Tunisie doth protest too much, methinks

Oh Tunisia! 

A huge national strike that was planned for tomorrow (13th December), and that we had basically planned our whole lives around this week, has just been cancelled, but let me tell you, Tunisia loves to strike.

Friday afternoons are the favourite, just after the Friday prayers. There a huge Mosque behind my office and as the prayers end, the chanting often starts. I took the picture below from my office the other day. It's rarely violent, usually pre-advertised and always loud.
Of course Tunisia was at the epi-centre of the Arab spring in late 2010 and early 2011. The government here was overthrown on 14th January 2011, an event we now celebrate with a public holiday.

 View from my office window last Friday

I love protests. I love standing up for what you believe in. I hate violence. I hate mob culture.

 

Protest prep behind my office

Some may argue that this tendency to strike is a throwback to Tunisia's close history with France, but this has always been a country where people have stood up for what they believe in, a land where people confront opposition and fight oppression... and so, the story of Felicity and Perpetua.

Felicity and Perpetua

So, strangely, Jung and I somehow found ourselves on a tour of all the Christian sites of Carthage earlier this year, and part of this tour was to visit the supposed execution site of Felicity and Perpetua, the famous female, Tunisian, Christian martyrs, from the third century. Perpetua was a noble woman who was put to dead for being a Christian along with her slave, Felicity. We have a nice stained-glass window to commemorate them at my church.

Her father pleaded with her to denounce her faith many times before her eventual execution, but she stood fast, despite the assurance of certain death. According to surviving texts, which are written in the first person, they both seemed to want to martyred - Felicity, who was pregnant when arrested, was relieved to give birth before the execution, as she would have missed out - as pregnant women could not be executed at that time.

The accounts of their deaths are pretty brutal, first set upon by wild animals, then impaled with swords. At the Amphitheatre in Carthage, it's not difficult to imagine the jeering Romans and the bears and leopards being released from the holding areas (all of the underground tunnels remain and exploration is, naturally, essential).

With such a strong history of defiance, no matter what the consequences, Tunisians continue to stand up for their beliefs and their values, and it's unlikely that this society will ever allow itself to be suppressed again.

An Aside

Also this week, I was invited to the Ambassador's Residence - I guess he had heard about my great singing voice!

The house was completely beautiful - and they had a huge, real (?!?) Christmas tree. There was a very lively rendition of Good King Wenslaslas at the close, which I wasn't really expecting, but I guess it's a bit of a party piece for the Embassy! 

Here's a picture of the Queen and I, having a ball:

P.S. I swear, I have been staring at my advent calendar for the past half an hour, and there really is no number 12 door.