Diversity in Tunisia : How do we live it?

During the four years I have spent in college in Tunis, I have come to realize how much of a diverse country Tunisia is. I have had the chance to meet people from places that I did not even know existed in Tunisia. Basically, college was like a melting pot. There were people from so different backgrounds that it was sometimes a source of enrichment. At other times, you would find people calling others names or treating them in an inferior way because of where they came from. Now the example of college is just a little image of a bigger one, that is of the country as a whole. As you walk in the long street called « L’Avenue » in Tunis,  as you are sipping your morning coffee in a café downtown, or as you are listening to how many languages, dialects and idiolects people speak in the same place, you would realize that even if it is a small country, it has people, cultures and origins from-almost- all over the entire world. This article is inspired by how I got to see the things around me for the past few years. I could see that our differences made something cohesive, something pretty and complete. However, I have also seen people suffer because of  their differences, cultures being an obstacle and human traits regarded as signs of being  inferior. 
I am not going to start this article talking about history because it would seem a bit boring to remind a people of their already known past but Tunisia and the Tunisian culture is the product of an important multiethnic influx. So, we can say that diversity is at our origine, isn’t it ? Many and successive dynasties made our country what it is today, so why would we regard the different ones as « Others » ? Our Tunisia as we know it now was home to  cultures such as the Carthaginia, which is our native civilization, the Roman, the  Jewish,  the Christian, Arabs, the Turkish, and the French, in addition to native Amazigh.  This is a one of a kind mixture of cultures right ? So, why should Tunisians be racists or intolerant or violent towards whom they do not consider « like us ». I might even ask, «Us ? Who ? » .

Didn't we say that we are already made up of heteregenous mix of cultures? Aren't we in our sameness diffrent? And in our diffrences the same?

The other day, as I was translating a video report for the American Corner, I got to listen to what the blacks in Tunisia suffer from on a daily basis. A woman in the video said that she would be told to go back to Africa while, as a matter of fact, we are in Africa. But Tunisians do not seem to think of themselves as very african. We tend to think of ourselves as arabs but not africans. This is what makes people who come to Tunisia to study and to make a living subjects to the worst kinds of emotional torture, sometimes even physical.

Tunisia is colourful !

Inside Tunisia itself, on a regional level, we seem to have some problems coping with what is different. I come from the North and I have heard that people coming from the North are still thought of as very agrarian, very simplistic and not worthy of education or work in places like the capital city or Sousse and so on. This stereotype is actually funny to me because some people’s arrogance rendered them too blinded by what they think is real civilization or appropriate culture. Some people, especially women, are subjects to exploitation, violence and hate crimes because they come from the North or the South, which is again absurd. Where you come from, how you talk, how you are dressed up doesn’t really reflect what you truly are. From where I stand, I think it is high time Tunisians gave up their prejudice and started focusing on what unites us. 

 « Tunisia for everyone. » , « Muslims, Christians, Jews, We are all Tunisians »

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities !

As I have mentioned before, Tunisia is the product of a large influx of cultures. Each of these cultures and civilizations gave us a trait that now distinguishes us from other nations. Shouldn’t we use those traits for our benefit ?

Let’s look at the bright side of Tunisia. Some of our distinctive features are distinctive because they are made up by a lovely combination of cultures and origines. Let us look at the way we speak, our language. Have you ever stopped at how many word origines we have ? French, Amazigh, Turkish, Arab, Spanish, Italian and the list could go on. This is what makes our language stand out in the Arab world and that’s what makes it one of the languages that the world is intersted in studying us, as a culture and as a language.

Look at how many examples there are of foreigners, American, German, Japanese and Egyptian people who came to live in Tunisia and ended up loving the country for the amount of cultural differences that there are !
Look at our food, festivities, words, songs and clothes ! Isn’t the plurality of all these elements amazing ? Isn’t it impressive ?
Look at how many ways we celebrate our weddings, our religious festivities and at how many different delicious meals we have all over Tunisia.
Aren’t all those elements worth being proud of and happy about ?
It is high time we started looking at our diversity as a source of us being a very special country. How so ?
This can be possible if we start teaching our children, young people that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. It’s time we start teaching them that someone who dresses up, speaks or behaves differently would not be a threat to co-existence. 

 "Diffrent ,but always united"

About this, Stephen Cosgrove says:

“Never judge someone by the way he looks

Or a book by the way it's covered;

For inside those tattered pages,

There's a lot to be discovered” 

The conclusion of all this is that the very challenge of us Tunisians accepting each others the way we are, is one of the proofs of the greatness of our country. It is our ability to reach unity in diversity  that will be the beauty and the test of the strength of our civilisation.  

Synda Arfaoui