At least, that is how one version of the revolutionary tale goes:

Last December, Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, could not afford to pay for a license for his vegetable cart and he was summarily harassed and slapped by municipal officer Hamdi.  This was the final straw for a financially desperate Bouazizi who had his wares confiscated several times before.  After his confrontation with Hamdi, he doused himself with paint thinner and set himself on fire in front of the town hall.  Bouazizi became the hero of the Arab Spring and Hamdi—suddenly on the “wrong” side of a civil uprising and a potential scapegoat for a nervous Ben Ali — was thrown into jail without a trial.

 For 47 year-old Hamdi, her simple life quickly changed. A resident of Sidi Bouzid, about 260 kilometres from the capital Tunis, she comes from a working class family in which her father was a security guard.  They are conservative, traditional people whose lives were thrown into the limelight last year when Hamdi’s “slap” was said to have sparked revolutions across the Arab world.

“The man who is beaten by a woman and does not respond, should wear a dress,” was what Hamdi often heard about the slap to Bouazizi that she says she never gave him. In fact, she says it was Bouazizi who assaulted her and wounded her hand when she tried to confiscate his scales.  The long-held martyr of the revolution, says Hamdi, slapped her with verbally abusive insults.

After three months in jail, during which time she was afraid to reveal her true identity, Hamdi was acquitted in April 2011 by the Court of First Instance. In an interview with Correspondents, Hamdi tells her side of the story and describes how she was a victim of injustice and harrassment and that the revolution has done little to change the role of women in Tunisia. 

What exactly happened on December 17, 2011?

Upon a complaint made by some traders in Sidi Bouzid’s central marketplace due to the disordered existence of peddlers in front of their shops, I went with two colleagues to enforce the law, which prohibits that. Mohamed Bouazizi was one of four peddlers in the place. When we arrived, they all ran away except for Bouazizi who remained there shouting and complaining that he was poor and couldn’t give a bribe.

I found his reaction rather strange, given that the day before I had friendlily told him that he couldn’t stand there any more and he had accepted it.

When we approached his vegetable pushcart to confiscate the goods, he firmly rejected, so I took away his pair of scales. He grabbed my uniform, uttering abusive words and cursing God. Then he assaulted me and wounded my hand. I returned to the car and talked to the dispatch to ask for a back up.

So, contrary to what the media has said, you feel you have been unjustly treated? 

Yes! I’ve suffered from injustice. I didn’t cause Bouazizi to set himself on fire. He did that because he felt oppressed and because of his bad social status. What happened between us was, for him, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I consider myself a political prisoner and I’ve contributed to the revolution from my position. I was jailed without trial based on an order of the former president, when the popular protests rose up against his regime; I was a scapegoat.

The media was also unfair to me, introducing me as an evil woman and hiding the truth. The worst was Aljazeera, which lied and changed my profession from a municipal policewoman to a constable to show people that I was the strong fist that Ben Ali used against his people. It also said that I slapped Bouazizi, but it did not prove that.

Can you tell us what happened during your imprisonment?

The funny thing is that throughout my three-month imprisonment, the female prisoners did not know that I was Fadia Hamdi, about whom they heard from TV channels and newspapers. I heard curses against me everyday by other prisoners, but I didn’t respond because I was afraid of them.

The jailers advised me to conceal my real identity, which was painful to me. It was as if I had been a criminal who committed a serious crime. Even though I was sure that I was innocent, I kept silent to avoid being hurt.

Do you believe in what you have done? If time went back, would you act the same way?

I like my job even though I joined my job in 2000 only to escape unemployment and improve my social status. Now, I’m sad because I’m no longer doing that job. I feel bored and unproductive because I sit for hours on a chair at the department uselessly since the municipal police was cancelled and its staff was incorporated into the National Security Service last June.

If this decision was abolished, or if time went back, I would return to my job and would, in respect of public order, enforce the law against anyone who exists in a prohibited place, even if it was Bouazizi himself. I’m surprised by a society that punishes an employee who enforces the law.

But Bouazizi today is a hero and a martyr in everyone’s eyes.

I’m a partner in this heroism, but I don’t view him as a martyr. It’s not only my opinion, but the opinion of our Islamic religion which prohibits committing suicide.

What do you think about the revolution in general?

Those who really made the revolution haven’t got anything yet. In fact, those benefiting from it are mainly the ones who have not contributed to it, starting with the president, who was living abroad, and ending with the parties of the ruling troika, such as leaders of the Islamist Al-Nahda Movement, who were exiled in the UK; their Sheikh Rashid Ghannouchi and many other ministers on top of them. 

I believe that the revolution has not achieved its goals yet. Numbers of unemployed youths have increased and deprived areas are still marginalized. On the other hand, the effective political elites in Tunisia, government and opposition, have tried to push the people into other mazes, away from the revolution’s original claims of employment, dignity and the removal of dictatorship. Now, the people find themselves divided between secularists and Islamists, modernists and fundamentalists, while the dreams of the poor are still waiting.

Do you favour any political character?

I admire the late President Habib Bourguiba who led the country to independence. As a woman, I’m grateful to him because he made Tunisian women get all their rights, compared with other Arab countries. He, also, established the principles of free education and medication. 

Now, I admire Hamma Hammami, the General Secretary of the Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party, regardless of his believes – a Moslem or a leftist, a faithful or a faithless – this is a personal thing between him and his Creator. In spite of the pressures put on him during the reign of Ben Ali, he did not leave the country and kept fighting inside. 

Your appearance as a veiled woman gives the impression that you support the Ennahda movement.

A. First, I’m not affiliated with any political party. Second, as you know, I’m a member of the Security Service and there’s a law issued during the reign of Ben Ali that prohibits wearing a veil during working hours (inside state institutions). I wear a veil after work as I come from a conservative family from the countryside of Sidi Bouzid. Moreover, after I got out of jail, I lost a lot of my hair and I had to wear a veil, and kept doing that afterwards.    

In general, how do you view the status of Tunisian women since the revolution?

In spite of what Bourguiba had previously done for Tunisian women since the independence, their equality with men, especially in politics, is still nominal. Ben Ali used to boast about the freedom of Tunisian women and their occupying of high positions, but in fact, they were mere nominal positions. This is still the situation after the revolution. Women don’t hold important positions; the portfolios they hold – the Ministry of Women or the Ministry of Environment – are not major ministries.

Therefore, I believe that Tunisian women, who contributed to the revolution and the removal of the dictatorship, side-by-side with men, have not freshly picked its fruits, like all those who have actually contributed to it.