Episode 1: Sidi Bouzid

Where were you on the day that changed the course of the 21st century?  I'm not talking about 9/11, but about January 14, 2011, ten years ago today. You don't remember? Then you're not going to want to miss this story. 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Erin Brown: [00:00:00] Where were you on the day that changed the course of the 21st century? The day that started the chain reaction that gave us Brexit and Donald Trump and ISIS, that brought back Vladimir Putin and started the refugee crisis? I'm not talking about 9/11, but about January 14th, 2011, 10 years ago today.  [00:00:21][21.0]

[00:00:22] You don't remember where you were? Yeah, neither do I.  [00:00:26][3.7]

[00:00:28] And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I can't blame you, but I also can't let you miss out on this story. You see, it's hard to know in the moment what an event is going to mean. When things are going to go from being just another Friday morning to being the first day of the next chapter of your life, let alone the next chapter of history. When you're there in the thick of it, it's hard to get the long view. It's the same story for Attia Athmouni. Attia is the kind of polished middle aged man whose graying beard, glasses and worn tweed coat give him the air of a college professor. In fact, that's what folks in his town called him, "The Professor," even though he teaches at the local high school, not a university.  [00:01:10][41.8]

[00:01:11] And that's what he was doing on the morning of December 17th, 2010 — giving a philosophy lecture to his students when his phone rang in the middle of class. An unexpected phone call was nothing out of the ordinary for a Attia. You see, he wasn't just a high school philosophy teacher. He was a longtime union activist in his town, a place called Sidi Bouzid, this squat and craggy little city in the middle of Tunisia. The central government, which had been under a dictator for the last twenty three years, had all but forgotten Sidi Bouzid and the unions were often the ones getting things done in town. Attia had been a mover and shaker in the teacher's union for decades and was well respected. So whenever something was afoot in Sidi Bouzid, someone would call a teacher. But that Friday morning, he wasn't prepared for what was on the other end of the line.  [00:01:58][47.3]

Attia Athmouni: [00:01:59] I got a phone call saying, we heard that there's someone who set himself on fire in front of the state building.  [00:02:04][4.6]

Erin Brown: [00:02:05] Someone had set himself on fire. Attia was stunned. Usually folks would call him to complain about union disputes or squabbles with police. Had his friend heard correctly?  [00:02:15][10.6]

[00:02:17] He turned his back on his class and cupped his hand over the phone while they talked. The details were sparse. It was a young man, the fruit seller on the corner by the mosque downtown. No one really knew what happened. Attia decided he needed to see it for himself.  [00:02:31][14.2]

Attia Athmouni: [00:02:33] I said, I'll go to him. I'll see what happened.  [00:02:35][2.3]

Erin Brown: [00:02:36] Sidi Bouzid is in a big place. The state building was just a short drive down the main road from the school. He wasn't sure what to expect.  [00:02:42][6.3]

Attia Athmouni: [00:02:45] So I let my students out 15 minutes early and I headed towards the state building. But when I got there, all I found was a car flipped upside down, some ashes and some fruit.  [00:02:53][8.5]

[00:02:56] Attia stood there looking over the gruesome scene where a young fruit seller had just set himself on fire and tried to make sense of what had just gone on. Of course, he sensed the gravity of the situation, but in that moment, Attia had no idea that what had just happened would be the first spark to ignite the Arab Spring and reshape the course of history.  [00:03:15][19.6]

[00:03:32] I'm Erin Brown,.  [00:03:32][0.5]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:03:32] And I'm Cyrus Roedel, and this is Revolution one, the story of the Tunisian uprising on the Agora podcast network.  [00:03:39][6.6]

[00:03:48] You know, Erin, we're living through one of the biggest waves of social unrest in history. I'm sure you feel it.  [00:03:52][4.7]

Erin Brown: [00:03:53] Yeah, I mean, I've been to more marches in New York in the last four years than I had in my entire life before that. And people are out in the streets in countries all around the world protesting.  [00:04:01][8.8]

