The Butterfly effect: “When a butterfly flutters its wings in one part of the world, it can eventually cause a hurricane in another.” The theory that events within the cosmos have a ripple effect, which extends beyond the space and time realm.
7:35 am
It was a cold December morning in 2010 in Tunisia. It was the 17th, to be more precise. A man stepped out of his house that morning and pulled his jacket a little closer around his shoulders just as he crossed the threshold of the door. He didn’t like the fact that it was so cold. He cupped his hands and blew into them and then rubbed them together and watched as his fingers, almost numbed by the cold, twisted around the bone looking like those of someone in his 80s. He laughed at that. He was 26.
He was 26 and didn’t have much to show for it. He worked those same fingers to the bone every day, trying to make things better. But it seems all his efforts were not exactly taking him anywhere. But he trudged on, hoping that one day, eventually, things will get better.
Life had not been exactly fair to him. His father, a construction worker, died when he was three of a heart attack leaving his mother with 6 other siblings. His mother married his uncle sometime later. It was allowed by the custom. With his uncle/new father unable to work regularly due to poor health, the man had had to help his family. He started doing various odd jobs when he turned 10.
He even quit school when he was a teenager, forfeiting a high school diploma, and hoping to work and make enough so his sisters won’t have to. He was actually helping to pay the educational expenses for one of his sister who was in the university. Getting a good education was something he always wanted for himself. And since he couldn’t get one, he made sure his sisters would be able to.
Now he sold food produce out of a push-truck in the local market in Sidi Bouzid, a rural town in Tunisia. He hoped that one day, he would be able to buy a real truck to help with his business. He made about $140 a month. Between taking care of himself and his family it was a long shot, but he kept the faith.
“Sabah alkhyr, Basboosa” a neighbour greeted from across the street. Everyone called him by his nickname Basboosa.
“Sabah alkyr,” he replied “altaqs barid alyawm.” Adding that it was quite cold that morning.
“Laa” the neighbour denied playfully, and they both laughed at the joke.
Basboosa then picked his push-truck and made his way to the market. He had a wide array of vegetables that morning, and he hoped to sell all of it.
8:00 am
He was a street vendor. He didn’t have enough money to rent a stall in the market and so he sold in and around the streets of the market. He needed, that morning, to sell as much as he could. Most of the produce he had in his cart were gotten on credit and he had to pay up any day now. His uncle had been in particularly poor health the week before and most of what he had earned had gone into medical treatment. His debt amounted to $200 and he was under pressure to pay it back. He didn’t like to owe people money.
But he feared one thing; the police.
Those greedy, corrupt bastards had been a stone in his shoe for years. Most of them knew him since he was 10 and they had been targeting and mistreating him since he was a child, regularly confiscating his small wheelbarrow of produce. Usually, he would give them a bribe, which is what they wanted in the first place. But today wasn’t such a day. He didn’t have money. He would dodge them as much as he could.
10:37 am
He was unlucky. The police caught him. They began to harass him. One female and two male officers. Their motive that day? He did not have a vendor's permit. Basboosa didn’t need one. No permit was needed to sell from a cart. He knew that and they knew it. He knew all they wanted was a bribe. But he could not give them.
He had taken a debt of $200 the night before and needed to sell enough to pay that back.
They eventually got into a heated argument. Anger flared and blood rushed to the cheeks. Then followed actions. Basboosa was slapped by the female officer. She then spat on him while her two other colleagues overturned his cart. A weighing scale fell out of the cart and she confiscated it while her two colleagues continued to slap Basboosa around and kick him as he lay helpless on the street, his vegetables strewn around him.
And then they left.
He lay on the ground, angered, frustrated and on the verge of tears. He had never been this humiliated before. And by a woman for that matter! He felt the world spinning around him and the injustice he had just suffered made the bile rise from the pits of his stomach. A few people who had seen the event, helped him get his cart back up, and to pick up what food produce had been littered onto the streets.
He now one mission in life; to get back his weighing scales which the female officer had confiscated.
11:06 am
He pushed his cart angrily to the office of the governor to make an official complain and to demand his scale. All he wanted was his weighing scale. He pushed his way through to the lobby of the governor’s office and demanded to see the man himself. He was standing in the lobby his chest heaving up and down in anger when 15 minutes later, an aide came by to tell him the governor was simply not going to see him.
He tried to explain to the aide that all he wanted was the governor to write a note demanding that his scales be returned to him. But the aide brushed him off, told him the governor had bigger fish to fry and walked away.
11:22 am
He was angry. He was frustrated. He lacked the words to say how much. He tried to scream, but he did not feel that any scream could ring out the volcano building up inside him. He walked briskly across the street and to the right to a petrol station.
He bought three litres of petrol and then a match from the shop at the petrol station.
11:28 am
He walked back across the street to the governor’s and stood right outside. There were a few people walking in and out, going about their business and no one really noticing him.
He fell down and all fours, crying as he did so. He had suffered so much injustice. Today's seemed to be more unbearable than every other day. He did not know why. No one was listening. But perhaps what he was going to do will make everyone sit up, and listen.
11:31 am
He got back to his feet more resolute than ever.
"How do you expect me to make a living?" He shouted. He doused himself with the petrol and set himself alight with a match.
People immediately panicked. Someone got a bucket and doused him with water. It only made things worst. He had suffered burns on over 90% of his body. He was taken by ambulance to a medical facility in where they were unable to treat his severe burns and so he was transferred to a the Burn and trauma centre in the city of Ben Arous where he was placed in the ICU.
His case gained a lot of media attention and the president of the country even visited him in the hospital and promised to have him sent to France for treatment. Nothing happened.
On 31 December 2010, doctors at the Ben Arous Burn and Trauma Centre reported that he was in stable condition and was showing a positive possibility of recovery.
The man died on the 4th of January 2011, at 5:30 p.m.
His name was TAREK AL-TAYED MOHAMED BOUAZIZI.
His death sparked a protest in his hometown of Sidi Bouzid the very next day. Eventually, the protest spread throughout Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Oman, Yemen, Djibouti, Sudan, Iraq, Bahrain, Libya, Kuwait, Morocco, Mauritania, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine.
The media called it ‘Arab Spring’
It led to the death of Khaddafi, the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia.
It led to what is now the Syrian war with its hundreds of thousands of deaths.
How will you change the world?
Watch your actions, they may have farther consequences than you can even begin to imagine.
P.S This story is 98% fact and 2% fiction
