A few weddings and two funerals

One cannot spend anytime anywhere where one has roots, and not be invited to a wedding or two. This is more so in Tunisia where the concept of extended family is deliciously literal. But what stood out in 2012-2013 in my mind are two funerals: that of Chokri Belaid, a leader of the leftist movement "Front Populaire", on February 6th, 2013, and Mohammed Brahmi, the leader a small component of the "Front Populaire" (harakat Ecchaab, or "Movement of the People", which is a Tunisian baathist party). All fingers pointed to the islamist party Ennahdha and its satellite organizations. The funeral was covered on national TV, and according to some accounts, drew close to a million people--in a country of 12 million--despite the party scoring only 5% of the popular vote in the 2011 elections. We expected violence, and both my wife and I wanted to attend. There was no way I could convince my wife to stay home, and because we didn't want our boys to end up orphans for some "feel good" event, we ended up going our separate ways to the funeral; a precaution we adopted in all the demonstrations we attended. I don't normally consider myself very courageous or "hubristic", but if you have ever been to a large demonstration for causes you strongly cared about, it is exhilarating, and what is almost scary, is that I am not sure I have ran away if things got nasty. The kinship you feel with the fellow demonstrators, of all ages, walks of life, genders (two, I guess) is incredibly beautiful. During that demonstration, I ran into my sister-in-law's 'aide ménagère' (housemaid), the president of the association of judges (Kelthoum Kennou, a distant relative "par alliance" (well, the aunt of the husband of my wife's cousin :-)) who was a candidate in the 2014 presidential elections), and an ex-classmate from my childhood, who, a year later, would become the minister of finance (Hakim Ben hammouda). The national hymn never felt as real, where you have a charismatic political leader who had given his life to the country. This painting, based on a cell phone picture, shows the central yard of the El-Gellez cemetery, at the moment that the military truck came in with Belaid's coffin. What you see over the walls are silhouettes of funeral attendees, and the black smoke is due to burning tires outside. The rumour has it that the islamist hired thugs to wreak havoc in an otherwise peaceful demonstration to invite a crackdown. However, it didn't work quite well. The Qatari news channel Al-Jazeera, which supports the islamist party, has shown close up shots of a counter-demonstration (a few hundred people) in downtown Tunis, but with the sound track of the funeral. From that point on, Al-jazeera news crews have become "non grata" in Tunisian public events (e.g. target practice for stone throwers).