˙uɐɔ I ʍouʞ I ¿sıɥʇ op I uɐƆ

A few years ago I heard that some of the scummier British newspapers have a system of prioritising what tragic events to cover based on the race of victims, with one British person being worth so many Americans, worth so many Africans, so many Chinese etc., and this is something you almost take for granted since people, despite how unracist they may claim to be, do have a certain empathy for the people most similar to them. I got to witness this first hand in September whilst I was in Tunisia.

You may remember the controversy which arose over the apparently god-awful (no pun intended) anti-Muhammad and anti-Islamic film 'Innocence of Muslims' which resulted in protests all over the world. The most noticeable thing about these events was the great focus placed on the death of the American ambassador for Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, an unfortunate event but perhaps not the most tragic of events related to the riots, since at least 70 people were killed in relation to the reaction of the film - mostly Muslims.

Anyway the point I was making is that because of all of this coverage of the events in Benghazi, the events in other countries were almost ignored. In fact despite Tunisia before hit by the rage across the world, my family didn't hear about it until I told them. And 4 people died in Tunisia.

The remarkable thing about Tunisia is that the people are in general friendly, there are some complete arseholes - and customs that don't make sense to me - but at the same time there is a lot of people harbouring a burning and extravagent hate for the United States of America. Hate for Israel is pretty strong, but it's not something that was immediately noticeable. I have some Tunisians as Facebook friends, and have seen some pretty interesting posts that may give you some insight as to how America has made some people feel:

"Dear America,
Your 9/11 is our 24/7
- Palestine"

The 14th of September was the day before I left Tunisia (maybe I'll tell that story before - it nearly killed me as well) -

Oh wait, I just realised Tunisia nearly killed me like 4 times. Maybe I'll share the ones I haven't told before later.

Anyway...

The 14th of September was the day before I left Tunisia, and a day I had set aside to go shopping for some souvenirs. I took the TGM into the centre, and walked up Ave Habib Bourguiba towards the medina - having never been before. Sadly after walking towards through the massive medina (literaly the size of a small town, I got lost like twice) I realised that there was nothing really new and nothing worth buying as a souvenir - however I had a backup plan with souvenirs so it was fine. For some reason my trip to the medina felt strangely hostile, I was tripped up by someone at one point (whether it was an accident or not I don't know) and I'm remembering that I recieved a few angry looks and very few invitations to browse - although this may be a trik of my memory - I don't know.

Something that I didn't notice at the time of me leaving the medina was that a lot of shops were closed, almost randomly. I attributed it to being a Friday, but it wasn't something that I had noticed before.

My plan to find 'emergency souvenirs' as it where, involved heading to the Monoprix inside the shopping centre 'Central Parc', so I could buy a few cans of Harissa, and some Tunisian sweets to bring home. The sweets were sold loose and had to be weighed by a member of staff, who for some reason spoke to me in English even as I attempted French. It was weird. As I was about to finish up shopping a member of the staff approached me and said something which I didn't understand before pointing at her wrist, and as I made to tell her the time she somehow managed to get the point across to me that they were closing early (I don't remember how, maybe she said something in French that I actually understood for once), so I approached the checkouts and was moved over to the cosmetics counter to have my items (all food) rung up, noticing that the shutters to the entrance had already been brought down and that all of the staff were hurrying. I realised that something was seriously wrong but it wasn't until the cashier said something that sounded like 'Americizi' whilst laughing - presumably she thought I was an American and found this hilarious.

I left the supermarket and went up the escalators (the supermarket was on a basement level), and moved towards one of the exits, but the shutters were closed, as were the shutters on all exits. Some people in front of me where ushured out of the goods entrance so I followed them out to the street to find almost every shop closed and shuttered.

That's when I remembered what had happened in Libya, and felt quite scared, almost certain there had been some sort of terrorist action. God knows how much danger I was in at that time, but I couldn't be certain of anything, since people on the street seemed quite calm.

I took the TGM back as I would have anyway, and as we crossed the strip of land between the two lacs I saw a massive plume of black smoke that stretched out for miles. A lot of people were staring both at me and at the smoke (although in fairness people stared at me whenever I was without a tan), and there were a few people pointing and laughing at the smoke, obviously aware of what was going on. If your picturing arab-looking people wearing traditional Islamic clothes, you're wrong, these were people wearing jeans, shorts and the like.

When I got back and accessed the Internet I learned that the American embassy had been invaded by protesters and was on fire, as was an American school. Traffic had come to stand still as police took control of the roads. It was all pretty horrible, and I had planned to visit a café that evening since it had been the first place in Tunisia I had been to. The IAESTE representatives who visited that night told us not to go, because it would be too dangerous. There wasn't a curfew that night, but it was still a pretty horrible time.

I now realise that there wasn't much of a point in that story. But it's probably something I would have written in my journal thread if I hadn't needed to pack.