Silence Is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (France Overseas: Studies in Empire and D)

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Silence Is Death

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Silence France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization s e ri e s e d i to rs Philip Boucher A. J. B. Johnston James D. Le Sueur Tyler Stovall


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Is Death The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout JU L I JA Š U K Y S

University of Nebraska Press • Lincoln & London


1/17/2007 3:45:30 PM

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© 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

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A part of “Dialogues with the Dead” originally appeared under the title “The Hypothetical Skeleton (A Letter to Tahar Djaout)” in Culture, Theory and Critique 45 (April 2004): 63–76, http://www.tandf.co.uk. Library of Congress Catalogingin-Publication Data Šukys, Julija. Silence is death: the life and work of Tahar Djaout / Julija Šukys. p. cm. — (France overseas) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-8032-4320-0 (cloth: alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8032-4320-0 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Djaout, Tahar, 1954– 2. Authors, Algerian—20th century —Biography. I. Title. pq3989.2.d538z87 2007 843’.914—dc22 [B] 2006050020


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For Tahar Djaout. And for Sean Gurd, in a different way.

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Mon histoire risque, selon toute apparence, de se transformer en biographie. Il faut bien veiller à cela. By all appearances, my story is in danger of becoming a biography. I must be careful of that.

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— ta h a r djaou t


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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

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Part One 1. Welcome to Elkader 3 2. The Death of the Author 14 Part Two 3. Poetry, Prose, and the Politics of Writing in Algeria 41 4. Final Projects 64 Part Three 5. Dialogues with the Dead 87 6. Voyage Immobile 115 7. A Posthumous Interview with Tahar Djaout 135 Notes 145 Works Cited 181 Index


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A constant presence throughout the writing of this book was the voice of Linda Hutcheon, though it spoke mostly inside my head and occasionally from inside my e-mail inbox. The power of a kind word from the right person at the right time cannot be underestimated, and Linda knows this better than most. I owe her many thanks for the lessons she taught while I was her graduate student at the University of Toronto (I carry these with me), and that she continues to teach now by example. This book was written during a particularly nomadic stage of life that took me from Chicago to Paris, Sydney, Jerusalem, Toronto, Cincinnati, and Montréal. In each city I found people who gave me support, ideas, sustenance, often a place to work, and occasionally a place to sleep. I owe thanks to Andrew Wachtel and Mireille Rosello. Both supported this project intellectually and administratively during my tenure as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, where this project was begun. Russell Clement gave me a workspace at the university’s beautiful art library, where crucial portions of this text were conceived. This small gesture of his proved to be revolutionary for me and my writing, and for this reason I cannot thank him enough. At the University of Sydney, Australia, Suzanne Rutland welcomed me as a visiting scholar. Konrad Kwiet and Lucy Davey generously shared their workspace, warmth, and


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Acknowledgments

endless cups of tea. Thanks to all of them. They made the Southern Hemisphere feel less upside-down to me. In Jerusalem Yaron Shur shared his “thinking journeys,” and Penina Shur her warmth, kindness, and Shabbat dinners. My experiences in their home wove their way into my text in strange and surprising ways. I owe much gratitude to Jim and Linda Gurd, who welcomed me into their Toronto home with open arms. I also thank Ed Olson and John Nikolai of Elkader, Iowa; Sister Regina Albers of Maria Stein, Ohio; Ann Marie Yasin; Mark Clamen; Thomas Keenan; Elizabeth Demers, Heather Lundine, and others at the University of Nebraska Press; and Djamel Farès for his portrait of Tahar Djaout used on p. xi. I am particularly grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support. Finally, I offer my love and thanks to my husband, Sean Gurd, who accompanied me at every stage of research and writing, and who accompanies me still.


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Tahar Djaout, Paris, September 1986. Photo courtesy of Djamel Farès.


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Silence Is Death

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ONE

Welcome to Elkader

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lkader lies about five hours northwest of Chicago. Once you fight your way out of the city and pass Rockford, the landscape changes from hard and urban to something more organic that allows the earth’s contours to be seen beneath the road. It is early spring, and the rolling hills of northwestern Illinois are beginning to green. Stubbly cornstalks cover most of the fields, though some have already been tilled: soft brown expanses scratched with subtle rivets and mounds. We are not prepared for the gentle beauty of this part of the country or for its sweet language: its “Burton’s Furnace Roads” and “dinner” at lunchtime and “supper” at dinnertime. In our minds Illinois had hardened into a flat place of unwelcoming highways and aggressive billboards, and in our imaginations Iowa (for neither of us has visited this state) had grown into a stultifyingly boring landscape interesting only for its lack of interest. But we were wrong. After we cross the Mississippi at Dubuque, the road rises and offers a staggering view. There are islands at this point in the river. Following the early spring flooding, trees stand up to their knees in water, their lengths doubled by reflections. “Now that’s a mighty river,” says Sean without a whiff of irony. He likes to use the word mighty, but only for rivers. Slow-moving and majestic, the Mississippi doesn’t disappoint. Elkader is not far. We are investigating a link between the Midwest and Algeria. The town of Elkader (pronounced Ell-kay-derr) was named for the Algerian national hero, Emir Abd el-Kader (or Abdelkader,

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as it is most often spelled), the son of a marabout who led the resistance against the invading French army from 1832 until he gave himself up in 1847. Elkader was named in 1844 (well before Abd el-Kader’s surrender to the French) by Timothy Davis, one of the town’s three founders, who had been impressed by the Emir’s courage in his struggle against the invading Europeans. I need to see this place named for an Algerian in Iowa: it exemplifies how people leave traces on parts of the globe they have never seen, and how place-names contain stories and worlds. A North African, a devout and learned Muslim, once famous internationally but now remembered only by his countrymen, has left his name on the map of America. Elkader is a tiny place with a population of fewer than two thousand. It lies on the banks of the Turkey River (a vestige of the village’s imaginary Ottoman past, I muse as I stand on the bridge, watching the slow-moving current), and it is surrounded by cornfields. We spend the night at a bed and breakfast in one of these fields, where John the proprietor shares the premises with horses, barn cats, an affectionate corgi, and a big old German shepherd named Dervish, who was rescued from a Chicago animal shelter and named for the way he whirled in his cage while recovering from broken bones resulting from a car accident. Before getting into the B & B business, John worked for the U.S. military in Pakistan, maintaining air conditioners.

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The town’s namesake, Abd el-Kader, is regarded as a revolutionary who, despite himself, had a talent for military leadership. The father of modern Algeria would have preferred a life of prayer and contemplation. Abd el-Kader succeeded in uniting some tribes of Western Algeria1 for the first time through a combination of negotiation, military conquest, and elimination of enemies and challengers to his authority. He created an army complete with ranks, uniforms, flags, and honors. He minted his own money, produced firearms, and paid civil servants and soldiers from public coffers.

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Welcome to Elkader

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The Emir even resurrected the ancient city of Taqdemt, originally founded in 761 then abandoned in 909, where he planned to establish a university and a library whose core collection would consist of his own books. For fifteen years, Abd el-Kader fought off the French, carved out a territory for himself, and gained his opponents’ respect. But with the appointment of Maréchal Bugeaud as governor of Algeria, the balance of power changed. Thousands more soldiers were mobilized to fight Abd el-Kader, who beginning in 1841 began to suffer serious losses. After much bloodshed, the Emir decided to end the conflict, put down his weapons, and hand himself over to the French. He left Algeria in 1847, accompanied by his family and servants, as well as fifty-seven fellow combatants who chose to follow him into exile. Forbidden from traveling to Mecca or residing in Alexandria, as Bugeaud had promised he could, Abd el-Kader was imprisoned with his family in Fort Lamalgue, in the south of France, then at Henry IV’s former estate in Pau, and finally at a medieval fortress, the Château d’Amboise, on the banks of the Loire River. For two years all visits and correspondence were forbidden. Abd el-Kader refused to leave his quarters in the castle in protest, and his health began to suffer. One of his three wives and three of his children died in captivity. Finally, in June 1850, Louis-Napoléon made the decision to release the Emir. He delivered this news to Abd el-Kader in person, informing him that he would be escorted to Brusa (Broussa), Turkey. Abd el-Kader’s stay in Brusa was short-lived. In 1855, an earthquake shook the city, destroying the neighborhood where he and his fellow exiles resided. The Emir took this opportunity to return to Paris to speak with Napoléon III to ask permission to leave Turkey. It was decided that Abd el-Kader would go to Damascus, where he spent the rest of his life . . .2

I look up, pausing in the condensed account of Abd el-Kader’s life that I am reading a little too quickly to Sean as we drive

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Part One

the thirty miles to Elkader from John’s bed and breakfast. I can taste the dust from the road, and the gravel crackles as it hits the bottom of the car. “Why was he called the Emir?” he asks. “It’s what his followers called him—it means ‘commander’ or ‘prince.’3 It was a big deal when the French addressed him by that title for the first time,” I add. “He was a really interesting man, and anyone—in the West—who still had reservations about his character would have changed their minds in 1860, when Abd el-Kader opened the doors of his home to twelve thousand Christians when their slaughter in Damascus began. When asked why he did it, he basically replied, ‘because I’m a good Muslim.’”4 Sean grins and flicks his eyebrows in a gesture that says of course. Our first destination is the public library, where I hope to find an account of both the town’s naming and Timothy Davis’s life. The single-story library is bright with a sterile, beige, institutional feeling, but it has inviting armchairs tucked away in corners and in front of windows that beckon patrons to sit and read. The librarian has pointed me in the direction of a bookshelf filled with volumes of local history, including a yellowing tome called Old Elkader: Facts and Food, published by the town’s historical society, which contains a short paragraph about its naming and a portrait sketch of Abd el-Kader. I slip a piece of paper into the book to mark it for photocopying.5 More complete is an 1879 account printed on the occasion of the Emir’s death:

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In 1844, when John Thompson, Chester Sage and Timothy Davis, the founders of Elkader were laying out the town, the attention of the whole world was turned toward Algeria, where Abd-ElKader was fighting for his country, trying to preserve it from the French. When the town had been plotted, and a name was necessary to complete the work, Timothy Davis, with the exploits

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Welcome to Elkader

7

of Abd-El-Kader fresh in his mind, proposed the name, Elkader, which was adopted. The chief from whom the town derived its name, died last week in Damascus, in the seventy-second year of his age.6

As for the man credited with naming the town, I come across a colorful local account of Timothy Davis’s life and death. When we return to Chicago I will read it out loud to anyone who will listen, including my brother-in-law, who looks at me like I am crazy as I act out the final scene of Davis’s life in my kitchen: This well-known pioneer of Clayton County was born in Utica, N.Y., in 1794. His parents had emigrated thither and carved out a home among the wilds of that then new country. It was then that Mr. Davis acquired those habits of industry and frugality which ever accompanied him through life. Inheriting a strong physical constitution, and imbued in early life with pluck and energy, he was well prepared in after life to meet and battle with the world. [. . .] The honor of naming the town fell to Mr. Davis. At that time there was great excitement about the exploits of the Arabian chief, Abd el Kader, and being an admirer of that daring chieftain, Mr. Davis named this place Elkader. [. . .] [Timothy Davis] died Sunday, April 27, 1872. He was sitting on the porch of his residence, engaged in a lively conversation with John Thompson, his surviving partner, joking and laughing with him over old reminiscences, when he suddenly fell back in his chair, threw up his hands with an exclamation of “O!” and immediately expired.7

Sean has gone for a walk and left me in the library until lunch. I find early photographs of the area’s inhabitants. They are farming people, many of whose ancestors came from Germany to seek their fortune: a nearby town has streets named for Goethe and Schiller. It is still an agricultural area today, and as far as I can tell, most of the farms continue to be family-owned. Later,

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when Sean comes to retrieve me, we explore the main street. It has a sign that proudly announces the receipt of an award for the Best Main Street in Small-Town America. There is a lovely bakery and a few shops. I snap several pictures each way, taking care to get the marquee of the closed movie theater, which cheerfully proclaims, Welcome to Elkader. Locals immediately become curious about us. Several approach and ask where we are from, and as we read the menu outside a café, a man casually asks us if we are looking for lunch. “You should go to the Two-mit Truck,” he says. “Best hamburgers in the country. You won’t find a cheaper lunch anywhere.” “The two-what-truck?” “Two-mit Truck. You can have your hamburgers mit onions or mitout onions,” he laughs. “Germans.” The Two-mit Truck is easily the busiest place in Elkader. Lines have formed at each of its two windows, and the couple inside is working hard to keep up with orders. After our lunch—as good as promised and complete with onions—we begin our journey home, back to the fray of Chicago. We didn’t know it then, but word had spread quickly that we were in Elkader asking questions about its “Algerian Connection.” Our visit had been very quick, just enough to get an image of the place. But a few days after my return home, I receive a letter from John, the bed and breakfast proprietor, gently lamenting the fact that I hadn’t gotten back to him later on during the day we spent in Elkader. He explains that he has contacted a lady who is an authority on local history, and who would have liked to talk to me. In any case, the letter continues, included are several e-mail addresses of people who might be helpful in filling some of the gaps about the link between Elkader and Algeria. One of those contacts is Ed Olson, the town’s former mayor. I write to him and a few days later I receive a package of newspaper clippings. “‘Ambassador’ from Algerian Sister City Arrives Here,”

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reads the headline of the Clayton County Register, “The Home Newspaper for Clayton County Folks.” The 1983 story tells of a twenty-seven-year-old Algerian named Benaoumer (Omar) Zergaoui who was working with the United States Information Service in Algiers when he came across some files about Elkader: “He proposed the idea of traveling to Elkader to the Public Affairs Officer in Algeria. It was the suggestion of that Officer that Sister City ties be made between Elkader and Mascara.”8 The article goes on to describe Omar’s biography in detail, including an outline of his education and a description of his family that makes special notice of the fact that his father’s name is Abdelkader. Photographs show Omar picnicking with Cub Scouts and inspecting a wire manufacturing plant. It is an account of small-town hospitality, heartwarming in its exuberance. No doubt Elkaderites were thrilled to hear that “all the students [in Mascara] know about Elkader, Iowa” after Omar showed them a 1979 article from the magazine Al Majal.9 The paper trail documenting relations between Elkader and Mascara is fascinating and weird. An article titled “Elkader Residents Find Sister City” tells of preparations for nine (although the number eventually grows to ten) delegates’ travel to Algeria, including Ed Olson, then mayor. “Fact is frequently more exotic than fiction,” proclaims another recounting the delegates’ return: “and for a 10 member delegation from tiny (pop. 1,700) Elkader, Iowa, their journey to Mascara, Algeria, to form the first link between a U.S. city and a city in that country reads like an adventure tale.”10 The North African journey transformed Olson into a believer in cross-cultural dialogue. A vocal supporter of the sister cities program, Olson cites its philosophy of “peace through people,” adding “when people cross borders in friendship, armies don’t follow.”11 The Elkaderites’ sojourn in Mascara was followed up in 1984 by a visit to Elkader by, among others, Khaldi M’Hammed, the mayor of Mascara, and Aboubekr Boutaleb, the great-great-greatgrandson of the Emir himself.12 A photograph accompanying

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an account of the Algerians’ welcome shows a blurry Olson seated beside Mascara’s mayor atop the back seat of a convertible, waving to the townspeople lining Elkader’s main street: “Saturday, it was Elkader’s turn to host the festivities—and the town did it in typically Iowa fashion with a parade that included pickup trucks, high school marching bands, the county beef queen, dairy princess and pork princess, along with some boring speeches by local politicians.”13 Also included in the package is a letter written by Boutaleb’s wife to Queen Elizabeth II, asking about a gift Queen Victoria had reputedly presented to the Emir. Appended is Buckingham Palace’s response that there is no record of such a gift, but that several members of the British royal family did indeed meet the Emir. Later articles tell of Ed Olson’s trip to Washington dc, where he was invited as an official guest at the dinner held for the president of Algeria. The stories are hopeful that the sister city program will help raise Elkader’s profile, and that tourists will come as a result. But as the violence escalates in Algeria during the 1990s, the town’s ties with Mascara falter, and eventually Ed loses the mayoral election because of, as he puts it, the “Algerian issue.” A growing feeling among Elkader’s townspeople is that too much time and too many resources have been wasted on the mayor’s flight of fancy. As the economic situation in rural Iowa grows increasingly dire, Elkaderites are more interested in jobs than peace through people. A sad ending to a curious love affair.14 Across the street from the library there is a park named for Elkader’s sister city, Mascara, Abd el-Kader’s birthplace. It’s not much of a park, just a vaguely green patch squeezed between two buildings. In this space stands a post mounted with the phrase “Peace on Earth” written in three languages: Russian, French, and English.15 The fourth language, presumably Arabic, is missing. Sean and I immediately become suspicious about the missing panel, and it is one of the first things I ask Ed Olson about in my correspondence from Chicago. I am interested to

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Welcome to Elkader

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know how a small Iowa town is coping with its very Arabic name and Muslim namesake in the post-9/11 climate in America. Sean and I visited Elkader in spring 2003, not quite two years after the airplane hijackings and subsequent attacks. Had the Arabic panel been torn down? Ed Olson confirms in his e-mail to me that there had indeed been a fourth Arabic panel. It fell off the post during a snowstorm and will be replaced. Initially Ed is guarded in his correspondence with me, but as time passes, he grows more candid, and interesting details emerge. The final article in the Elkader dossier, “Small town diplomacy,” is the only one written after September 11, 2001.16 In it, a local museum employee is quoted with regard to a portrait of Abd el-Kader on display there: “I was walking by here the other day and saw this, and who does it look like? [. . .] Osama bin Laden, [. . .] and I thought, ‘Oh my God, what are we doing with this picture here?’ [. . .] One visitor recently complained about the Algerian display, saying it was inappropriate.” I send an e-mail to Ed Olson: what can he tell me about the picture in the museum? The funny thing, he tells me in his response, is that he has been involved in a long-standing argument with the museum staff over the portrait display. The man presented as Abd el-Kader is not him: all the Algerians who have come through the museum have confirmed this, including the Emir’s great-great-great-grandson. Not only is this not a portrait of Osama bin Laden, but it is not one of Abd el-Kader either. Who is the man in the museum? Another Algerian has been on my mind. One who, like Abd el-Kader, has left a print in the soil of Iowa without ever having set foot there. Tahar Djaout’s posthumous novel, The Last Summer of Reason (Le Dernier Été de la raison) was chosen for a public reading project in the autumn of 2001. Every adult and adolescent in Johnson County, Iowa, was invited to read the same book, then to come together for discussion. Nine community fora were held over six weeks. Questions were provided as a guide for small groups who wanted to get together


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or for teachers to use in class, and the whole event culminated with an interview with the Algerian author Assia Djebar. Response to the project was overwhelming: library waiting lists for The Last Summer of Reason multiplied as demand grew and the novel climbed to the top of the local bestseller list. And so, in the fall of 2001, while individuals in other parts of the country set about intimidating brown-skinned shop owners or censuring and silencing those who dared question the actions of the U.S. government, and while others vowed revenge, plastered their cars with American flags, and divided the world into “us and them,” people in one corner of Iowa were reading the tale of a bookstore owner named Boualem Yekker. In gymnasia and classrooms they talked about a character terrorized by young militants determined to impose their version of Islam, and a book written by a man killed in a culture war long before most Americans had ever heard of Al Qaeda or given terrorism much thought. Tahar Djaout was murdered in 1993. His death is remembered as the first in a series of attacks on writers, journalists, and other intellectuals, and his murder is generally attributed to armed Islamic extremists, although the question of who actually killed him has not been answered definitively. Algeria is widely considered to have been the most dangerous country for journalists to work in during the 1990s. From 1993 to 1995 writers and journalists fell there with an astonishing regularity not as casualties of cross fire in the war between the ruling military regime and underground Islamist groups, but as targets. Djaout wasn’t murdered without warning—he had been receiving threats for some time before he was gunned down— but he wrote anyway, in defiance of the threats, and in opposition to both the authoritarian regime that has ruled Algeria since 1962 and the Islamist opposition that reached its height in the 1990s. Two years before his death, Djaout diagnosed that Algeria was going down a path of destruction. Caught be-


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Welcome to Elkader

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tween the bad options of military rule and Islamist theocracy, he wrote: “Algeria is becoming a mortuary site, and is in danger of becoming a cemetery for the most elementary freedoms. Only cynics can speak of democracy. No, at the end of this month of December 1991, we have the defeat of democracy in Algeria, the defeat of intelligence, the defeat of reason.”17 The author of numerous books of poetry, novels, and short stories in French, Djaout also edited and contributed to newspapers. He was born in Kabylia, a region that has always defended itself fiercely in the face of invaders and oppressors. Tahar Djaout was young when he died, only thirty-nine years old. With his murder a promising writing career came to an abrupt end. When I return to Chicago I understand that Elkader is more than a simple curiosity. It stands for remembrance, forgetting, and invention all at once. It offers a point of contact with Tahar Djaout, a way to write about him and for him from this foreign place called America. How does one write a book about a man one has never met, who comes from a place one has never been? By going on a thinking journey, an immobile voyage in which all roads start and end in Iowa. In naming his town Elkader, Timothy Davis opened a portal to the outside world in a country that then, like now, sought to seal cracks in its borders and keep strangers out, making America safe for its own. A curious thing happened in Elkader at the moment of its naming: a small opening in the universe was created, a gap that leads to an underground passage. It forms a link that will stretch across the Atlantic, coupling the United States and Algeria, Iowa and Kabylia for as long as the name Elkader is retained by the townspeople. It is a portal to other worlds: to the “Orient,” but also to the afterlife. Time, language, and space collapse there. Present and past coexist. Welcome to Elkader.


