On the “Arab Maghreb Union” vs “Maghrebi Union”

Recently, during a meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the “Arab Maghreb Union” the Moroccan Minister proposed to drop the term “Arab” in the name of the Union, in order to stick to the reality of Maghreb, a multicultural space where Amazigh (Berbers) and Black Africans coexist with Arabs (actually, who are not really Arabs, but merely Arabized Berbers). But the Tunisian Minister Rafik Abdessalam Bouchleka refused, arguing that Maghreb was Arab in terms of “civilisation, culture and geography”. Not only the geoagraphic argument is absurd (since when did Maghreb drift out of Africa and became part of the Arab Peninsula?), but the civilisation argument is the sign either of  intolerance either of ingnorance. Indeed, 45millions non-Arabs live in North Africa, why would we stick on all of us a wrong classification?

North Africa doesn’t exist only as a part of the “Arab World”, it also exists in itself: it has its own History, civilisation, numerous languages, ethnies. Egypt isn’t part of Arab Maghreb Union so is technically not concerned by this debate, but who is not aware of the fact that denying the non-Arab History of Egypt (Pharaonic) would be unacceptable for Egyptians? For the case of Maghreb, it is the same: denying the non-Arab past AND present is a denial to the identity of the land and its inhabibtants. As long as Maghrebi leaders refuse to stop to be just the satellites of the Middle-East, as long as they don’t listen to the people, asking for recognition and dignity, they will not drive us to the true democracy, the task we entrusted them with.

Reviving the Amazigh (Berber) Identity in Tunisia: because we are all Amazigh

Walk in the streets of Tunis, in the streets of Monastir or Bizerte, and listen to the people: people talk in Arabic, mostly, some in French and if tourists are around, in German, Italian or English. And unlike in the streets of Algeria or Morocco, you will never hear anybody talking in Tamazight (berber language). You might then conclude that unlike Algeria or Morocco, Tunisia is a pure Arab country. You’d be wrong.

Now walk nearby the mountains (Sidi Abdel Rahman mount, for example), wander in the small villages hardly reached by the hectic life of cities, walk in the cities a bit far from the centralized power, in Gasserine, in Tataouine, walk and watch the elder ladies: some wear thistypical square-patterned cloths kept tied by silver ornamental pins (‘Kholla’), and have around their necks ‘Rihanna’ (long chain made of big round silver rings as links) with ‘Khomssa’ pendants (Hand of Fatima), some even have tribal facial tattoos,  and all of them, when they talk, use words slightly different from those used in the big towns.  They don’t say ‘Ana’ (I, me), they say ‘Yeney’, the ‘Q’ is pronounced ‘G’. It seems Arabic but at least 30-40% of the words are not Arabic. What are they? They are Amazigh.

Go to the weddings, you will see the ancestral Berber costumes, the Berber jewellery (such as the ‘Kholkhal’, massive anklets), the music played strangely seems the same as in Kabilya or Northern Atlas. Amazigh, again. And if you are not yet convinced look out for Tunisia’s History: from Hannibal to Ibn Khaldoun, from Carthago to Djerba, the Amazigh presence is everywhere.

Tunisia has a strong Amazigh heritage. Systematical genetical survey show that 98% of the Tunisian population is of Amazigh origin. Every part of the culture and traditions show that we are in an Amazigh country, at the only striking difference that here, almost nobody talks Tamazight: but then why did the language almost disappear while all the rest stayed quite unchanged?As if the Imazighen where everywhere in Tunisia, only that they are mute.

Like in Algeria, Morocco and Libya, Tamazight was the native language of this country that our ancestors where calling ‘Ifriqya‘ (does it remember you something? Yes, from that word comes ‘Africa’). Like in these other countries, Arabic arrived in Ifriqya together with Islam: but unlike people sometimes say, it was not a massive invasion of Arab populations. Arab population that settled in Tunisia were never more than 2-3%. Arabic and Islam integrated the culture of Tunisia and became part of every Tunisian’s life and identity (after all, Tunisia is an Arabic name, given by Arabs that, when they arrived in Ifriqya found its inhabitants so generous and with such a strong sense of hospitality that they called this land the land that ‘twannass‘, meaning the land where you feel like surrounded by your family/friends), but Tamazight and Amazigh culture stayed also a vital part of this identity, and would not disappear. So to say, Tunisians are Amazigh people, that throughout History constituted a mixed Amazigh-Arab-Islamic identity. Arab-Islamic culture is vital to understand Tunisian identity, but so is Amazigh culture. They are like two sides of the same coin. A peaceful Tunisian would be a person accepting the both sides if their culture and the impregnation of Islam on these both sides.

