“Tunisia is not an easy place to live if you look like me. I wear my dreads with pride but it is not something that is considered normal here. Even my dad, who has always been very supportive of me, offered to pay for my tuition if I would shave off my dreads. It would be really easy for me to get rid of it and just be ’‘normal” but I wont. Many people here in Tunisia have forgotten about theirroots. In fact, many of the problems we face today have to do with our lack of identity. We speak French but we are not French. We speak Arabic but we are not Arabs. Before the French and before the Arabs we were Amazigh, the original inhabitants of North Africa. Many of us would wear our hair exactly the way I do today. It makes me sad that not only have we forgotten where we come from but we even developed prejudice against it. That is why I will keep wearing my dreads with pride even if that means facing negativity on a daily basis. My dreads represent much more than my looks, It is my way of honoring my roots’’
(Tunis, Tunisia)