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used to say, allow the model we’ve just fought against to survive in Algeria. But those who saw Algerian socialism at work could rest easy. That said, dispossession does not occur with impunity, and reparations are not easily made. If Algeria wants to move forward peacefully, it will need to draw on a specific type of courage to tirelessly address the current grievances against it, as well as those still to come.
In 1981, Algeria wanted to be completely monolingual. It legally imposed the Arabic language and accompanying religion on its people. Without the policy’s monoreligious mandate, some segments of the country’s history might have been salvaged, but neither Jews nor Arab Christians were invited to express their dissent.
The consequences of this project were disastrous. The few “French” people whom I met insisted on loudly proclaiming their “Algerian-ness,” which they thought meant they were integrated for good in this country to which they had given so much. Every day they bore witness to the abandonment of Algeria’s French culture in favor of a pan-Arabism that beckoned with open but necessarily empty arms. Rare were those willing to accept to what point the despair voiced by Albert Camus and Kateb Yacine was also their own. It was only in Kabylie, surrounded by my old aunts and uncles, that I found love and reassurance. They told me about their loss and pain. I was one of them, though they hadn’t seen me in fifteen years. I personified the shock, still raw, that they had experienced after the Algerian people were divided. On this subject, I’ve said that you can’t recover from a ruptured brotherhood without a certain amount of grieving. Their generosity only deepened the abyss in which I found myself. The memory of their love still haunts me. None of those family members, most of whom are dead now, ever saw my father again.
Back in France, I no longer believed in the romantic, comforting illusion of a faraway land. I gave up on the idea of ever going back. After that decision, I had to reshape my life around objectives as yet unknown to me. The process was painful. France wasn’t the right place for me. In no way did this country, still overly reliant on its precepts of universalism, want to support me or be enriched by the conflict haunting me. In short, I contributed nothing. Relieved of all responsibility—and not without a good dose of amnesia—French society pretended to be unaware of my situation. According to the schoolbooks, the Algerian War never happened. And admittedly there’s no trace of it in France. After all, everyone knows a silent soldier makes no noise. The war had happened elsewhere and in the meantime, I was dragging it around what seemed to be a repainted set. Behind was a layer that someone had hurriedly covered up. “Ssshhh,” the French people would say. I never saw that war. Yet in my home, in our house, I saw my father’s face every day. He was mute. So who could I talk to?
I grew up in a cultural and linguistic space tightly knit around Algeria. My mother spoke to me only in Kabyle. Her morals and religion came from her native country as well. The “Harki,” or as we used to say Algeria-born, community that I was able to associate with in France wasn’t any more emancipated from its Algerian identity than were my parents. In short, we were trapped in one moment, as if hanging in a cage swinging between obligatory regret for life in Algeria and our hypothetical entrance into French society.
I owe my break with this existence to literature. It taught me about the black man and the pariah. I’ve believed in the value of rupture ever since. I didn’t want to choose between the melancholy idea of a lost homeland and the unavoidable abandonment of my childhood brethren. So I broke with everything I believed was linked to such a choice. I didn’t want to be assigned to anything. I just needed to become free. I waited ten years to go back to Algeria. It was 1988. I went to take walks on the mountainside. I couldn’t do it. So I gave up on vacations there as well. Then came 1989. My cousins were happy. Everyone was starting to have hope. Some of them began to write for the newspapers, one was going to open a cabaret, another a tearoom. One day, one of my cousins called me. “Come visit, I’m opening a literary café.” In the time to get excited and clear my schedule, I decided to bring two female friends with me to Algiers and Ghardaïa. I told them, “Algeria’s changed.” It was October 1991. When the glass arrivals door opened in front of us at the airport, we lowered our heads quickly in the same movement of paralysis and fear. There was an endless row of bearded men in long robes visually undressing us from head to toe. I’ve never wanted to get back on a plane more than on that day. We left the bottleneck trembling. “You won’t go to Ghardaïa. You can’t. Not three girls. Algeria has changed,” said the man who came to pick us up.
Two weeks after my return, on November 11, my father committed suicide. I will never forget the few words he said before his death: “It’s starting over, it’s starting over.” In June 1992, I was gripped by immense sadness. I couldn’t stop crying over the unhappiness of my father, a man I thought I didn’t love. Algeria resurfaced in a flood of tears. I decided to go back one last time. The trip was short. It took place in September. I was thirty years old. For one week I walked where a man who never spoke of himself and whose name I bore had grown up. I saw his house, his school, his land, and the hills where he used to hunt with his friends. Some were still alive and wanted to tell me about him. They did so tenderly. They spoke of his childhood and his adult life. Others who were undoubtedly hoping to reassure me told me what a good man he had been. I didn’t want to hear that. They had loved him, they still loved him. As for the rest, I had my own ideas. I’ve never lived through a war myself. The decade that followed was agonizing for me. Algeria was knocking too hard. Each time I heard about bombings and casualties in Algiers, I would fearfully wait for a call to ease my worry. On the telephone I kept asking my cousins, “How do you do it? How do you do it? Tell me, how do you hold on the way you’re holding on?”
I didn’t know that I would return to Algeria one day. I came back at the invitation of a French TV station. It was March 2003. Twelve years after my last trip. I won’t write here of the joy I felt during the three days I spent in Algiers in the company of exceptional men and women. For the first time I saw the face of a new Algeria. Dogmatism had well and truly given way to the demands of a citizenry strengthened by forty years of privation.
I belong to an adult, educated generation that very quickly understood that it needed to emancipate itself from any demand made in the name of community or religion. “We” are defined solely in the eyes of others. But I am the only one who knows who “I” am. It’s because of our history that we, the children of Harkis, became who we are. And whether people like it or not, we are the legitimate heirs of a war that entitles us to tell the parties involved that we have judged them harshly. Beyond the contempt and harsh rhetoric directed at the Harkis by the Algerians, beyond their political cannibalization and ignoble treatment in France, our first responsibility was to live. Though it wasn’t painless. We had to move beyond the states of mourning and constant supplication through which people hoped to keep us on one side or the other. We knew to learn from our fathers’ lots in life. As for the questions of choice, blame, and fraternal betrayal, we’ve lived with them since childhood. By assuming the challenges faced by our parents, we, more than anyone else, know what war means. The past decade in Algeria, which saw so many men and women killed, was for us rich in experiences and abnegation. There are still some who would like to believe that the Harkis live in a state of dependency, be it emotional toward our country of origin or plaintive toward our adopted country. That state is long gone. And our fathers are dead. Was the true force of this uprooting ever duly measured? The fact remains that our existence as “exiles”—one that defined us and which, in my eyes, could be a blessing if ever it was deliberately brought to light—demands an unimpeachable quest for truth. They made us, the children of Harkis, the bearers of betrayal. But to what end? All those involved should search their souls and consciences for what they hoped to perpetuate with this chapter of history. As for me, I’ve seen the exodus of young people from Algeria firsthand. As a result I can’t help but think that thanks to the dramatic disappearance of the “other,” the country has nearly finished digging its own grave. That “other” is me and all those refused the right to describe their relationship to this country in a different way.