After police confiscated his fruit cart and humiliated him publicly, 26-year-old vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire outside a government building in Sidi Bouzid. His act of desperation, born from years of unemployment and petty harassment, detonated protests across Tunisia that within weeks drove President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from power after 23 years, and set off uprisings across the Arab world.
Bouazizi had sold fruit and vegetables from a cart for years to support his family, without a permit because, he told relatives, he couldn't afford the bribes officials demanded. On the morning of December 17th, a municipal inspector named Faida Hamdi confiscated his scale and produce, and, according to witnesses, slapped him in front of a crowd. Bouazizi went to the provincial headquarters demanding his cart back, was refused a meeting, and returned an hour later with a can of fuel.
He survived his burns for eighteen days, dying on January 4, 2011, by which point his story, spread by cell phone video and Facebook, had already become a rallying symbol. Protesters in his hometown clashed with police within hours of the immolation; by early January the unrest had spread to the capital, Tunis. President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14, ending a regime many had assumed was permanent.
The shockwaves reached Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain within weeks, an upheaval the world came to call the Arab Spring. Tunisia alone among the affected countries managed a relatively peaceful transition to democracy, adopting a new constitution in 2014, though the euphoria of 2011 gave way to years of economic struggle and, eventually, democratic backsliding — a complicated legacy for the single desperate act that started it all.