MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Eleanor Beardsley has the story from Tunis.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTESTING)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Unidentified Woman #1: (Chanting in foreign language)
(SOUNDBITE OF TV BROADCAST)
BEARDSLEY: That surprised no one, says 22-year-old student Mehdi Hachani.
MEHDI HACHANI: Young people are angry when they watch the Tunisian TV. They don't see what they are seeing in the street.
BEARDSLEY: Hachani says everybody watched French and Arabic cable stations to get their news. His mother, Mufida Hachani, has spent most of her career as an editor at Tunisian state TV. She says the channel did not find the courage to broadcast the footage of the protesters and police violence at first. But on Friday night, after Ben Ali fled the country, the station did take on-air calls from angry Tunisians for the first time in its history.
MUFIDA HACHANI: I'm 56 years old, and I have been fighting for all this time. Never, we have never been free to run our stories. It's a victory. But I hope it will be a victory for a long time there, because they are still there and really, we are afraid.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BEARDSLEY: Unidentified Woman #2: (Speaking in foreign language)
(SOUNDBITE OF TV BROADCAST)
BEARDSLEY: A crowd gathers outside a bookshop on Habib Bourghiba Avenue. They're looking in the windows at books on display that were all banned just a week ago. I met the bookshop owner, Selma Jabbes, at last Friday's demonstrations right before the government fell. She spoke then about the difficulty of importing foreign literature. Today, she's beaming as she welcomes customers into her store.
SELMA JABBES: We have all the books that were forbidden. It's books about the families of Ben Ali, and all books about freedom and about liberty of thinking.
BEARDSLEY: Zeid Hafhouf says he's finally able to get a book written by two French journalists called "The Regent of Carthage." It's about President Ben Ali's wife, Leila Trabelsi, a hated figure here. He says everyone has been dying to read it.
ZEID HAFHOUF: I'm very happy. It gives me a good reason to stay in my country. Before, I was planning, like, to leave, because I said to myself I could not live in such a country where I cannot be free to read what I want.
BEARDSLEY: Mr. ALAEDDINE BEN AMOR (Radio Disc Jockey) We didn't have choices to choose our, really, our music. Really, sometimes, some songs that we had to broadcast on the radio.
BEARDSLEY: (Soundbite of song, "Mr. President")
EL GENERAL: (Rapping in foreign language)
BEARDSLEY: His new favorite artist is rapper El General, who has just been released from prison. Ben Amor puts on El General's scathing ballad about Ben Ali, entitled "Mr. President."
AMOR: (Soundbite of song, "Mr. President")
GENERAL: (Rapping in foreign language)
BEARDSLEY: (Soundbite of song, "Mr. President")
GENERAL: (Rapping in foreign language)