Killings and looting returned to the streets of Tunis in late February before mass resignations of opposition politicians from the interim government put politics on course for a far deeper transformation. The success of the kasbah protests has led to a new 77-year-old temporary president, Fouad Mebazaa, and an 84-year-old interim prime minister, Beji Caid el Sebsi, both too old to be part of the political future. Responding to the street, the old men liquidated the RCD and the political police, then promised to host elections for a constitutional convention in July that was announced with a fanfare on live TV.  

Tunis is different now; the nights are nervous.  The tomb-like calm of a one-party state has evaporated. The shops and cafés close at nightfall. Vendors have bricked up fronts in the souk. Corners are clogged with illegal vendors selling stolen perfume or contraband cigarettes. Traffic has gone awry. Locals shudder that one of the 9,000 criminals released from jail might be behind them. Barbed wire surrounds the tree-lined elegance of the central Avenue Habib Bourguiba. Uniformed men shout if you get too close. Armoured vehicles slumber at the crossroads. 

The difference from 1989 is that in East Berlin everyone knew why they were revolting and what they wanted the countries of the Warsaw Pact to become. In Tunis everyone knows what they don't want, but the agreement stops there. 

Wasef is 22 and has been camping in the kasbah for a week. His friends all back different factions. Ben Ali's censorship has ensured none of them really know what politics entails. "There are four groups here. There are the women's rights campaigners, the Arab nationalists, the soft Turkish Islamists and then the extreme Islamists. They will win because the Left is too friendly." His friend Hassan has an afro and a red keffiyeh, backs the communists and the legalisation of marijuana. "I defended the Jews and the sluts on the TV the other day and now the Islamist students are giving me grief." His friends laugh.  

These boys have never left Tunisia, "but we have watched so many movies we know what it is like in a developed country."  They are naively optimistic. Wide-eyed, they show me the bullets that tried to kill them and tell me their political dreams. "Come back in a year and we'll buy you coffee because we'll all have jobs."