[00:04:03] It feels like there's something in the air, but also that there's something different about all these uprisings. We were talking about it just the other day, and you asked me a question that right at the core of it. Do you remember?  [00:04:14][11.5]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:04:15] Yeah, I think so. I asked you who the Gandhi or Dr. King or Nelson Mandela the 21st century was.  [00:04:21][5.4]

Erin Brown: [00:04:21] And there really isn't one.  [00:04:22][1.3]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:04:23] Yeah, I mean, not really. It's weird because after an entire century of revolutions led by these charismatic figures who were backed by these organized political movements, the revolutions we have now are — just they're just dramatically different. They're these spontaneous eruptions of regular people spilling into the streets, nothing about them is calculated or even centralized. And that's in large part because of the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring that followed. You know, that same Friday in 2010 that Attia got that earthshattering phone call, I was finishing up applications for master's programs in Middle Eastern studies. Back then, nearly every country in the region in the Middle East and North Africa, from Morocco in the west to Iran in the east, was under the control of some sort of dictatorship. I mean, the level of corruption or brutality or oppression that changed from country to country, but none of them had any real political rights or even rights of expression, like freedom of speech or assembly and been that way for decades. Most of the dictators in the region they've taken power before was even born and it seemed like they weren't going anywhere either. And then just in a matter of months, everything was flipped on its head and I watched in real time on Twitter as one by one those dictators were ousted or they were left desperately clinging to power. Tunisia lit a spark that spread across the whole region. There were six revolutions in a matter of months and major protests and a half a dozen other countries. Just a few months later, I was there in Jordan on the Syrian border. I saw hundreds of Syrians streaming to town every day as their country slowly collapsed. You saw this from a different angle, didn't you?  [00:05:55][91.9]

Erin Brown: [00:05:55] Yeah, I mean, we hadn't met yet, (Cyrus and I are married, by the way,) but it will be no surprise to you that even back then, as a little baby journalist, I was a breaking news junkie. That spring, felt like every other day another revolution started. But just as soon as it had something else major swooped in to take its place in the news cycle, like Gabby Giffords being shot or the Fukushima nuclear disaster. By the time we realized the Arab Spring was going to be a major story, the Tunisian revolution had already happened. Most news organizations skipped right over Tunisia and headed to Egypt, where things were spiraling out of control, and then went on to Yemen and Libya and Syria. But every one of those countries had been watching what happened in Tunisia and countries for years to come would write.  [00:06:40][44.3]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:06:40] I mean, just last year, there was a brand new round of protests that swept to Algeria and Sudan, but also Chile and Argentina.  [00:06:45][5.0]

Erin Brown: [00:06:46] There's this regime in France and the protests in Hong Kong and of course, the Black Lives Matter movement.  [00:06:51][4.7]

[00:06:52] But it's not just the protests, we feel the effects of the Arab Spring in so many other ways. In the 10 years since I've reported on everything from the war in Ukraine to the refugee crisis in Europe to the U.S. elections. And if you burrow into just about any major news event these days, you don't have to go too far back to hit the Arab Spring. Want to know why the UK and EU or duking it out over a divorce agreement? The Syrian revolution devolved into a civil war which sent a flood of refugees not just into Jordan, where you are, but also into Europe. The response was a rising tide of nationalism. And guys like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson played on people's fears of refugees flooding into the country in their bid to make Brexit a reality. You know, one of the pillars of Donald Trump's first campaign was a promise to ban Muslims feeding off of people's fears about ISIS, which was yet another outcome of the Arab Spring.  [00:07:44][52.0]

[00:07:45] The success of that policy empowered him to take an even harder stance on the U.S. southern border. It goes on and on.  [00:07:52][6.9]

