"Don't ask me about what I don't understand!" shrieks Bouazizi's mother when I ask if she plans to back a party, come July. "All we want is for the mosque to be praying 24/7, that's it," says his 16-year-old sister. "We are earning £2 a day with the vegetables. Things are OK." 

It is simple families like these that will decide the fate of Tunisia or Egypt at the ballot box. Nothing has changed in Sidi Bouzid, and the country now faces dire economic straits as the economic illiterates jostle for power. The situation is unlikely to remain at this level, let alone improve. Renewed rioting will test the viability of Tunisian democracy.

Normally the road to Ras Ajdir is clogged with oil containers and Libyan truckers heading to the ports of the north. No more trucks are leaving Libya. Uniformed men hail the car and open the boot — could there be weapons in there? Documents are checked. Ben Ali's thugs are driving rented cars across Tunisia. Every checkpoint is frightened lest my Citroën is an incoming drive-by shooting. The technocratic government in Tunis has slipped away. South of the city of Sfax this is a country under military rule. 

The radio reports that stabilisation in Tunisia is making good progress. Two hundred kilometres away, running street battles between the army and protesters bloody the grubby city of Gafsa. They wanted jobs at a phosphate plant. There are casualties, two dead. We have no idea as the road leads through the curfew and locked-down dusk of Tatooine. 

"This is our Sahara. This is our oil. We are to work in our Sahara." Those are the shouts of strikers camping in the dust by an office on the edge of the desert. "We want work here, now, now." Two men from Tatooine drowned this week as they were sailing to Sicily; everybody knows about it. Everyone knows that another gang are trying next week. 

It is too late to drive any further. We are becoming aggrieved and showing it at the constant inspections. In a bare room Sahara traders pitch in off the road. The TV is tuned to a Libyan channel. Freezing footage of green flags on an all-hour loop: "Gaddafi and God, Gaddafi and God!" 

The ochre earth at Ras Ajdir. The dunes are low, the trees are scarce and Africans are lying on the floor of the refugee camp. "Libya problem for blacks...Libyan take mobile...take money...take bag...rebel chase us...Gaddafi chase us," mumbles a Malian for his gang of total losers in the lottery of war. "Cross desert...not enough to drink...Go home...with nothing."