"We are trying to contain protests and dialogue with the army. We are fighting against saboteurs." On February 25 Ben Ali thugs torched parts of the town. "Here the revolution means complete social class transformation. We need to uproot and purge all RCD elements." That is not what it means in Tunis. 

"If the Islamists want to co-operate with us, we'll co-operate with them. If they want war I'll give them war." The cafe is quiet. Sour men smoke and dream of sneaking into Europe. "I am getting worried. A friend in Le Kef in this region was pushed out of teaching at the local high-school. Those Islamists said, ‘Atheists can't teach there.'" 

Behind us eloquent graffiti — "FUK You Ben Ali." The time warp is deeper in the hills. "You speak Russian. Ah, since you are also a communist and from the motherland of socialism I must buy you a falafel." There are enmities and ambitions enough for a low-level civil war in Kasserine. 

"We didn't know it was like this outside. Even if there are ten revolutions it won't get better. It's Europe for me," blurts out Rami as the road winds through hills and scrub towards Sidi Bouzid. Squat Berber houses cling resourcefully to exhausted soil. 

"The revolution is about jobs, about infrastructure, about development to this forgotten city," says Hazar Gharbi from the local Committee to Protect the Revolution, dominated by communists, trade unionists and Islamists. His phone rings. The army want him to defuse another protest. The meeting has taken longer to arrange as he is frightened of secret Israeli journalists, posing as Englishmen reporting for Haaretz. 

"If in a year the development does not come then we won't hesitate to take to the streets again." In this dreary, sticky café, unemployed Amin shows me a Facebook video he has made with his unemployed friends —"Our Aspirations." To dramatic music, photographs of tourist villages on the coast are contrasted with the slums of Sidi Bouzid. "We want Sidi Bouzid to be like that," he says. 

Posturing and aggressive, a gang in sunglasses presses us into downloading "the rare footage" of them beating up policemen. They are really proud of this. "What does dignity mean, what does the revolution mean?" retorts Hamid, whose animation degree is in little demand out here. "It means a car, a house, a wife, it means being a man. If in a year it isn't here we'll all still be drifting through the café, not knowing what we're doing, not knowing where we're going. We'll riot again." 

The gang escorts me to the slum inhabited by the family of Mohammed Bouazizi, the unlicensed vegetable-seller whose self-immolation outside the local administration sparked these men to riot, and revolution to erupt from Tunisia to Bahrain.