Amazigh language began to almost disappear from Tunis only in the two last centuries, when the French domination, like in other parts of North Africa, needed a way to constitute populations in nations and blocks rather than in tribes, because it was easier to handle: imposing an uniform identity and language was the easiest way to break regionalism and build nationalism. Amazigh was banned, and Arabic and French were imposed, nomad tribes were forced to settle. After independance, the dictatorial regimes, following the French example to impose its law over the countries, continued the same path and criminalized the use of Tamazight, while leading a huge ‘arabization’ campaign through schools, administration, etc. The unluck of Tunisia compared to Morocco, Algeria and Libya, is that in this small country without big geographical relief, where most of the population was already living in towns near the sea, and with much fewer nomads, the cultural genocide worked much better than in the neighbouring countries. Indeed, one can say that big part of the preservation of the Amazigh culture in Algeria, Morocco and Libya is due to the difficult access to the mountains of Kabilya, Atlas and Nefoussa. And the job began by the French was finished by Bourguiba, certainly the most ‘francophile’ of all Arab dictators, and consolided by Ben Ali brutal dictatorship. Bourguiba and Gaddafi could certainly be ‘awarded’ as the biggest mass eliminators of Amazigh culture; after all didn’t they try shortly in 1973-1974 to form a Tunisian-Libyan Union called ‘Arab Islamic Republic’ (ironic, isn’t it, to refer to Islam for a man like Bourguiba that was not even observing Ramadan and wanted to force Tunisians to follow his example?).

The denial of Amazigh identity of Tunisia policy is so harsh that there isn’t even official statistics of the remaining number of Tamazight speakers in Tunisia: we talk sometimes about less than 100’000 people, sometimes less than 10’000. But the worst part of it certainly arrived through schools: ideological versions of History tought to children make it possible that in an Amazigh country, if you ask to the definition of the word ‘Amazigh‘, many are unable to give it, and many hear that word for the first time. A real national drama, if you consider socio-linguistic studies that show that about 60% of the Tunisian population had within the four preceding  generations Amazigh locutors in their family. If nothing is done now, Tamazight will simply disappear from Tunisia.

The New Tunisia, free from dictatorship is still looking for putting the right words on the aspirations of Tunisians: the new constitution has to be written. Preliminary drafts show that Tunisia is defined as a country of “Arab identity”. It would be a big mistake to not include the Amazigh Identity in the Constitution and not recognize Tamazight as an official language together with Arabic. Since the end of Ben Ali regime, we see a whole new activism in Tunisia of young Tunisian Amazigh, that want to follow the Moroccan example, where Tamazight entered in the constitution. Associations begin to form and to protest. Social networks are used as a platform to coordinate actions. Tunisia needs to revive its Amazigh culture. Tunisia needs to recognize what it is: a mixed Amazigh-Arab-Islamic identity.

European journalists think its an Arab Spring, but inside of it, there is a strong Amazigh flavour. After all, didn’t the Tunisian revolution start in Sidi Bouzid, a town named after a local saint, a purely Amazigh tradition?

You heal, you change

Depression. It took me years to put that word on what I was experiencing; I don’t now eactly why. Maybe because we are tought so young to take seriously only what is properly visible. You can be pitied for a broken leg, but you can only be left misunderstood for a broken soul.

Healing, pushing depression out of one’s life is a continuous struggle. Antidepressant medecine makes only things easier in suppressing the physical symptoms such as excessive or too light sleep, state of uncontrollable anxiety or the ‘emotional rollercoaster’. The factual healing comes then from the ability of the depressed person to rediscover the “normal life”. Basically, this requires to work around two axis: oneself and the environment. One’s weakness results most of the time of unsolved inner conflicts, lack of confidence or any kind of hypersensitivity, while the environmental factors of a depression are a conjunction between initial conditions, randomness and consequences of interactions with the ouside world. Healing is basically finding a balance between the necessary acceptance of what we do not control or have no moral right to control and the necessary insubordination to what shouldn’t be inflicted.This balance requires to correct what has a negative impact on the quality of life from the inside and from the outside. To rethink some of one’s own behaviours, as well as moving away from some situations/conditions.  In one word: healing is changing. Some have to change their too stressful job, some others have to change their submission to the manipulative character of a parent or quit an unfair relationship with an unappropriate partner, som have to raise their self-esteem or learn to manage their own tendency to procrastinate.

