The Source Simmers

It was in Tunisia, if you will recall, that the so-called Arab Spring began, when a young man named Mohamed Bouazizi committed suicide after a run-in with a government official over where he could and could not sell his fruits and vegetables. He claimed that the official, a woman, had slapped him, and his self-immolation was seen as an act born of a desperation and frustration that many felt with the seemingly immutable power of the government. So he became a symbol ~ until the official was found to be innocent of the slap, and then many didn't know quite what to think. While they were proud of the outcome of their revolution (Tunisia's president/dictator of 23 years, Zine
el-Abidine Ben Ali, had been forced to flee the country), they were not so proud of the man who had started it (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/15/arab-spring-tunisia-the-slap).
   The country remains full of contradictions. Many of the foreign fighters who have joined the Islamic State are from Tunisia (story, slideshow: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tunisia-after-igniting-arab-spring-sends-the-most-fighters-to-islamic-state-in-syria/2014/10/28/b5db4faa-5971-11e4-8264-deed989ae9a2_story.html), but in a recent election, the ruling Islamist party, Nahda, lost to the secularist Nidaa Tounes, or Tunisian Call (http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21628920-surprising-defeat-islamist-nahda-party-secularists-comeback).