4 ideas
The tower was the Ben Ali regime's own landmark, erected on the spot where Bourguiba's equestrian statue was removed after Ben Ali took power. Riahi wrote the novel under Ben Ali, and it appeared in 2011 as the revolution was unfolding, so readers received a fictional public standoff at the heart of the capital as the real one happened in the streets.
When speech is censored, a powerless person can still protest by physically occupying the symbol the regime built to represent itself. A clock tower that replaced the previous ruler's statue stands for the new order's claim to own public time and space. Putting an unwanted body on top of it turns that symbol into a stage for dissent without a single word being said.
Read what a society calls its marginal people, because the nickname shows how they are excluded. Naming a man 'the Gorilla' strips his personal name and gives him an animal identity, which makes his exclusion feel natural rather than chosen. His climb upward makes that dehumanising label literal and forces the city to look at the person behind it.
One person raised above a public square turns scattered passers-by into a crowd with a shared focus, and that crowd changes the situation. The state can no longer handle the dissenter quietly, so it has to respond in full view of everyone. Its police response then becomes something the public examines and judges, just as it examines the man on the tower.