[00:07:53] But most Americans, including me up until we started this project, know next to nothing about the political, economic and cultural factors behind the Arab Spring, let alone anything about the people who were involved. You know, we're a team of a historian and a journalist, but we wanted to know what happens in between the headlines and the history books. What are those powerful personal stories that get whittled down to a sound bite for the news or aggregated for the historical record? What's it really like to change the story of your country and the world?  [00:08:25][31.6]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:08:26] So we went to Tunisia to dove deep into what actually happened. And since there wasn't a Gandhi or Dr. King or Nelson Mandela to interview, we just talked to the regular everyday people who made the revolution happen. It's a story of desperation, defiance and transformation. Suddenly, students were becoming spies, mothers were turning into activists and exiles emerge as politicians to push their country towards democracy. We interviewed dozens of people from all sides, the uprising. And now we're bring the story of the Tunisian revolution to you through their voices.  [00:08:58][32.1]

[00:09:00] So let's get started. This is episode one, Sidi Bouzid.  [00:09:03][3.4]

[00:09:13] So then what does make someone decide to set themselves on fire?  [00:09:15][2.7]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:09:16] In Sidi Bouzid reaching heaven is easier than having a job here.  [00:09:20][3.4]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:09:21] This is Zied Bouazizi, his cousin Mohammed Bouazizi was the man who set himself on fire.  [00:09:27][6.4]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:09:28] We grew up together, yeah. Even I mean, when we started smoking, we started together.  [00:09:31][2.7]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:09:32] Sidi Bouzid where the boys grew up, and where our story starts, is this economically depressed town in the middle of Tunisia. In case you need a quick geography refresher, Tunisia's this little wedge of land on the African side of the Mediterranean. It's Italy's boot is kicking Sicily towards. You might not think you know a lot about Tunisia, but you probably know more than you think. If you've read the Aeneid in high school or learned about Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants, that's all Carthage, the ancient capital on the northern coast of the country. For centuries, it was a major producer of grain and grapes to the Roman Empire. Then the Arabs came in the seventh century and it started this process where Tunisia became the Arab and Muslim country it is today. Even if you're not so familiar with Carthage or ancient Rome, you've probably seen another place in Tunisia and one that's even close to where our story starts tattooing.  [00:10:20][48.0]

C3PO: [00:10:22] What a desolate place this is.  [00:10:24][1.4]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:10:29] That's right, the hometown of Luke Skywalker is an actual village in the southern part of Tunisia. And apart from those mud cave homes, it looks a fair bit like Sidi Bouzid. Sidi Bouzid is right in the middle of Tunisia's agricultural belt, and it's mostly a waypoint for fruits and vegetables before they're shipped off to bigger cities. This whole area has been ignored by the government for decades. While money was pumped into infrastructure projects on the coast in cities like Tunis, which has a modern highway system and a beautiful tree lined avenue downtown, Sidi Bouzid doesn't really even have a stoplight. The main street is this hodgepodge of shabby cafes, mosques, little convenience shops and just a lot of empty storefronts, most of the neighborhoods don't even have paved roads and they definitely don't have sidewalks. Almost every news report I'd read about Sidi Bouzid include the word dusty, and they weren't wrong.  [00:11:19][50.8]

[00:11:21] When we stepped into one of those cafes, it felt more like a waiting room than anything. Every place is filled with these groups of young men nursing a single cup of Nescafe or a pack of cigarets for hours, just sitting there waiting for things to change in their lives. Ten years ago, it was even worse. So then Zed's quip about it being easier to get into heaven than to get a job wasn't really a joke. Back in 2010, the unemployment rates in rural parts of Tunisia was nearly 40 percent.  [00:11:49][28.7]

