he concluded by the great question:

“ How come that
you, the journalist, do not see the necessity of commenting on this great event
of our diplomacy?”

I never imagined
that some day, in the popular quarter of Bab Souika, a cop would lecture me
about my work. That was absolutely surrealistic as a situation. I would have
burst out in laughter and rolled down like an epileptic so absurd was the
scene, if I did not know that he would never forgive me even a little smile.
But I remained quiet. To provoke his ire at the moment he was imagining
impressing me was pointless. So, I tried to avoid worsening an already
complicated situation. I said merely:

“ I am not
writing on The Maghreb, and the Tunisian diplomacy is none of my business.»

He replied:

“ OK. Now we
want you to write…”

“ To write
what?”

“ To say what we
think… how we see things…”

I was not sure
to understand whom exactly his “we” was including. So, pushing the absurd a
little further, I candidly asked:

“ How do you
figure out I can do that? I mean how am I going to know what ‘you’ think and
how ‘you’ see things?”

“ That’s
simple”, he replied. “ You’ll have to come to my office, and we’ll work
together”.

“ You mean I
should have to write my commentaries with you?”

“ No. I mean
only that we discuss together some matters. You are the journalist, not me.”

Ah! Fortunately!
I was thinking he just wanted to have my post in the newspaper. Yet, what he
suggested was not much better either.

“ What will
become of the sentence for theft you informed me about?”

“ Forget it.
That’s not a problem. You know that if you accept cooperation nothing can
happen to you. You’ll get everything you need. “

“ And I’ll have
my passport?”

“You’ll have
your passport.”

“ OK”, I said. “
I’ll have to talk it over with my boss. Then I’ll tell you what he thinks of
your suggestion.”

“ No. That’s not
our agreement.” He replied.

“Why not?”

“You shouldn’t
talk of this to your boss. This is between us.”

“ I am sorry,
but I cannot do that. Let me suggest something to you at my turn. I’ll give you
the phone number of Mr. Ahmed Al Houni. And you tell him what you told me. If
he agrees, I will.”

That was the
solution I found at that moment to get away from that trap. I never imagined
that one day I should have to work with a Bab Souika cop for my commentaries on
international issues. Maybe he had other projects for me. Anyway, I tried to
hide behind my boss. I reminded him that Mr. Ahmed al Houni is a friend of Ben
Ali, and that if only he would consent to talk to him of his idea, there is a
chance that he would find it interesting.

The interview
ended there.

They released
me. They have become suddenly polite. One of the cops asked:

“Do you want a
ride? I can drop you…”

I thanked him
and said that I preferred to walk.

In the morrow, I
went to see my lawyer. I told him the story and asked him to check whether
there is really a sentence against me. Which he did.

It turned out
that the sentence had been issued, but the lawyer could not find the file nor
consult it. So, the question remained: if I was convicted for theft, what did I
steal?

Up to this day,
neither my lawyer nor me know the answer to that question.

Anyway, the
lawyer appealed against the judgment. A day was appointed. I went to the court.
The case was being dealt with in less than five minutes. The judge uttered my
name and the number of the affair, and just said:

-        
Affaire classed.

My lawyer wanted
to make clear that I have been victim of a judiciary mistake in addition to
police harassment. But the judge wanted to forget all about it. So, he simply
asked the lawyer to calm down and shut up.

The lawyer did
not insist, neither did I.

We both knew
that at that moment it was better for everybody not to much stir the muddy
waters of the Tunisian judiciary system. For my part at least, I judged that I
was enough lucky to get away with such a sentence: the file was void. In fact,
the court recognized that there was no case at all. But I knew that the
Tunisian prisons were full of people who are victims of such “ judiciary
mistakes”, and I have no illusions about any possibility that if I sacrificed
myself that was going to change. So, I shut up. I did not even ask the court
for the compensation of the moral and material damages they caused me. I was
too happy to get out free from the justice palace.

Well, free in
Tunis…it is perhaps an excess to say this.

That is why I
waited quietly until I could flee… legally, with a passport and a visa… to
support the national soccer team in Marseilles, as I pretended.

