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The words have been engraved in the memory of Ali Bouazizi.
Over the phone, he learned that his cousin had set himself on fire.
The video he took of the protests that followed spread like wildfire.
More than 3,800 kilometers away, Omar (15) saw the images on television. His life would never be the same again.
OSLO / SIDI BOUZID (VG) On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi (26) pushes his vegetable cart towards the square of the sleepy Tunisian city of Sidi Bouazid.
Like many other Tunisians, he cannot find a good, stable job. The country’s economy is ruined by an authoritarian regime that makes a fortune at the expense of its poor population.
A policeman approaches and says that he does not have the papers for sale in order. He threatens to confiscate the vegetables and ends up hitting Mohamed in the face. Two policemen arrive and take an electric weight that he needs at work.
He is humiliated and powerless.
Along with other greengrocers, he goes to the local city authorities to regain his weight, but without success.
The next thing that happens it must be defined as the moment that triggered massive popular uprisings in much of the Arab world, which in turn overthrew dictators and gave millions of people hope for a better future.
But it is also the beginning of what in some countries will end in more authoritarian regimes and brutal wars that still continue:
Mohamed pours gasoline on himself and lights a lighter in his body. A taxi driver can put out the fire quickly, but it is too late.
Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali visited the dying Mohamed in hospital to try to quell the anger of his regime. Photo: Tunisian Presidency
– I got a call that someone had set themselves on fire. Shortly after, the taxi driver confirmed that it was Mohamed, my cousin and friend, says Ali Bouazizi when VG meets him in Sidi Bouazid in early December this year.
When he got on the train, a large crowd had gathered.
The vegetable cart was still there. Angry men grabbed a bunch of bananas, lifted them up in the air and shouted:
“We will sacrifice for you, Mohamed, with our blood and our soul.”
With his mobile phone, Ali filmed people’s anger. I have posted the clip online, with the aim of showing the reality of life for ordinary Tunisians under the regime of the dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
– I was hoping that we could at least pressure the regime to give us more freedoms, but it would turn out that everything was ready for something bigger in 2010; to overthrow the entire regime, he says.
These videos are usually posted on an opposition website and few see them.
– I did not expect the video to go viral, but Facebook opened a new door for us and attracted international media. The ball started rolling, he says.
Ali Bouazizi at the grave of his cousin. Photo: Radhouane Addala, VG
One of those who saw the video. Omar Alshogre was 15 years old. He was watching television with his father at their home in Tartus, in northwestern Syria.
He remembers it well: the news that a vegetable seller set himself on fire because he felt trampled on by the corrupt and authoritarian leadership of the country.
“I went from house to house, from relative to relative, and everyone sat in front of al-Jazeera and watched,” Omar told VG today.
He especially remembers that his father leaned against him on the sofa and excitedly whispered:
“Imagine if something like this happened here in Syria!”
His father did not dare to say it out loud, because he knew that such contradictory dreams could be life-threatening to express them in public.
The protests in Tunisia increased in scope, and after a month the regime fell. Ben Ali, who had been in power for 23 years, fled the country.
The greengrocer never got to see what he had started. Mohamed died in hospital two weeks earlier.
But other young people in the Arab world could hardly believe their eyes: could their leaders also be expelled after such a short time?
In Egypt, it began with a demand for “bread, freedom, and social justice.”
After 18 days, the authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak resigned.
The protests spread to Libya and the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, among others. It quickly ended in a bloody war.
In Syria, he started by writing on a wall.
“Freedom. Down with the regime. Your turn, doctor,” some teenagers wrote on the wall of the Daraa city school.
The message was directed at Bashar al-Assad, who trained as an ophthalmologist in London, before assuming the leadership of the country when his father, Hafez al-Assad, died.
When the boys were arrested, protests broke out across much of the country.
For several months, the father of 15-year-old Omar Alshogre had witnessed the drama unfolding in the region.
Now the moment he had been waiting for had come. He took his son to a demonstration in his hometown.
“This could go in the wrong direction and end in a war in which more than a million die,” his father, who was a former career soldier, had told him.
In Syria, as is well known, everything quickly went in the wrong direction.
Read comment: Ten Years of Arab Winter
Omar, 15, before the war broke out in Syria. Photo: Private
For Omar’s family, they were as follows years a complete tragedy:
In November 2012, the Syrian security service arrived at the aunt’s door in the city of Tartus.
Omar and two of his cousins were arrested for participating in peaceful demonstrations.
The following year, two of the brothers and their father were killed in a massacre carried out by the regime and its allied militias.
The surviving mother and siblings eventually managed to escape across the border into Turkey and raise $ 15,000, a huge sum for a family on the run. With the money, they managed to bribe the right people with the Syrian authorities.
In prison, Omar escaped the death penalty. In June 2015, they tied him up off the islands, put him in a car and threw him into a ditch. Then he had suffered three years of unspeakable torture, he tried to describe VG in an earlier interview.
Then he had tuberculosis and weighed 35 kilos.
After leaving Syria, he fled across the sea, to Europe and Sweden.
Now he works for prisoners in Syrian prisons. Here he talks about torture, in the United States Senate.
Omar’s story is just one in millions of stories influenced by the chain reaction that the vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi unleashed that day in the square ten years ago. Omar is full of excitement when he looks back.
– Going on fire was a moment of despair that I understand well. In prison in Syria, I saw what despair can do to people, he says, adding:
– It may seem strange, but I thank Mohamed Bouazizi. It helped give me my freedom. This revolution has cost a lot, but I think it is still worth it.
Give some thought to.
– Ten years have passed, but we are still in the first step on our long road to freedom.
Wael Bouazizi sells vegetables in today’s Sidi Bouzid. Photo: Radhouane Addala, VG
In Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia he meets VG a greengrocer, in the place where Mohamed sold his wares ten years ago.
– Not much has changed. We have a little more rights, but the prices are higher than ever, Wael Bouazizi tells VG.
– The political elite do not care if the people and corruption suffocate in the country. We used to have a Ben Ali, but now we have a lot of small Ben Aliers. I can speak freely and say what I want, but can I survive in this economy?
Tunisia is considered the only country where the Arab uprisings have led to a successful democratic process, but development since the revolution has been marked by economic decline, unemployment and political unrest.
Shackle of Mohamed, Ali, believes that Tunisia has not gone as far as he dreamed of ten years ago.
– We gave politicians time for a whole decade and it has not improved much. Now is the time for revolutionaries to act again, he says.
Portrait of Mohamed Bouazizi at a post office in Sidi Bouzid, December 2020. Photo: Riadh Dridi / AP
