It’s impossible to dominate with no one below you. What’s there to do with an army but no enemy? What to do with settlers who were promised a better life under North African skies? The French authorities quenched the colonists’ thirst for greatness through the figure of the beggar, the native. The man without rights, who would be made more indigent than the others. I don’t question the suffering of the poor white man come to Algeria. Of the Alsatian fleeing the Germans. Of the impoverished Maltese, Spaniard, or Italian to whom were granted, just like the “Arab Jew,” the stature of French citizen, even though, elsewhere in France, they were nothing. Even the advancement of a low-grade soldier, far removed from the officers’ aristocracy, was accelerated. You can’t reproach someone for being born there. But if everyone had had the same rights, another kind of uprising would have taken place in the French colony. Instead, social distinctions gave way to racial ones, and to a type of superiority more entrenched in the hearts of men.
In its beginnings, destitute captives from Europe carried out the colonial conquest of America. Both their jobs and statuses were lowly. Many of them revolted. And the colony grew more miserable still. It emptied Africa of its people. The prisoners and surviving slaves attempted to unite. But that alliance was broken. Only the white captive was granted emancipation. After several years of servitude, he would receive a few acres. Making him a pitiable, jealous landowner and the worse exploiter of the black man. Destitution was maintained through racial differences. If racism could have been overcome, an entirely different struggle would have taken place to the benefit of mankind. This ugly story is a vicious one. It drapes the perpetuator and victim alike in the narrow and binding garments available to them.
In my village the people I spend time with don’t own books. None of them goes to the theater. No one listens to music. Cinema doesn’t exist. Anything that could nurture a thought, a painting, art, history, or literature is foreign to the town’s inhabitants. They are agricultural workers or factory employees. They don’t pick their professions. If there is another model of what life can be, one more cultivated and ambitious, it has completely passed me by.
Many of the students at my junior high have violent and alcoholic fathers. For the most part their mothers wear gray-blue aprons, their faces aged by perms and their ankles swollen by work and pills. Except for the rare open-minded families—artisans mostly—everyone thinks it normal that I yield to their judgment. They can’t imagine that I don’t want to be just like them. I have to continually justify why I can’t eat pork or drink alcohol, and the restrictions limiting my relationships with boys. It’s by observing this narrow lifestyle and the absence of culture that I develop a taste for the outside world. I said I came from nowhere.
The problem is that the villagers believe their way of life is timeless. And I can’t be a part of it unless I accept their customs. They eat pork, they drink wine, their women kiss men in public. That’s the perimeter by which they evaluate their freedom. And it’s enough. So I begin to eat pork and drink alcohol. But, because of my upbringing perhaps, I mask any romantic inclinations behind deeply rooted modesty.
My own curiosity grows in relation to their certitudes, and lack of interest in others. Nonetheless, I have to prove myself to this community.
I know that my readings have a strong influence on me when it comes to the injustice that has me telling my neighbors that I’m no different from them. It’s true they aren’t richer than I am. Their homes don’t conceal any great inheritances. Formica, artificial oak, and acrylic armchairs are the materials that make up their daily lives. I don’t live in a black ghetto in Memphis where everything would be off-limits, but in a white ghetto where all individuality is refused me. The word “God” is never pronounced in my presence, but I’m reproached for my parents’ religion without being told why it’s not as good as any other. In the villagers’ minds, I’m Muslim, which for them equates to a kind of barbarism. They rank it below their own belief system in an act that valorizes and energizes their existence.
But God wasn’t present at my birth. So I act outside of him, though not in ignorance of religious teachings. I have to justify to my family my refusal to believe. The villagers are spared this fight. Long ago they learned a prayer, which they imitate at funerals. For them, Jerusalem is not a place but the setting of the fable about baby Jesus, tucked into a corner of their brains. At school, they tell me to ignore everything that has to do with religion, but at home my mother punctuates her every sentence with a respectful mention of God. I am so closed off to these invocations that I educate myself about religion and its justifications to show my parents that I am informed and opinionated on the subject. I aspire to another life. I want another one. A sentiment I cannot share.
When my father is out, I go to his room and face the sole full-length mirror in the house. I sit down and talk to it. I speak to a presence. A man I name Paul. I tell him everything. I talk. I summon him over and over again. I ramble discreetly for hours. “Paul, what if . . .” “Paul, what if I lived with a French boy?” “Paul, what if . . .” And it goes on. He answers me.
More than a mere secret, these forays into madness terrify me.
I dream of neither a voyage nor a country, but instead imagine myself under water probing the ocean’s depths. Carried away, though I don’t understand why yet, I view the silence of the sea as a symbol of otherness. This unknown universe is the only one, the final one that can still accommodate my desire to exist in a world without violence. I write to Captain Cousteau and ask to join his team. In his response, he explains that I have to work hard at school and later attend the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco. I cry when I read his letter, knowing that my father will spend nothing on me. My dream crumbles.
At the age of thirteen I need money. I introduce myself to a family with two children that has just moved to the village. The father holds a new kind of job. He is a senior computer engineer. I tell them that I am sixteen. My sister, who works in another house, has her employer confirm it. I clean on Wednesdays and occasionally Saturdays. I take care of the children as well. Sometimes I stay the evening. I discover their library. They’re Catholic. I open books and catalogues. I see angels, clouds, crosses, Jesus, Mary. Painters. I go to town and visit the bookstore inside the post office where my brother made his purchases. A woman, whom everyone calls Colette, listens to me attentively. I make my first request. “Hello, I’m Hocine’s sister. I want a book about paintings.” She displays her collection of art books and talks to me. She shows me pictures and talks to me about art. I leave with Modigliani. Thirty years have gone by and the woman who provided my books is still there. I also use my earnings to buy my clothes and pay for my school lunches. When I can’t respond to the follow-up letters sent by the school, I tell the principal that I don’t have enough money. He’s understanding, spares me the shame of being pulled from the line at lunchtime, as others are. This man, getting on in years, is bald, commanding, and strict. He terrorizes the students but welcomes me into his office with nothing but great kindness. Later I learn that he lived in Algeria. But I credit his indulgence to my excellent school results. I show up at my diploma ceremony brimming with confidence. The results are announced in the local press. The postwoman enters my home yelling at my mother, “Your daughter is first. First in Picardy.” I am number one across all the age groups. I already knew this. The night before, I went to the prize ceremony at the junior high in the presence of the region’s chairman, who is also the father of my French teacher. I would have done anything for her. During the event, they ask me to choose a book from among the three offered as top prizes. They are long and beautiful. I comfort myself by picking Underwater Exploration and pose for a photo with it. The picture of me surrounded by officials and teachers runs the next day.