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TWO

The Death of the Author

“One must always be wary of post-mortem homages.”

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—t a h a r djaou t “I forbid you to use the stupid word ‘symbol.’ [. . .] That’s how terrorist organizations think!” —m i l a n k u n d e r a “It’s a tough job being Algerian.” —t a h a r djaou t

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ow can one honor the specificity of a life lost and acknowledge the broader political significance of the attack on that life? It is tempting to turn a man like Tahar Djaout into a symbol, emptying the individual of all the particularities that made him human, to transform his death into something poetic, and make the man into a vessel for our fears about terrorism and “barbarism.” This tendency is apparent in the first printed reactions to Djaout’s death: he became “a symbol of rupture,”1 “the symbol of a paradoxically evolutionary ‘return,’”2 “‘the’ figure of the intellectual-martyr.”3 In killing Djaout, as his friends and colleagues write again and again, the assassins were attempting to kill much more than a man: they were attacking democracy, freedom of expression, artistry, intelligence, modernity, Algeria itself: “To smash Tahar’s head is to kill thought”; “They killed him [. . .] because he em-


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bodied culture and tolerance in a country they hoped would collapse beneath its own mediocrity”; “To articulate freedom, to write freedom, to defend freedom with conviction [. . .] this is the idea that they wanted [. . .] to kill”; “They killed the symbol of a new, modern Algeria, liberated at last.”4 But beyond the idea was a man—memories, loves, and a unique future—who was suddenly and brutally put to death. To forget the mere man is to kill him again. In writing the death of Tahar Djaout we must do so in a way that does not reduce the man to a symbol. But how can we give voice to the dead without doing violence to their memory? Perhaps not surprisingly, much more has been written in death than in life about this young writer, only thirty-nine when he died, but the proliferation of post-mortem writing is not easily accessible outside of Algeria. Even in France, the press archive of Djaout’s life and death exists not in the sumptuous setting of the Bibliothèque Nationale, where few Algerian newspapers are archived and none are catalogued, but in the tiny third-floor library of the Centre Culturel Algérien, where two librarians work tirelessly clipping articles and organizing dossiers on writers, victims of violence, political developments, and more. The contrast between the bn and the cca is striking and eloquent: the former is spaceship-like with its electronic access cards, twenty-foot-tall doors, and corridors of brushed aluminum and glass, while the latter—humble and low-tech, with off-white walls and orange lamps hanging haphazardly above small wooden desks—contents itself with a single photocopier and two women who know the entire archive like the backs of their hands. These two women, like cemetery caretakers tending to monuments and graves, keep the public record of Djaout’s life.5 When he was gunned down in front of his Algiers apartment building on May 26, 1993, Algerians were stunned and enraged. Instantly, Tahar Djaout became a literary martyr and a secular


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saint. A massive public outpouring of grief ensued, a mountain of elegiac writing was produced, and the terrible moment of this writer’s death was frozen, preserved as the instant that defined his life. Out of the mountain of articles and homages a scratchy portrait begins to appear: he was a man with clairvoyance, courage, culture, and tolerance, the defender of the idea of a democratic and republican Algeria,6 a renowned writer, progressive, respected, admired, loved, “profoundly loved, even if our love was modest and silent.”7 Intimate portraits of Djaout underline his modesty, his soft-spokenness, his elegance, and his diplomacy. This combination of quiet charm and unflinching courage took people aback when they met him. An interview conducted by journalist Chantal Allaf in 1991, but printed after Djaout’s death, illustrates two things very clearly: the extent to which Djaout’s use of language unsettled some of his compatriots; and how skillfully and calmly Djaout was able to deal with questions and challenges that were at best naïve and at worst insulting. The interviewer describes gearingup to meet him: And after reading his novels, stories, and poems, I was irritated beyond belief [gonflée à bloc], a guy who uses and abuses “bad” words in his texts, sure that my “virgin ears” would turn red from his verbal shamelessness. Thus, armed with the most corrosive of rejoinders, I showed up at the agreed-upon hour, date, and place. And then all my aggression melted like snow in the sun. From his eyelashes to the tips of his toes he “exudes” kindness.8

Despite this initial “melting,” Allaf gathered herself and proceeded to take the author to task for the structure and use of vocabulary in his texts (“Mr. Djaout, who exactly were you trying to impress with your completely hermetic texts and your sophisticated vocabulary, which put my Petit Robert to shame?”9); for his elitism (“But if you wanted to appeal to a bigger audience, don’t you think that you should have aimed a bit lower?”10);


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for his “dirty” imagery (“Speaking of material that aims lower, you seem to have bladder problems? [. . .] [Y]ou soil everywhere, if it were only in the urinals I wouldn’t say anything, but like this, just anywhere . . . it pollutes!!”11); and for his lack of punctuation (“And to make your case of Dr. Jekyll worse, some of your texts have no punctuation at all. Why?”12 To this Djaout answered eloquently, “All these writings without punctuation, I wrote them with my eyes closed, I wrote according to a rhythm, a kind of respiratory rhythm that cannot withstand any rupture”13). Interviewer and interviewee interact like mismatched dance partners, with Allaf flailing indignantly, and Djaout slowly, skillfully, and thoughtfully leading the dance. He manages to steer the conversation from his own depravity, which Allaf believes comes through all too apparently in his texts, to a discussion on the need for innovation, professionalism, and tolerance in Algeria. During the 1990s Algerian citizens found themselves attacked at home, on the way to work, at airports, at weddings, and on trains. Since 1990 over one hundred thousand people have been killed in a conflict some called a “guerre civile”—“civil war” (Luis Martinez)—and others a “guerre contre les civils”—“war against civilians” (André Glucksmann).14 For the most part the perpetrators have remained anonymous and unpunished. After 2000 the situation improved significantly, but even now there are reports of attacks on military convoys and of what appear to be mass revenge killings in rural communities.15 May 2003 saw the capture and subsequent liberation of foreign hikers held for several months by an armed Islamist group.16 The collective in question calls itself the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, and has distinguished itself from its predecessor, the Armed Islamic Groups (Groupes islamiques armés, or gia) by declaring that it does not target civilians.17 The capture of the hikers, however, puts that distinction in question. Unrest began in October 1988 when mass youth demonstra-


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tions filled the streets of Algiers, protesting rising prices and the increasing scarcity of basic necessities.18 During a week of riots five hundred demonstrators were killed in clashes with the military, thousands of people were arrested, and many were subsequently tortured.19 Then in 1992 Algeria held legislative elections for the first time—something the demonstrators of 1988 had demanded—and the electorate took the opportunity to voice its discontent with the ruling Front de libération national (fln). When after the first ballot it became clear that the Front islamique du salut (fis) was in a position to seize power, the elections were interrupted and then canceled.20 The fis was outlawed, its leaders imprisoned, and the Islamist movement forced underground.21 A third decisive moment occurred with the 1993 assassination on live television of President Mohammed Boudiaf—a founding member of the fln who had lived in exile in Morocco for twenty-eight years. Boudiaf had surprised many Algerians by starting a process of reconciliation. Rather than crushing the Islamist movement, Boudiaf wanted to extend a hand to its supporters, start a dialogue, and bridge what he saw as a generational divide. But his vision of Algeria sat badly with the military that had put him in power. Boudiaf was assassinated by a trusted member of his guard.22 Réda Bensmaïa offers the following assessment of the impact of the president’s assassination: Boudiaf the reconciler, the incorruptible: he was the man who had renounced power, who had even left the country to make a new life for himself elsewhere, and who had been asked to return to save a country in ruins. [. . .] The death of Mohammed Boudiaf was the detonator. That is when the Algerian people lost confidence in themselves, in others!23

With Boudiaf’s assassination Algeria’s last hope was extinguished. The disaster had begun. Algeria rapidly descended into conflict: armed Islamist groups formed and declared war on


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the so-called Hizb-França (Party of France), the term by which intellectuals, journalists, foreigners, and anyone else seen to be collaborating with the regime and against the Islamist agenda were designated, and a period marked by the killing of intellectuals ensued. In 1993 the new leader of the gia, Sid Ahmed Mourad, also known as Djaffar Afghani, published the following declaration in an underground newspaper: “Our jihad consists of killing and dispersing all those who fight against God and his Prophet [. . .] The journalists who fight against Islamism through the pen will perish by the sword.”24 With time the killers became less discriminate in their targets, and ordinary citizens, not only writers and journalists, began to fall. The death count of what is now called Algeria’s civil war varies—between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand deaths have been reported—but the scope of the catastrophe remains enormous. Tahar Djaout died early in the slaughter. Remembered as the first writer to fall (although he was not, in fact, the very first), Djaout has been commemorated annually since 1994. The insistence that this author should go on living despite his death was felt especially strongly in its immediate wake. The headline of Djaout’s newspaper Ruptures declared “Djaout’s Algeria will prevail!”25 Other articles proclaimed “Tahar Djaout is not dead,” “Tahar will survive,” and “He remains alive.”26 Later, Djaout’s legacy was officially entrenched: the Maison de la presse was named in his honor, and a cultural prize endowed in his name was presented to the Kabyle singer Matoub Lounès, who dedicated a song (“Kenza”) to Djaout’s daughter.27 Matoub Lounès survived fifteen days of captivity by the gia, the most notorious and violent of the armed Islamist groups in Algeria of the 1990s. He too was ultimately killed in mysterious circumstances in 1998.28 But in the cascading catastrophe early victims of the conflict, like Tahar Djaout, were increasingly forgotten, as evidenced by the following passage from a 1998 article in the newspaper El Watan:


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After the terrible shock felt immediately following the disappearance of the man of letters, a period of amnesia, which threatens to stay for quite some time, has now set in. In effect, since the first commemoration (from May 26 to June 2, 1994) whose program was quite solid, the planning committee has reduced the festivities with each passing year. [. . .] The euphoria of 1994 has yielded to a generalized lukewarmth.29

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Forgetfulness comes not from malice, but from fatigue. Algeria has suffered too much, and thus can be forgiven its forgetting. Outside Algeria, Tahar Djaout sits at the margins of Francophone scholarship, itself at the margins of French scholarship. Very little has been written about him: a handful of articles, one booklength study of his poetry, and a few translations.30 The Life A few dates, place-names, and a list of books are hardly representative of the life. The bare-bones account below is obscenely stark. But a reader needs to know these things to anchor Djaout in a time and place, so I offer up the facts: he was born on January 11, 1954 in Azeffoun (sometimes spelled Azzeffoun), in the wilaya (province) of Tizi-Ouzou. He was Berber and spoke the Kabyle language, though he didn’t know how to write it. “I would have liked to write in my own language,” he commented, “but circumstances, history, made us what we are. Because writing in a foreign language like French is to exile oneself, to feel like a stranger.”31 He studied mathematics and communications in Algiers, obtaining a license in each field. His modern Arabic was fluent and sophisticated, his French slow, lilting, and eloquent. He spoke it as if weighing each word, rolling it around on his tongue before putting it into the world. Friends “often used to kid him about his handlebar moustache and his Swiss accent,” a reference to his peculiar cadence.32 From 1976 to 1977 he wrote for the cultural pages of the Algerian daily El Moudjahid, and then for Algérie Actualité from 1980, where


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he remained until 1992. Between 1975 and 1991 he published thirteen books (if we count the two editions of L’Exproprié separately), including novels, poetry, an anthology, and an interview with author Mouloud Mammeri. His bibliography, excluding articles, reads as follows: Solstice barbelé (Barbed Solstice). Poetry. Sherbrooke, qc: Naaman, 1975. L’Arche à vau-l’eau (The Arch Adrift). Poetry. Paris: SaintGermain-des-Prés, 1978. Insulaire & Cie (Islander & Co.). Poetry. Sigean: Orycte, 1980. L’Exproprié (The Expropriated). Novel. Algiers: sned, 1981; Second edition, Paris: François Majault, 1991. L’Oiseau minéral (The Mineral Bird). Poetry. Sigean: Orycte, 1982. Entretien avec Mouloud Mammeri (Interview with Mouloud Mammeri). Algiers: Laphomie, 1988. L’Étreinte du sablier (The Embrace of the Hourglass). Poetry. Écrivains Algériens au présent N. 6. No publication place. No publication date. Les Rets de l’oiseleur (The Bird-Catcher’s Snares). Short stories. Algiers: enal, 1984. Les Mots migrateurs (Migratory Words). Anthology. Algiers: opu, 1984. Les Chercheurs d’os (The Boneseekers). Novel. Paris: Seuil, 1984. L’Invention du désert (The Invention of the Desert). Novel. Paris: Seuil, 1987. Les Vigiles (The Watchers). Novel. Paris: Seuil, 1991.

Approximately six months before his death, Djaout founded a weekly newspaper called Ruptures with two colleagues from Algérie Actualité, Abdelkrim Djaâd and Arezki Metref. The first


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issue of Ruptures appeared on January 13, 1993. In it Djaout articulated its project:

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Many friends who learned of our plans quickly assessed that our timing for the launch of a new newspaper was badly chosen, that neither the plethora of already-established titles, nor the political terrain should incite one to embark on an experiment that could very quickly turn into a misadventure. But we undertook to attempt it because, on the contrary, we consider that Algeria is going through a period of decisive battles, in which every silence, every indifference, every abdication, every inch of surrendered territory can prove fatal. The year that has just ended saw freedom of expression and democracy groping along, struggling with pain, stumbling, but getting up once again and continuing to resist. In short, it wasn’t a great year, and as such, it more or less resembled the preceding ones. [. . .] After three decades of wandering, of fragile construction, and of monumental blunders, Algerian society has come to understand that everything has to be started from scratch, that we have to rebuild it all on a more solid foundation. Mohamed Boudiaf understood this well, and it cost him his life. [. . .] Our hope, but also our ambition, is for Ruptures to become a meeting-place, a space of expression and debate for all those who are working for a democratic, open and plural Algeria.33

Ruptures disappeared a few months after Djaout’s death, despite the intentions voiced by Abdelkrim Djaâd in the issue dedicated to Djaout’s assassination: “But for our part, the journalists of Ruptures, we will continue the fight that we began with our friend Tahar. A fight against obscurantism and terrorism. A fight for a strong, modest, efficient, and radiant Algeria.”34 Ruptures had been plagued by problems from the beginning—paper shortages and obstacles in the printing process had made the publication difficult to get off the ground— and Djaout’s violent death made its continuation impossible.35


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Though his name remained on the masthead even after his murder, the memory of Djaout was not enough to keep the paper afloat. In the face of increasing violence, his coeditors sought shelter in France. The life span of Ruptures was so short that librarians barely had time to archive it. Copies of Djaout’s final journalistic endeavor are difficult to find, and collections are incomplete. In addition to his regular newspaper columns and editorials, Djaout wrote under at least two pseudonyms: one was Temim Dhofari,36 a name used for articles published in the Revue celfan Review at Philadelphia’s Temple University; the other was Tayeb S., used for texts appearing in the Paris publication Actualité de l’Émigration (Emigration News). In 1996 Djaout’s collection of poetry, Pérennes (Perennials) appeared, and in 1999 his final novel, Le Dernier Été de la raison (The Last Summer of Reason) was published posthumously in Paris. The novel had been found among his papers. Djaout was married and had three daughters. The Threats Djaout’s friends and colleagues attested that he had been receiving death threats for some time.37 Threats during this period arrived in many forms: one form was wordless, a white burial shroud delivered through the mail. Sometimes the shroud was accompanied by a bar of soap, to use for washing the corpse. Another was more conventional: threats in the form of letters. I don’t know in which form Djaout’s threats arrived, but Louis Gardel, his friend and literary director of the French publishing house Seuil, confirmed that the author received them every day, and refused to hide or take precautions.38 Saïd Mekbel, also a journalist and a friend, recounted the nightly exchange between him and Djaout after the situation had become ominous: “Tahar, come close the door behind me.” “Pardon, what were you saying, Saïd?”


