Of Laws Tattooed in Flesh: Gendered Self-Expression through “Tounsi” in Post- Revolutionary Tunisia

They gathered outside, in the summer of 2013, at a public park in Tunis with yellow flyers attached to their arms that read Sayeb 15. They were demanding freedom for Wled al-15, a Tunisian rapper, who had recently been jailed after months of hiding for his song Bolicia Kleb, or “The Police are Dogs”. The gathering was among the first for Kalaam Charaa, a street poetry movement initiated by young Tunisian poets, which stresses the importance of poetry in Tunisian dialect, known locally as Tounsi.