The challenge is in the change, yet it is also in having an appropriate response to the reaction of the entourage during and after the change if one wants to make that improvement permanent. For most of the people, as long as one has a “good” job (good meaning well quoted on the social ladder), as long as one seems to have a few friends, a few family members and eventually a partner, there is no understanding on why changing. The most common sentence one listens when the change becomes effective is “You are not the same anymore.”. Sure, I am not the same anymore, the old “me” was broken from inside and I had to melt it!

One is also confronted to the critics. Sometimes, critics even turn fully opposite what they were a few months ago: when, for example, for years you was criticized for your unmotivation, your lack of implication and the waste of your precious time and abilities, how to understand that the same people end telling you you are too enthusiastic and agitated, too fully into the too many activities you are doing, that you have to “understand” that you cannot make this and that, or act like this or like that, etc? Or when you are accused to be all at once too distant or selfish when all you did is to put an end to years of suffering many negative consequences of the fact of being too disposable to everybody and anybody, to the point of losing your ability to build your own life?

It is true that it might well that one gets “too far” in the change, like a pendulum that swung from one extremum to the other, but if it is the case, the stabilization normally ends coming. It is highly improbbable that a too selfless person, a “Mother Theresa”, becomes a cruel selfish bastard all at once; mostly, they just need some time off, some time apart, a bit away from people and “normal routine” to be able to come back in a better shape.

Being confronted to this kind of criticism about the change is a bit disturbing. When I was confronted to it, I felt disturbed: “Am I becoming a bad person?“. But then I tried to look at where I was about two years ago and where I am now: no, I am not becoming a bad person. I was burried alive and I had to struggle to digg up my personnality and find my way to my own happinness. I had to learn to not be ashamed to rise my voice and listen to my inner wishes. I had to stop being in the unconditional despaired need of giving it all to the others just to exist for them, and to keep some of it for me.

In the same time, going out of my own suffering made me more sensitive to the suffering of the others, in the sense that when I stopped crying, it gave me the opportunity to “re-discover” the world we are living in, with new eyes. And this sensitivity sometimes turns into oversensitivity sometimes. I imagine it is a bit like when the teenager becomes suddenly aware of the cruelty and cynism of the “grown up world” and thinks he found answers to all questions in reading the Communist Manifesto to confront the corrupted world and argue over dinner with the parents about how pitiful is their pragmatism compared to his/her own idealism.

Maybe am I living my second adolescence? Maybe I will have to go through a new couple of years of over-reactions I will be ashamed about afterwards, mistakes I will have to apologize for,  whims that will put me in unconfortable situations. The parallel with adolescence is even extended to the physical change: depression craves sadness in the outer appearance and healing is also finding a better shape (some put on weight during depression, some lose too much weight, the quality of the skin and hair changes, the hormonal system is disturbed, etc).

The change is here, the change has just started. I don’t know where I will be five years from now, but I definitely know that everyday, I’d climb the hill so I could see the horizon.

When humor is a weapon against racism

I was in the bus, looking through the window, wandering from one thought to the other. At one of the bus stops, climbed in a group of teenagers, 3 girls and 2 boys. Like all teenagers, noisy and careless about being noisy – most of people here in Switzerland consider this as being misbehaved, and from the angry looks they gave them one could easily say that they were highly bothered. As for me, this ‘annoyance’ is always most welcome to me, as I consider noisy teenagers perfectly embodying life; it is the only period of life where one have an organic reason to be stupid and in the same time to be enugh aware of things to make sharp observations. Should I mention also that they were obviously Arabs, given the mix of some Arab words in their french talk and that were Muslims given the veils the girls where trying to wear – they looked quite unexperienced to it though – and the qamiss the boys were wearing? It might be by experience or maybe am I paranoid but I think I could say that the other people in the bus were not looking at “noisy teenagers” but at “noisy Muslims”.