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“Will you bolt the door?” “Yes, of course, it’s better to be careful these days, right?” The same scenario was repeated every time I left after submitting my article to Ruptures. Each time, Tahar Djaout answered me in the same calm voice, in the same peaceful tone, with a sort of secure detachment.39

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“Are they still posting their famous list?” “Yes, they’re still doing it.” “We’re all still on it, aren’t we?” “Yes.” His gaze meets each of the faces present, then it comes back and stays on yours with a kind of sadness and melancholy. When we bring up the threats that weigh on every one of us, Djaout is the most discreet of the entire team. We quickly understand that in his case there is no question of varying or changing his habits.40

The “famous lists” referred to here were circulated between extremist mosques and contained the names of people deemed enemies and valid targets for assassination. Nineteen months after Djaout, Mekbel too would be dead, shot while dining in a restaurant, on December 4, 1994. But first, November 1993. Mekbel is filmed as he and his team at the newspaper Le Matin prepare to resume publishing after a forty-nine-day suspension, the result of a stance deemed too critical of the regime.41 A middle-aged man with curly hair, olive skin, and glasses perched at the tip of his nose, he looks exhausted. He has just taken the helm of the newspaper, as the former editor-in-chief has gone into exile. He shows the interviewing journalist the death threats he has been receiving. One consists of a collage of journalists’ faces, the other is a letter he reads aloud: “We address you in the name of the fis to tell you to be patient. You will soon receive news.”42


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Mekbel looks wearily into the camera and says: “Now I would like to know why we are dying.”43 Under the circumstances, it’s impossible for him to sleep without tranquilizers: “It’s been practically ten days since I’ve closed my eyes. . . . And it’s the questions that keep coming back: who is killing, why are they killing, why do they choose certain people, why a writer, why a psychiatrist, why a civil servant?”44 At the end of one of the letters is written “you are a dirty communist”45 with a swastika drawn underneath. The Attack May 26, 1993. Baïnem (an Algiers neighborhood). Between 8:30 and 8:45 a.m. Tahar Djaout sits in his car, allowing it to warm up as usual. The car, red, is parked in the lot in front of his apartment building. The journalist is about to set off for work. Someone knocks at his window. He opens it. Two, possibly three bullets are released from the gun and lodge inside the writer’s head.46 Djaout collapses in the driver’s seat. The killer pushes him out of the car and speeds away in it. The author lies bleeding on the pavement of the parking lot until an ambulance is called and he is taken to hospital. Strangely, no one has heard anything. In a complex that houses scores of families, no one can offer any testimony as to what happened or who committed the murder. Some have taken this to mean that it was a professional hit, noting the possible use of a silencer and pointing to the absence of bullet casings at the scene.47 Others attribute the silence of bystanders and witnesses to fear: “It’s understandable,” Djaout’s cousin is quoted as saying, “people are afraid because we live in a society of terror.”48 Even Nordine Saâdi, who offered the silencer theory, appears to believe that people knew, saw, and heard more than they had courage to admit: “A silencer?” he writes bitterly, “Or perhaps the cicadas cried out loud enough to drown out the sound of his car at the very moment it pulled away without him.”49


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The Hospital Reports of the author’s condition are grim. Soon after his arrival at the hospital Djaout’s doctors release the following statement:

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Mr. Tahar Djaout, 38 years of age,50 was admitted as the result of a bullet wound. . . . In light of the serious cerebral lesions, the prognosis remains very, very somber. The victim is in a very deep comatose state. Chances that his condition will improve are very slim.51

He spends eight days in this condition. Many articles published during this torturous period of limbo are accompanied by photographs of Djaout smiling and sporting his trademark moustache and square, heavy glasses. But one photograph, printed alongside an article called “Un choc généralisé” (A Generalized Shock) shows the wounded author in a hospital bed, barechested and wrapped in a sheet.52 His eyes are closed, his head bandaged, he is surrounded by wires and hooked up to a respirator. It is the only such image of him I have seen. This is how Djaout received his friends and family who kept vigil at his side. Some could not bear to see him like that and stayed away.53 Assia Temimi, a politician and friend of Djaout, offers some of the most moving testimony about this period between life and death: Wednesday, 2 hours before his death, I was still at his bedside with two friends. The beating of his heart . . . despite itself, perhaps . . . But it beats. Grazes your hand, your warm, palpitating skin . . . Guard this feeling like a treasure. Soul mates, these are the only ones we never renounce. The breath exhaling regularly from his body. Silent encouragements. Yes, live some more, live . . .54

But even as his friends and family prayed for a miracle and urged Djaout to come back to them, they knew there was noth-


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ing more to be done. Djaout was clinically dead.55 At the end of an exhausting eight-day period, his colleagues at Ruptures published the following text, a simple thank-you to those who had tried to help: The family of Tahar Djaout, the team at Ruptures, and the hundreds of friends who have kept vigil at Tahar’s side would very much like to thank all the personnel at Baïnem hospital for their concern, their kindness, and their exceptional goodness expressed throughout the suffering of Tahar Djaout.56

June 2, 1993. Tahar Djaout was dead. The Funeral “The earth closed in on the frail body of the assassinated poet! Exile or death; silence or death, his killers decreed!” —h a f s a z i n a ï - kou di l 57

The funeral was held in the mountain village of his birth, Oulkhou, on Friday June 4, 1993, at one o’clock in the afternoon. Buses were organized for those who knew and loved him to depart from the Maison de la presse in Algiers that morning.58 Thousands of people attended, many having traveled from all over the country. After the Friday prayers, Djaout’s body was carried, under the cover of an Algerian flag, by literally hundreds of youths from the house in which he was born to the cemetery at Akhfou, the resting place of his ancestors.59 It is estimated that sixty thousand people lined the route, some of them brandishing signs and placards denouncing terrorism and attacks on the country’s cultural figures, and painted with antigovernment slogans that read “pouvoir assassin.”60 The procession was punctuated by the cries of women, by the tears of the crowd, and by the applause of the thousands gathered. At times the progress of the coffin stalled completely because of the sheer number of individuals wanting to lend a hand in


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the author’s final journey.61 There were many accounts of the funeral in the press, but two are most telling: Chérif Ouazani’s, “À l’ombre d’un drapeau” (Under the Shadow of a Flag) which appeared in El Watan, and an article entitled “Les pour Djaout, poète algérien” (“Ululations” for Djaout, Algerian Poet) in Libération. The first emphasizes the solidarity of the crowd and its cultural diversity, while the other points to the anger directed at a government that was failing to protect its citizens.62 The two accounts are contradictory: Ouazani says the funeral was attended by many politicians, whereas the second article claims that only one dared show his face. Lovely details punctuate Ouazani’s account: children circulating through the crowd offering drinks of water from their buckets, and scurrying back to refill them when emptied by parched mourners; young men spontaneously sectioning off the crowd with rope and organizing the throng to move in blocks so as to avoid trampling; the kind words of a sheikh calming the anger of young men incensed at the unjust death they had come to mourn. But a single detail appears in all accounts: during the procession, a decision arose from amongst the women that their tears should be transformed to ululation, “you-yous.” The women’s cries changed in tone from sorrow to outrage and defiance. And with that, Tahar Djaout was honored as a martyr: “All these illustrious unknowns made it so that Tahar had the funeral he deserved, that of a great man.”63 Justice? The Algerian police took swift action to find those responsible for the attack on the writer. Two of the three primary suspects were killed immediately, on the very day of the attack (some say they were killed a few days later), and the third, a twentyeight-year-old man named Abdellah Belabassi, was seen on television and heard on the radio confessing to the crime.64 At nine o’clock on the radio, just before signing off on the pro-


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gram: “News of which I’m learning at the same time as you: some terrorists, having made an attempt on the life of Tahar Djaout, have been killed. One other has been arrested. His statement will therefore be broadcast tonight on the 8 o’clock television news.” “I will tell you (. . .).” “Who gave the order?” “The order came from Abdelhak Layada. [. . .] “What was Layada’s order?” “The order was to kill a journalist named Tahar Djaout.” “For what reason?” “Two reasons: first of all because he is a communist. Secondly because he has a formidable pen. He knows how to express himself, he influences Muslims a great deal (. . .).”65

The man on the television screen had been tortured. His confession, it appeared, had been beaten out of him. Since an attack on the Algiers airport on August 26, 1992, which had left ten people dead and dozens wounded,66 the practice of televising confessions had become commonplace: “Seated in a chair in an unidentified location, the guilty party or parties surrender confessions, which are filmed, sometimes without their knowledge, by people whose identity is unknown.”67 The confessions are aired as proof of the suspects’ guilt, before they are even brought before the courts. According to Belabassi’s confession, the killing of Djaout was meant to reactivate the terrorist cell of Bab-el-Oued (an Algiers neighborhood), whose primary mission would be to assassinate police officers from a list compiled by “a certain” Abdelkrim Aït-Oumeziane, who himself was killed a few days after Djaout.68 Belabassi claimed that he had merely been the driver on the operation to assassinate Djaout, and that he delivered the others to Djaout’s home and then picked them up at a nearby traffic light.69 The order to kill Djaout, he claimed, had come from Layada. Belabassi’s version of events has not


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held up to scrutiny, and it became clear very early on that finding the real killer would be difficult. Soraya Sayed raises some interesting questions in her article “Des questions encore sur l’assassinat” (More Questions about the Assassination): if Belabassi picked up the assassins after the murder, then who stole Djaout’s car? She also points to the fact that a few days after the June 15 murder of Professor Mahfoud Boucebci, the security forces announced that they had arrested several terrorists responsible for the murders of intellectuals, including Tahar Djaout. The armed group in question in this case was led by Imam Harik Noreddine, who stated that his cell was commanded by Abderrazak Redjam, who had publicly claimed responsibility for Djaout’s death. Harik Noreddine himself professed to have ordered Djaout’s murder, and told the police that the killing had been carried out by Bourayane Sedik (a.k.a. Djaafer), and Touati Abdelkrim, both of whom were arrested, as well as Brahimi Mohamed and “a certain Fateh,” who were on the run:70 The Court had recognized a certain Bourrayane Sedik as being guilty for the crime of Tahar Djaout and had condemned him to capital punishment together with Harik Noreddine. During [Belabassi and Layada’s] trial, the defense pointed out to the jury that four other people had been arrested in connection with the assassination of Tahar Djaout and that their appearance before the Special Court was only a question of days. Who are they, and why were they not tried together with Harik’s group? In addition to that, it is necessary to point out that the security forces had for months accused Mohamed Guezmir (who has since been killed) of the assassination of Tahar Djaout and so many Algiers intellectuals. Who is behind the assassination of Tahar Djaout?71

Not surprisingly, both Belabassi and Layada were acquitted at trial. Belabassi retracted his confession in court, claiming that


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it had been extracted under torture. His lawyers offered evidence in court that Belabassi had, in fact, been training with his handball team in the July 5 Stadium in Algiers at the time of Djaout’s murder.72 Layada, for his part, proved to have been in hiding in Morocco for several months during this period before he was eventually handed over to the Algerian police by the Moroccan authorities. Reporters sans frontières agrees that “these special courts do not have the reputation of being gentle with Islamist terrorists. It was difficult not to believe [Layada] innocent of the crime.”73 Digging too deeply into the identity of Djaout’s killers has proven fatal. Even before the acquittals of Belabassi and Layada, a group of Djaout’s friends had come together to form a Committee for Truth. The group, which included renowned psychiatrist Mahfoud Boucebci, surgeon Soltane Ameur, writers Rachid Mimouni and Nordine Saâdi, filmmaker Azzedine Meddour, and journalists Omar Belhouchet and Saïd Mekbel, was dissatisfied with the authorities’ version of who was responsible for the crime. They decided to make their suspicions public: namely, that the regime, not young thugs, was responsible for Djaout’s death. On June 14, 1993, the committee released the following statement: “Too many political crimes go unpunished in our country. The images of maintenance men exhibited on television will not be able to mask the faces of those pulling the strings.”74 The president of the committee, Boucebci, was killed the following day, stabbed in front of the Drid-Hocine Hospital where he worked. Saïd Mekbel remarked in his column that this killing showed that the committee had hit a sore spot. A short time later he was dead too. Like Djaout’s newspaper, after a few meetings, “held at the Ruptures office, then at the Maison de la presse, ‘the committee died’ without having been able to undertake or fulfill the objectives it had assigned itself, namely the reconfiguration of this committee into an association whose goal would be to promote the intellectual and cultural heritage of Tahar Djaout.”75


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Part One

The Killing Continues

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Reporters sans frontières reports that fifty-seven journalists were killed in Algeria between 1993 and 1997 (Mustapha Marrouchi cites sixty-nine).76 Although Djaout’s death is remembered as the first such incident, attacks on intellectuals began months (and even years) before Djaout’s assassination: at the end of 1992 the academic and unionist Belhazar was killed, the sociologist Djilali Liabès on March 16, 1993, and the writer and doctor Laâdi Flici on March 17, 1993.77 The list of cultural figures assassinated after Djaout’s murder is long. The list presented here is not complete. Not included here, for example, are Archbishop Pierre Claverie of Oran, killed by a bomb along with his driver in 1996, the seven monks of Tibhirine, kidnapped and killed, also in 1996, and fifty teachers murdered between 1993 and 1994.78 But it gives an idea of who and how many were killed because of their profession, politics, or (real or perceived) anti-Islamist position: M’hammed Boukhobza, psychiatrist (June 22, 1993) Abdelhamid Benmeni, journalist at Algérie-Actualité (August 9, 1993) Saad Bakhtaoui, journalist at El-Minbar (September 10, 1993) Abderrahmane Chergou, former journalist and official of the leftist pags party (September 28, 1993) Djamel Bouhidel, photographer with the weekly Nouveau Tell (October 5, 1993) Mustafa Abada, former director of Algerian State Television (October 14, 1993) Smail Yefsah, assistant news director of Algerian State Television (October 18, 1993) Youcef Sebti, poet, freelance journalist, and professor (December 27, 1993)


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Olivier Quemener, French freelance television journalist (February 1, 1994) Abdelkader Hireche, journalist with Algerian Television (entv) (February 28, 1994) Mohamed Hassaine, correspondent of the daily newspaper, Alger Républicain (kidnapped March 1, 1994) Abdelkader Alloula, dramaturge (March 11, 1994) Hassan Benaouda, journalist with Algerian Television (entv) (March 12, 1994) Yahia Djamel Benzaghou, director of the Prime Minister Redha Malek’s Press Department (March 19, 1994) Madjid Yacef, photojournalist with the independent Frenchlanguage weekly L’Hebdo Libéré (March 20, 1994) Mohamed Meceffeuk, journalist with the weekly magazine Détective (April 13, 1994) Ferhat Cherkit, adjunct editor-in-chief of the government-run daily El Moudjahid (June 7, 1994) Yasmina Drici, proofreader with the French-language daily Le Soir d’Algérie (July 10, 1994) Mohamed Lamine Legoui, Algerian Press Service (July 21, 1994) Mouloud Barroudi, cameraman with the National Agency of Filmed News (September 25, 1994) Smaïl Sbaghdi, reporter with the official Algerian Press Service (September 25, 1994) Dhjilali Belkenchir, professor of pediatrics (October 10, 1994) Lahcene Bensaadallah, director of El-Irshad, a publication affiliated with the moderate Islamist party Hamas (October 12, 1994) Tayeb Bouterfif, journalist at Algerian Radio, the government’s Berber-language radio station (October 16, 1994) Mohamed Salah Benachour, Algerian Press Service (October 20, 1994)


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Farah Ziane, editor of the National Liberation Front weekly Révolution Africaine (October 20, 1994) Kaddour Bousselham, correspondent with the government newspaper Horizons in Mascara (disappeared October 29, 1994) Ahmed Issaad, reporter for Algerian Television (November 30, 1994) Nasseredine Lekhal, reporter for the state-owned Arabiclanguage daily El-Massa (November 30, 1994)

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Saïd Mekbel, journalist, editor-in-chief of the independent, French-language daily Le Matin (December 4, 1994) Zineddine Aliou Salah, investigative reporter for the independent French-language daily Liberté (January 6, 1995) Ali Abboud, adjunct editor-in-chief of the state-owned, Arabiclanguage Radio Chaine 1 (January 7, 1995) Abdelhamid Yahiaoui, copyeditor for the government-controlled Arabic daily El-Chaab (January 12, 1995) Azzedine Medjoubi, director of the National Theater of Algiers (February 1995) Nabile Dialmire, architect (February 1995) Nacer Ouari, journalist with Algerian State Television and producer of a weekly news program for the hearing-impaired (February 1, 1995) Djamel Ziater, reporter with the government-run, Arabiclanguage daily El Djoumhouria (February 17, 1995) Ahmed Asselah, director of the Advanced School of Fine Arts in Algiers (March 5, 1995) Ali Boukerbache, owner of the private production company Media-tv) (March 21, 1995) Mohamed Abderrahmani, journalist, director of the daily newspaper El Moudjahid (March 27, 1995)


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Rachida Hammadi, investigative reporter for Algerian State Television, and her sister, Houriya Hammadi, a secretary for the television station (March 31, 1995) Mekhlouf Boukzer, sports commentator for Algerian State Television (April 4, 1995) Djamil Fahassi, reporter with Chaîne 3 (kidnapped May 6, 1995) Azzedine Saidj, former editor-in-chief of the now-defunct independent weekly El-Ouma (May 15, 1995) Malika Sabour, cultural reporter for the independent Arabiclanguage weekly Echourouk al-Arabi (May 21, 1995) Bakhti Benaouda, professor of Arabic at Oran University and a frequent contributor to many publications, including the government-run daily El-Djoumhouria (May 22, 1995) Mourad Hmaizi, reporter with Algerian State Television (May 27, 1995) Salah Djebaïli, rector of the University of Sciences and Technology in Bab Ezzouar (May 31, 1995) Youcef Fathallah, president of the Algerian League for Human Rights (June 18, 1995) Ahmed (a.k.a. Hakim) Takouchet, journalist with Radio Cirta (June 18, 1995) Naïma Hammouda, cultural reporter with the weekly Révolution Africaine (August 2, 1995) Ameur Ouagueni, head of the international news department at Le Matin (August 20, 1995) Saïd Tazrout, bureau chief for Le Matin (September 3, 1995) Yasmina Brikh, journalist for a cultural program on Algerian Radio (September 4, 1995) Brahim Guaraoui, journalist and cartoonist for El-Moudjahid (September 4, 1995)


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Saïd Brahimi, journalist with Algerian State Television and his wife, Radja, who worked as an administrative assistant at the station (September 9, 1995) Aboubakr Belkaïd, former minister of labor, higher education, and communication (September 28, 1995) Cheb Hasni, raï singer (September 29, 1995) Omar Ouartilan, editor-in-chief of the independent Arabiclanguage daily El-Khabar (October 3, 1995) Saïda Djebaili, journalist with the Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat al-Arabia and her driver, Mustafa Lazar (October 17, 1995)

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Hamid Mahiout, reporter for the independent, French-language daily Liberté, and Ahmed Belkhefellah, his driver (December 2, 1995) Khadija Dahmani, reporter for the weekly tabloid Echourouk al-Arabi (December 5, 1995) Mohamed Mekati, correspondent for El-Moudjahid (January 10, 1996) Abdallah Bouhachek, editor of Révolution et Travail, the weekly of Algeria’s largest workers’ union (February 10, 1996) Allaoua Ait M’barak, Mohamed Dorbane, and Djamel Derraz, journalists with the independent evening daily, Le Soir d’Algérie (plus fifteen others killed in the same bomb blast) (February 11, 1996) Djilali Arabidou, photojournalist for the weekly Algérie-Actualité (March 12, 1996) Salah Kitoumi, founder of the Islamist-leaning newspaper El Nour and journalist with El Hilal (disappeared July 1, 1996) Mohamed Guessab, host of Radio Koran, a religious program on Algerian Radio, and his brother (August 12, 1996)


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Aziz Bouabdallah, journalist with the Arabic language daily El-Alam el Siyassi (disappeared April 12, 1997) Matoub Lounès, Kabyle singer (June 25, 1998)79

This list accounts for a small fraction of those killed in Algeria during the 1990s and during the present decade. Most victims were not intellectuals, journalists, artists, or writers. They were ordinary men, women, and children. Countless police officers were also killed.80 Many had supported the establishment of an Islamist government and had voted for the fis. I do not wish to forget these people in my narrow account of a complicated conflict. Djaout’s death was one of thousands, of a hundred thousand. For their sakes as well, I will remember him.


