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/