On Dec. 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old street vendor in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, poured a bottle of gasoline over his head and body and set himself on fire. The act came after his goods and cart were confiscated by municipal officers and he was refused a meeting by the local governor. He died from his burns a few weeks later.
His wasn’t the first self-immolation in North Africa that year, but his act of desolation resonated with millions of other young Tunisians who, like him, lacked stable jobs and lived meager existences under the autocratic rule of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. They took to the streets in protest until Ben Ali’s 23-year rule collapsed and he was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia the next month. Bouazizi’s lonely gesture changed the course of Tunisia and the Middle East at large. But a decade later, the same flames that killed him burn today. And in Tunisia, they risk incinerating so many of the positive changes that emerged out of that singularly violent event.
