More than a year after his election, however, the president had been unable to do much about the collapsing economy, skyrocketing prices, or lack of decent jobs. That was why an estimated 15,400 Tunisians boarded rickety boats for Europe this year, only 570 of which drowned, and part of the reason why young men continued to set themselves on fire.
In Tunisia, illegal migration to Europe by boat was called the ‘harga’. The word literally translates to ‘burn’.
Chaos and unrest
In the burn unit, all the doctors raised their voices so that the patients could hear them through the thick layers of white bandages that enveloped their heads, but Dr. Jami was the loudest of them all. Her “good mornings” were trumpets, her entrances laughter and thunder; she could now make a roomful of staff laugh with a single line, or rock it with calls for help.
Dr. Jami, the daughter of a nurse, had studied medicine because her father’s dream was to join the burn unit shortly after opening in 2008.
She and her office mate, a fellow GP, Behija Gasri, had spent five straight days in the ward during the revolution, changing diapers and mopping hallways because no one else could reach the hospital. So many self-immolation cases were brought in that they ran out of beds and started putting patients on chairs.
Chaos and unrest: that was all the revolution had brought her, she often thought.
In the decade that followed, most of Tunisia’s self-immolation cases were brought to this hospital, the main burn treatment center in North Africa. Their numbers grew while the medical staff caring for them declined. The deteriorating economy had prompted thousands of Tunisian doctors to leave the country for better opportunities abroad, including half of the burns unit’s senior specialists, and now there was much more work and much less money for those left behind.