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THREE

Poetry, Prose, and the Politics of Writing in Algeria

B

etween the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight Djaout published five books, four of them poetry (Solstice barbelé [Barbed Solstice], L’Arche à vau-l’eau [The Arch Adrift], Insulaire & Cie. [Islander and Co.], and L’Oiseau minéral [The Mineral Bird]),1 and the fifth a poetic novel, L’Exproprié (The Expropriated). They display a determination to demarcate a space for writing in Algeria, where authors could compose according to their consciences and aesthetic agendas, independent of the demands of the regime, and they critique the relationship Algerian writers of the first decades of independence were expected to have with the past. Prevailed upon to aid in the project of nation-building, Algerian writers of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s often found themselves unwilling soldiers in a war of words. The regime demanded that writers become “engaged” and explicitly contribute to the construction of a national identity by mythologizing war heroes (for example) or erasing political differences to create a unified narrative that could serve as script for a unified society: Since the war of liberation, the political system has been characterized by an “obsessive unanism” that represses the political, that denies the political. Among the “true Algerians,” there are no political problems, so we hear. . . . As though it sufficed that power affirmed its tutelage over social activity so that the latter was sheltered from political conflict.2

The government controlled the story Algerians were told about


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themselves not only through the Writers’ Union and journalists’ accreditation, but also, and perhaps most importantly, through the production and distribution of paper, books, and newspapers.3 The 1960s witnessed the founding of the state-run publishing house sned (Société Nationale d’Édition et de Diffusion, later called enal, or Entreprise Nationale du Livre) in an effort to solidify Algeria’s cultural autonomy from France, countering “the power of French publishers and to promote local production.”4 Because of the state monopoly over book production, censorship could be exercised in less than overt ways. Keeping an ideologically undesirable book out of the hands of Algerian readers was a relatively easy task: it simply wouldn’t be published in Algeria, or if published abroad, it would not be imported or distributed.5 Djaout rejected the role the regime assigned the writer, opting to publish his first books abroad or with semiclandestine presses. “So-called engaged literature [. . .] puts the writer in ambiguous positions,” he explained. “In Algeria, in the 1970s, to become engaged necessarily meant to be on the side of power, to be against a certain number of realities, or specters like imperialism, neocolonialism. . . . In this sense, many writers who were engaged were at the same time very servile.”6 “It’s not easy to write in a country where the sociocultural traditions have not been established,” Djaout said in 1991. “An author often finds himself in a domain that lies outside of his talents. He is called upon to participate in the building of a society, and implicated in the sociopolitical realm. Thus, he is killed. His talents are killed, he is indirectly deprived of writing, and sometimes directly so.”7 His early poems narrate the aggression, disdain, and veiled violence he felt directed at himself and his colleagues. In poetic thought experiments like “The King’s Breviary,” Djaout imagined the ideological aggression become real.


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The King’s Breviary [. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] you must get him at any cost my sons he is a poet debauched he draws the dagger at every remark he prostitutes syntax to make of it a vagina that bears nightmares he insults the divine Verb [. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] kill him my sons he covets a subversive verb8

The poem foreshadows the death of its author. In this youthful phase of overt revolt Djaout was already tracing the line of flight that his mature writing would follow: a technique of rhetorical and emotional minimalism, catching the details that ideological acts of war cannot oppose and had not yet learned to crush. Ultimately, here and later, it would be a restrained voice verging on reportage that Djaout would offer up as his most effective resistance. Some of the best examples of Djaout’s poetic minimalism can be found in Solstice barbelé (Barbed Solstice), published by Namaan in Sherbrooke, Québec in 1975. The poems of this first collection, most notably the miniatures of a section entitled “Aléatoires” (Aleatory), recall Sylvia Plath’s capacity to evoke with an eloquent neutrality the minor incongruities that grand plans like “the nation” cannot take into account. In “Je l’aimais,” for example, the poet declares: I loved her simply because she wore her girdle backwards9

Most of the poems of Solstice barbelé are narratives presented


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in clipped stanzas. Some offer social commentary, like “Ma cousine a des yeux de mer . . .” (“My cousin has sea-eyes”), which laments the lot of women in Algeria: My cousin, once married, was walled-in —on the advice of the Imam— in a naive and pious veneration of the Master’s Phallus.10

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Another, entitled “La Révolution et la poésie sont une seule et la même chose” (“Revolution and poetry are one and the same thing”), employs a vocabulary so reminiscent of Soviet publications of the same era that you can almost smell the brittle Russian paper on which they were printed.11 Like the term “engagement,” “revolution” too signposts the curious politico-ideological climate, known as “Muslim” or “Algerian” socialism, in which Djaout began his writing career. The historical leaders (chefs historiques) of the Algerian revolution chose a hybrid of Islam and socialism as their guiding principle. Socialism first became prominent in Algeria in the 1930s and 1940s, through the work of Messali Hadj, and the conviction that socialism would prove to be the most appropriate social and economic path for Algeria crystallized among members of the fln during the war of independence.12 Its most outspoken advocate was Ahmed Ben Bella, a senior fln figure who emerged victorious from a virulent internal fln struggle to become independent Algeria’s first president. Algeria was not the first North African country to embrace socialism, following as it did on the 1952 example of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. In some ways it is easy to see that socialism might make sense for a largely Muslim society with long traditions of brotherhood and a well-entrenched concept of the umma, or Muslim community.13 But the marriage of Islam and Marxism was not an easy one, and not surprisingly the experience of Algerian socialism was rocky from the start.


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In advancing his peculiar blend of Marxism and Islam, Ben Bella tried to convince his critics that, far from conflating two worldviews, his vision of Algerian socialism incorporated only those elements of Marxism compatible with Islam and Algerian culture. He made his case, stating: “We adopt the Marxist economic analysis because we believe it is the only one valid for the economic development of our country; but we do not espouse the Marxist ideology because we Algerians are Muslims and Arabs.”14 Despite Ben Bella’s efforts, opposition among traditionalists continued to grow, and on June 19, 1965, the army ousted Ben Bella in a bloodless coup led by Colonel Houari Boumedienne, the country’s former vice president and commander of the army. Boumedienne continued his predecessor’s socialist economic agenda, but appealed to the Islamic opposition by bowing to religious groups where social policies were concerned.15 In Djaout’s poetry of the 1970s and ’80s the language of “revolution” and “engagement” employed by the regime is spun around and recalibrated to bespeak an upheaval that the apparatus of state could never achieve. Djaout’s revolution turns the poet’s voice into a sensitive receptor for the minor, the beautiful, and the unassimilable, the backwards girdles and ocean-blue eyes of the world. Revolution and poetry are the same thing for him, (as the poem’s title, “La Révolution et la Poésie sont une seule et même chose,” declares) for this is a poetic revolt against the appropriation and cynical manipulation of the writer for political ends: it will be necessary once more to photocopy my tears so as to shrink the spleen of well-to-do citizens and like a good poet —registered with city hall


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as unemployed— hold out my filthy hat to the kindness of middle-class men dressed in their Sunday best who come to admire the roads of Algiers16

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The revolution called for here is one in and of language and writing. It would allow one simply to write, and allow language to resonate with poetic, rather than only political meanings. The poems of Djaout’s second collection, L’Arche à vau-l’eau, are linguistically denser and less playful than those of Solstice barbelé, but there too the miniature poems succeed best. As with the microtexts of “Aléatoires,” the miniatures in the second collection continue to explore a concentrated minimalism that, toward the end of his life, would flower into mature novels. An example from the cycle “Quatrains éclopés” (Limping Quatrains): to fortify in man the strength to say No17

Here Djaout’s voice sharpens itself to a point, to a single eloquent syllable capable, because of its modesty, of destroying the entire apparatus that menaced the poet and the possibility of a free act of expression. It was this voice, the sharp, simple voice, that would deploy itself to even greater effect in later works. Although Djaout made his mark with novels, his early poetic texts have nevertheless maintained a hold on the Algerian imagination. The one full-length study of his work published to date treats only Djaout’s early poetry,18 and the elegiac texts that appeared after Djaout’s death more often cite and honor his early work. “I discovered Tahar Djaout’s poetry,” writes


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Rabah Belamri, “at the end of the 1970s. It was engaged in the revolt and desire of the generation of intellectuals to which I belonged.”19 For Belamri these poems, which dared point an accusing finger at those who ruled, are “ardent and without concession.” This early mode of writing became a way of life for Djaout, and although his philosophical opposition to oppressive forces (both from above and below) remained a lifelong stance, his mode of expression changed considerably over his lifetime. In his last decade Djaout increasingly turned to prose and especially to the novel as his preferred form. But his prose nevertheless retained the cutting simplicity of his best poetry. On at least one occasion Djaout relegated his early poetic texts to the status of juvenilia, saying: “Poetry was certainly a fruitful experience, I wrote beautiful poems, but these are just youthful writings. As for today, I don’t plan on writing any, but if I feel the need, perhaps I will return to poetry.”20 He offered here a judgment of his own work, rather than of the form in general, for Djaout held poetry in the highest esteem and considered it to be the most accomplished mode of expression: [P]oetry is the first word, it is the last one as well. Moreover, I have noticed that many writers begin by writing poetry in order to move toward the novel, whereas I would imagine more readily the inverse process, poetry being the pinnacle of all writing.21

Despite the fact that Djaout’s writing developed exactly in the manner he described here, from poetry to the novel, poetry nonetheless turned out literally to be the final word for him. The last text Djaout handed off for publication only days before he was killed was a collection of poems, Pérennes (Perennials), the first since the appearance of L’Étreinte du sablier (which primarily comprised poems from L’Oiseau minéral and Insulaire & Cie) in 1983. Djaout’s return to poetry at the end of his life was not only a return to a form, but also to the texts of his youth: many of the poems in Pérennes are revised versions of previously pub-


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lished texts. The new ones, by contrast, are haunting and austere. “[T]he poems I’ve written recently,” he commented: are poems of emaciation, poems of asceticism, poems of essentiality. These are poems whose principal theme, whose central obsession is something of the mineral world, the desert, and all things emaciated, like skeletons, like bones.22

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And so, at the end of his life Djaout came full circle. The author’s gesture backward, to the beginning of his writing career—to the remains of the dead, to arid spaces, to images of childhood and youth—is reminiscent of the interior journey in reverse, undergone by those approaching the end of life, when one’s earliest memories return with astonishing clarity. Perhaps it was this eternal presence of the past that Djaout sought to point to with the title of his final collection, Pérennes. In the preface to Pérennes Jacques Gaucheron describes how the author’s choice of title had caused some consternation. The word was too archaic, Djaout was told, too seldom used on its own in this way. But Djaout stood his ground: He said he preferred this title to the one he had chosen initially: “the embrace of the hourglass,” that of the first of the poems in the collection. He insisted. He appeared to savor this old word, risen up from the depths of language, in a manner one could call gourmand [. . .]. He insisted. It had to be acknowledged that he was right. This was done in good faith, and today the title resonates in a different way, and powerfully, because the poetic affirms itself in it, even though the voice of the poet has been silenced, assassinated.23

Pérenne comes from the Latin perennis, “eternal.” Its English form, perennial, is most familiar to cold-climate gardeners. The word carries a scent of newly thawed earth, decomposing leaves, and brave tendrils returning to life in the spring. Gaucheron heard in this word, pérenne, the voice, “among others,” of Montaigne:


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[C]hemin [. . .] droict, uny, large de vingt-cinq pas, pavé, garny de costé et d’autre de belles et hautes murailles, et le long d’icelles, par le dedans, deux ruisseaux perennes bordez de beaux arbres, qu’ils nomment molly.24 [T]he road [. . .] paved, lined on both sides with fine high walls, and along these, on the inside, two ever-flowing [perennial] streams, bordered by beautiful trees, which they call molly.25

But if the pérenne of the gardener and of Montaigne is mossy and wet, Djaout’s pérenne is dry and deserty, conveying not the return of plants and thawing rivers, but of bones that never decay, finding themselves uncovered by shifting sands: sand, a time hole in which god himself is shrouded26 The Move to Prose No easier way to trace the development of Djaout’s late, precise style exists than to track the long genesis of L’Exproprié, Djaout’s first novel, but also one of his last. First published in 1981 at the height of his poetic career, the novel was rereleased in substantially revised form by the Parisian house of François Majault in 1991. The difference between the two texts is striking. The first is stylistically baroque and linguistically exuberant, consciously deploying an avant-garde language and a swirling and difficult syntax to mirror the rhizomorphic openness of its structure. A sample passage: and what was I doing leaning on these shelves where I didn’t make a sound but where I was striving to decipher the destiny of the world to come with its swift hungers its breakwater H-bombs its sulfur dioxide legs and computer guardians for immense herds of sheep and slaves I repeated to myself that in this world the masters of all borders were forcing themselves to work with the


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image of their hunger I was not necessarily losing because I had been given a prestigious post as a biology teacher and was allowed to print books (in my name!) that even found understanding and encouraging readers with the publication of my first book I received a pile of mail27

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Echoing its snowballing sentences and paragraphs, the novel is structured around a voyage without beginning or end, “as if there existed no territory with intact origins or possible aspirations.”28 A train transports convicts, each of whom disembarks at a station predetermined at sentencing. But the narrator of this disjointed tale will not disembark. He “doesn’t know the grounds for the charge [. . .]. The only possible stop is the return to his childhood, the sole place of anchorage and integrity.”29 As with every novel and much of his poetry, Djaout meditates on the eternal presentness of childhood. Whether the narrator is a child as in Les Chercheurs d’os, or an adult transported back to youth in the final moments of life as in Les Vigiles, Djaout privileges youthful perspective without exception. L’Exproprié is no different. The end of the novel is occupied by a series of excursions into memories of the narrator’s childhood. Inasmuch as one can pin down a single thread in the polyphonic L’Exproprié, the text examines the relationship between official and individual history. As always, Djaout privileges the second over the first, ever wary of what he calls “la grande histoire”: Because it seems to me that circumscribed history is always a kind of usurpation. The only history that interests me is individual history, that which loosens the lips of each person, which gives and liberates language rather than immobilizing it.30

In terms reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s conception of origin (Ursprung) as an “eddy in the stream of becoming,”31 Djaout


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considers history in terms of a wandering, a perpetual crossing or journey, “a kind of ferryman’s barge that never docks at any shore, because the mooring carries within it the danger of falling back into ‘the illusion of roots,’” open and eternal, without beginning or end.32 But while it is true of both versions of L’Exproprié (the first published in 1981, and the second in 1991) that “there is no character who could serve as a guiding thread, the plot does not unfold according to the Cartesian logic of effects and causes, and upon first reading, certain portions of the text present themselves as an assemblage of incongruous, even incoherent discourses,”33 the 1991 version is much more restrained, even clinical in its style. The first version of the novel was written quickly and impatiently, while the second represents a more mature, considered text. In the contest between rage and restraint, exuberance and discipline, the latter win out—though here it is by means of a generous compromise with the open-ended structure of the first production. The major late novels perfect this disciplined form with the process of opening a space of political neutrality far more explosive than any explicitly “contrarian” position could have been. Djaout himself must have meditated on the transition at work in his style through the mid-1980s. In 1984 he published a collection of short stories, Les Rets de l’oiseleur (The Bird Catcher’s Snares). They tell of country boys who hunt birds with slingshots or keep them captive in cages, of a maquisard during the Algerian War who takes refuge in the sea after all his comradesin-arms have been killed, of a madman’s tattered diary. Djaout narrates these stories episodically and disjointedly, as if recording dreams. But one text, “Le Reporter,” commands attention because it explicitly considers the relationship between the various modes of writing Djaout knew. The narrator finds himself in an African city where he has been sent by a newspaper. It is not in the Maghreb, but in sub-Saharan Africa, where the re-


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porter finds lodging at the Great Federal Hotel, and where he remains in his room for days, silently combating writer’s block. The reporter waits for the right words to come, so a flow of writing will follow:

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These reporter’s beginnings have tormented me since the first day I embraced the profession. In the end my entire profession consists of finding the subterfuge to reveal the birth of the report and to capture it at the opportune moment. Occasionally I arrange a pile of books (classical masterpieces for the most part— Moby Dick, Dangerous Liaisons, Anna Karenina, Bouvard and Pécuchet) on my night table to inspire me.34

“Le Reporter” tells of the ways writers find to systematize literary production—by setting personal quotas, for example. The narrator describes a colleague who forces himself to write a page every day, thus finding himself the proud creator of 365 pages each year. But it is the hierarchy of genres that eventually causes this colleague’s fall. Sent to the subtropics to write a story on cannibalism, and fascinated by the subject at hand, the colleague decides to produce a novel and short story in addition to the article he was sent to write. Originally having intended to undertake the writing of all three pieces at once, he soon realizes this process must end in failure: the texts begin to interpenetrate, infecting one another, disrespectful of the boundaries of genre. The newspaper article robs ideas and literary formulations from the short story, which, in turn, saps energy from the novel, his “cherished child, the jealously coddled fruit.”35 His solution: abandon everything until he finds a way of writing all three without interference. Embedded within this discussion of the writing process is a nightmarish tale. At the hotel drunk and horny young women appreciatively watch a young Berber man masturbate (the man steps out of the bas-relief of the building): “Oh his prick is as big as a winch,” says one Scottish onlooker in English, “I’d like


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to put it in my mouth.”36 The status of this narrative is unclear: a fantasy, perhaps, or a writing exercise designed to inspire real beginnings to come. It is followed by another short narrative about an alcoholic miner named Johnson, whose family cannibalizes its youngest child at the end of a plentiful meal. In “Des deux côtés de la vitre” (From Both Sides of the Window) Farida Boualit suggests that “Le Reporter” stages both sides of Djaout’s writing life: the “hybrid word craft that he practiced on this side of the ‘window’ as a writer and on the other side of the same ‘window’ as a journalist.”37 Caught between his literary ambitions and economic necessities the reporter of the story finally becomes paralyzed by inner conflict and retreats into himself, filtering the world through his hotel window. “Le Reporter” may be read as a hinge piece in Djaout’s literary career, mediating thematically between artistic and journalistic work, chronologically located between the early poetry and the later novels. With Les Rets de l’oiseleur Djaout began a protracted flight from poetry and committed himself almost exclusively to prose (with the sole exception of the late Pérennes). But even when his success in prose had been firmly established, the designation of novelist made Djaout uneasy. Although to his readers it appeared that Djaout had left poetry behind, Djaout rejected this characterization of his literary career, and the label of what he termed the “novelist-novelist.”38 In April 1991 he took part in a roundtable discussion in Rennes, France, with Habib Tengour, Mohammed Sehaba, and Marc Gontard. The latter asked him about the relationship between poetry and prose in his work, and how the marriage of the two forms manifested itself in his writing. Djaout offered the following answer: I personally have had the experience of reading the articles of literary critics who present me as a novelist. This makes me extremely uncomfortable because I have never felt like a novelist.