[00:11:51] And if you could find a job, it was probably an agriculture working long hours for almost no money.  [00:11:56][5.5]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:11:57] In Sidi Bouzid no way either just to be a farmer, to work and like farms and things like that, or there is no way to have a job.  [00:12:04][6.5]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:12:11] People were living on a couple of dollars a day and sometimes even less even Zied who'd move to Tunis and gotten a master's degree, could only find odd jobs for me.  [00:12:20][8.6]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:12:20] I came here to Tunis and there was working as like a translator, maybe just having like a little amount of money, much better than nothing.  [00:12:27][7.0]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:12:28] But none of the jobs are permanent and none of them was a career. If you wanted something full time, you'd have to pay a bribe.  [00:12:33][5.8]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:12:34] I remember once I like someone told me that they need to pay twelve thousand dinars to have a job. Yep, to be a teacher.  [00:12:42][7.7]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:12:43] That amount, 12000 dinars. That was more than most teachers made in a year.  [00:12:46][3.6]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:12:47] I mean, someone especially from Sidi Bouzid at the time having twelve thousand dinars. If I have that amount of money, I would start my own business.  [00:12:54][6.4]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:12:55] So then lots of Tunisians were living on the economic edge like this. The formal business sector at the time was controlled by this corrupt circle close to the president's family. Unless you had connections, you weren't breaking into it. Everyone else trying to make it on their own had to wade through a sea of red tape to get a business permit or operate under the table by bribing the police.  [00:13:14][19.7]

Erin Brown: [00:13:16] And that's where we meet Mohammed Bouazizi, the man who set himself on fire.  [00:13:20][4.2]

[00:13:21] You need to know that Mohammed wasn't an activist or a zealot. He wasn't politically engaged at all. In fact, he was 26 years old and already out of options. Zied described him as a sweetly naive guy, scrawny, demure, generous to a fault. You could take the money out of his pocket and he'd trust that you needed it more than he did. The boys would be out smoking at a cafe, and if you'd asked to borrow some cash for a drink or a smoke, Mohammed would give him his last dinar, even though he needed it. Mohammed's dad died when he was young and as the oldest son, he had to help meet his family's needs. While he was in school, Mohammed was perpetually exhausted because he'd pick up odd jobs after class.  [00:14:03][42.5]

[00:14:09] Zied left Sidi Bouzid to go to university, but Mohammed couldn't.  [00:14:12][2.6]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:14:12] He's not graduated from University Secondary School, that's it.  [00:14:15][2.7]

Erin Brown: [00:14:16] A lot of news reports got this part wrong. They said Muhammad had an advanced degree, but he didn't. But college or no making ends meet in Sidi Bouzid was tough.  [00:14:26][9.3]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:14:27] Mohammed Bouazizi was the person who is taking care of the whole family, by the way. And he was like spending the whole time, especially on the day selling fruits on streets. And at night he'd go to the supermarket from midnight to 6 am, like to work for like some money, having some money, 6 dinars, 7 dinars, 10 dinars per night and get some fruits and vegetables. So he would be able to to sell them during the day.  [00:14:47][20.1]

Erin Brown: [00:14:48] Mohammed had a fruit cart and he'd sell produce from the area to people on the main drag of the town. But he wasn't supposed to. There was one government sanctioned place to sell produce and Sidi Bouzid, and that was the central market.  [00:15:00][12.2]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:15:01] He was not able to sell his fruit in the weekly market. He needs to go to streets because he was not able just to fight for his place in this market. You have you have I mean, to be strong so you can join this will say gangs in the markets, in the area, so you'd be able to sell your food.  [00:15:16][15.1]

Erin Brown: [00:15:16] Mohammed didn't have the power or the money to get a stall in the market. So he bought a little hand cart and set up on a busy corner right near a mosque where there were good crowds and regular foot traffic. Then one afternoon, a policewoman and her partner showed up.  [00:15:30][13.4]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:15:30] She asked him to move from that place. Someone who's working hard. Where do you want him to go? They are saying you are selling the fruits here, yeah, it's not good for the beauty of the city.  [00:15:40][9.8]

Erin Brown: [00:15:41] Essentially, they were telling him his cart of oranges was bringing down the curb appeal of a town that was as short on time as it was on infrastructure. Look, Tunisia's got plenty of cities along the coast with gorgeous beaches or Roman ruins that have been tourist hotspots for decades. But Sidi Bouzid isn't a pretty whitewashed town on the sea. Remember, dusty. [00:16:00][19.4]

