The word mabrouka in Arabic translates as ‘many blessings from God’ and ‘good luck’. It is believed that a woman who holds this name not only enjoys these blessings and luck but also shares them with those around her. Yet things didn’t quite turn out that way for Mabrouka Oweini who was born and raised […]

More than fifty years ago, when Hamrouni Bin Issa was a young pupil, he stole his French teacher’s stick. Robert Wating realized his pupil’s crime but chose not to punish him. On the contrary, the teacher helped Issa nurture his talent. “Hamrouni made a beautiful piece of art out of a wooden stick used to […]

A woman sitting at a working-class café in the central Tunisian governorate of Kairouan is still something that customs and tradition refuse to countenance. This region abides by rigid social conventions that regard the café as an exclusively male space. You will only rarely encounter women at these cafes, and then only a few of […]

Libyan demand for furnished flats in Tunisia’s southern cities has led to a rise in property brokers. Apartments are being converted into furnished residences overnight and put on the market by brokers who receive a fixed percentage for every tenant they find. They are the preferred solution for Libyans who, undeterred by the prices being […]

Twenty-one-year-old Yohav Hattab, one of the victims of the Paris supermarket attack, which killed four people on January 9, holds only one nationality: Tunisian. The son of Benjamin Hattab, chief Rabbi of Tunis and director of a Jewish school, Yohav Hattab, was studying international trade in Paris for the last two years. Yohav Hattab was […]

The Abdaoui family had just started to accept the death of its son Khalid when it learned that his twin brother Walid, within the same year, had also been killed on his way to wage jihad Syria. In the central Tunisian province of Kairouan where the Abdaoui family lives, stories about the deaths of its […]

Tunisia’s leading party, Nidaa Tounes, chose Habib Essid, an independent, veteran politician going as far back as the Ben Ali era and also active in the 2011 revolution, as its new prime minister. By virtue of his position as an independent, which spares him some partisan pressures, Essid is faced with a long list of […]

The last presidential candidates standing, Nidaa Tounes’ Beji Caid Essebsi and Ennahda ally Moncef Marzouki, have only a few more days to perfect images of themselves that will remain entrenched in the minds of voters on Sunday, December 21 when Tunisia holds the runoff vote of the first democratic presidential elections since the ouster of […]

The pre-game show (also known as Dakhla) held by fans of Avenir Sportif de Gabès football team on December 12, depicted their foes— Stade Gabèsien—as sympathizers to the former French colonialists. Avenir fans held a giant banner showing a line dividing the city into two parts, and pictures of themselves as freedom fighters on horses, […]

From the beginning, the Ennahda Movement chose, explicitly and publicly, especially after the announcement of the legislative elections results, neither to enter the presidential elections nor to support any candidate. It supported this position by a stance taken during a meeting of its Shura Council, calling on Ennahda supporters to vote for the appropriate presidential […]