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First of all because I don’t have much imagination and, for me, the story I tell is extremely incidental compared to other things. In fact, I have never had stories to tell.39

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Poetry, asserted Djaout, was the most accomplished, “merciless,” and perfect genre.40 Form rather than content, discourse rather than story guided him, even tortured him, and ultimately determined what he wrote. In a 1976 letter to Hamid NacerKhodja he diagnosed his central concern as the “foutu problème de langue”—“fucking problem of language”—adding: “You will tell me that it’s an anachronistic and sterilizing consideration. But it’s a problem that sticks to my meninges like a murderous influenza.”41 The Returned Style: The Boneseekers With Les Chercheurs d’os (The Boneseekers; 1984), a short allegorical novel that tells the story of a boy and his older relative on a journey to collect the bones of the boy’s dead brother, Djaout made his way back to the qualities that characterized the best texts of his early poetic collections: simplicity and minimalism. The restraint of a poem like “to fortify in man / the strength / to say / No” is now exacted on the novel. Les Chercheurs d’os probes Algeria’s relationship to its past and its dead, parodying the trafficking in memory that went on in the first decades of independence. When Tahar Djaout, Slimane Benaïssa, Rachid Mimouni, or Assia Djebar talk about a culture of amnesia or forgetting, or about the hijacking of history, they mean that those who claim legitimacy from the 1950s and 1960s struggle with the French colonial state bear little resemblance to those who conceived of it. They argue that the power of the military regime bases itself on an illegitimate construction of the past. Ghania Mouffok contends, for example, that the current fln is little more than a shell of the revolutionary group that led Algerians to victory in their war for independence. Once the war had been won, a military coup was


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staged, and the original fln dismantled. What was left could now be worn as a mask of legitimacy: “Contrary to a stubborn prejudice, the fln has never been in power in Algeria, but has rather been the party of the power, the civilian façade of a military regime, whereby if the army is its heart, the security forces are its brain.”42 Upon independence the ruling party appropriated the concept of ancestrality, and its members portrayed themselves as (in Slimane Benaïssa’s words) the “fathers of the nation”: avengers of the past, victors of the present, and builders of the future. Such that it was no longer possible to contest the leaders, because History had chosen and legitimated them; to question the politicians was to enter a discussion about Algerianness itself. It was therefore impossible to refer to any memory other than that decided upon by them, with which they occulted everything that could relativize their power or prestige.43

The story told about the Algerian War by its ruling-class “inheritors” is carefully edited, with its tellers skipping over large sections and tearing out entire pages of history, like the atrocities committed against Algerians by Algerians,44 the elimination and marginalization of rival leaders and, as Assia Djebar and Danièle Djamila Amrane-Minne have written, the important role of women in the struggle for independence.45 The past, or more precisely national memory, became a valuable commodity in newly independent Algeria. Those who held the rights to the dead, to their commemoration, the right to exhume, interpret, and rebury, found themselves in a position of great cultural and political influence. Les Chercheurs d’os begins in the first days after the Algerian War. It is a time of discovery: the dead lie scattered across the country, and countless men venture out into unfamiliar mountains, plains, and villages to retrieve the remains of loved ones. For a brief period, brotherhood and generosity prevail as the


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population revels in newfound freedom. The novel’s narrator, a fourteen-year-old boy, sets out in search of his brother’s bones. As he and his uncle depart, they find themselves accompanied by women singing.46 But as the days of oppressive heat wear on, the generosity of the first days dwindles, and camaraderie turns to suspicion. Food is hoarded and citizens race to take possession of properties abandoned by the French. Conversations continually return to the war. Throughout the journey the boy’s uncle recounts his wartime activities—breaking curfew to search for food to feed the starving villagers, for example. When the travelers finally retrieve the brother’s skeleton, they do so as graverobbers: the retrieval of the bones, far from a resolution, is in fact only the beginning of a necrophagous bureaucracy. Shortly before his death, Djaout criticized the Algerian government for its persistence in writing hagiography rather than history.47 This scenario is concisely articulated by Slimane Benaïssa’s character Farid in the play Les Fils de l’amertume (The Sons of Bitterness): Before, when there was war between the tribes, the dead were buried in secret, and no one knew the extent of our losses. Look at the intelligent countries: they light a flame, it’s that of the Unknown Soldier. This means that whatever war it is, they have lost one soldier, and what’s more, he’s unknown. In our country, in thirty years we’ve talked more about the dead than about the living. We’ve unearthed and reburied them several times.48

Similarly, in Djaout’s novel Les Chercheurs d’os the remains of battle victims stand for political capital. More bones = more power is the theme of his book. In exhuming the bones of the war dead, the boneseekers transform them into more than mere remains. An honorable act quickly becomes a cynical one. The bones are awarded a power determined not by the intentions and acts of the deceased, but by the anxieties and desires of the war’s survivors who (perhaps traumatically) seek to justify


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that survival by claiming a part of an honorable death: “The bones become a talisman for the living; they establish the evidence of past sacrifices so as to guarantee the rights of the survivors to enjoy the benefits of independence in the newly created state.”49 But Djaout’s young narrator knows that not all is well with the past. The bones are unearthed not to be reburied in a fashion more befitting war heroes and martyrs, but to be interred more deeply, securely, and absolutely than before. The boneseekers hope to silence the retrieved skeletons, even as they click and rattle on the mule’s back, for these remains, if allowed, will tell a very different tale about the war than the simplified and sanitized version of events offered by those reaping the benefits of liberation. The Invention of the Desert Following on the heels of the 1984 novel Les Chercheurs d’os, 1987 saw the appearance of L’Invention du désert (The Invention of the Desert), which Djaout wrote during a three-year writer’s fellowship in Paris.50 Here Algeria’s relationship to the past returns as a central theme, but the text also warns against the return of a Medieval puritanism to modern Algeria. It tells the story of a writer whose assignment is to pen a book about the medieval Almoravide Dynasty, but rather than writing the history of the vanquished Almoravides, the author-narrator decides to write the story of Ibn Toumert, the founder of the Almohade Dynasty, successor to the Almoravides: “It is the Almohade, Ibn Toumert, to whom the narrator will become attached, at once fascinated and horrified by this exigency of purity that haunts the fanatic imam.”51 Ibn Toumert, a one-man police force, enforcer of morality, and reviver of the faith, traverses the Maghreb on foot, cracking down on drinking, homosexuality, and prostitution along the way.52 He is the soul of the mosque and terror of the market. Cast out of Marrakech by its prince, Toumert and his faithful disciple find themselves


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welcomed by the tribes of the Atlas who give him thousands of men. Thus the Almohade Dynasty is born.53 The novel traverses time and territories, as the narrator follows Ibn Toumert into the Middle East, to Algeria, and through modern-day Paris. Djaout’s narrator tells here a story of writing, and of his narrator’s dark fascination with a subject whom he despises. Slowly Ibn Toumert takes on a life of his own inside the writer-narrator’s head, until he finally breaks out of it. The struggle of writer and subject results in a thrilling, impossible ride. The voyage of the writer-narrator across the Middle East is transformed to a voyage of the mind: “Arabia is only in one’s head, in immobile itineraries. Like when one travels inside a piece of music.”54 The narrator journeys to Yemen, farther than the Mahdi Toumert ever ventured, and still Toumert accompanies him, slipping periodically through his fingers like sand. The two ultimately part ways with the narration of the Mahdi’s final defeat and subsequent miracle, when he is saved from death at the hands of an angry mob by a storm. Not yet sixty years old, but nevertheless nearing the end of his life, the Mahdi appoints his successor and goes off, never to be seen again. The writer then abandons his subject and its “impossible history,” transforming L’Invention du désert into a book about childhood, Djaout’s constant theme and the only place “the ideal of purity can [. . .] find meaning.”55 The final section of the novel recounts the narrator’s childhood experiences of village life, and revolves in large part around the adventures of three young boys who terrorize small animals and haunt secret hideouts. The narrator-as-child then discovers the world of books, and embarks on internal voyages, imagining the mysteries of snow, exile, and women. But the adult narrator is all too aware that his return to childhood is illusory. “We give ourselves the illusion of reliving by undertaking journeys in reverse,” he observes:


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but in truth we only make our own deaths more imminent. For what a cemetery the past is! It is like an excavation site in which only funerary objects rise to the surface. In this way you too become an archeologist of your past; but you do not delude yourself: you know that archeology is above all the science of necrophagy.56

Time is a field of ruins that can only partially be rebuilt through writing. The past, necessary only for the unhappy, the narrator tells us: “must be the property of people whom the present rejects. Happy people have neither age nor memory, they have no need for the past.”57 But writing nevertheless acts as a palliative to death, and children a reminder of the irretrievable long-ago and unstoppable yet-to-come. As the narrator watches his daughter play, another child runs by. He tries to catch this child, but he’s gone. Journalism If in his literary writings Djaout found himself confronting the problem of cultural amnesia and the struggle for intellectual freedom on a theoretical plane, then it was as a journalist that he met with these challenges most concretely. Indeed, all of Djaout’s writings interrogate, in one way or another, Algeria’s telling of its past, but through his journalism, Djaout managed to do so in a way that struck a chord with Algerians of all walks of life. Through Ruptures he dared to express his views openly and forcefully, and these final writings of his life are perhaps what most made him a target for assassination. To be a journalist or writer in 1970s Algeria, when Djaout began his career, was not a path open to any talented Algerian wordsmith. Accreditation needed to be acquired, censors would have to be placated (or fooled), and employers were limited to state-run newspapers and publishing houses. Paper shortages were common, and books prohibitively expensive for the average Algerian. Like their Soviet colleagues, Algerian journalists and writers of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s were required to belong to


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the Writers’ Union and to comply with state-sanctioned editors. From the early 1980s, all journalists were required to submit to a police investigation, called “une enquête d’habilitation” (“a qualifying investigation”) to receive a press card issued dually by the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.58 As a result of this close scrutiny by the state two categories of writers quickly developed: those who embraced the privileges offered by the regime, accepted its constraints, and participated in the process of censorship; and those who rejected the regime’s conditions. The latter were condemned to silence or exile. Many of Algeria’s best writers moved abroad, or were forced to publish their works overseas or underground.59 And so, it was under these conditions that in 1975 Djaout began writing for the Francophone state-run newspaper El Moudjahid,60 where he worked for several years. In 1980 Djaout moved to Algérie Actualité (“the weekly of the 1980s”),61 where he used his position to begin breaking literary and artistic taboos, introducing the Algerian public to a generation of forbidden writers, previously exiled from the literary establishment: Opening an unforeseeable gap in the cultural silence in the years of the lead seal, Djaout undertakes to reveal to his readers their own creators, to have them discover and meet their writers, painters, and filmmakers. His attentive style unveils and cuts into the aphasia in which literary works and even names are secreted, prohibited at the time are the elders Jean-El Mouhoub Amrouche and Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri, Jean Sénac or Bachir Hadj Ali, and the “young poets,” Sebti, Laghouati or Farès. From week to week Algeria has an appointment with itself, and thus becomes acquainted with itself.62

By 1989 social change had begun to take hold in Algeria. That year a new law, subsequently called the “Hamrouche Decree,”63 allowing for the liberalization of the press was passed, and independent media began to grow. Djaout joined the field in


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January 1993 with Ruptures, and in doing so implicated himself politically in a way he had never done before. The move was courageous and dangerous, but one that Djaout felt was required of him.64 Ruptures defended its independence vehemently, repeatedly emphasizing the fact that no political party was behind the publication.65 But Djaout and his colleagues took a hard line on political Islam, openly declaring that their paper would never be used as a platform for the fis or other Islamist parties: We will refuse [. . .] ways of thinking that go: [. . .] ‘if you’re not with me, you’re against me.’ Our line will be independent and dictated only by our conscience, our enthusiasms, or our disappointments. But we will, of course, maintain our choices and our positions. If Abdallah Djaballah,66 for example, is looking for a pulpit from which to express himself, he will not find it here.67

Djaout’s critical stance on Islamism and his uncompromising position on what constituted the correct path for the country characterized his contributions to Ruptures. In “Le Retour du prêt-à-penser” (The Return of Ready-to-Think) he criticized what he saw as a movement backward toward the familiar patterns of an undesirable past, namely “The national constants, the sacrosanct Arabo-Islamic norms, the bidding war between the nationalist and the religious: all these banalities that have marked out the path toward Islamism once again have the upper hand.”68 In “Suspicion et désaveu” (Suspicion and Disavowal) Djaout demarcated three groups comprising Algerian society: [T]he Islamist camp retains a legal political presence [surface] through at least two political parties, even while turning to terrorism and armed action; the democratic and republican camp; the governing camp, which is becoming increasingly difficult to classify and which, in any case, is distancing itself palpably from the democratic process.69


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In keeping with the title of the newspaper, itself an homage to the late President Boudiaf, who had used the term as a prescription to heal Algeria, Djaout argued for a radical shift or break in Algerian culture and politics, which he saw as the only way out of the mounting crisis:

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Only at the cost of a radical rupture will Algeria be able to find its way out of the quagmire in which it has become trapped. We know where half-measures and confusion have led us. Measures that were supposed to create quality, to build a modern society using the materials of archaism and regression, and with mediocrity at the helm.70

He called for a reform of the school system, which he accused of providing a breeding ground for Islamism and violence; for a return to the heady days and heroes of the 1960s: Kateb Yacine, Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Angela Davis;71 and for the creation of a truly free press, a sector that increasingly found itself under the threat of death at the hands of Islamists and hampered by the repressive measures of the government.72 His strong stance on radical Islam caused some to call him an “eradicator,” that is, a supporter of the policy of hunting down, locking up, and eliminating Islamists. An article published after Djaout’s death by the French journalist Catherine Simon in Le Monde labeled him this way. In Simon’s view, Djaout had become “one of the champions of the ‘eradicator current’—the nickname given to the opponents of dialogue with the Islamists, partisans of ‘eradication’ through force, of the ‘Madmen of Allah.’” She continues with a blistering review of Djaout’s posthumous novel, Le Dernier Été de la raison, comparing it (inexplicably) to propaganda, and characterizing it as a “militant diatribe disguised as a novel.”73 Not surprisingly, Simon’s article was not kindly received by Djaout’s colleagues and friends. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact Le Monde about Simon’s piece, Ahmed Halli published two articles in the newspaper


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Liberté (November 17, 1999) in response to Simon’s characterization of Djaout.74 On the terms “éradicateur” (eradicator) and “réconciliateur” (reconciliator) Halli wrote: Le Monde has created a religion for itself using the following overly simplistic sketch: Algeria is divided into “eradicators” and “reconciliators.” The eradicators (the term applied to those who oppose Islamism) are also the henchmen of the “universally corrupt” regime, since they oppose the same adversary. They are the bad guys even if paradoxically they are the first victims of violence. By contrast, the reconciliators, who include the Islamists who have not proclaimed allegiance to the gia, are the good guys, because they continually call for peace and reconciliation, but without going so far as to distinguish victims from executioners.75 Although Djaout believed a dialogue with the Islamists was im-

possible because of what he saw as their unwillingness to engage in a necessary social contract,76 one would be hard-pressed to argue successfully that Djaout believed in the eradication of Islamists by force. Halli’s response to the allegation was unequivocal: “Those who knew Tahar Djaout knew that he wasn’t inclined toward violence, whether verbal or physical.”77 Above all, Djaout championed universal human rights, freedom of conscience and expression. The freedom to believe, not to believe, and to disagree were at the center of his hopes for Algeria. They were hopes that did not include the mass arrest, imprisonment, or eradication of those who disagreed with him. In 1992 Djaout voiced his concern for all Algerians by asking: In this century that has broken open so many ghettos, in this century in which so many values have become universal, in which every person—regardless of gender, skin color, nationality, language, and religion—has the right to his or her integrity as a human being, his or her convictions and opinions, will Algerians see their fundamental freedoms guaranteed and protected, not within certain “parameters,” but as absolutes?78


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FOUR

Final Projects

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T

he last year of Djaout’s life was marked by the appearance of a new novel, Les Vigiles (The Watchers); the completion of a book of poetry, Pérennes; and the drafting of a new novel, Le Dernier Été de la raison (The Last Summer of Reason), that would be published posthumously. It was also the year he launched the newspaper, Ruptures. In addition to all this, his Parisian publishers have told of a new novel, a very literary project, that Djaout had been working on before his death, but never finished. In short, 1993 promised great things for this writer just hitting his stride and finding his mature voice. It proved to be a tragic year for him, his family, Algeria, and the literary community. Examined below are Djaout’s final two novels. The Watchers Like Les Chercheurs d’os, the story at the heart of Djaout’s 1993 Les Vigiles, is simple: a man comes to a town looking for some peace and quiet to complete his invention.1 At the local journalists’ haunt, a bar called The Scarab, the inventor, Mahfoudh Lemdjad, meets a kind individual who lends him an unused building to finish his work. Since the property has not been used for some time, the “watchers” of the town grow suspicious at the sudden activity in the formerly abandoned house, and Mahfoudh is put under surveillance. The inventor consequently finds himself at odds with the local bureaucracy when he goes to the town hall to seek a patent for his newly invented loom, and then, for unrelated reasons, with the national government when he applies for a new passport.


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The novel does not call out to the literary and academic elite on each of the shores of the Mediterranean. Rather, it is an attempt to open a dialogue with the author’s own society, with Algerians themselves. A prayer to (and for) Algeria, Les Vigiles calls to Algerians to change their relationship to the past: to stop the exploitation and rewriting of history by the war generation, to stem the tyranny of paranoia and suspicion, and to make room for openness, creativity, and intelligence. A dialogue needs to take place—if we follow Djaout in Les Vigiles and the late President Boudiaf, whose peace initiative brought about his assassination—between the generations. The generational divide Boudiaf so clearly identified in Algeria is real, and Djaout’s clownish characters of Les Vigiles—paranoid old men and gruff, lazy bureaucrats—are closer to reality than they may seem at first glance. John W. Kiser’s book about the murdered monks of Tibhirine offers a portrait that illustrates well the distance that now separates the young and old in Djaout’s country: Gradually, these old men, heroes of the war of liberation, became suspected of collaboration with the enemy [the regime]. A young man explained [. . .]: “You can’t trust the old men. They walk into a café say nothing, look at no one, and seem disconnected from the world. In reality, they are listening to everything. Afterward, they tell the police what they have heard. If a stranger comes into a village, they will tell the police. That’s why they set one on fire with gasoline in M’sila. It was a warning to others, as well.2

In Les Vigiles Djaout describes a society reminiscent of that outlined above by Kiser, run by men obsessed with a war long finished. The novel takes place in a community where absurdity reigns, and men are overvalued for their progeny—“(male, of course—girls don’t count).”3 But these are sons who nevertheless find themselves cast aside for the real or perceived rejection of their fathers’ narrative about the past.