As their loud conversation was ongoing – they were mostly talking about the celebration they were going to attend in the mosque – one of the girl said a joke, half in arabic half in french (this girl was quite witty in fact), her friends couldn’t help to laugh – so did I. One of her mates told her “look even the Madam is laughing at you“. “I was laughing at the joke. And if the jokes are going on like this all day long, I wonder how funny must be school.“, did I reply. We all went laughing, and then started talking. They apparently wanted to talk about school; proud to list all the jokes and tricks they did to the teachers and other students. As I learnt they were living in France (the scene was taking place in a bus in Geneva, which is next to the French border), in an area I know a bit.

One of the little stories they told me was about one of their teachers that apparently was punishing them everytime she was hearing an arabic word in class. The problem is that her allergy to any mention to a foreign language was even extended to their private conversations during break; it seemed also she never missed any occasion to emphasize on the fact that French rules only have effect on their lives. As a consequence, the young teenagers – that were after all like so many of us here, born in Europe from Arab migrant parents, and do not want any of the two parts that constitute their identity and culture denied – began to “outbid” about their Arabic identity. One of the boys explained me that for the yearly class picture, they took Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian flags they waved just at the moment of the picture. When the teacher received the picture, she told to the class “We are in France here, it is shameful that none of you took a French flag“. The boy replied “La France aux Français Madame” (“France for the French people”, according to a famous moto of the Front National, the french right-wing party). She dismissed him, and before leaving class he told her “A demain, Inshallah“.

The witty girl then told me that they were going to re-shoot the class picture, as asked by the teacher for it was too unacceptable to have those foreign flags on it. I asked them: “And how do you feel about it?“. The other boy just told me “We won’t have the flags, but we will be scowling on the picture.“. To that they all went laughing – again so did I.

Their bus stop arrived are they noisily left the bus – a relief to all other passengers for sure – waving at me “Salam Alikoum Madame“. And while I was seeing them crossing the street through the window, I was thinking: we all understood that it would be helpless to complain to the principal – after all there is certainly something in the highschool rules and regulations against waving foreign flags or speaking foreign languages at school – and sometimes racism takes so subtle forms that only the targeted person can get it deep meaning (the teacher would easily dismiss all allegations, if she was asked), that still the best way to resist is symbolic: using humor, for sometimes a joke can be a weapon against hatred.

The Awakening

Today I was at the cigar store of the train station, getting a pre-paid card for my phone. The shelves were full of newspapers and magazines of all kinds, of all languages. Most of the front pages were mentioning the Egypt protests, of course. One of them immediately caught my eye, mainly because of the picture I think – the portrait of a young man, the lower part of his face hidden by his scarf. It was the « Nouvel Obs » magazine, and it was titling « De Tunis au Caire, quand le monde arabe s’éveille » (From Tunis to Cairo, when the Arab World wakens). Wakens… awakening?

Definition: awakening [əˈweɪkənɪŋ əˈweɪknɪŋ] n the start of a feeling or awareness in a person

There is no day since the beginning of the worldwide mediatic coverage of the protests in Tunisia where I didn’t hear or read somewhere this word – awakening. Everywhere, I see journalists analyzing the events as the awakening of the arab word, the arab people, the arab street, the arab whatever. And everytime I wonder the same: what is before the awakening? Sleep or unconsciousness, isn’t it? Does it mean that we were worldwidely considered as being asleep or unconscious?

Maybe am I a bit touchy; maybe I shouldn’t think that much about what is – after all – just a word. But the fact is that everytime I am confronted with ‘the awakening’, I cannot help feeling slightly angry and insulted. Don’t we refer to awakening when it comes to the development of a young child gradually getting able to walk, speak or understand abstract concepts? Those who talk about the awakening of the Arabs, without any doubt, suggest that they were in some kind of lethargy until then, that unlike the rest of the people of the world, the Arabs were lost in some extra-dimensionnal realm of irrationality, unaware of the recent progress of History. There even was frequently journalists/analysts/politicians/whatever that were clearly assuming that our « slow » progress on the path leading to political and civil awareness makes it impossible for now to consider anything else than dictatorship for us. Very seriously. And that giving to Arabs democracy too soon could lead to disasters like whole nations falling into political-religious extremism, violence, chaos. It always sounded to me like a father explaining to his to his 16 years old son why he won’t give him the keys of the car: « Don’t you realize you would be dangerous for yourself and for the others? ».

When I read about « awakening », it makes me feel the same way than when I hear anybody saying that – I am giving you here a hint on how to get me mad in less than 2 minutes – « Columbus discovered America in 1492 ». Columbus did not discover America; the people that were already living on the american continent when he reached the shore were those who did. Or like when I consult some page on Wikipedia on some random african country and that under the section « History », the history starts… the day of the colonization of the country. As if the country was created out of nothing the day an army took possession of the land.

