Through the Eyes of the Tunisian

The first sound you hear as morning arrives over Tunis is the soft, undulating note of a mezoued (bagpipe) playing a single tone, blended with the distant call of a muezzin from the Zitouna Mosque and the drifting aroma of fresh lablabi (chickpea soup) and harissa rising from a nearby home. That bagpipe sound carries our story back to a time of sea and oases, when we lived as the peoples of Tunisia: the Berbers (Amazigh), Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, and Ottomans who together shaped our history. Our ancestors built Carthage with its harbour that commanded the Mediterranean, the Roman ruins of Dougga and El Djem with amphitheatres still standing, the medinas of Kairouan and Tunis filled with mosques and spice-filled souks. The Carthaginians traded as far as Spain, the Romans constructed roads and aqueducts, the Arabs brought Islam and knowledge of the world. Every family knew the feasts of Eid and Yennayer (Amazigh New Year), the stories of Hannibal and Ibn Khaldun, the bond stronger than the waves. That was our golden time: a land of coast, oases, and mountains, where people lived in harmony with the Mediterranean as mother and the Sahara as father, connected through trade, art, and tolerance.

But then came the wave from outside, rising like a storm from the sea. The Ottomans, and then the French who colonised us in 1881 and made us a protectorate, plundered our wealth and tried to make us French. Every family knew the loss: an ancestor who fought in the uprisings, a child taught that freedom was forbidden, a culture held on to in secret. Independence in 1956 brought Habib Bourguiba—hope that bloomed with modernisation—but also the dictatorship of Ben Ali from 1987, censorship, prisons. The Arab Spring in 2011 brought the Jasmine Revolution: crowds in the streets, Ben Ali fled, but the transition brought unrest, ISIS terror in 2015, and economic crisis.

From that depth rises a pride that is warm and resilient. The mezoued still plays in the villages, lablabi is shared with love, the medinas still pulse with life. Our people laugh through hardships, our young rise for a better country, our bonds stronger than the pain. We have reclaimed our voice: the democracy after 2011, the constitution that protects rights, the hope growing along the coast.

Yet the truth colours magenta like a sunset over Carthage. The scars remain: the memory of colonisation and dictatorship, the terror that returns, poverty in the villages, the emigration of youth. The outside world buys our tourism and our oil, but often fails to feel the depth of a people that never broke.

Still, we remember in silence: around the mezoued where music is born, on Revolution Day the 14th of January when we raise our flag, in the medinas where spirits still speak—never forgetting who we were. We tell our children of Carthage and of Bourguiba, of the sea and the mountains, so they know: we were connected and strong before the challenges came.

And yet… the mezoued continues, soft and waving, like a promise drifting over the coast. That is our secret: we have suffered under colonisation, dictatorship, and revolution, but first we were a land of sea and wisdom. For our children we build no walls, but a medina where everyone may walk. How do we let that reed sound bring hope once more to all? How does Tunisia remain a home of hospitality and unity?

January 2026

Manna Ori