Marhan & Mohamed’s Furious Fight for the Family Land

As the democratic promise of the Arab Spring slowly fades, two Tunisians battle to win back the property stolen from them through decades of imprisonment, torture and abuse.

Illustration by Joe Anderson

The first thing you notice about Marhan Habessi is the scar on his left cheek — a long, deep cut, etched into his face with a knife. Twice, he has had operations to make the scar less visible. At his last consultation, a doctor suggested covering the scar with hair implants from Marhan’s head, but the procedure is too expensive. Marhan was born in Tunisia, but when people ask, he tells them that he’s Syrian because that tends to get more sympathy — people are less judgmental about his dark skin, his Muslim name, and the scar on his face when he says he’s escaped from a country they’ve seen being blown up on the evening news. By contrast, his home country, Tunisia, thanks to a successful ad campaign by the Ministry of Tourism, has had a reputation of a vacation paradise for many years. Although recent attacks against foreigners at the country’s Bardo Museum and at a beach resort at Sousse a few months ago are starting to shed light on Tunisia’s problems, man…