By Fire: Writings on the Arab Spring

The Spark (L’étincelle)

The chapters selected from The Spark focus on former Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s corrupt regime; how he deposed President Habib Bourguiba, an educated and a visionary man, in 1987; and Mohamed Bouazizi’s difficult life and death. Unlike By Fire, which takes us into Mohamed’s head, The Spark begins by taking the reader into the heads of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali after both flee like thieves from their countries. It finally dawns on the two dictators that they have lost their grip on power in 2011, after the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. Using light mockery and humor, Ben Jelloun portrays the two exiled dictators: “While Mubarak has a headache, what is Ben Ali, the Tunisian, who fled from his country on January 14, doing?… What does he do with his days? He watches television. He just lies around. He too [like Mubarak] doesn’t feel like coloring his hair. He is depressed. He lives in a gilded prison [Saudi Arabia].” Throughout the book Ben Jelloun condemns the dictators’ brutality, unmasks their greed, corruption, and total indifference toward their people. After Bouazizi’s brutal suicide, writes Ben Jelloun in The Spark, “with calm and dignity, Tunisians rose as one. It was the police who were violent; their brutality left several dozen dead and hundreds of others wounded. Submissive for twenty-three years to a quiet dictatorship, the people succeeded in bringing down Ben Ali, his family, and his racketeering and mafia clan.”

The Spark also surveys the situations in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Morocco, and Libya at the very beginning of the Arab Spring. Ben Jelloun writes, “The Arab Spring exploded victoriously mainly because the conditions were ripe. People spontaneously poured into the streets and decided to go all the way without following the orders of any political leader, party chief, or, much less, leaders of religious movements.” Especially important in this book is Ben Jelloun’s distinction between the words revolt and revolution. For him, a revolt occurs when people rise as one against a regime. Revolts often lack both formal organizations and recognized leaders. The Tunisian revolt is a good example as it began spontaneously when Bouazizi’s desperate act was mis- or overinterpreted as the cue to demand the end to Ben Ali’s dictatorial regime.

Ben Jelloun sees the Arab Spring as a string of revolts and not revolutions. In The Spark he makes a rough comparison between, for example, the Tunisian revolt and the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, which, in 1974, overthrew a forty-year-old dictatorship and gave people the right to vote, free health care, pensions for the elderly, and free public education. The Carnation Revolution was carefully planned and led by Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. The junior officers of the military simply deposed their Portuguese superiors and set up a three-person junta that guided the country to democratic elections. The Carnation Revolution led to a new, democratic state with entitlements for virtually every class of people. The Portuguese were thrilled to have their repressive regime removed and to see instead respect for civil rights and the rule of law. The Arab Spring revolts, however, failed to have an outcome similar to the Carnation Revolution. Tunisia is the only nation in the region to have emerged from the Arab Spring with a democratic state. “Tunisians have shattered the dogma that citizens of the Arab world must either accept a secular authoritarian status quo or must submit to Islamist authoritarian rule” (Ryan 2014). The New York Times applauded Tunisia’s achievement: “After a long and often fraught process, Tunisia has managed to produce the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and it has done so through consensus” (“Tunisia’s Remarkable Achievement” 2014). Then, in October 2015, a group of labor, business, legal- and human-rights activists called the National Dialogue Coalition won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel committee cited the coalition’s “decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011” (Chan 2015).

There were earlier, occasional revolts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, but they were strongly repressed, and all the opponents were eliminated. Everything had been done to suppress the emergence of the individual as a singular entity. The French Revolution allowed French citizens to become individuals with rights and duties. “In the Arab world, it is the clan, the tribe, the family that is recognized, not the person as an individual,” writes Ben Jelloun in The Spark. Yet, the individual is a voice, a person who has a say and who expresses his opinion by participating in free and fair elections. “That’s what democracy is about: it’s a culture based on a social contract,” Ben Jelloun adds. “This is why,” he contends about the Arab Spring, “it’s not an ideological revolution.” There was no leader, no guide, and no party to propel the revolution forward. It was millions of ordinary people who poured onto the street because they ran out of patience and tolerance. It is a new kind of revolution: spontaneous and improvised.

The Spark condemns Arab presidents who behave like absolute monarchs and stay in power by force, by corruption, and through lies and blackmail. Ben Jelloun argues that once leaders come to power, they think it is for eternity, whether the people want them or not. In order to appease the West, they establish a sort of “formal democracy.” Everything’s in their hands, though, and they will not tolerate any opposition. While in power, they do business, get rich, and keep their money in American or European banks. For Ben Jelloun, a crucial outcome of the Arab Spring is that dignity and honor have been restored to a whole generation. Arab citizens will no longer remain silent, submissive, and at the disposition of contemptuous power. Ben Jelloun hopes “an Arab man will become an individual who has a name, a voice, and all his rights” after the experience of the Arab Spring.

Wrapping up The Spark, Ben Jelloun tries to summarize the Arab Spring’s aspirations, even if its reality fell short of the ideal. He writes,

What took place in Tunisia and Egypt is by nature moral and at the same time ethical. It’s a full rejection, without compromise, of authoritarianism, corruption, theft of the country’s resources, nepotism, favoritism, humiliation and illegitimacy that lie at the base of these leaders’ coming to power and whose behavior is similar to the ways of the mafia. These protests bring a little bit of moral hygiene in a society that has been so exploited and humiliated. (L’étincelle 2011, 31–35)

When asked if he felt personally touched by the events, Ben Jelloun responded:

I am still affected by the events that are unfolding in the Arab world. I am appalled; I am angry; I am horrified by the massacres in Syria and by the impotence of the United Nations and the West. The Arab world is in the middle of a revolution; at the moment, we see only drama and blood. Perhaps something good will come out of all this — a real democracy, secularity, and a prosperity that will help the most destitute. (Treisman 2013)

Ben Jelloun cares deeply about politics, is interested in the Arab Spring and its future. Yet, he considers himself a writer only, not a political engagé: “I’m not a political writer. I am a citizen, concerned about politics, but I’m first and foremost a storyteller, a novelist, and a fabulator who plays with words and with the imaginary” (Triesman 2013).