But when in the
station of Saint Charles, I found myself face to face with Prince Andrew,
coming to support the English team; I saw how far I was from being a true
soccer- nationalist. For I simply, turned my heels to the direction of the
stadium, and run away.

 

 

 

 

 

Footnotes:

 

           

(i)                 
Bourguiba would never have been first
President of Tunisia if he did not profit from two tragic events: 1) first, the
assassination of the great Union Leader Farhat Hashad. 2) The murder of the
second leader of the Destourian party, Salah Ben Youssef. Both men were his
rivals. Both were committed to a pan Arab vision that clashed completely with
the “petitesse” (narrow and tight) of Bourguiba’s view, and nullified the
right-wing settlers’ project of a French controlled North Africa. Both were
preaching joining forces with the other Liberation movements from Morocco to
Egypt, in order to face the French and the British imperialism together.
Bourguiba was an isolationist who believed in arrangements behind the curtains.
He succeeded because he was merely a collaborator. It is known that he was
behind the assassination of Salah Ben Youssef, which arranged also the French.
As to Farhat Hashad, it is said that the French «red hand» had murdered him.
But it had never been proved.

(ii)               
In the early seventies, the republican
constitution has been amended especially to give Habib Bourguiba the power of a
king! Without being a king, he was thus able to rule Tunisia for his time-life,
without elections! And in 2002, Mr. Ben Ali could claim to run for two supplementary
mandates thanks to an amazing 99,99% of referendum voices.

(iii)              
Indeed I am not suggesting that the
government banned me from writing for its own press. There used to be an
independent press in Tunisia, although the Destourian party made its survival
precarious through varied pressures and blackmails. I don’t know what became of
that press today. Some magazines have been pushed to shut down, and some others
have been forced to secretly subscribe for the membership of the party, which
made them as far “independent” as their boss (in the Ministry) allowed!

 

(iv)             
 It is in the early eighties that the MTI (: movement de la
tendance Islamique) would be allowed to have some activity in the political
spectrum. That liberal opening has been made by the former Prime Minister
Mohammed Mzali, the only man who had had the courage of allowing some
democratic multipartism in Tunisia in about 45 years of independence. He is
also an intellectual with humanist views, whose cultural magazine (Al Fikr: The
Reflection) has been the unique platform for all the literary and cultural
trends during many years, until Mr. Ben Ali suspended its publication, which
was a great lost indeed for the cultural life. Mzali was also the founder of
the “Union of the Tunisian Writers”.

 

(v)               
 I hasten to say that I have never met Mr. Mohamed Mzali
personally, although I contributed to his magazine (Al Fikr) three articles
about the historical origins of the Israeli-Arab conflict. But obviously, I
have not been forgiven for contributing to that cultural magazine, since for
years after Ben Ali’s coup, I was forbidden to write in the Tunisian press. And
when I succeeded in publishing some articles, I had to fight in order to be
paid. Some newspapers did not even pay me after publishing my stories: Assahafa
for example. I was forced to seek a job abroad.

 

(vi)             
Of course, it is hard for me or for
anybody in my case to prove such charges, albeit the observers know that this
is a long established tradition in Tunisia. When a journalist is ill
appreciated by the regime, no matter what is his (or her) experience and
professional competence, he will never see the end of the tunnel, so to speak.
If he is not simply fired (which happened to me), he will not find any magazine
or newspaper to hire him. These are the facts experienced by several colleagues
out there. For my part, suffice it to say that the Ministry of information
never accepted to allow me the national press card, despite repeated requests I
have made. Without such a card, it was merely impossible to join the
Association of journalists, or even to get a pay slip.

 

(vii)            
They have never explained why they
fired me actually. One morning, I was in the office of the telex reading the
news before writing my daily column, as I do every day. Suddenly, the guard
enters and tells me to get out because he had orders not to let me in! As I
refused, the Director of the newspaper, then Mohamed Mahfouz (not Al Arab’s
editorial adviser, who is Egyptian, but another) himself came up and asked me
to get out. Still, I refused. He called two cops of the secret police, who
forced me out.

 

See Hichem
Karoui home page:

 http://hichemkaroui.com/