Interviews with Abdel Aziz BelKhodja

Living in Tunisia for a writer who likes politics, who defends his values is very difficult because the censorship was very, very, very strong, you know? The censor is a variable, you know? In the television, it´s very strong. In the theater, it´s less strong. And in the books, it´s less strong than in the theater because with books, you can´t touch more than a few thousand people. But I find a way to circumvent the censor. What´s that way?

I write book in how do you say? Inverse book. [Mr. BelKhodja is discussing his novel, Le Retour de L’elephante, (The Return of the Elephant), published in 2003. Through satire and fantasy, the book describes conditions under the Tunisian dictatorship.] I talk about what happened in 22nd Century. And I talk about Tunisia. Tunisia became a great power in the world, you know, but I’ll explain that, okay? With the Renaissance, with the Carthaginian values, which were freedom and democracy. So I present Tunisia in the twenty-second century as a very big country with freedom, with culture and I invert. In the West, it was completely the opposite.

In the West, you have dictators. You don´t have any freedom. And when I talk about the West, I talk completely about Tunisia, you know? I talk about what happened in Tunisia with the president of the United States, where that lives and the party of the dictator in the United States was in New York in the Fifth Avenue. Because I was talking about the Avenue Mohamed the Fifth in Tunisia where you find the seat of the party of the dictator. Well, in the Mohamed the Fifth Avenue in Tunisia in Tunis is where you find the headquarters of the party of [Former Tunisian President Zine el Abidine] Ben Ali.

And all the examples that I give were about what happened in Tunisia, what happened in the airport, what happened with the police, what happened with the telephone, what happened in the reunions [meetings]. It was completely crazy in Tunisia, really. And so I find a way to write all the things. But I invert the situation. And the book had a lot of success in Tunisia. Really, a lot of success and all the journalists they came and they tell me, “But Mr. BelKhodja, how could you publish that book? It´s completely crazy, you know?” How you succeed to publish that book?

All the journalists ask me the same question. Because it was very clear that I was talking about Tunisia, no? And in the end of the book, I ask people to make a revolution. It was really a good joke in Tunisia. Everyone was talking about the Retour de l’Elephante. [Return of the Elephant] And now in Facebook a lot of times they always use that title, you know, to say Retour de l’Elephante. When we had the revolution in Tunisia they always say to me, imagine, now Retour de l’Elephante is possible.

I chose the title of The Return of the Elephant because the elephant was the symbol of Hannibal. [Hannibal, 247 – 183/182 BC, was a military and political leader of ancient Carthage.] And of the powerful city of Carthage. And for me, the Renaissance of Tunisia came with the values of ancient Carthage. Because those values were the values of today democracy and freedom. Tunisian people didn´t know history.

I think that he didn´t know his history because that values of democracy and of freedom. So the dictators that we have in our small history of 56 years they didn´t want to talk too much about Carthage because the example was so big, so beautiful. And the values of democracy and freedom were very dangerous for them. So a very small part of Tunisian people and students knew the history of Tunisia. And when they make the revolution they don´t think about it.

Abdel Aziz Belkhodja is a Tunisian writer, publisher, and democracy advocate. In 2003, he penned a satirical novel called The Return of the Elephant in which he criticized the authoritarian regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Belkhodja’s narrative is set 100 years in the future where Tunisia has become an influential, democratic nation pitted against a tyrannical United States. This fanciful portrayal of the United States worked to spotlight the repressive policies being practiced by Ben Ali’s government.

Beyond his literary criticism of the Tunisian government, Belkhodja challenged the regime more directly via the Internet. In the midst of the country’s 2010-2011 revolution, he appealed to army, police, and government officials to abandon Ben Ali.

After the fall of Ben Ali, Belkhodja helped found the Tunisian Republican Party and served as its leader. The Republican Party joined the Democratic Modernist Pole, a coalition of four political parties and several civic initiatives, which ran in Tunisia’s constituent assembly elections in October 2011. He has since left politics to focus on his writing.

Belkhodja is the author of several novels and histories of Carthage including The Ashes of Carthage, The Stars of Anger, Love Mosaic, The Sign of Tanit, and Hannibal, the True Story.

Tunisia is situated on the Mediterranean coastline. It has a population of fewer than 11 million people and is the smallest nation in North Africa in land area. In 2010 and 2011, it became the first of the Arab countries to revolt against decades of dictatorial rule, launching the Arab Spring and a wave of change across the region. Tunisia has a developing economy, focused largely on agriculture, tourism, and light industry.

Tunisia has been settled since ancient times. In the 10th century B.C., it was part of the Phoenician Empire. The city of Carthage, near the modern capital of Tunis, was established in the 9th century B.C. In 149 B.C., the Roman Empire conquered the Phoenicians. Islam was introduced to what is now Tunisia in the 7th century A.D., and the area formed part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. In 1881, Tunisia became a protectorate of France. A strong French cultural element continues to this day.

In 1956, Habib Bourguiba led Tunisia to independence from France. His political party, later known as the Constitutional Democratic Rally, went on to dominate Tunisian politics for more than 50 years. Bourguiba’s Tunisia was a largely secular state and was viewed as one of the most progressive in the Arab world on women’s issues. In 1987, Bourguiba was replaced in a “bloodless coup” by his prime minister, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Ben Ali continued many of Bourguiba’s policies, but ruled with an increasingly heavy hand. The Ben Ali regime was repressive and corrupt, with a dismal human rights record. The regime showed little tolerance for dissent, and lashed out at opposition voices in politics, civil society, and the media.

The Tunisian Revolution began in December 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a young street vendor, set himself on fire in protest over harassment by a local official. Bouazizi’s act led to mass demonstrations across the country, protesting the lack of human rights, poor economic conditions, and corruption and nepotism in the Ben Ali regime. On January 14, 2011, Ben Ali stepped down and fled the country. On October 23, 2011, Tunisia held its first free elections, forming a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution and lead the country to general elections. The role of religion in society is among the most important issues facing the assembly and country.

Under the interim Constituent Assembly, Tunisia has experienced considerable political upheaval, but has begun to consolidate its democracy. There is a major fault line between Islamist and secular political forces. In 2013, several political assassinations resulted in widespread protests and demonstrators calling for the nation’s Islamist-led government to be removed. In January of 2014, after two years of debate, the Constituent Assembly ratified the nation’s new constitution. The constitution is considered progressive for the nation and has many human rights guarantees. With the ratification of the constitution, elections are scheduled for autumn 2014.

Freedom House’s 2013 Freedom in the World report categorized Tunisia as “partly free”. The nation received the following ratings on a scale with one being the most free and seven being the least: 3.5 as an overall freedom rating, a four in civil liberties and a three in political rights. Tunisia’s Internet and press were also categorized as “partly free” in subsequent Freedom House reports.