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Les Vigiles has been compared to Kafka’s Trial for its portrayal of erratic and unpredictable civil servants, incomprehensible and impenetrable bureaucracy, and for the disorientation of a protagonist whose sixth sense tells him that he is being watched.4 It does not portray the unrest and enormous social change undergone by the country at the time of its completion, nor does it hint at the violence to which its author would fall victim. Rather, it crystallizes an image of Algeria in the moments before the crisis of 1988. “Single party rule was firmly in place when I began to write my novel,” Djaout explained in a 1991 interview: I could no longer change the facts when the events of October took place. The premises of Islamism were present during the time of single party rule. Algerian society as a whole functioned according to a certain number of anachronisms, of taboos. The religious taboo and the political taboo always went hand in hand. In fact, it was the fln who started to transform these mosques into political tribunals. It was they who tore these mosques away from worship before the Islamists started to do it as well.5

Every present privilege enjoyed by a given individual in this society of watchers may be traced back to a real or imagined wartime heroic deed. Pensions, cars, houses, and cushy desk jobs are distributed among the war veterans who cling to power acquired over the decades since independence. Two kinds of corruption come to the fore in this narrative. On the one hand there is Skander Brik, the self-appointed godfather of the “watchers” of Sidi-Mebrouk, town hall custodian, and king of conspiracy theories. His responsibility is to track and report any interesting or unusual movements and events in the area, a job that he executes with great efficiency, “like an insect with ultrasensitive antennae, barricaded inside his shell but keeping his senses vigilant like so many traps placed on the path of the careless.”6 At the other end of the spectrum we have Menouar Ziada, the hap-


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less, childless, and depressive accidental war veteran. By dint of his sterility Menouar has failed as a man (for male progeny is everything in this fictional world). Employing a survival strategy of remaining under the radar, Menouar accepts the perks offered him because of his veteran status, but does not ask for more. The war enters every transaction in this society, justifying every inequality, each lie, and even criminal behavior. But unlike Skander and the other watchers, Menouar Ziada tacitly acknowledges that his life could have been completely different. He admits that, in truth, he joined the maquis out of fear, “not out of a patriotic awareness (such concepts were to arise mostly after the war had been won), but out of the irrational fear the soldiers had inspired in him.”7 Menouar knows that he just as easily could have chosen the other side: He humbly recognizes that it was luck alone that made the choice for him (can he speak of a lucky star? a lucky star lights your way throughout life). For he had neither the intuition nor the guts of some who had served in the occupying army and then, at the last minute, with all bets placed, rejoined the national army and entered cities or villages as liberators where a few months (sometimes only weeks) before they were swaggering around in a different uniform. Nor had Menouar dared beg for proof of having been in combat, as had so many others who had never left home during the war and who today hold various titles that bring them not only respect and sometimes immunity, but material advantages as well—preferential jobs, pensions, planned retirement, permission to import goods that cannot be found inside the country.8

Through Menouar’s character Djaout again raises the possibility of and need for an awakening among the war generation, and an examination of its conscience. It is time, he says through Les Vigiles, to abandon the justification of present corruption with the battles of the past, to stop disdaining those who had the misfortune of having been born after the war:


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Menouar feels like saying that the country belongs to all its citizens and that he doesn’t always understand the mania of veterans to want to defend it against its own people. Besides, defend what exactly? The country or their own privileges? Does having liberated the nation give one the right to be so heavy a burden on it, to confiscate its riches as well as its future? But it would take much more courage than he possesses for that sort of utterance to clear the immeasurable distance between his thoughts and his tongue.9

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Cowardice, as has always been the case, is Menouar Ziada’s downfall. Although he sees the truth, he cannot speak it. He will not challenge the bullying watchers in their assessment of his guilt. In the end Skander Brik and his sidekicks succeed in hounding him into committing suicide as a gesture of sacrifice for the misdeeds of the group. He dies a melancholy, ambivalent death, at once pathetic and a welcome release from the disappointments, charades, and failures of his life. Although it is Skander Brik who conceives of the sinister plot to set Menouar up as a scapegoat to restore honor to the group, Menouar is ultimately the unwitting engineer of his own downfall, as he is the first to sound the alarm about the late-night activities in the edifice where Mahfoudh Lemdjad is completing work on his loom. Confiding to his friend that “for a solid week now the place has been occupied by dangerous conspirators! [. . .] There’s no doubt the house has been taken over by professional subversives who know how to conceal their plans as well as their identity,” Menouar provides the other watchers with the ammunition that they will eventually use against him, further warning that they should “expect a great disaster” soon in Sidi Mebrouk.10 When news of the stranger’s suspicious behavior reaches the inner sanctum of the watchers, a plan is hatched by Skander Brik and his war council, and the inventor Mahfoudh’s problems begin. His activities are monitored and his


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workshop broken into. Difficulties compound when Mahfoudh visits the capital, only eighteen kilometers from Sidi-Mebrouk, to renew his passport, for which he needs a copy of his police records. Here too, as with his patent application at the town hall surveilled by Skander, the inventor encounters mysterious delays and obstacles. Although Mahfoudh eventually obtains the required police document and succeeds in renewing his passport, the police episode culminates with an absurd interview in which Mahfoudh is questioned about his “activities during the war of independence,” “homosexual or perverse tendencies,” whether or not Einstein agreed to subscribe to Islam, illegitimate children he has fathered, and whether he has read the Koran or Capital.11 Several questions are asked a second time, and Mahfoudh amuses himself by answering once in the affirmative and once in the negative when asked if The Prophet by Khalil Gibran is a blasphemous book. Once the interrogation is complete, and after a long unexplained wait, Mahfoudh is finally allowed to meet with the police commissioner, who assures him that his difficulties in securing a new passport have been due to a simple bureaucratic oversight, adding “You will never know what it’s like to work with people whose intelligence is not their primary characteristic.”12 Les Vigiles offers a portrait of small-scale absurdity, of a society that “mistrusts culture and intelligence like the plague,” where food shortages are constant (“No matter how many record stores, newsstands, dry cleaners, and theaters have been changed into food shops these past few years, the lines never stop growing”), where the police routinely blackmail ordinary citizens by withholding official documents, and where housing shortages are rampant, “the ones in power take it all—everything the country produces is for them.”13 Although Djaout’s novels are never a simple reflection of the world around him, these criticisms do indeed have a basis in reality. In a 1991 interview Djaout confirmed that his descriptions of the inventor’s


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run-ins with the Algerian authorities were inspired by events in his own life:

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I describe a situation that I experienced in reality. I had spent three years in France and returned to Algeria in 1987. Upon my return I had a very dark impression of the Algerian reality of that moment. Every avenue appeared obstructed to me. October 1988 had to happen (editor’s note: the riots that shook all of Algeria). We were living in a suffocating situation that couldn’t continue indefinitely. [. . .] [Les Vigiles] relates very strongly to reality in Algeria and especially to Algerian reality as I’ve experienced it. I know that a part of every work is autobiographical. A novelist, a writer always communicates something very dear through his or her characters. I will make a confession. I was invited to the Montréal international writers’ conference in 1988, and since my passport had expired, I had to renew it. I encountered a lot of problems in the process. I was met with a disguised refusal. Throughout the section where the inventor finds himself confronted with bureaucracy I describe a situation that I experienced myself.14

Mahfoudh Lemdjad will finally receive his passport and successfully regain his loom from customs, even eventually find himself honored by the very community that has treated him with such suspicion. And while this kind of bureaucracy—one based on power and intimidation—undoubtedly has a soulkilling quality, it is its utter stupidity that is most infuriating and frustrating, as when Mahfoudh Lemdjad is treated with disdain when he explains to the customs agent the purpose of his invention. “I was expecting a real machine,” comments the customs agent: a miniature spacecraft, a household robot, or a computer. All you’ve invented is an old woman’s tool. You don’t live here? You don’t know that our country is committed to walking the path of modernism? Why don’t you go out into the street someday in-


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stead of staying cloistered in your house and take a look at the cable cars, the electronic games and news. Perhaps that’ll give you ideas for inventions.15

Djaout wrote Les Vigiles out of dismay at what he saw happening to his country: the triumph of stupidity and the rise of contempt for intelligence and creativity. He explores a further narrowing of horizons and killing of independent thought among children through Mahfoudh’s relationship with his young nephew, Redhouane, who is gradually assimilating the Islamist beliefs of his father (Mahfoudh’s brother) and his school teachers: After a religious faction instituted a series of reforms, the school has become a veritable military-religious institution—with the focus now on raising the flag, singing patriotic songs, and a heavy load of religious instruction. Rather than busying themselves with things that suit their age, pupils are preoccupied with good and evil, this world and the hereafter, divine reward and punishment, archangels and demons, heaven and hell. Mahfoudh has heard that some teachers occasionally practice moral blackmail on their students, forcing them to pray by threatening them with divine retribution, and even getting them to denounce parents who use alcohol. He was told about a school where every girl who wears the veil is sure to pass.16

Redhouane, Mahfoudh notes, is entering an inquisitive stage, and has begun to see the gulf between his uncle’s way of life and what he is taught in school. He also realizes that his uncle is not the corrupt individual he should be, given his lax attitudes toward religious practice and belief. The young Redhouane is at a critical developmental stage, finding himself faced with choosing between the uncle he loves and the ideologies he is taught. The reader does not learn what happens with this young boy, and as such he remains a figure for possibility in the novel. Redhouane stands for young Algeria—trapped between secu-


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larism and religiosity, between a beloved uncle and father, and between democracy and Islamism. Both in fiction and through interventions in the Algerian press, Djaout laid blame for the darkening of young Algerian minds squarely at the doorstep of the school system. He pointed to a growing mistrust of words, images, and ideas that resulted in repressive censorship:

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During the past decade schools and universities have become fortresses of the repression of intelligence, knowledge, and beauty. Books have been removed from school and university libraries because they were considered to be secular, profane, and communist.17

The educational and intellectual crisis heightened in Algeria when it became clear that the administrations of some institutions of higher learning (the University of Constantine, for example) had been “infiltrated” by Islamists. What resulted was an atmosphere in which intellectual freedom became an impossibility, and where the world (and what Djaout calls its “hierarchy”) found itself turned upside-down.18 Hafid Gafaïti, Mustapha Marrouchi, Paul A. Silverstein, and Réda Bensmaïa, among others, have argued that a continuum not only exists between the colonial French regime and the fln regime of independent Algeria (Silverstein writes, “Indeed, Algerians have generally regarded the central state itself as suspect, realizing quickly after independence that the party elite had merely stepped into the positions of power left vacant by colonial officials”),19 but also between the fln and the Islamist fis: [A]n analysis of the treatment of the intelligentsia throughout modern Algerian civilization indicates a terrible continuity. In brief, although there is a difference in degree between repression under the “socialist” regime and the barbarism of the Muslim fundamentalists and their secular allies within the Algerian social


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fabric and political sphere, in fact they are structurally similar. To a certain extent, the latter is an extreme continuation of the former. Both authoritarian socialism and fundamentalist Islam are based on an obsession with unity, a monotheism, be it secular or religious, that by definition cannot bear multiplicity. Neither can bear diversity of thought; neither can accept the questioning of the principle of transcendence, whether it is designated as the Revolution or as Allah, by which everything must be defined.20

This continuity has been expressed through the formulation “Le fis est le fils naturel du fln.”21 As Gafaïti points out, there is a complex word play at work here: “fis” and “fils” are homophones, but the complexity enters when one begins to parse the meaning of “naturel”: It is nearly impossible to translate this sentence because it is based on a paradox, in French of naturel meaning “natural” and “legitimate” in one context and “bastard” or “illegitimate” in another. It is this use of the paradoxical meaning that renders the full dimension of what Algerians feel and think about their situation, and the relationship between the two parties. The closest translation would be: “The fis is the legitimate bastard of the fln.”22

It could therefore be argued that the fln created its own worst enemy by allowing the school and university systems to be influenced so strongly by Islamist ideologues. But the contempt for independent and creative thinking Djaout lamented both in his literary and journalistic writings was by no means invented by Islamists. Indeed, it was the fln who institutionalized wide-spread censorship and the policing of literary and journalistic texts. In “Between God and the President,” Gafaïti describes the arbitrary and unpredictable ways in which censorship has been practiced in Algeria since independence. He offers anecdotes


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about authors like Kateb Yacine and Rachid Boudjedra who have fallen in and out of favor over the decades.23 The most telling one, however, is about Rachid Mimouni. Like Djaout’s Mahfoudh Lemdjad—persecuted, ignored, and treated with suspicion until he returns from the Heidelberg inventors’ fair bearing an award—Mimouni toiled in relative obscurity until he received recognition from readers and critics from across the Mediterranean. When he submitted his novel Le Fleuve détourné (The Roundabout River) to the state-owned publishing house sned, Mimouni was turned away. Gafaïti reports that the publisher’s censor returned the manuscript to its author with the words: “I love your book. I share your views and agree totally with you on the necessity to say the truth about our society and system. But, because of all this, and because I like you, let us just say that officially I have never read your book.”24 Two years later, the novel appeared to great acclaim in Paris, and Mimouni found himself skyrocketed to celebrity both in France and Algeria. Shortly thereafter Mimouni was invited to participate in a Paris conference, and requested a leave of absence from the technical college where he taught. At this point I will allow Gafaïti, who tells the story so well, to continue it in his own words: Being that, in our socialist paradise, a teacher cannot take a leave without the chair’s approval, the writer asked his boss for permission to go to Paris. Since his chair was unaware of the complexities of politics, and since for him Mimouni was just a teacher, he refused to allow the now-famous novelist to leave. On the basis of this course of events, a rumor spread in the French capital, thanks to the daily Libération, that Mimouni was under house arrest. The idea of an international committee to support him was concocted by some Parisians, who in general cannot live without their Algerian obsession. Furthermore, because Algerians cannot live without their fixation on the French, they


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were reciprocally affected by the rumors in Paris. Hence, because of the seemingly eternal Franco-Algerian dialectics, Mimouni, who in the meantime had submitted to his respectable department’s chairman and had reconciled himself to not participating in the conference, received a visit from two officers of the dreaded Sécurité Militaire. The extremely civilized officers proceeded to tell the stunned Mimouni that his chairman was an idiot—and perhaps a plotter manipulated by Western neoimperialism. They assured him that it was a matter of national interest that he participate in the Paris conference. Indeed, the rumors had reached the diligent ears of the well-informed Presidential advisors, who lovingly keep watch over the country’s international image in order to preserve its prestige. In order to make sure that Mimouni would go to Paris, they brought him a free airline ticket and had an agent spend the night on a chair across from the writer’s apartment. The next morning, Mimouni was taken to the airport in a very official car and was very officially escorted onto the Paris-bound plane. Although the Algerian censors had previously refused the novel in question and although the national press had subjected him to vicious criticism, Mimouni was now treated like a highranking member of the government, since it was obviously out of the question for Algerians to allow France to satisfy its morbid neocolonial obsession with their country.25

The story underscores the validity of Djaout’s criticism that in order for a writer, artist, or inventor to be recognized locally, he or she must first find success in Paris (or in Heidelberg, as in the case of the inventor). This is the sin for which Menouar Ziada must atone through his suicide—a collective blindness to genius and the mistaking of creativity for criminality. In his discussions with journalists about Les Vigiles Djaout was careful to stress the book was more than simply a “corrosive text” about Algerian society, which is how he felt French critics had overwhelmingly received it:


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You find something like this expression in all the articles written in France about my novel, but an acute observer will easily detect that there is a huge capacity for upheaval there, working deep within the text. [. . .] There are notably the chapters in italics, or above all, the final chapter where the main character examines life, his own lack of purpose, the meaning and cogency of existence itself.26

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Interesting in Djaout’s short analysis of his novel is that he considers Menouar Ziada, the accidental war veteran, and not the inventor Mahfoudh Lemdjad, to be the novel’s main hero. Read from this perspective—if we shift our focus from Mahfoudh to Menouar—Les Vigiles becomes a tale of trauma. Mahfoudh, instead of the protagonist, becomes a kind of a catalyst for the rest of the story, a simple tool that reveals the workings around it. Read in this manner, Les Vigiles transforms itself into a tragic story of men who cling to fantasies of enemy plots so as not to see the real disaster around them, and to forget certain truths about the war: moments like the torture of Menouar Ziada at the hands of the maquis, his own comrades-inarms. These men continue to accuse their friends to justify the mistreatment of neighbors past, and to keep those ghosts at bay. The misdeeds of the French (like the near-drownings of prisoners in bathtubs, the systematic rape of women, and the use of electrical current attached to the genitals during interrogation)27 are not at the center of the memory of the Algerian War explored by Djaout. Instead, he explores the forgotten memory of what brothers and neighbors did to each other, and how those who joined the maquis sometimes did so out of cowardice, like Menouar Ziada, by accident, or only once it was clear that the French army would retreat. In the moments before his suicide Menouar Ziada retreats into “the unfathomable water of memory, in the protected shelter


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of childhood.”28 (Menouar’s life, it seems, began to go downhill at the moment he left his village dressed as a bridegroom.) With this mental return, “[h]e can again run through certain luminous landscapes, again enumerate and savor the dreams that energized his life—dreams of glory, dreams of pleasure, dreams of friendship, the always-unrealizable dreams because they run parallel to the stunted course of his life.”29 Menouar is both the product and representative of a stunted generation. He, together with Skander Brik and his cronies have never learned to be adults, trapped as they are in their adolescent fantasies of intrigue. Surprisingly, amidst the absurdity, bitterness, and critique of this novel, in the last moments of Ziada’s life, Djaout treats him with tenderness and understanding, like a wounded child. Wounded children create worlds into which to escape, and this is what Ziada does when he returns in his head to his village. The late president Mohammed Boudiaf famously extended a hand to a generation of young Islamists, and before he was killed, it was clear that strides were being made in opening a muchneeded dialogue between generations. With Les Vigiles Djaout too may be seen as extending a hand to members of the war generation like Menouar Ziada, who have been silent too long in the face of the tyranny of their own Skander Briks. With this novel, as with L’Invention du désert and Les Chercheurs d’os, Djaout invites his readers on a thinking journey. The Last Novel Djaout’s final novel, Le Dernier Été de la raison (1999; The Last Summer of Reason), was found among his papers after his death. It seems the author finished it a few days before he was murdered, although the manuscript had no title. Its published title was taken from the text. At its center is an unlikely protagonist: a bookstore owner named Boualem Yekker, trying to survive the reign of terror of the “Frères Vigilants”


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(Vigilant Brothers), young Islamists. Under the watchful eye of these youthful warriors, Boualem’s city has been purged of impure influences like music, sexuality, and creativity. Djaout describes the Vigilant Brothers in a macabre if somewhat comical fashion as: “bearded young men, rigged out like Afghan warriors but with a flight of fancy introduced by the union of upscale sneakers and pajamas, gandouras and leather jackets.”30 Upon first reading, Le Dernier Été de la raison appears to be doubly reflected in life. The humble Boualem Yekker may be read as the doppelgänger of the author himself, a man famously modest and without pretension, who found himself under attack by equally zealous young vigilantes. Like his author, Boualem Yekker carries a heavy name. Hiding and remaining as invisible as possible, he acts in contrast to his patronym, Yekker, which can be translated as “he gets up,” or “he holds himself upright.”31 (Djaout’s name, Tahar, carries the meaning of “the pure one,” a weighty name for an iconoclastic writer.) Secondly, we know that Yekker’s character is based on a real-life bookseller named Vincent Grau, the proprietor of an Algiers bookstore frequented, among others, by Djaout and fellow writer Rachid Mimouni. In 1991 Grau, like Boualem Yekker, was forced to close his bookstore temporarily. Eight months after Djaout’s death, on January 21, 1994, during the month of Ramadan, Vincent Grau too was assassinated.32 Djaout’s posthumous novel, his editors insist, is a finished work. The following note introduces the text: Tahar Djaout was assassinated on June 2, 1993. A few weeks earlier, during a visit to Paris, he had announced to us that he had begun a new novel, but that he was only at the very beginning. The manuscript that we publish today was found among his papers after his death. It made its way to us after many adventures. It is not the novel of which he spoke to us. It is plausible that upon returning to Algiers, Tahar decided to put the very


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literary project of which he had spoken to us aside in order to devote himself to a tale more directly inspired by reality. The manuscript didn’t have a title. The one we selected was taken from the book. We have not touched the text, except to correct some minor inconsistencies.33

Perhaps Djaout’s editors are correct in saying that the text was finished, but perhaps not. The question of how Djaout felt about his text, whether or not he considered it finished, is one we may never be able to answer satisfactorily. Only his very closest associates or family members may know for sure, or perhaps the manuscript could give us some hints as to whether or not it was deemed finished by its author (though the absence of a title would seem to indicate the latter34). But maybe this is not such an important question after all. We know from Djaout’s own literary career that a text considered ready for publication can always be revisited and substantially changed. Djaout’s first novel, L’Exproprié, was published twice. He described the preparation of the second edition as follows: I removed many passages, added others, and I worked toward tightening up the part that was left. I know this is a questionable thing to do, since one doesn’t always return to old footprints with joy, but this text from my youth meant so much to me, and I wonder if the primary motive to publish it in another form doesn’t go back to the first edition of this book, which was so very technically deficient that I had a hard time looking at it. I wanted to correct this malformation somehow. But then I went on and retouched the text as well.35

The theoretical moment of the completion of a work occurs when it is handed over to a publisher. This moment, however, is purely arbitrary and does not necessarily mean that the process of finishing is really finished. In Toward a Medieval


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Poetics, a discussion of authorship in French medieval poetry, Paul Zumthor makes an important distinction between a work and a text. The text, he says, is an easily deformed trace of the work. The work is ephemeral, a mythically original text, and an idea: “The work is fundamentally unstable. Properly speaking it has no end; it merely accepts to come to an end, at a given point, for whatever reasons. The work exists outside and hierarchically above its textual manifestations.”36 In Djaout’s case, the distinction between text and work is clear to see. We have two versions of L’Exproprié: that is, two texts, but one work. Each text can be seen as an approximation of the work (though we can assume the second version is a little closer to what Djaout had in mind when he started to write). In this context the question of the “finishing” of Le Dernier Été de la raison becomes much more interesting. It no longer matters whether or not the author deemed the work finished, because “it merely accepted to come to an end,” in this case, because of the death of its author. I am tempted to speak here about texts in organic terms since they have lives of their own. They grow by themselves, sometimes bursting out of their authors; sometimes requiring coaxing, causing a writer pain. I would like to suggest that when Djaout’s final novel “merely accepted to come to an end,” this ending resembled less a death than an entry into a perpetual comatose state. Indeed, the novel as a whole takes place in a kind of comatose time and space. Even the title of the novel, well-chosen by Djaout’s editors, speaks to the suspension of time in the novel. “The last summer of reason” marks the beginning of the new temporal order that has come over the city of the text. It is the summer, Djaout’s narrator tells us, that time stopped: Boualem Yekker calls this season the last summer of reason. Sometimes, the last summer of history. Indeed, thereafter the country went freewheeling, leaving history behind.