[00:16:02] This kind of harassment from the police wasn't uncommon. Mohammed was used to it. They were most likely just looking for a bribe. But they took his fruit instead as a fine and he left, but he couldn't not work. So he looked for a new spot.  [00:16:16][13.9]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:16:17] So he'd left that place that day. And like three days later, on Friday, he moved to this taxi station and he started selling his fruits there, yeah. [00:16:24][7.4]

Erin Brown: [00:16:25] But the police found him again and told him to move.  [00:16:27][2.3]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:16:27] So he refused to move from the area. She took his balance.  [00:16:31][3.3]

Erin Brown: [00:16:31] They took his scale's probably the most valuable thing he owned and the only essential piece of equipment in his business.  [00:16:39][7.9]

[00:16:41] He was pissed and an argument started, he called the policewoman a word I can't say on the radio, and then she slapped him.  [00:16:50][8.7]

[00:16:51] He was humiliated and furious. Sidi Bouzid is a traditional place. And being slapped by a woman in public, especially one who had just stripped him of his means of supporting his family, was beyond what was his pride could bear. He stormed off the police station to try and talk to someone about this humiliation. He wanted to hold the policewoman responsible and get his scales back.  [00:17:13][22.5]

[00:17:15] They refused to hear him. Then he went to the mayor's office and was turned away. Finally, he went to the Wallea, the state building where the governor's office was. He demanded to talk to the governor. The guards at the gate told him to go away.  [00:17:32][16.9]

[00:17:34] We can never know what Mohammed was feeling before he took his next step or what he was hoping to achieve. He never told anyone and afterwards it would be too late.  [00:17:42][7.9]

[00:17:43] But whether out of anger or desperation, as he stood outside the gates of the governor's office, Mohammed Bouazizi poured lighter fluid on himself and then he flipped the wheel of his lighter.  [00:17:53][10.4]

[00:17:55] Moments later, he was engulfed in flames.  [00:17:57][2.1]

[00:18:05] We went to Sidi Bouzid Rasyid to see where all this happened. As we drove into town that first night, he showed us the corner where Mohammed's car had been, I slowed down to take a look.  [00:18:15][9.8]

[00:18:16] Then he pointed across the street to the Wallea where he lit himself on fire. I hadn't realized everything was so close to the police station was next door and the mayor's office was just a few blocks down. In my mind, Mohammed Bouazizi Self immolated must have included this grand wind up, abandoning his cart somewhere in the city and marching downtown to this fancy government office to demand his rights.  [00:18:40][24.3]

[00:18:42] But he just walked across the street. The smallness of it all made it to me even more tragic.  [00:18:49][7.4]

[00:18:51] I think he had said it best when we asked him what he was feeling when he heard the news about Mohammad.  [00:18:55][3.8]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:18:56] Honestly, I was very angry that I at least give people the opportunity to listen to them what they want, just talk, at least to talk. You are not giving me this opportunity. So what do you expect from people to do?  [00:19:09][12.1]

Erin Brown: [00:19:09] It was as if there were two parallel worlds on that little stretch of road in Sidi Bouzid divided by economics and power. The police officers and municipal workers and probably even the governor must have passed Mohammed every morning on their way into work, either indifference rendered him invisible, especially when he came to be heard. And while Mohammed was just feet from the air each day to him, the governor who refused to hear him might as well have been a ghost.  [00:19:37][27.2]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:19:38] The whole time I'd spent it in Sidi Bouzid, I never saw the face of the governor there, yeah. You may see, I mean, God or Allah's face, but not the governor. They're always like, where's the governor? He's inside the car. That's it. I never saw his face here.  [00:19:53][15.2]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:20:06] Zied was in Tunis working when this all happened, but news spread quickly among folks from Sidi Bouzid. When we were there, there was a minor traffic accident on the main road and brought out what seemed like nearly half of the town to see what was going on. Obviously, a man lighting himself on fire would grab even more attention, so that's why Zied had hopped on a bus right away to head home and why Attia, our professor slash activists, walked out on the students to see what was happening. As if he was trying to piece together what had happened from the remains, Mohammed's cart, someone had seen the whole thing told him they'd taken Bouazizi to the local clinic. Attia rushed over.  [00:20:44][37.9]

