Mondher Ben Mabrouk, a young Tunisian working in the building industry, never thought that one day he would be the country’s most famous construction worker. Or that he might be threatened with death for this role. Or that, after he faced such threats, that his life might improve because of them. But all of this did happen.

Mondher Ben Mabrouk, a young Tunisian working in the building industry, never thought that one day he would be the country’s most famous construction worker. Or that he might be threatened with death for this role. Or that, after he faced such threats, that his life might improve because of them. But all of this did happen.

And it was all due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On June 26 this year, extremist Seifeddine Rezgui opened fire on tourists on a beach in Sousse, killing 38 people. On the same day Ben Mabrouk was returning from work through a shortcut he took daily; the shortcut involved him climbing over a wall in the middle of a road which was actually, unbeknown to him, very near the site of the terrorist attack.

Tunisian authorities conducting reconnaissance from above saw him and the area was sealed off, with Ben Mabrouk arrested shortly afterwards.

‘Kill the terrorist!’

Ben Mabrouk was severely beaten by the people who caught him as he was climbing the wall. “The people around me were shouting: ‘kill the terrorist’,” Ben Mabrouk recalls. “The women were cheering that I was being arrested. But I had no idea what was going on.”

A woman even bit him on the neck and he believes that if security forces hadn’t pushed him into their vehicle, he would have been killed by the mob, who were calling for him to be tortured and executed. “Although I was covered in the dirt of my construction job, all fingers were pointed at me,” he says.

Thanks to testimonies from his co-workers and employer, Ben Mabrouk was released after two hours of interrogation. Immediately after the news of his release broke, there were calls on Tunisian social media to apologize to him and to support him.

Although he is a recent graduate from the Higher Institute of Sport and Physical Education, Ben Mabrouk was unemployed in his hometown of Sidi Bouzid, in central Tunisia, and he had moved to Sousse for a short time to do construction work and earn some money to support his wife, an unemployed academic, and their new baby daughter. Ben Mabrouk also helps to support the rest of his family.

A dream comes true

“Construction work is a worthy job,” Ben Mabrouk explains. “It saved me from being unemployed and I’ve met a lot of great people through it.”

Still, three days after he was beaten and arrested, Ben Mabrouk was still frightened to leave the house. At that stage though – on July 2 – he got a personal call from the Tunisian Minister of Youth and Sports, Maher Ben Dhia. The Minister had heard about his story and promised him a job. Ben Mabrouk was then given a contract at the athletics center in Sidi Bouzid.

Today Ben Mabrouk is preparing to leave Sousse and return home to his new job. His memories of the place will be a mixture of pain and joy, he says. But best of all he is now getting to fulfill a long-held dream of employment in the field he trained for.