Country of contradiction

This brilliantly written article published on Tunisia Live website perfectly summarizes Tunisia for an outsider - a country of contradictions but yet so alluring and fascinating that it keeps visitors coming back. The only part I don't like is where the writer buys into this phantasmagorical narrative of cutting off hands which are so far from truth. Otherwise, it is a great read:

this is post-revolution Tunisia, a clumsy moment rife with contradiction: divorce and abortion are legal and polygamy is banned; homosexuality is illegal and prostitutes are official employees of the Ministry of the Interior; women feel free to wear bikinis on the beach but kids are thrown in jail for kissing in the streets; alcohol is legal but not widely available and discreetly sold for fear of a fundamentalist cutting off your fingers; there is a liberal media yet one can still be locked away publishing pictures of the prophet. All the while, a Salafist minority noisily threatens to foist theocracy upon the country. Hypocrisy is also rampant … the psyche of millions torn asunder by the dissonance between the sacrosanct laws of God and the mutable laws of men and the social pressure to reconcile the two. A man that frequents the brothels would not tell me where it was located, because it is “haram” – forbidden by Allah. One young man would not speak the name of the street for fear of what others might think of him for the mere utterance; he opts to write the name on a piece of paper, and only because I am a friend.