People tend to think that what they have not yet seen or noticed, do not exist; and when it becomes visible, they sometimes don’t get to understand that it is not an « awakening ». It is just that something was screening the view to any outside observer; like the Atlantic Ocean between Columbus and America.

Arabs, we, us, are not living presently our « awakening ». They always were fully conscious, fully aware. But this is what the oppression, after all, is about: seeing everything but being forced to keep silent. Being cautious; how to be anything else than cautious when you know that in some conditions, if you speak or protest, it’s your life, or even worse, your wife’s or husband’s, or your parents’ life that is treatened. And maybe it is because this heavy, unbearable barrier between the Arabs and their freedom of speech and act, the people in our countries always felt that much concerned about the palestinian or iraqi issue: it was the only political topics they could discuss without being put in danger; and read between the lines, it was the only way they were able to criticize their governments.

I always found for example that very few Tunisians will ever tell you directly anything about politics, but always amazed how most of them have an extended ability to give practical answers to overcome the issues created by the lack of citizen rights. As if they always were acting political (not in the derogatory meaning of the word) without speaking political. And when they found the first sign of weakeness of the oppressing entity, the movement was spontaneously initiated and followed. As for Egyptians, they have always been more keen to speak than Tunisians, but when it comes to acts, as they were living in certainly what is one of the most halting conditions you would ever imagine, they were making their way through paths you would never have guessed, and I always found them unbelievabily relaxed about it; just waiting for the right time to do the right thing. And it seems now the right time has come; the tunisian revolution was the triggering factor. Egyptians didn’t wait for that day to become aware of the political spoliation of their rights; they knew it already, it is just know it is also visible to the outside world: the view is no more screened.

Will the tunisian and egyptian protests be the triggering factor to other poeple (not only in the arab world) to defeat tyranny? I hope so and I think so. But again, they won’t create the awareness in other countries, they will just be what they needed for releasing the claims.

Hopefully this would lead to the awakening into a new understanding of our History.

Am I the citizen of three countries?

Although I have three citizenships (Swiss, Tunisian, Egyptian), I used to think, all my life, that only in Switzerland my opinion mattered, through my vote, and that dictatorship in my two countries of origine, and the fact I leave abroad, made my voice mute and useless.

I remember the day I received for the first time of my life, as a 18+ swiss citizen, my materiel de vote in my mailbox, it was in 2000 and it was a popular consultation on the rise of age of retirement for women from 62 to 64, I spent days reading all I could read about the topic, too afraid to make the wrong choice. The day I went to the polling station it was odd to me, I clearly felt for the first time of my life to not only be swiss or swiss african, but to be a swiss citizen who has her contribution to bring to Switzerland.

My parents have had Swiss citizenship later than I did – I was almost 20 at that time. The first time they received the materiel de vote, with their voter cards, I remember them so perfectly, laughing and grinning like kids oppening their Christmas Gifts, and telling me it is the first time of their lives they are asked their opinion through vote. At that time my parents were more than 40, but my father, egyptian, and my mother, tunisian, had to wait to be swiss in order to vote for the first time of their lives. I remember when they asked me how to proceed to vote; after the explanation I gave them I remember my mother’s first question was “But what do you think I should vote here? Yes or No?” (and all her life long we had always the same argument about the fact that every time we had to go for voting, she wanted to know what did I vote to vote the same) and my father asking me, while looking at the voting paper, where exactly does he have to write his name – above or below the  “yes” and “no” box?

The day I realized how strange it was to be on one side citizen of one of the most democratic countries – Switzerland – and on the other side “citizen” from two of the most repressive dictatorships of arab countries – Tunisia and Egypt – was the day I voted for the first time for a Tunisian vote. It was in 2002, and we had to chose wether or not we agree to modify the Tunisian Constitution. The Constitution was restricting the president to limited number of mandates, and the ‘popular consultation’ was about rising this restriction to an unlimited number of mandates – in other words, give the constitutional right to Ben Ali to stay a lifetime president. Me and my mother, with our voting cards, went to the Tunisian Consulate and were given the voting material. I remember the voting papers, one with “Yes” written in black on a white paper, “No” written in white on a black paper, and an enveloppe – a transparent enveloppe where nothing was easier to see the color of the paper inside of it. I asked one of the staff if I could have a copy of the constitution with highlights on the parts that are to be modified, he brought me a text telling me that the concerned parts were written in red…. but he gave me a black and white photocopy of the constitution.  When I entered the voting booth, I remember putting the white “yes” paper in my pocket, the “no” black paper in the enveloppe, together with the photocopy of the constitution, in order to make it invisible through the transparent enveloppe which one I chosed. After being out of the Consulate I felt melancholic and angry of how ridiculous all this sounded. When, In november of the same year, at the annual gathering of tunisians of Geneva at the occasion of our National Day, I remember the Ambassador self-congratulating about the successful vote and how each of us can witness how fair our democratic consultation was.

