Translation Tuesday: Excerpts from Bed of Jasmine by Hella Feki

Hella Feki’s Bed of Jasmine recounts Tunisia’s 2011 Jasmine Revolution through four voices, three human narrators and a prison cell. Translator Rhiannon Lawrence describes this polyphonic structure as a way of portraying the revolution across different generations, genders, and social classes while creating a counter-narrative to state censorship and propaganda. The two excerpts published by Asymptote follow Mehdi, a 28-year-old journalist arrested after filming the protests. From a small cell beneath the Ministry of the Interior, he reflects on Mohamed Bouazizi’s death, the spread of demonstrations, unemployment, poverty, and police violence. Mehdi had travelled through Tunisia’s interior with a video camera and smartphone, documenting events that could not appear in the press and posting them instead on his blog and Facebook. The narrative then moves into his interrogation and torture, where fear and physical suffering are set against his continued hope for a more merciful future for Tunisia. Feki presents the revolution not as an abstract political event, but through the lives, memories, and experiences of those who endured it directly.