A Glimpse into the Future Mirror



 It is June 2025. Coronavirus mutated and became both airborne and far more deadly. Millions died. Although the plague has finally passed, Italy has become a social and economic wasteland and huge numbers of people are emigrating. Through a combination of control and good fortune, Tunisia has remained free of the virus and has even managed to benefit and build a thriving economy. As a result, large numbers of Italians, along with other Europeans, are travelling in desperation across the Mediterranean to live in Tunisia.

At first the Tunisians welcome this migration, but as time goes by the local people become disturbed at the proliferating construction of Catholic churches, the many restaurants and bars that sell alcohol when it used to be rare, and overall the rapid growth of Western culture in Tunis and other major cities. Women wear provocative clothing, and couples (especially gay couples) behave in public in ways that many locals find offensive. Not only that: some areas are becoming solely European.

A movement starts that proclaims that the essential nature of Tunisia is being lost. Tunisia is a Muslim country, it has a strong culture and sense of its own history – a shared way of being – but all of these things are being threatened by this ongoing migration of Europeans. Soon, proclaim the activists, Europeans will outnumber native Tunisians and it will not be Tunisia any more. Tunisians will have been replaced by outsiders. It will be a different country, one that its inhabitants neither wanted nor voted for.

Do they have a point?

Kate Flinders

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