Presidential Elections of 2005 and 2009 were such a mascarade, with the same transparent voting enveloppes and the red paper for Ben Ali, who was re-elected with more than 95% of votes. I went to the 2005 vote to put all the ‘alternative’ candidates papers (4 or 5, I dont remember) in the enveloppe, embended in the red paper. I didn’t even bother going to the 2009 votation, for it was too ridiculous.

I never voted for any egyptian vote or election. I remember at age of 13 or 14 a conversation with my aunt Sohir (at the age where you believe so much in your own stuff that you really look down on adults who tell you about being realistic and compromise, etc, etc), where she said “why should I want for a president a guy we don’t know when we already have one we know? One has to be satisfied or God can send you worse”. And later I never asked for my egyptian voting card, after learning from my father that his Uncle, my grand-uncle Ebrahim was a ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ Society member (“Ikhwan el Moslemine”) and that the day Nasser established their illegality my grand uncle burnt everything, every evidence he had that he was part of the Society.

Before 14th of January I never felt my voice had something any interesting elsewhere than in Switzerland, first because of our democratic system, second because of living here, while I always felt useless to Tunisia and Egypt by dictatorship, but more because of the fact of living abroad – I always felt like I had no really any existence in my two countries of origin – as if I hadn’t “deserved” the right to be called citizen. To be citizen is to vote, but also to work in and for the country, to be part of the everyday life. And without any right to vote – really vote I mean – I was nor a political citizen, nor a factual citizen. Would any of my egyptian or tunisian fellows living there consider me ever anything else than some special kind of tourist (even if I don’t feel myself to be so), coming at summer because I miss the family and the country; because there, I dont own a car, I rent it, I dont see the kids growing up continuously, I only get snapshots? And that question always, alway asked: do you prefer Switzerland or Egypt/Tunisia? How to explain that I prefer none of them, I just dont really get the point of it, as if I was asked who do you love the more, your father and your mother? That despite the fact that I have the perspective to go back live in Egypt or Tunisia (or any muslim country, especially if I get married to a non-egyptian or non-tunisian) before I have kids – for it is clear to me I want my children to be raised in a country where they are not a minorité religieuse where people ask them (as it is a growing tendency in Europe since September 2001) if they are more faithful to Europe or Islam (as if a geographical location was any comparision with a religious entity) – I always felt so far I would be a citizen of Tunisia and Egypt only the day I will be resident there.

But After 14th of January, as Ben Ali stepped down, the perspective slightly changed: in six months I will be voting for a presidential election where my voice will count, whether I live abroad or not. How would I direct my choice towards one of the other of the candidates? Of course my choices are more driven towards the ideologies I believe in and away from those I don’t – the french-like ‘laicité’ opponents like Marzouki no way I’m ever going to give my voice to any of them.  But anyway, the gap that separates me and the day-to-day life knowledge of somebody living in Tunisia, how can I fill it? And now that I see that Egypt has started to follow the Jasmin Revolution path, and that things even go much beyond all expectations, the same question is to be relevant for Egypt also? I try, of course, to do my little own contribution with what I have in hand, but from far, is it enough, is it appropriate? How would I know? I’d certainly never know but now that first time of my life I had the feeling after January the 14th that I am not only tunisian person but also a tunisian citizen, not only an egyptian person, but also an egyptian citizen, the time is really coming for me to answer to THE question: I always knew I can be without any internal conflict a swiss and a tunisian and egyptian person, that I was a muslim-european and is not afraid to raise my voice for what I believe are our rights as europeans with a strong conscience on what we believe is our philosophy and contiousness as muslims, but now I am also another kind of citizen.

