Revolution and Its Aftermath Play Out on an Avenue That Defines a City

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/world/africa/tunis-journal-a-front-row-seat-for-an-uprising.html

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TUNIS — An elderly veteran of Tunisia’s struggle for independence has watched his country’s transformations — through colonialism, a coup and an uprising — from his regular spot at a cafe on the avenue that bears the name of his hero.

Tear gas sometimes wafts into the cafe. Other days, only voices drift in, as they did on a recent afternoon while Islamists gathered on the avenue to support their leaders. “The people are Muslim,” a crowd chanted. “We won’t surrender!”

From his window seat, the veteran, Mohamed Awadi, 83, recalled the many lives of the avenue, named for Tunisia’s first post-independence president, Habib Bourguiba. After the 2011 uprising against President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Avenue Habib Bourguiba became the stage for Tunisia’s politics and never-ending protests, projecting both the hopes and anxieties of a nation bracing for change.

Most days, Mr. Awadi, who said he once served as one of Bourguiba’s personal guards, looks out and worries. “This is a revolution that is not won yet,” he said.

On Tuesday, a young man set himself on fire on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, with witnesses saying he screamed that unemployment had forced him to become a cigarette vendor. It was a reminder of the rebellion’s unfulfilled demands for dignity and work more than two years after Mohamed Bouazizi, another vendor, set himself on fire in an act that set off the revolt.

The Arab uprisings have changed cities like Tunis, turning the avenues, squares and traffic circles where protesters marched and died into hallowed spaces. Now those sites seem to measure the progress of the revolts, as in Bahrain, where the authorities have tried to wipe away the memory of the uprising there, renaming the roundabout where the protesters gathered and sealing it off with soldiers.

Traffic no longer flows though Tahrir Square in Cairo. It is filled with tents that feel ever more permanent and suggest a chaotic impasse. Avenue Habib Bourguiba, guarded by riot police officers but full of movement and life, reflects the cautious hope of Tunisia’s transition. In its best moments, the avenue ties together the nation’s strands, forging a community even when Tunisians seem at odds.

It felt that way for a moment last month, after the assassination of a leftist politician on a Tunis street led to fears of broader unrest. But as the avenue settled into its familiar rhythms, the country seemed to calm, defying the darkest predictions.

Generations ago, the ground underneath the avenue was wetlands, paved over to connect Tunis’s old city to the capital’s port. After Tunisia became a French protectorate in 1881, the avenue was renamed for Jules Ferry, the French prime minister and educator who notoriously set his countrymen about the task of civilizing “the inferior races.”

His statue lorded over the avenue, with the French subjects symbolized by a woman at Ferry’s feet, holding up wheat in an offering of fealty, according to Fatma Ben Becher, who wrote a book about the avenue.

The anticolonial movement gathered steam on the avenue. Photographs from April 9, 1938, show soldiers stringing barbed wire near a protest in front of the Cathedral St. Vincent de Paul. The chants would be familiar today: “Power to Tunisians.”

After independence, the avenue was renamed for Bourguiba, who imposed his vision of a secular, modern state. Ferry’s statue was torn down and replaced with one of Bourguiba riding a horse.

For decades, the avenue was given more to culture than politics. The Municipal Theater hosted poetry readings, plays and the region’s most famous singers, in performances that Ms. Ben Becher said she never forgot. When the waiters still wore white coats, they held a monthly competition, racing with their trays to see who could avoid spilling coffee. In the 1980s, the local council organized a giant game of chess on the boulevard, borrowing an event that one of the council members saw in Moscow’s Red Square.

Ms. Ben Becher said the avenue “was the most lively place in Tunis.”

It was falling into disrepair by the time Mr. Ben Ali deposed Bourguiba in a bloodless coup in 1987. The road was renovated, but its nature changed, reflecting the country’s mood. The florists’ stalls that brightened the boulevard were moved to the end of the road, where no one could see them. The avenue became associated with the Interior Ministry’s imposing headquarters, a symbol of a repressive police state.

“It used to be so strict,” said Lotfi Lahmar, whose flower stall once sat across from the theater. “No one could talk.”

The new era started on the morning of Jan. 14, 2011, in scenes that recalled the anticolonial protests. After weeks of demonstrations across the country, Tunisians headed to Avenue Habib Bourguiba and demanded that Mr. Ben Ali leave.

“I took a cab there; it was surreal,” said Youssef Gaigi, who had participated in earlier protests in the capital that the police always prevented from reaching the avenue. The cabdriver “thought we were a bunch of kids who didn’t know what we were doing.”

“I guess we were,” he said. “We didn’t know what would happen.”

At first, the police let people gather, and soon they filled the avenue, from the old theater down to the clock tower in the circle. Some of the bars stayed open. “The atmosphere was amazing,” Mr. Gaigi said. “I’m not sure we’ll ever get that back again.”

In the early afternoon, as protesters scaled the Interior Ministry’s walls, the police used violence to break up the gathering, firing tear gas onto the avenue and chasing protesters down side streets.

It was too late to contain the anger. By nightfall, Mr. Ben Ali had fled for Saudi Arabia.

Two days later, Selma Jabbes, the owner of the Al-Kitab bookstore on the avenue, put the covers of banned books in the window to celebrate newly won freedoms. Since then, though, the transition has been difficult for her store, and the avenue.

Tunisia’s tense debates unfold outside the bookstore in arguments over economic justice, the role of religion and the ways to overhaul institutions. Last April, the government made a vain attempt to ban gatherings on the avenue, causing more violent clashes. Barbed wire still surrounds the Interior Ministry and the French Embassy. These days, the waiters compete in a different competition, to see who can pull down the iron gates of the cafes fastest when tear gas is fired.

Last month, when the leftist politician Chokri Belaid was assassinated, someone threw a rock at Ms. Jabbes’s window, at a spot where she had hung a picture of Mr. Belaid.

“Democracy is a long way,” she said, sitting in the store, which her mother opened in 1967. “A hard way. We have to resist trouble.” She was determined that the store stay open as a beacon of culture.

She organized her own rally recently, bringing thousands of people onto Avenue Habib Bourguiba just to read books. “It was magic,” she said.

<NYT_AUTHOR_ID> <p>Farah Samti contributed reporting.