Revolution Running

Posted by J on Dec 10, 2012 in J Posts | 2 comments

I ran through revolution with my oldest son this evening.

We are all in Tunis for one night … on our way to Greece and Turkey … so we imposed some forced family exercise before retiring for the evening. While S, H, and E rotated through stations in the hotel fitness room, W and I headed outside for a jog.

Turns out, our path took us directly down Avenue Habib Bourguiba — the very place where massive numbers of Tunisians had begun astonishing protests against their president in 2010, launching what would become the Arab Spring.

W asked about the barbed wire that’s still there. He asked about the tanks and the soldiers still posted along the avenue. Later at dinner, he asked whether Tunisia’s revolution had been successful.

I’d been down that Tunis Avenue before, in 2011, well after the city’s intense protests … on my way to Libya, where revolutionary protests threatened the reign of Moammar Gadhafi. W and I were just blocks away from a grocery where I had spoken to some close friends by phone before leaving to catch my plane to Tripoli.

Had you seen W and I jogging down Avenue Habib Bourguiba together in our shorts and short sleeves this evening, you might have giggled at the Americans who stuck out so obviously. Still, it was a deeply moving experience to return to these places with my son.

And one of the most vivid memories from today’s jog? The thousands of birds that fill the trees along the famously wide avenue.

Their chirping was deafening, they were flying this way and that. I explained to W that maybe their chirp song was like a revolution — you put enough of those tiny voices together … and something powerful and wonderful can take over the streets.