vendor's suicide reflects despair of mideast youth

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_MIDEAST_YOUNG_AND_HOPELESS_?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-05-11-13-27-36

SOUK AL-JUMMA, Tunisia (AP) -- On the day he chose to die, Adel Khedri woke up at 6:30 a.m., took his black backpack and headed down to the busy boulevard where he worked as a cigarette peddler.

It was the last in a series of odd jobs that had defined his hand-to-mouth existence for almost nine years. He couldn't afford to pay bribes to get hired as a driver or a guard. The Tunisian army didn't need him. There were few factory jobs. And the owner at a fast food restaurant in neighboring Libya had cheated him out of wages as a dishwasher.

So on March 12, three weeks after his 27th birthday, Adel left the dirty room he shared with his older brother in a Tunis slum for the tree-lined Avenue Habib Bourguiba, once the stage for the first of the Arab Spring uprisings.

He stopped in front of the art deco Municipal Theater. He poured gasoline over his body. Then he set himself on fire.