[00:20:45] But the scene in the clinic was just as much of a mess. They weren't prepared for someone completely covered in second and third degree burns. And it turned out they didn't even have an ambulance.  [00:20:55][9.6]

Attia Athmouni: [00:20:57] When I got there, he was just laying in a hallway. I asked what was happening and one of the administrators told us they couldn't find a way to transfer him to Sfax. There was no car.  [00:21:05][8.2]

[00:21:07] Attia knew that Bouazizi he needed to get the bigger, more sophisticated hospitals in Sfax, which is about 85 miles away on the coast. He saw that this was his moment to step in and use all the political cash he had built up over the years as a union organizer. So Attia leaned on the administrators, see if they couldn't do more for Bouazizi.  [00:21:25][17.8]

Attia Athmouni: [00:21:29] I got really angry and I demanded that the administrator find a car to transfer him to the hospital. It was impossible for him to stay in that condition, lying in the hallway.  [00:21:37][7.6]

[00:21:40] The administrator tried to shrug me off, but I leaned on him. I threatened that I would organize a sit in at the hospital if bouazizi wasn't transferred to Sfax. Everyone was listening into the argument and the pressure worked. He started to look for a car to transfer Bouazizi [00:21:56][15.8]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:22:00] By the time Attia left the clinic and head of the center of town, it was late in the afternoon. A large crowd had started to gather in front of the municipal building where there are still streaks of ash on the ground from Bouazizi's body. [00:22:11][10.8]

Attia Athmouni: [00:22:15] When we got there, we started hugging the people who were gathering and we started shouting and holding up homemade signs and banners. Little by little, the crowd grew and they started throwing fruits and rocks at the state building and climbing its walls. They were holding the banners, pushing for the government to listen to our claims and answer our demands. [00:22:34][18.8]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:22:37] I think to a lot of American ears, this sounds pretty normal. A tragedy happened that people protest. But at the time, protesting against the government was absolutely illegal in Tunisia. Any gathering of more than three people risk being broken up by the police and it could land you in jail indefinitely.  [00:22:54][17.1]

[00:22:56] The folks leading these protests were the kind of people you might call the usual suspects, these were the people at any sort of union meeting or political agitation in the town. They're mostly older men who had been activists since the 80s. Attia was one of them. And he knew that this was bigger than just a spat with the police.  [00:23:13][16.8]

Attia Athmouni: [00:23:17] We were telling the people the Bouazizi was a victim of injustice then that the administrative, political and security authorities mistreated him to the point that he committed suicide. The authorities were responsible for his death. Our words resonated with them and spread across the whole town until more people emerged and were prepared to support Bouazizi and his issue.  [00:23:37][20.1]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:23:43] The protest that you went to were small and they ended quickly. The police would show up and that would be that. He and the other opposition leaders would have to wait for the next opportunity to chip away at the regime, but even after 20 years of trying, little had really budged.  [00:23:57][13.9]

[00:23:58] But as the crowd outside the Wallea thickened, Attia something was different this time. I asked him how he knew.  [00:24:04][5.5]

[00:24:06] Because of the youth, because there were young people joining the movement for the first time. These marginalized youth, it is impossible that you control them. You cannot limit their impulse. You know what I suggested? A sit in. That we put up tents, close off the roads and invite people from even the suburbs to join us and create this big force that would corner the regime. But the youth couldn't be contained. So I wasn't able to hold the movement back. I was only able to move it forward. [00:24:35][29.0]

[00:24:41] Attia uses the word "Shabab" here. It's an Arabic word to describe young men from the ages of 14 to, well, whenever they were able to get a job, find a wife and enter real adulthood. You know, dudes, the boys. These were the politically disinterested kids who'd been hanging out in the coffee shops, unemployed, but they were kids who identified with Bouazizi. They started to turn up, and some of them had cheap camera phones. Those camera phones would prove to be incredibly potent weapons against the regime. And as the speeches in front of the world grew more impassioned, someone in the crowd started recording. Soon they would post the video online. The shaky footage became a call to arms for anyone who saw it.  [00:25:23][41.4]

