Aug 10 Tip: Where the Spirit of the Arab Spring Lives On

From the NY Times: Where the Spirit of the Arab Spring Lives On

(The Aug 10 Compassionate Living Tip from Interfaith Paths to Peace)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/world/africa/a-cafe-where-the-spirit-of-the-arab-spring-lives-on.html?hp&_r=0

A Cafe Where the Spirit of the Arab Spring Lives On

By CARLOTTA GALL

TUNIS — In the heat of the afternoon, especially this past month of Ramadan, downtown Tunis plays dead. Offices and shops close at 2 p.m. and life is suspended as everyone, parched and hungry, waits for sunset and the breaking of the fast.

On a side street behind the Interior Ministry, the only movement is the occasional rumble of a tram, the only sound the trill of its bell warning pedestrians to step off the tracks.

But open a cafe door in a low-rise building here and you enter a buzzing theatrical space, alive with the clink of glasses and coffee cups and the roar of conversation from 100 tables. The air is thick with smoke from cigarettes — also forbidden during Ramadan.

The Théâtre de l’Étoile du Nord — the North Star Theater — is the place in the Tunisian capital to beat the Muslim fast. Customers here are unabashed about breaking the rules, and they pass the time drinking espresso with a glass of ice water, or perhaps sweet homemade lemonade.

“We are very weak, and it is too hot!” said one customer, Ali, with an apologetic smile. He had come with a friend for the first time. “You hear by word of mouth,” he said.

But L’Étoile du Nord is far more than a cafe. Originally a parking lot, it covers 7,500 square feet and never closes, a freewheeling space for spectators and performers and a haunt for actors, intellectuals, freethinkers and revolutionaries.