Thought for the Week: Tunisia
Trish Carn reflects on recent events in Tunisia
Last January my husband and I travelled to Tunisia for a winter break near Sousse. While the weather was colder than we had been expecting, the welcome was warmer.
We took two tours to places of interest. The first was to the Bardo Museum, in Tunis, to see their wonderful collection of mosaics. We were picked up at our resort by a very knowledgeable Tunisian guide named Hamid. He spoke enthusiastically and informatively about the mosaics, describing the various periods in which the mosaics had been made and the differing ways of laying them – thus explaining why some had lasted so well over the succeeding centuries.
But that wasn’t all he told us. He was passionately proud of his country and the way that Tunisians had embraced democracy with the presidential election in November, only two months previously. Tunisia as a new democracy grew out of the 2011 Tunisian revolution. A new constitution was adopted in January 2014. The presidential election was the first fair and free election since Tunisia had gained independence from France in 1956.
One day on our holiday I went with a group to visit the covered market in Sousse. The streets inside the souk are very narrow, winding and confusing and I became lost when I got separated from the group. A stallholder, who I approached for directions, left his stall untended and spent about fifteen minutes helping me find the group, which was led by a well-known guide. He queried various other stallholders, asking if they had seen the guide, and quickly reunited me with him and the rest of the group. My rescuer refused any payment or tip. I was not his responsibility but he helped a person in need. It was an act of kindness that I especially remember. We were shown both courtesy and kindness by other Tunisians we met.
Only two months after we visited the Bardo Museum gunmen murdered twenty-two people there. The victims included both tourists and staff. We were shocked when we heard news of this event. We were even more stunned to read about the massacre last weekend of some thirty-eight tourists relaxing on the beach in Sousse.
We must have faith in the majority of the Tunisian people. They will be as shocked and upset as we are. Terrorism can happen anywhere. Innocent people die. Innocent people suffer: the tourists who were injured, the families of those killed and injured whose heartbreak is unimaginable, the ordinary people trying to make a livelihood catering for the visitors to their country and even the perpetrator’s mother, who was rushed to hospital on Monday.
We must keep all of these in our prayers and continue to look for that of God in everyone, even misguided young men and women who forget that Muhammad and Christ both taught that taking another life is wrong.
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