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Therefore, that summer was indeed the last. For, from then on, time had no seasons and no nuances. It had been transformed into a tunnel whose end could hardly be seen.37

Timelessness has descended like a fog, and in response, Boualem’s city has entered a kind of state of hibernation. The obvious targets of the vbs (books, women, unbelievers, booksellers, book lovers) keep their heads down, hoping that they will survive long enough to see the storm blow over. They wait for spring to come again,38 or else for disaster to hit. A favorite topic of conversation is to speculate when the next big earthquake will shake Algeria.39 There is nothing to do but wait for something— good or bad—to happen. Something that will end the torturous period of limbo. For Boualem Yekker the only moment of connection and intimacy in this “nebula of the everyday” is provided by his friend Ali Elbouliga, who visits him in the bookstore, where they sit for hours, sometimes in conversation, sometimes silently. The narrator tells us how these two men have learned to inhabit darkness. The bookstore has become so dark that reading there is no longer possible. As such it is no longer a bookstore in any real sense, particularly since there has been no selling of books from this store for some time. And so, the bookstore has become a kind of monument to itself, and a reminder to the vbs of what lies concealed all around. Everything dangerous now hides in darkness: books “too hazardous to be seen in the window or on the shelves inside” are piled up in back rooms; women, if they dare go out at all, scuttle through the streets under the cover of veils, “reduced to a shameful thing.”40 In this context Boualem Yekker has the impression that books no longer have any importance: “that they have turned into extras hugging the walls. They have covered their faces with veils.”41 If books are metaphorically veiled, like the women who move


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anonymously in an attempt to remain invisible and thus unmolested, Boualem Yekker’s store is literally so: “From inside his bookstore, through the triangle cut by the open door, he watches black shapes, the hermetically sealed fabric that leaves no trace whatever of a human body.”42 The triangle-eye of the store acts as a portal to the sphere of resistance inside. The formless figures in the streets are thus filled with new potential: their coverings too could be hiding a space of revolt.43 And truly, small gestures of resistance abound: women continue to go to the beach even though they risk being condemned, Ali continues to shave, and Boulem reads and keeps his bookstore open. In this atmosphere of terror, books are an important refuge: “—the closeness of them, their contact, their smell, and their contents—constitute the safest refuge against this world of horror. They are the most pleasant and the most subtle means of traveling to a more compassionate planet.”44 In periods of terror books serve as a survival mechanism: this is something that was observed and well-documented in the Jewish ghettos of World War II. In his account of the year’s work in the Vilna ghetto library, for example, the librarian Herman Kruk marveled at the immediate rise in the number of subscribers that the library began to serve once the ghetto had been implemented (from two thousand to more than four thousand in 1940–1941). Kruk understood the importance of the library for mental and physical prisoners, calling the effect of reading a “bibliopsychological relief.”45 The miracle of the book, he wrote, is that it “became a narcotic, a means of escape”: A human being can endure hunger, poverty, pain, and suffering, but he cannot tolerate isolation. Then, more than in normal times, the attraction of reading books is almost indescribable. In the ghetto, each individual is allotted scarcely 70 square centimeters [approximately 7 square feet]. Everything is heaped onto the floor, without a table or a chair. The house is like a gigantic beehive. Still, you lie down, doubled up on your meager


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possessions, and you ingest the narcotic—the book. The new ghetto inhabitant thus clings to the little bit of what [remains] from before. Books [carry] him away, over the walls and into the world. A reader [can] thus tear himself away from his oppressive isolation and in his mind be reunited with life, with his stolen freedom.46

The book gives the freedom-starved a taste of what used to be, and it gives the imprisoned a sense of connection to the outside world. Boualem Yekker, though not a prisoner in a physical ghetto, inhabits a psychological one. He describes his city as having been transformed into a desert without oases, and as existing in a bland state to be endured until things return to normal, regain their colors and tastes.47 As for the Vilna ghetto inhabitants, the city’s smallest spaces—the back room of Boualem Yekker’s store, for example—connect to bigger ones, to the outside world, beyond the city that imprisons him. They connect not in a concrete manner, but virtually, through the written word. Toward the end of the novel, Boualem Yekker’s greatest fear is finally realized: he returns to the store to find that it has been closed by the vbs. On the padlocked door hangs a sign declaring that the space has been seized for a purpose more “profitable” and “honorable.”48 The move devastates Boualem Yekker, who finds himself paralyzed and blinded by separation from his books—an event that causes him to suffer even more than the departure of his family: “It is as if a black wall had been erected. A wall all around him, preventing him from looking either ahead or behind.”49 This final action drives the bookseller to hopelessness and death. A shocking aspect of the violence in Algeria during the 1990s was the reminder with which one was faced again and again— even from a perspective far removed from the crisis—of the shortness of life, the smallness of the human body, the quickness with which it is killed, and (if we’re not careful) of the


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banality of existence. It is the brutality of this realization that lies at the heart of Le Dernier Été de la raison, and with it the notion of living on through one’s writing suddenly appears absurd, even as we are confronted by an individual death. By the end of the book, Boualem Yekker arrives at a place of ultimate despair, a belief that his life does not matter, and his death even less so. Oblivion is all that awaits Boualem Yekker. After crossing over into minor immortality, he is certain that eventually even his best friend will forget him.50 “Boualem [has] accepted dying. [. . .] Perhaps he will be a writer in another life? It is true that a single lifetime is too short to accomplish all that you want.”51


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FIVE

Dialogues with the Dead

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ow do we speak to the defunct? Countless points of contact between this world and the other exist. They are located in shrines, where the faithful use relics for ease of access to the divine, or in the eyes or gesture of a child, who for a split second looks exactly like his late grandfather. At the end of Les Vigiles (The Watchers) Menouar Ziada, at the moment of his suicide, locates a secret place where dialogues with the dead can take place. There is a passage, we are told, that connects the world of the living to that of the hereafter: “A tangle of alleyways [. . .] link[s] the things of this world and the things of worlds foretold [. . .]—and those who know the formula can have dialogues there with the dead!”1 “What has always interested me,” said Djaout in a 1991 radio interview, “is the exploration of territories of the interior.”2 Territories of the interior: the phrase brings to mind the work of Yaron Shur, a Jerusalem educator. At the end of a day Yaron showed me a parcel that had arrived in the mail. “It’s one of my thinking journeys,” he explained, unwrapping a book and laminated card. The card illustrated the lunar surface, and on closer inspection I could see that it was textured. The depths of outer space were covered with a regular scattering of convex pinpricks, and a series of lines and dots defined the shape of the moon. Yaron’s kit was intended to teach blind children about the concept of space. I closed my eyes and ran my fingers over the bumps, feeling for moon craters. Did he have similar cards with stars and planets? I asked. Yaron shook his head.


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The point of this exercise wasn’t to teach children about space in the sense of identifying constellations, but to communicate the idea of space. Like Djaout’s territories of the interior, a thinking journey is undertaken with no destination in mind: on these journeys the mind is the destination. Just as with my search for Djaout. The only place I can really look for him is inside me. In The Work of Mourning, Jacques Derrida wrote about talking to the dead (with my red pen I change “writes” to “wrote,” for now it is time to mourn him). He said, in connection with the death of his friend Louis Althusser, “At bottom, I know that Louis doesn’t hear me; he hears me only inside me, inside us (though we are only ever ourselves from that place within us where the other, the mortal other, resonates).”3 A dialogue with the dead— between the living and the dead—necessitates an internalization of the defunct. When I address Djaout, he can only hear me inside me. Perhaps it is the same with Les Vigiles: if it is a dialogue—as Djaout claimed—it can only hear its interlocutor inside of itself. Or perhaps the inverse is even truer: the dialogue between the book and the reader can only take place inside the reader. Every time we read, we enter into a kind of dialogue with the dead, by entering the book, or by internalizing the book. A dialogue with the dead is a thinking journey. And a thinking journey takes us through interior territories. Derrida’s internalization of the dead is akin to Paul de Man’s notion of prosopopoeia, the giving of voice to things or people inanimate, “such as an ancestor or literary precursor, so that a sort of dialogue with the dead can be established.”4 But for De Man it becomes “the fiction of the voice-from-beyond-the-grave”5: To read is to understand, to question, to know, to forget, to erase, to deface, to repeat—that is to say, the endless prosopopoeia by which the dead are made to have a face and a voice which tells the allegory of their demise and allows us to apostrophize them in our turn.6


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But just as the dead momentarily come alive, the living too momentarily die in this exchange. For the “latent threat” of prosopopoeia, De Man warns, is “that by making the death speak [. . .] the living are struck dumb, frozen in their own death.”7 Dead Language The year 2003 saw the North American release of Russian Ark.8 It was filmed in a single take, and one long scene guides the viewer through the halls and galleries of the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. The camera is maneuvered through the museum by an individual called The Spy, whom we never see. At the opening of the film The Spy realizes that he has mysteriously fallen into the nineteenth century: masked ball goers lead him into the museum (still a palace and not yet a museum, at least not in this first scene), where he bumps into another confused soul, an eighteenth-century French diplomat, the Marquis de Custine played by Sergei Dreiden, whose conversation with the faceless voice behind the camera forms the focal point of the film. As the two move through the Hermitage, admiring the art, eavesdropping on diplomatic meetings, crashing parties and flirting with women, the marquis periodically stops to marvel at how well he speaks Russian, a language he never knew in his lifetime. This film, like all dialogues of the dead, is a thought experiment, a flight of fancy. What would happen, for example, if Socrates and Gandhi got together for a chat? Or Plato and Mary Queen of Scotts, as Fontenelle imagined at the turn of the eighteenth century?9 Dialogues of the dead make the impossible possible. Time, language, and place collapse. Individuals can speak across centuries, and those who had no common language in life communicate with ease. In this afterlife, an Algerian writer makes as much sense in Iowa or Illinois as he does in Kabylia. Dialogues of the dead produce unexpected combinations: like Goethe and Hemingway, who become fast friends in Milan Kundera’s novel Immortality, like an eighteenth-century


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French diplomat and a twenty-first century Russian filmmaker. Like the Midwestern United States and Algeria. The Hypothetical Skeleton (A Letter to Tahar Djaout) “Through art, we are able to break bread with the dead, and without communion with the dead, a fully human life is impossible.” —w. h . au d e n 10

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Thursday, December 200—— Yesterday I was looking at Algérie: Photographies d’une guerre sans images (Algeria: Photographs of a War without Images).11 Michael von Graffenried, the book’s photographer, is Swiss, and he has been to Algeria many times. His first trip there was undertaken at the invitation of the minister of culture to put on an exhibition. I wonder if you saw it. It took place in 1991 and the country was about to explode with violence: you were still alive, as were Rachid Mimouni, Saïd Mekbel, Mohamed Boudiaf, and countless others. Von Graffenried continued to return to Algeria throughout the 1990s, and his photographs tell the story of that decade there. There are photographs of fis rallies, of the survivors of massacres, the maimed recovering in hospitals, a corpse lying alongside the road, veiled little girls, and young women on the beach in bikinis. And cemeteries: masses of upturned earth and wooden gravemarkers that stand in sharp contrast to the green and expansive suburban cemeteries of my childhood. I remember the special Sundays we called “cemetery visiting days.” Mass was held outside among graves and we prayed for the dead. Hasty preparations were made with the approach of cemetery visiting day: flowers were planted despite the encroaching late-October chill, the grass on the family plot clipped, and the headstones of the newly buried erected in time for the festivities of sorts. I loved cemeteries. My father and I used to walk among the graves,


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reading the names off the headstones, laughing at the oldfashioned given names and considering the design of each monument, which were becoming increasingly grand. We also liked to ponder the surnames on these tombs, names with meanings, like “Tinginys” (Lazy Man), or “Pusdešris” (Half-Sausage), or my father’s favorite: “Vyskupaitis.” The suffix “-aitis,” my father explained to me, meant “son of,” so the surname “Vyskupaitis” meant “Son of a Bishop.” He grinned and let my child-brain process the information and its implications. As I wandered among the headstones, contemplating the surrounding greenery, the temptation to take one of the flowers laid on the graves was overwhelming: on one occasion I gave in and was severely reprimanded when my grandmother caught me with the stolen blossom. Ashamed, I explained meekly that I didn’t understand how the person buried beneath the flower could be offended, but I wasn’t convinced by my own excuse. In the background of Von Graffenried’s photograph of the muddy Algerian cemetery can be seen grander and whiter monuments to the dead erected years before, but these pictures tell the story of cemeteries too full for landscaping and sculpture. The photographer says that he didn’t want to include images of the dead in the book, and although there aren’t many, I suspect that leaving them out entirely would have been dishonest. Besides the photograph of the corpse lying alongside the road, there is a picture of a woman’s body in a morgue, bloated and violated, which had already been there, refrigerated, for three months. No one had come to identify her. There was no funeral for this young woman. She died in absolute anonymity. These photos tell the story of a country armed against itself: one shows a sexagenarian woman, Ouardia, a Kabyle like you, sitting on the white steps of her house, dressed in print upon print upon print. Scarf tied around her head, chin resting gently in four fingers of her left hand, she holds a hunting rifle in the other. Von Graffenried tells the reader that the country’s


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self-defense movement started in Ouardia’s village, Igoujdal. This woman, sentenced to death by the French many years ago during the War of Independence, has taken up arms once again. She has taught the youth of her village to use the firearms the government distributed throughout Kabylia at the height of the violence.12 Guns are everywhere in these photographs: slung over the shoulders of the members of so-called ninja antiterrorist squads; at roadblocks; held by men hanging out of cars—one leg in, one leg out—patrolling the then notoriously dangerous city of Blida;13 and in the hands of children. A particularly poignant photograph shows two boys playing “policeman and terrorist”—one lies face-down on the ground, while the other stands over him holding a gun. Even the photographer himself was armed with a weapon provided by the Swiss army. These images show the everpresence of death and violence in your country during the 1990s, but also of life going on despite the terror, the blood, and the hatred. Young people continue to dance, and families continue to celebrate holidays, births, and marriages. In these pictures life seems to sidestep death. The photographer tells the story of finding a corpse lying in the street at ten o’clock in the morning. Sure that the body had been lying there all night, he asked himself how many people had walked by it, and continued on their way. There is a photograph of the one-year commemoration of your death, Tahar. A man with sunglasses and moustache holds one side of a wreath that frames your picture: it is a good photograph of you in profile, laughing. The man in the sunglasses looks like Saïd Mekbel, whose face is now framed by a wreath of his own. On the next page of the book there is a picture of the women of your family. They sit, close to the ground, wearing print upon print upon print. In the corner there is a portrait of you, one of the women is nursing a baby. Life and death, side by side.


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Cemeteries In your novel Les Chercheurs d’os (The Boneseekers), a young boy and his older relative journey across Algeria by foot to retrieve the bones of the younger traveler’s brother, a victim in the Algerian War. After exhuming the dead your boneseekers only rebury them deeper than before. Les Chercheurs d’os is about the trafficking in honor that went on in newly independent Algeria, and it constitutes a harsh critique of the rewriting of the history of your country: “War, this motor of history,” as you once said.14 But the reburial described in the novel intrigued me in and of itself. I know nothing of this relationship with bones, except that on one of my first visits to Lithuania, the birthplace of my parents, I happened upon a meeting held by Siberian deportees organizing for the return of bodies, frozen in the tundra for decades, to the shores of the Baltic Sea. It was a gesture that touched and confused me then, and perhaps my reluctance to read your novel only as a critique of the postwar construction of national narrative has its roots in that chance encounter during my teenage years. So, while I recognize that my fascination with this gesture may be unwarranted (it is only an allegory, after all), I am nevertheless stuck on this image of exhuming loved ones for repatriation. My family has kept an old custom alive: photographing the kin gathered around the casket in a funeral home when a loved one has died. It is a practice that my grandparents carried with them from Eastern Europe, from a time and a place where the corpse was a more familiar sight than it is now in Canada or the United States, and where the dead were cared for and prepared for their last journey at home. Old photographs from Lithuania attest to this, pictures I found recently when going through some of my maternal grandmother’s things: the casket is laid out on a table, inside is a man who looks remarkably like my grandfather, and who I imagine must have been his father. Buried deep at the bottom of cardboard boxes, I have photo-


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graphs of myself taken at funeral homes: one by my grandfather’s coffin, and then another, taken years later, by my father’s. I remember wondering whether or not I was supposed to smile for the photograph, suddenly disturbed at how deeply ingrained the impulse was to do so. This body caused me grief, the casket display required mourning of me, but the camera had its own expectations, implying its own ritual—one in which a display of happiness was required, here as at a birthday party or at a wedding. It was an uneasy meeting place of two cultures—of life and of death—and I had to mediate between them somehow. I wonder if your boneseekers too didn’t find themselves in an uneasy space between the cultures of life and death. In this contact zone one culture may not always win out, some new combination might be found. The Corpse My desk at the library is covered in books about burial and funeral rituals, bones, and skeletons. I’ve been trying to learn about the materiality of death, what remains for the living once the soul has left the body. I have never seen a corpse outside of a funeral home, where death is covered in make-up, or outside of a clinical environment, where death is presented as a hard, cold, scientific fact. My grandmother’s generation was much more acquainted with death than we are now. Two of her brothers died while she was still a girl: Jonas passed away as a sickly toddler, and the other, Aleksas, suffered from mental illness and drowned himself in the river that ran through Kaunas, the temporary capital of interwar Lithuania, where they lived. Recently Mocˇiute˙ (my maternal grandmother) told me the story of a young girl who poisoned herself when her teacher held her back a grade. The girl didn’t die immediately, and Mocˇiute˙ went to visit her classmate as she suffered in the hospital. Unlike my grandmother’s generation, and unlike in Algeria, where for a decade people sidestepped corpses on their way


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to work, our relationship to the corpse is carefully mediated, and the process of burial and memorialization carried out in a manner that protects us from the confusing reality of the cadaver, that go-between between the living and the dead. The not-fully-dead quality of a corpse is especially apparent in our culture, where embalming is so common, and where the appearance of the corpse is restored and preserved so that it may appear to be sleeping. I was interested to learn that the process of embalming was embraced on this continent during the American Civil War, when it was introduced as a means of returning dead soldiers home to their families.15 At the end of the war, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln further familiarized Americans with embalming, as his body was preserved for a funeral procession that extended from Washington dc to Springfield, Illinois.16 A gruesome process to read about, it involves the draining of fluids, the plugging of orifices, and occasionally the suturing of mouth or eyes.17 All of this, of course, is done in the name of making the face of death beautiful and lifelike for the sake of family members, when they gaze upon the loved one for the last time. This last gaze is an important psychological moment: in it mourners take in the reality of the loved one’s death and process the finality of this goodbye, but paradoxically all this is done while trying to keep the corpse as close to life as possible. The relationship to the corpse in a funeral home is an extension of one’s relationship to the person as he or she was when alive: we speak to a corpse, squeeze his hand, kiss her forehead (at this stage the corpse is not yet an “it”), we slip special objects into the coffin for the journey into the afterlife (my grandfather, a doctor, took his stethoscope with him). In The Corpse: A History Christine Quigley explains that the attempts of the living to resist the reality of death are occasionally accompanied by a similar attempt on the part of the dead: “Concurrently with the refusal of the living to accept death, corpses stage their own denial. The heart


