Protests for secularism are staged in the town of Hammam-Sousse and Tunis. The walls of the colonial theatreare besmirched by women's rights graffiti. Islamists come up again and again in conversation. "There is an Islamist menace here," says the intellectual Sophien Ben Hamidi, a member of the national trade union's international bureau. "Their project is opposed to the project in Tunisia since independence of openness and modernity, opposed to Tunisia as a Francophone country." The finest families of Tunis say: "It can't happen here." The young say: "The peasants won't vote, we don't have to worry about them." 

Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi returns from exile. Ten thousand followers of his Islamist front, Ennahda, throng the arrival halls. Off the Rue d'Angleterre, the supporters of what is surely destined to be democratic Tunisia's largest party are setting up shop. "We are all meeting for the first time, we were underground, in exile," says a surly organiser in a bare room. "When the people follow sharia the economy will just boom," a cataract-eyed supporter insists. The door opens. Two serious-looking African imams from the Sahel garbed in red robes and fez discuss the politics of theKoran while street boys push tables, then mount the plasticised banner of God. 

"We don't have a systematic technical programme yet, we have all been in exile or in prison for 17 years, we don't know each other," says Noureddine Arbaoui, from the executive committee of Ennahda. "We are inspired by the Turkish AKP, we are not going to ban anything, our leader is not seeking office, we are moderates." When I press him he cannot answer. He is not lying to me. He does not know what to say. Like any man who has spent 17 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, he moves slowly with motionless eyes in a perpetual stare. 

"When I came out of prison on that first day, it was so frightening. Women I remembered young, now old, friends completely changed. The family situation, it was another family. These telephones and this," he flicks his hand, "this internet...thing."

Sheikh Ghannouchi cannot be reached. He is in Turkey for four days of discussion with the AKP on developing a viable programme, boast the staff. His texts are known to be moderate within political Islam. On January 22 he denounced the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir and spoke against the dream of a united Muslim caliphate.  Among Islamists he has argued for a movement "not rooted in the obscure theories of Said Qutb". But he is also an intellectual atop a movement that never expected to become an incoming party of power, whose fractious members interpret his vague words very differently.