Erin Brown: [00:25:29] Zied arrived in Sidi Bouzid the next day and joined his family and the rest of the Bouazizi clan. Everyone in the town was out on the streets. The police could barely contain them.  [00:25:39][9.3]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:25:39] I went back to Sidi Bouzid and they felt like seeing this conflicts against the police and things like that. It was a good opportunity for for me at least to express myself to be a man, a real man. And we start burning wheels. I remember someone wanted just to open like a gas bottle, a big one. He wanted just a big explosion.  [00:25:57][17.3]

Erin Brown: [00:25:59] The protest gave people an outlet for their frustration and their boredom. For the first time in their lives many of these young people felt like they could say and do things in public that were completely off limits and taboo just a few days before. The crowd empowered them. They could shout at the police, they could demand action.  [00:26:16][17.8]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:26:18] They said, like "Shughl hurriya, karama wataniya, khubz wa ma, wa Ben Ali la." We can survive anything on bread like water, but without Ben Ali much better. we want our dignity.  [00:26:28][10.3]

Erin Brown: [00:26:29] More and more people streamed into the streets. The local police, who knew almost everyone in the town and didn't want to see a riot break out, couldn't keep the masses from gathering during the day.  [00:26:39][10.2]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:26:41] Our families, they were giving them food, by the way. They were preparing couscous and things like that, and they were giving them to the police officers on the streets. And that night, it's hell, it's completely different.  [00:26:51][10.9]

Erin Brown: [00:26:53] By the second evening, they had to call for reinforcements from elsewhere. But the police and forces from the Ministry of the Interior who showed up weren't as keen on keeping the peace. They didn't have the same ties with the local community. So when it came to force, it wasn't their cousin or their teacher they were raising a baton to. It was a stranger trying to threaten the regime that paid their bills. They shot tear gas into the crowd and started beating protestors, including Zied.  [00:27:22][28.7]

Zied Bouazizi: [00:27:22] Me, my brother and my father. We are all beaten, even my dad. He didn't even participate in anything like an old man hanging on the street. He was arrested, they took him and he was beaten and he came back home with, like, blue eyes and things like that. We're having fun on him.  [00:27:41][18.4]

Erin Brown: [00:27:42] Despite the brutality, there was an energy in the crowd. You can hear it. And how he had laughs at his dad's black eyes. But Zyad and the rest of the protesters had no idea that what had started as outrage on behalf of his cousin was already becoming the first days of a revolution.  [00:27:58][15.8]

[00:28:04] As things devolved on the street and Sidi Bouzid and the news of the protests started to spread. One person was completely unaware: Mohammed Bouazizi. He'd been transferred to a hospital outside of Tunis put on life support and wrapped from head to toe in white bandages like a mummy. And he was about to receive a very special visitor. A tall man with slicked back dark hair in wire glasses and an expensive suit with a camera crew in tow. Bouazizi may have never seen the face of the governor in his 26 years in Sidi Bouzid, but in his final moments of life and many speculate he was in fact, long dead at this moment, he was about to come face to face with Tunisia's dictator, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.  [00:28:52][47.7]

Cyrus Roedel: [00:29:03] Revolution one is produced by me, Cyrus Roedel and Erin Brown, Tim O'Keefe is our composer and engineer, a special thanks this episode goes to Omar Ebid, who voiced Attia, and Forat al Hattab, who helped with translations. We recorded this episode at La Fabrique in downtown Tunis. Join us next week for Episode two, where we meet that shady visitor at Mohammed Bouazizi bedside and hear the story of how he built an ironclad police state that he ruled from yachts and mansions for 23 years.  [00:29:31][27.9]

[00:29:32] And also, if you like this episode, could you do us a favor and leave us to review? Reviews are the best way for people to find new podcasts, and we would love to share this story with even more people. Thanks, and we'll see you next time.  [00:29:32][0.0]

[1544.4]