The Arab Spring Has Given Tunisians the Freedom to Act on Their Unhappiness

For Immediate Release: March 21, 2016 Press Contacts: Natalie Raabe, (212) 286-6591 Molly Erman, (212) 286-7936 Adrea Piazza, (212) 286-4255 The Arab Spring Has Given Tunisians the Freedom to Act on Their Unhappiness In the March 28, 2016, issue of The New Yorker, in “Exporting Jihad” (p. 38), George Packer reports from Tunisia and investigates how the after- math of its revolution—the 2011 ouster of the country’s corrupt and autocratic leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali—created not only the Middle East’s only functioning democracy but a climate in which young Tunisians are turning to jihad, and joining ISIS, in droves. “In Tunisia, leaving to wage jihad has become a social phenomenon,” Packer, who cites estimates suggesting that the country of eleven million people is the world’s lead- ing producer of jihadism, writes. “Recruitment spreads like a contagion through informal networks of friends and family members, and the country is small enough so that everyone knows of someone who has disappeared.” One young, unemployed engineer tells Packer, “The friends I was studying with in high school and boxing with—ninety per cent have gone, and not to Italy. They went to Syria and Iraq. There are no longer any young people.” Democracy didn’t turn Tunisian youths into jihadis, but it gave them the freedom to act on their unhappiness—which is fuelled in part by the country’s rampant unemployment. A third of recent college graduates cannot find work. “By raising and then frustrating expectations, the revolution created conditions for radicalization to thrive,” Packer writes. “The youth are lost,” a young Tunisian who lives in Douar Hicher, a poor suburb of Tunis, tells Packer. “There’s no justice.” He continues, “If you want to stop terrorism, then bring good schools, bring transporta- tion—because the roads are terrible—and bring jobs for young people.” Tunisian jihadis have developed a reputation for being involved in extreme violence. In Tunis, Ons Ben Abdelkarim, a twenty-six-year-old woman who leads a civic organization named Al Bawsala, tells Packer, “Tunisians who go abroad are the bloodiest—they show such an inhuman face when they go to the zones of jihad.” She explains, “Injustice contributes a lot to this—when one feels that one doesn’t belong to Tunisia, when one feels that Tunisia brings you nothing.” The Jasmine Revolution, she says, had been stolen from the young. “We’re suffocating,” a young man named Alaa tells Packer. This sentiment is one that Packer heard repeatedly from young people there, who frequently used the word “makhnouk” in conversation. “It means ‘suffocated,’ and it suggests a sense of being trapped, bored, and enraged, with no alternative but to explode,” Packer writes. One young Tunisian who attempted to join the fight in Syria tells Packer that he was driven to do so for “a sense of revenge for the injustice in this country.” He continues: “It’s not only me. All of Tunisia wants to leave.” Es Devlin and the Psychology of the Stage In “Imaginary Spaces” (p. 52), Andrew O’Hagan, speaking to some of entertainment’s biggest names, including Benedict Cumberbatch and Bono, profiles the visionary set designer Es Devlin, whose work extends far beyond theatre and opera—to stadium rock concerts, the Olympic games, and Paris fashion week. Devlin, who is forty-four and widely considered to be the world’s foremost set designer, “is an architect of temporary space, making images that can survive only in the minds of the people who see her shows,” O’Hagan writes, noting that she has become one of show business’s busiest people. “Devlin’s conversation is peppered with references to artists she has worked with, or who have inﬂuenced her—Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst, Bill Viola, Pina Bausch, Bruce Nauman, Tracey Emin—and she is widely credited with having brought the sensibility and visual vocabulary of the contemporary-art scene into the theatre world,” O’Hagan writes. “Es doesn’t design plays,” Lyndsey Turner, the director of a recent Devlin-de- signed “Hamlet” production, tells O’Hagan. “Or, at least, she doesn’t design the locations in which they’re set. Instead, she designs the ideas, the thought structures, the systems in which the characters operate.” Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the title role in the production, adds, “She knows how to bend the mind around corners of our experience.” Devlin, who has worked with Louis Vuitton, in Paris, and with the Metropolitan Opera, and who has masterminded concert sets for Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, U2, her longtime collaborator Kanye West, and Adele, “seems to love the glamour of her crazy schedule and diverse worlds,” O’Hagan writes. Bono tells O’Hagan, “Es takes our inchoate aspirations and bashes them into metal.” Devlin tells O’Hagan that Kanye’s sets are, visually, “as good as it gets at a pop concert,” because he, as a performer, has the confidence to venture beyond the norm. She continues: “Some people just see the world according to its geometry.” Plus: In Comment, Jeffrey Toobin examines how President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland as Supreme Court Justice reveals the President’s “distaste for the vulgar realities of politics,” and considers how the Supreme Court—not only an honor society for America’s smartest BARRY BLITT BARRY lawyers but a partisan battlefield—is inescapably political (p. 21); in an essay, David Sedaris confesses to his love for buying unflattering, exhil- arating clothing—including multiple pairs of culottes—in Tokyo, a pastime that has become a bonding experience for him and his siblings. “Shopping with my sisters in Japan was like being in a pie-eating contest, only with stuff,” he writes. “We often felt sick. Dazed. Bloated. Vul- gar. Yet never quite ashamed” (p. 36); drawing from his forthcoming book, “The Gene: An Intimate History,” Siddhartha Mukherjee explores his family’s history of mental illness, and reports on the genetic roots of schizophrenia (p. 28); in Shouts & Murmurs, Susanna Wolff imagines several new wireless-Internet plans, including the TV-Buff-Infuriating Buffer Plan and the Thrill-Seeker Triple-Refresh Bundle (p. 33); Louis Menand reads Charles Duhigg’s new book, “Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business” (p. 68); Nicholas Lemann considers why suspicion of bigness—in government and in business—has been a venerable theme in American politics (p. 72); Eliz- abeth Gumport reads “Noonday,” the third book in Pat Barker’s trilogy about a group of artists (p. 76); Anthony Lane watches Jeff Nichols’s “Midnight Special” and Arnaud Desplechin’s “My Golden Days” (p. 80); and new fiction by Ian McEwan (p. 62). Podcasts: Evan Osnos speaks with Jelani Cobb and Benjamin Wallace-Wells about the Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and the populist movements in the Democratic and Republican parties; David Remnick moderates a conversation between Amy Davidson, Kelefa Sanneh, and FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver about the state of the Presidential campaign; Ian McEwan reads his short story “My Purple Scented Novel.” Digital Extras: Photographs of Es Devlin’s sets; Robin Becker reads her poem; and Richard Brody comments on scenes from Freder- ick Wiseman’s 1970 film, “Hospital.” The March 28, 2016, issue of The New Yorker goes on sale at newsstands beginning Monday, March 21. ARI STEINBERG.

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