THE TALKING STONES, LETTER TO SOUAD (6)

 

Photo@ Yassine Gaidi

The Talking Stones, Letter to Souad (6)

 

Tunis, March 6,  2021

Madame,

The stone has spoken. The stone that you have installed on the Avenue Bourguiba to embellish the stand that holds Ibn Khaldoun’s statue and pave the plot that surrounds it has started screaming. After only a few days of its public life as an urban item, it has been covered in shrieks of anger:  « ACAB ! Taḥt al-zlīz [Under the floor tiles]! Flūs al-Shaʿb [The people’s money]! Al-Jīl al-Khata’ [The wrong generation]! Milliard w 800 [A million and eight hundred]! Fuck Capitalists ! Fāsida [Corrupt]! Qadha'ukom labbisūh al-zayy [Dress your justice in a (police) uniform]. And, a poster, peacefully hanging from Ibn Khaldoun’s arm, demands “Freedom to the prisoners we do not know. » 

Souad, the cold and heavy damn stand in speckeled Italian granite transformed into a moaning mass, a burning monolith. Can you hear it? Can you just hear it, or do you think –like the others- that your  masterpiece was vandalized by impolite leftist rascals who attack public assets and sign their actions with a raised fist? As the adage from here says, Madame, there was enough to make a stone talk. But we kept silent.

The frivolity with which you have tackled the representation of a figure who crossed life –partly on this same land that is holding us- with the ardent desire of capturing its meaning, its functioning, its cycles, its truth, was inappropriate. The levity with which you have played ornamenting around an image loaded with severity, a figure who –from this same life and in this same land- endured all the pains, all the losses that a human being can bare, was insulting . Never get near such icons with no knowledge and no expertise, Madame, never! They seek revenge! Truth and its seekers burn if you approach them lightly, you see. The so-called marauders seem to have suspected this: God knows how, in the middle of the night, despite of the curfew, in a densely policed area, they chose to tag the granite of the stand and to preserve the marble of the sculpture. They could have tagged things differently! There is no graffiti rule stating some icons should stay unspoiled and some do not : Neither Ibn Khaldoun disguised in Zoubeir Turki nor Zoubeir Turki disguised in Ibn Khaldoun; neither the dark marble nor the speckled granite. Visibly, the taggers of the Avenue are not addressing any of these: The message is for you, and what you represent, Madame. Can you only hear it?

We can easily imagine how frustrating it must be to govern a city falling into poverty and decrepitude, and which budget cannot cover the cleaning costs anymore. That was the deal, though. When in democracy, good governance does not do “embellishments”, Madame. It has been half a century since the very notion of “embellishment” left the vocabulary of city-planners, landscape architects or the sensible municipal councils. When in democracy, governance discusses priorities, fair and equitable budget-management, citizens’ life-quality in the city, how to constantly re-invent it. Good governance, in times of recession, discusses emergencies, and the legitimacy of each action. Embellishments (sadly, you would say) are the archaic luxury that other forms of governance (which are neither good nor democratic) offer. They are the syndrome and the weapon of governors who -by despair or by arrogance- make use of window dressing for the show. What winds-up being served is the governor’s persona and ambitions to leave a legacy in their cities (and why not, other interests for themselves and their loyal clans). When such projects grow in a democracy, you have to be prepared to harvest the thorns they bring with them. When at a stone’s throw away from the site of your project, sewage manhole are uncovered, balconies and crown-moldings are falling apart on pedestrians, sidewalks are cracking, breaking, undulating, and garbage is piling-up in blind alleys, then covering the floor under Ibn Khaldoun with polished stone and ribboning the sides of palm-tree boxes with purple lights becomes an inferno paved with good intentions (or not). And let me tell you here, if you found Ibn Khaldoun’s taggers mean, wait to see those who will celebrate the Bab Souika embellishment project you are preparing for them!

Now, this being said, I shall present my congratulations to you for this project. In urban-planning, like in show business, nothing can be worse than indifference. In just a few days, the Ibn Khaldoun placette has been more than ever written about (and on!) , with ink –be it digital - and with paint. I need to confess there was something in the project that appeared to me like a monumental mistake: The newly-embellished stand was put under a projector’s light, whilst the statue was left in the dark! I was telling myself that the mistake must have been coming from some designer’s ego that made them forget the very purpose of their operation. Then, I saw the stand covered in graffiti and realized that I was mistaken: The stand is the star of the project. And its stones are promising to be talkative and rebellious. Such things can happen with mineral matters, sometimes. And when they occur, there is not much left to be done but to prepare your sponges and solvents, then to read well and listen carefully to what the stone has to say.

Regards,

Sihem L.