Can I really be citizen of three countries? Defend three Constitutions, look after the interests of three countries, one of them being neutral, the two remaining part of a cultural block that is not neutral? Feel three times patriotic, sing three national anthems? Or am I only one citizen, one citizen of one ideology, that has the right and the chance to participate to the implementation of the so said ideology in three different countries?

My friend Anais who is swiss with peruvian origins and with whom I shared my concern gave me, as an answer, a new question, a clever one. She asked me if I could imagine defending the interests of Switzerland/Tunisia/Egypt against any other interests of another country… to wich of these countries would I be able to fight and dedicate my life. Currently I am still trying to sort out the answer – and certainly I began to write this note not to give to the reader (who anyway is certainly not that interested in my own personnal inner debates) the answer to the question, but to find out what it is.

What I know for sure is that chosing between Egypt, Tunisia and Switzerland ‘s interests would it be like chosing between my father’s, my mother’s and my adoptive mother’s interests. I would never be able to harm any of them to defend any other of them, but I will always be able to give my own soul to protect any one of them if it is in my hand to do so. I do not share my love in three for them, I have three different loves. At this point I feel very lucky that I belong to three countries that have different interests, yet not really antagonist interests – not as if I were half egyptian and half israelian for example.

And what I feel now while I am writing these lines is that the one thing that stands in the middle, that links everything together, is not that I am european or african, or swiss or tunisian or egyptian, but that I am a muslim, that knows that only my moral values can make me chose not the interests of a country or another one, but the make me chose the right thing in each situation.

And maybe now I feel for the first time of my life what it is to be part of the Umma, the muslim nation: forget your frontiers but not your moral limits, don’t fight for your country with a patriotic resolution, regardless if the cause is just or not, but fight for your country to follow an ethical path. My two green passeports and my red passeport are not my identities, they are the pacific tools given to me to allow me to act for a change where I belong. Yes I am a Swiss-Tunisian-Egyptian person, a Swiss-Tunisian-Egyptian citizen, but above all I am the carrier of values which I deeply believe are my way to give the best part of myself to the human kind.

Masr wa Touness, Egypt and Tunisia

Why did I start? I don’t know exactly. I just know I needed it. There is much I want to say, there is much I have to say. Although there is nothing very interesting about it, nothing new, except for me maybe. Blogging is so egocentric, but aren’t nations, people, communities, no more than a collection of egos, all bound together by the counsciousness of their similarities?

I am born in Geneva, Switzerland – where I still live. I never lived anywhere else. My parents met here and settled for life here. My mother, from Tunisia, and my father, from Egypt, were my first and essential link to my arabity. When I was a child, we were used to go from year to year, from summer to summer to Egypt and Tunisia, Mars wa Touness. But if it was not the constant presence of Masr wa Touness in our home in Geneva, I would never have been an Arab, I would just have been a tourist visiting egyptian pyramids and tunisian white sand beaches. My chance has been to grow up within all mixed influences: swiss school during the week, muslim school at the mosque on week-ends, arab-north african ambiance on evenings and loving family on holidays. There are so much stories, and I read a lot of other people’s stories. I have certainly been blessed that I never felt torn between East and West: I always have been fully part of both. Speaking french, speaking arabic, not with the same fluency at the same time, but that never was really the point. Finding some of Egypt in Tunisia, some of Tunisia in Egypt, finding both of them in Switzerland; getting the real essence from where I belong.

I have all those memories arising, the elder telling dreadful stories where ghosts speak the countryside egyptian slang, the inner square patio of the traditionnal berber tunisian houses; my two grandmas baking their bread each on her own way (tabbouna wa forn);  the poultry yards and the cats in the streets. Smell of the jasmin flower, smell of the melted semna. Mahalla el-Kubra wa Fondouk ej-Jedid.

I am Egyptian. I am Tunisian. I am Swiss.

2011: two revolutions shake the grounds of the political arab world. Tunisia  and Egypt force dictators to step down. I am fully excited but only half surprised: Arabs have always had the most free minds, and dictatorship was only an artificial trick of history that could not hold for long. And me, forced to look at my countries through screens: computer screen, TV screen, mobile phone screen. It hurts to be so far, but it feels good to be so proud.

I start this blog at the moment where these historical events take place, and I will be certainly talking about it sometimes or most or the time, but the politics are not the purpose here. I think I just want to talk of Masr wa Touness; what are the exact nature and intensity of the feelings the ‘migrant children’ have for their homeland and their rootland.