Yesterday, in downtown Tunis, a few hundred Tunisians created the event: a collective reading session, which transformed the avenue into an immense open-air library. Young and old, high school students, civil servants, retirees and children, provided with their books, stormed the marches of the municipal theater, the cafes terraces and the sidewalks of the famous avenue.
A good -natured atmosphere, the police presence was discreet. Sitting, standing, leaning against each other, people were cut off from the world, absorbed by their reading … A show never seen in Tunisia.
The Al Kitab bookstore, one of the rare bookstores that have contributed to this event in its own way, developing a reading space (mats, low tables and carbonated drinks), and promoting books.
Initially, this initiative was set up to bypass the prohibition to demonstrate on the avenue. It was maintained despite the lifting of the ban. Its initiators wanted to convey more than one message: show that Tunisians like reading, even if they do not read enough, and by the same, encourage them to read even more, give an image of Tunisians, other than that which one wants to give them; Opening to the world through reading and refusing any form of approval and obscurantism.
And the idea has come up. For more than two hours and up to nightfall, people continued to read in the light of candles. Each their style, their literary genre, Coelho and Musso rubbed shoulders with Rousseau and Baudelaire. The sacred and profane were able to coexist the space of a few hours.
What was remarkable was that the majority of readers were young people, and that they read in several languages. The number of women who participated in this cultural event was slightly higher than that of men. The presence of children is also to greet. Parents came with their bits of cabbage to make them read stories.
Also note that several people read “political”. Indeed, in the current situation, young people want to know a little more about religious fanaticism, on the history of the Arab world, on the percepts of Islam, on the movements of liberation in the world …
A real success, despite the criticisms and the denigration that shot here and there, because for some, this initiative was simple showing off, one more opportunity for the “sores” to display their interest in reading, to “make” intellectual “. There are even some who went so far as to say that the Tunisian people had other necessities, much more urgent than reading!
An initiative to renew, with perhaps much more involvement on the part of publishing houses and bookstores, because, it does not go without saying that the book remains inaccessible to a large slice of Tunisians.
In a country where statistics show that 23% of Tunisians have never read a single book, in a socio -political context which tends towards the single language, even the single thought, some believe that reading is their only weapon, and we can only encourage their approach.
