The work in the village is shared and anyone can be called upon to lend a hand. The difficulty is such that we pay someone to help us. The father of a friend. He’s the first villager to regularly spend time with us. A good, simple man who likes wine and talking to people. He comes often and then every day. His curiosity about us is not entirely innocent. It feeds his bistro conversations. So we have to make an ally of him. When he’s around us, he eats and laughs constantly. He puts his bottle of wine in a shrub to stay cold as he works and takes gulps while my mother’s back is turned.
“Take the shovel, little girl, and watch what I’m doing.”
He explains how to prepare the soil. Turn it over and remove the roots. I concentrate. I dig. I do it again, I keep going. He teaches me how to use gardening twine, what distance to put between the seeds, how to hoe furrows on a gentle slope, the way to set up stakes, the maturity of a vegetable and the care it needs, how to remove roots with thick leaves, how to snip the tops off carrots and turnips, the proper development of a pumpkin, how to trim trees and rosebushes, how to graft a cherry tree, and, on top of everything else, he takes me to visit other vegetable patches. I memorize the different kinds of crops, I buy books, I learn the science of gardening, botany, and the classification of species. An appreciation for the work we’re doing will connect me to this land and its people. Over time the fruit trees and decorative plants will multiply. Today grass lawns have overrun the gardens. We aren’t any richer, but the price of food is much lower than the cost of the effort and seedlings invested. The transmission and preservation of this type of knowledge has completely stopped. I saw it all disappear over a few short years. I can’t resign myself to it. Today, I share my passion like a Holy Grail with those of my friends in Paris who, like me, saw this lifestyle disappear.
Every year, during the third weekend in August, a village festival with merry-go-rounds and music is held behind our house. A lantern procession launches the festivities on Friday night. Led by the city council and the school principal, the parade gathers together all the students in town. It passes in front of each home and parents come to the door to wave as their children go by. The first time, I’m not allowed to attend the festival. I watch the procession from behind the window shutters, which remain closed. The following year I convince my mother to take my sister and me. She waits until my father, who has a separate bedroom, falls asleep. It’s dark. She spreads quilts on our beds, puts on European clothes, crosses the field that separates our house from the gazebo, and enters the large ballroom tent with us.
The villagers greet her in shock. She remains seated, smiling, and encourages us to have fun. I introduce her to my schoolmates. Her awkward “hello” moves me. Unlike my father, she doesn’t understand the song lyrics and therefore, seeing our good mood, can’t imagine that they evoke any kind of vice. Throughout the night I do my best to cling to my new girlfriends and ignore the boys. If they approach, it will cost me as much as it will them. And they know it. The joyful, talkative gardener has taken care to explain our lifestyle in all its severity. “You know, their father never laughs.” And a few words about us, his poor daughters.
My mother wants to see us happy. We return home without making any noise.
Village festivals punctuate the summer. They take place in other towns as well, situated a handful of miles away. Sometimes we hear fireworks and echoes of dancing. They all last three days and have the same program. Lantern procession on Friday night, opening of the merry-go-rounds when the children arrive, then a ball held under a large gazebo with a band. Often the same one, led by a singer with bleached hair who imitates French pop stars. He’s always accompanied by a new conquest with dyed hair, heavy makeup, and tight clothes. The band singers are local legends, shadowed by young women dreaming of a life made better by the mere effect of their artificial hair color. They approach the stage as rivals, in search of glory. On Saturday, the bumper cars are taken by storm, serving as preludes to the encounters that take place at night behind the gazebo. Two girls drive a car and chase two guys. Then the guys chase the girls. After three rounds, they meet up at the refreshment stand, talk for a few minutes, and everyone goes home to get decked out for that evening’s conquest. Sunday is for families and the raffle. People visit the different shooting galleries to win a teddy bear or a baseball hat. Parents arrive at the ball with their children, showing off their sons- and daughters-in-law. The majorettes’ parade is in the afternoon. Drums and batons and all the girls jealously eyeing the prettiest one there. My father hates this kind of exhibition. Then comes the last day to dance. Monday afternoon, reserved for the old folks. A shift in register. Waltz or mambo. We attend anyway, to keep it going, telling ourselves the fun will be in mocking them. But we end up imitating them. We’re horrible, but they tolerate us.
In my last year of junior high, fate has it that I meet two high school girls. They have a home filled with books and an Italian father. I’m struck by the blondness of his hair. I go to their house by bus or on foot. Their father fascinates me. He talks politics to me. I learn that he’s an immigrant from northern Italy, that he has Austrian roots, that he’s a worker at the chemical plant. He and his wife act happy when they’re around their family, they love their daughters, and lunchtime is the occasion for debates that teach me about the history of struggle. I borrow their books, soothed by their political engagement. I read in their garden and begin a relationship with my new friends that will eventually turn my life upside down. We put up fliers and travel across the entire region. One night in Paris I listen to some Trotskyist leaders. I leave my bedroom very early in the morning and get into a car waiting for me outside. We leave to sell newspapers at the factory exit. It’s the changeover from the night crew and a man tells me nicely that it’s time to go to sleep. Two of us hold a red scarf, in which coins have been tossed, while shouting, “Demand the Workers’ Struggle.”
“Honey, it’s time for bed.”
“Demand the Workers’ Struggle.”
A person comes to this in an odd way. You don’t understand everything. You’re given a book. You read it, you’re shaken. You want another one. Once again, you’re rattled. One more. That’s how you get started. John Reed, Jack London, Erich Maria Remarque, Joseph Conrad. More books. You earn several francs. Books. Every week, I go to a meeting and talk to an activist. I talk about my readings, the text and the subject. The session always takes place in a café and sometimes lasts a long time. Someone suggests another book, I buy it, I read it. They give me booklets, manuals, and manifestos. Marx, Engels, Trotsky. It sinks in all the same. And one beautiful day I tell a comrade my pseudonym, Galia, which I hope masks the partial anagram of Algiers. Galia, and I see myself caught within a universal mythology even as I cling to Algeria. And nowhere to go.
“Maman, tell me why we don’t go back?”
“Your father can’t.”
“And without him, we can’t?”
“They won’t want us.”
“Well, nobody wants us. What do we do? Stay?”
No answer. And not a North African friend in sight. I could have asked him or her if they intended on returning. They no doubt would have told me, “Yes.” Would I have believed it at the time?