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continues to beat after the brain has died, and the cells continue to live for a time after even the beating stops.”18 She recounts amazing stories of corpses suddenly sitting up as the result of a posthumous spasm, and of people buried alive, clawing their way out of graves. Apparently it was a relatively common occurrence to be buried alive in past centuries, and one of the purposes of sitting with a body for a day or so is precisely to make sure that death itself, and not only the appearance of it, has arrived. The fact that a corpse remains alive in some sense— either by virtue of its recognizability, by virtue of the denial of loved ones, or by virtue of the corpse’s own refusal of death— allows for the living to continue to interact with the corpse as if it were alive. This works both ways: just as the dead can be handled tenderly and with love, dead bodies can be humiliated and taunted (in the 1950s the corpses of partisan fighters in the Soviet Union were displayed by the authorities in public squares for all to see); they can be tried and punished (Oliver Cromwell’s dead body was disinterred, hanged, and then decapitated for the crime of regicide); they can even sit in judgment (“sixteenth-century outlaw Raymond Gui was placed on trial before a jury comprised of the shrouded bodies of three of his victims. He was convicted and executed”);19 and the dead can even be murdered for a second time, as was your friend Rachid Mimouni, who survived the violence directed at Algerian writers and escaped the death threats delivered to him only because he died of hepatitis.20 You must have heard that the day after his death, his body was disinterred and dismembered.21 Perhaps he even told you this sad story himself. Years ago, when my friend Larissa and I were finishing high school, we took a road trip from Toronto to Kingston, Ontario, under the pretext of visiting Queens University to consider it for our postsecondary studies. Our real reason for going was to visit a young man who was in medical school there. We drove out in my father’s old Saab; I had just learned to drive stick


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shift, and the three-hour journey held adventure and excitement. It is a trip that has stayed with me for so long, because it was my first (and so far my only) visit to an anatomy museum. Our med-student friend took us there, I suspect, with the purpose of shocking our teenaged sensibilities. The room was filled with glass cases which held cross-sectioned body parts, limbs, organs, heads, and eyes, and the smell of formaldehyde gave me a slightly nauseated feeling that stuck like a lump at the back of my throat. I was repelled, confused, and deeply fascinated. Anyone who has visited a museum of anatomy will recognize the contradictory nature of the dismembered corpse on display. It is at once human and inhuman: “it exists simultaneously and uncannily as both human and as gross matter, as both itself and as an unsettling image of the once living entity.”22 But as inhuman and inhumane as such a display might seem, the cadaver nevertheless retained a bit of the man it once housed. I couldn’t help imagining this person walking his dog and reading the paper on Sunday mornings. That cadaver, even in the most clinical setting, retained something of the individual. It fought the idea of death by holding onto the semblance of life: facial features, hair color, cut. I remember trying to explain this to Larissa, who smiled and shook her head at my sentimentality. She is now a medical doctor. Bones Monday (11:30 a.m.) It is still happening, Tahar. This morning I awoke to a news report about killings in Algeria: forty-three dead after a military convoy was attacked in the Aurès, and thirteen members of two families massacred near Blida.23 Years after your death, and the killing continues. They say that 1,400 people died in attacks in 2002.24 The armed groups have reconfigured themselves since you were alive: the gia is now weak, and “counts barely 60


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fighters,” whereas the gspc (The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), which splintered off from the gia in 1998, is the new group to be reckoned with.25 Even so, the gspc only numbers an estimated 350–380 militants—this seems very small to me—but these tiny groups continue to cause such bloodshed. Algeria, still littered with bones. I have little experience with bones, but it seems to me that they are entirely different from corpses. Dry, impersonal, and anonymous. While a corpse is transitional, paradoxically and impossibly almost-dead, not-quite-alive, bones are fully, completely dead. Skeletons, unlike corpses, play no role in our usual relationship to the dead. Here in North America we skip straight from the corpse in the funeral home to the monument in the cemetery: bones have no place in these rituals and are relegated to the realm of forensic scientists and Halloween costumes. Perhaps the skeleton is more terrifying than the corpse, because the bones in their anonymity mark the real beginning of the journey from personhood to dust and oblivion: Once the skin, muscles, and organs have fled their frame, the bones attest only to the fact that a life was lived. Except to the scientist, they do not offer the who, what, where, and when. The skeleton is the halfway point to not having existed at all. [. . .] Our bones outlive us, but in anonymity.26

After reading Les Chercheurs d’os, I started to search for examples of exhumation and secondary burial, an act at once so tender—for who can fault family members for wanting to have loved ones’ remains returned to them?—and a gross violation of the right of the dead to rest peacefully. The first examples of exhumation I found were done for practical reasons. For example, until quite recently in Brittany, the remains of the dead were unearthed from inside the churchyard to make room for new bodies.27 Something similar is happening today in Mexico City: the


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earth is heaving up bones. There is no more room for the dead in the city’s cemeteries, so after as few as seven years, families must disinter their loved ones and rehouse them: Things are so cramped that a market has sprung up in which families willing to evict their loved ones can get thousands of dollars for the space, and city officials have taken to touting the advantages of cremation in radio ads. Under city regulations, after seven years cemetery officials dig up and cremate the remains. Family members can buy postponements totaling an extra 14 years, but after that all post-1975 public tombs have to be excavated.28

The living are increasingly finding themselves crowded out by the dead. I remember a public awareness campaign in France a few years ago, whose purpose was to encourage cremation: “land for the living,” was the slogan. But the most widely known and studied tradition of secondary burial is practiced by the Merina people in the Highlands of Madagascar. Interpretations of it are occasionally contradictory, but anthropologists (Maurice Bloch, Rebecca Green, Pier Martin Larson) seem to agree on the process, the first stage of which occurs immediately after death, when the body is considered “wet.”29 Rebecca Green explains the second stage thus: [A]fter a minimum of six months to a year following initial burial, the body no longer contains wet elements and consists only of the essential, dry, “eight bones,” the tolan-balo, the conceptual name for the lasting physical remains [. . .]. At the end of this second stage, the deceased is dry and therefore eligible for transfer into the family tomb and into the ranks of the ancestors. Because this new ancestor continues to be a known and recognized being, he or she is still thought to require the basic human needs of food, entertainment, and warmth.30

The third stage is marked by the bones’ transformation to dust,


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when individual ancestors’ remains are often combined into a single “ancestral bundle.”31 There seems to be disagreement about how much the ritual of secondary burial is about forgetting, and to what extent it is about remembering. Striking in the Merina practice, Maurice Bloch tells us, is the roughness and almost irreverence with which the ancestral bones are treated. Relatives of the dead dance with these skeletons, and women hold them in their laps so that, according to Bloch, “the realization of death is fully accepted.”32 In other words, for Bloch, the secondary burial, and specifically the second stage of the Merina burial tradition, is ultimately about forgetting. Handling the dead in this way amounts to acquiring permission to efface them from one’s memory and to realize that the deceased are finally dead. But Rebecca Green disagrees: her take on the reasons for the handling of the bones is exactly opposite. She suggests it is necessary for the ancestors’ continued existence: “the living must interact with their ancestors. It is through the famadihana [secondary burial] ceremony that the living keep in touch with their ancestors’ spirits, by thinking about them, interacting with them, and appeasing them.”33 Handling the bones placates the dead and keeps them silent. Can you help me answer this question, Tahar? Does bringing bones back into the light facilitate memory or forgetting, silence or speech? In Les Chercheurs d’os, the bones speak loudest when exhumed, clicking and rattling as they bounce against the mule’s back on their homeward journey: “They clink together like coins each time the donkey stumbles or encounters steep-sided paths.”34 Reburial seems to muffle the sounds of the dead, gagging them further with each fistful of dirt: bones here are not unearthed to interact with the deceased as in the Merina practice, instead your travelers exhume to verify the death of the boy’s brother, and then they rebury him, rendering him even deader still. “And here we are today, going to search for his hypotheti-


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cal skeleton,” says the boy of Les Chercheurs d’os.35 All skeletons are hypothetical in their anonymity and resistance to explanation. Inscrutable as ancient texts, they require translation to gain meaning. Bones are like hieroglyphics or cuneiform script: intriguing but illegible without skills of interpretation. To translate a skeleton—both to interpret and exhume (translation also signifies the Catholic practice of unearthing and rehousing the remains of saints)—always represents an attempt to narrativize the remains of the dead. Medieval Christians not only rehoused the bodies of saints, but dismembered them and scattered bone fragments of this or that saint throughout various churches. The protocol for keeping Christian saints’ relics is very specific: each bone, tooth, or bundle of hair must be sealed and tied with a thread in such a way that it cannot be removed from its case without destroying seal and thread, and each relic must be accompanied by a document attesting to its authenticity. If a new seal is put on a relic, a new document must be provided as well. In moving a bone into its reliquary, it becomes something new. Re-housed, transformed, and translated, the bone may now speak as a relic. A Road Trip to the Shrine of the Holy Relics Monday, February 200—— I am back at my desk, Tahar, after what feels like a very long absence from you and from my writing. What took me away was a journey of discovery to investigate further this question of bones, and the relationship that the living have to unearthed remains. We have all had this experience: as soon as we learn something new, suddenly this thing, whatever it is (but invariably it is a thing to which we never gave much thought beforehand), begins to pop up everywhere. This is exactly what happened to me not long ago: as I was deep into my reading on relics and the translation of the bodies of saints, I heard a short news item on the radio about a shrine, only five hours from my


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home in Chicago, which houses the second-largest collection of saints’ relics in North America. I decided to go. I set out on a Saturday morning, traveling east across Indiana and into Ohio, where the land became progressively flatter, more open, and the number of churches appeared to multiply with each mile driven. My destination: the heart of Catholic Ohio, a region called “The Land of the Cross-tipped Churches,” settled by Germans in the nineteenth century. At the time of settlement, the entire area had been marshland, and families could only travel a mile and a half at a time. As a result, Catholic churches there were built only three miles apart. I wanted to visit the shrine at Maria Stein to get some more ideas about this relationship that we all have, across all cultures and faiths, to the remains of our dead. What was the role of speech and silence, and of remembrance and forgetting in the exhumation of bones in this context? How did it compare to the process you described in Les Chercheurs d’os? I wanted to see how these bones were arranged, how they were framed, how the reasons behind their preservation were explained. How would the Sisters of the Precious Blood, the caretakers of the relic collection, explain the relationship between a believer and a sliver of bone? I had made an appointment for a tour of the relics with Sister Regina Albers, who had agreed to come in to work early on Sunday morning to meet with me. I hoped she would be able to shed light on my questions. When I arrived at Maria Stein, a small, kind-looking woman with curly white hair, glasses, and a red suit jacket popped her head through the doorway and invited me in. Sister Regina. She led me though a side door from the church into the tiny chapel, where the relics were on display. At the front of the room, an ornate wooden altar rose up to the ceiling, and the reliquaries there were displayed behind glass. Only a few special ones were available for visitors to handle, Sister Regina explained, most notably Saint Peregrine’s, which people suffering from


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cancer requested to have brought down for them to pray with. Two display cases lined the walls of the chapel, and each was filled with medallions, crosses, and glass boxes, each of which was a reliquary. The shrine gleamed: the brass reliquaries were so ornate that they (perhaps purposefully) distracted the visitor from the relic inside. Only after a few minutes, once my eyes had adjusted to the brilliance, did I start to actually see the relics themselves. I hadn’t expected them to be so small: most were little more than a speck that could as easily have been a piece of rock as of bone. But slowly I began to see more: Saint Constantine’s finger, for example, as part of a starburst arrangement on red velvet combined together with small bones from Saint Blandina, Saint Columba, Saint Justina, Saint Placidus, Saint Pontian, Saint Valerius, and Saint Vitus (though no other component of this arrangement was as specifically identified or identifiable as Constantine’s finger). This single collection enacted a seemingly casual dismemberment36 of bodies (a further dismemberment occurred within the shrine, which possessed six relics of Saint Augustine, all housed in separate reliquaries), but also a recombination of them. Faced with this dismemberment, a phrase from Les Chercheurs d’os returned to me: the ubiquitous skeleton.37 Not only are multiple skeletons scattered throughout the countryside of your book, or throughout shrines and churches like the one at Maria Stein, but single skeletons themselves are dismembered and scattered in numerous reliquaries. A skeleton need not be whole in order to have meaning: “It may be dismantled and divided into small pieces; each of its bones possesses the same symbolic value.”38 But a relic need not even be part of a skeleton to have meaning. Sister Regina explained that three classes of relics exist. First-class relics are a piece of the saint him- or herself: bone, teeth, or hair, for example. Second-class relics can be something once used by the saint: a walking stick, or a fragment of a cloak. Third-class relics seemed dubious to me: these need not even be


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contemporary with the saint him- or herself. Third-class relics are objects that have simply been “touched to” a real one. In the display case opposite Saint Constantine’s finger were two such relics: a model of a nail that had been touched to the original nail of the cross, and a framed picture—not even a photograph, but a drawing—of Veronica’s veil used to wipe Christ’s face as he carried the cross. In an age of technology, of carbon dating, and dna testing, there is something oddly yet beautifully retrograde about these relics with their red seals, silk threads, and documents. The question of their authenticity is apparently foremost in the minds of most visitors to the shrine: how did they know these relics were real? Sister Regina answered the question before I had even thought to ask it. The Church, she said, kept very good documents. It is interesting how little the question of authenticity troubled me. I was much more interested to know what I was supposed to think (or feel) when gazing at a fragment of Saint Augustine, this sliver of calcium and other minerals from a Berber bishop who may well have walked the same mountain paths you did as a child during summers spent in Kabylia. I liked the fact that even here, in the heart of Catholic Ohio, there were six slivers of Algeria, that ubiquitous skeleton. Was I to believe that the speck of bone in the display case before me actually carried some sort of magical power? Surely not, since this kind of belief would be tantamount to idolatry. What was the purpose of adoring saints in this way? Sister Regina corrected me. “No,” she said, “we don’t adore the saints, we venerate them. Adoration is reserved for the divine, while veneration can include mortals. When we venerate the saints,” she continued, “we want to be in the presence of holiness.” Then she asked me a question I wasn’t prepared for: did I consider myself to be a holy person? She didn’t do so accusingly, as if to imply that I was obviously a sinner and had come to the shrine for all the wrong reasons. She asked it kind-


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ly and simply, as if it were the most natural question in the world. Did I consider myself to be a holy person? I remembered something a friend had told me you were supposed to say to a rabbi when asked you if you kept kosher: “not yet.” The answer is an admission of one’s shortcomings that contains the promise of trying to do better. This seemed like the right answer to give Sister Regina; and what’s more, it even seemed true. Not yet, but trying to do better. Being in a room full of saints’ bones, as far as I can gather, is supposed to achieve two things: the first is rooted in a hope that some holiness may rub off on the visitor (if not from the bones themselves, at least from the example the saints set in their lifetimes); the other is more mysterious, and has to do with miracles. The bones of the Catholic saints do not actually carry any healing powers, but they act as a form of mediator. The relic functions as a gateway to the saint: it is an ultimately unnecessary (one doesn’t need a saint’s bone to ask for his or her help), but efficient object of medi(t)ation. The relic, one could say, intensifies the trip, makes the connection clearer. The bone acts as an intermediary between our visible world and the invisible world of the saints; between our world of desperation, and their world of hope; our finite world, and their infinite one. Of all the relics in the shrine, I was most drawn by a large glass box containing several bones about the length of one’s forearm, a broken skull, what appeared to be a shard of a ceramic bowl, a dark packet of hair, and something I couldn’t identify encased in a long plastic tube. It was the most dramatic reliquary of all, since the bones inside were most identifiably human. The catalogue at the back of the chapel identified this as a relic of Saint Cruser. But this saint, despite my perusal of theological libraries, my e-mails to members of the clergy, and my correspondence with Sister Regina (who has also become curious as a result of my inquiries), remains a mystery. No


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dictionary or calendar of saints ever includes this name, and even his or her gender remains a subject of speculation. While an article in the Catholic Telegraph, the newspaper published by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, refers to the relics of the martyr “Sister Cruser,” my copy of the document, “Auszug aus der Autentik zu der Reliquie des heiligen Cruser” (Extract from the Authentic Document Accompanying the Relic of Saint Cruser), sent to me by Sister Regina, refers to this saint in masculine terms.39 It goes on to explain that the body of Saint Cruser was removed from its burial place in Rome in 1836, and that the relic was declared genuine at that time. The bones were then encased in a wax figure, presented to Reverend Francis de Sales Brunner,40 and transported to the United States, where they remained in this state for almost a century: In another document dated June 24, 1928, permission was granted to open the case to refurbish it because [it] was deteriorating, but the relics were still intact. Apparently no relics were again encased in a wax figure, and the document must not have been placed in the case with the bones as it apparently had been when it was brought to the U.S.A. The bones as you saw them are exposed in a small rectangular glass case. We now have the document placed inside the large glass case next to the reliquary that contains the bones of St. Cruser.41

Cruser remains a saint whose gender is unclear and whose life story is unknown, and because of this, s/he is a saint without an office or a mass. Cruser is a saint without a job, without prayers to respond to, without children, churches, or schools to look after, and with a great deal of time on his or her hands. Compare Saint Cruser to the overextended Saint Peregrine whose hands are full with the prayers of those suffering from cancer and their loved ones; with Anthony of Padua, patron saint of lost articles; Christina the Astonishing, patron of lunatics; Bernardine of Siena, who surely must be cursing her lot in the


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afterlife, patron saint of advertising; and finally, perhaps the busiest of all, Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of lost causes. Saint Cruser is ready and willing. S/he has been waiting for prayers to answer for over a century. Algeria needs a new mediator, and Cruser will answer the call. A new kind of saint, s/he will answer the prayers of Muslim, Christian, and Atheist alike. A saint for the twenty-first century, Cruser will sit down together with President Boudiaf and work out a strategy for Algeria. You should sit down with them too, Tahar, and bring Rachid Mimouni along. Cruser will have to be brought up to speed on the specifics of the situation. Algeria needs a new saint, a new mediator (for that’s what saints are), and in uniting these two, we shall find poor, neglected Saint Cruser an office and a mass, and Algeria a muchneeded peacemaker. Cruser, patron saint of living saints. Patron saint of exiled and fallen writers. Of short-lived newspapers. Of kidnapped folk singers. Of mild-mannered independent thinkers. Of tolerance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and dialogue. Of open-mindedness and of free and fair elections. Patron saint of unfinished books. Of Algerian Islam and Maraboutism. Patron saint of oral traditions. Of the hittistes.42 Of cultural fusion. Of polylingualism. Of veiled women and of women who defy the veil. Of falsely accused and imprisoned terrorists. Patron saint of trabendistes.43 Yes, to all of this and more. Baraka Baraka, “that ineffable substance [. . .] which betokens a special relationship with the supernatural. Paradoxically, baraka is both a cause and a consequence of saintliness.”44 Baraka is a beautiful word denoting a mysterious power, blessing, or holiness that distinguishes the saint from all others. A Muslim saint, like his or her Christian counterpart, enjoys a direct, unmediated relationship with God, and acts as a mediator between the divine and the mortal.45 Of course, Muslim saints can be living


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as well as dead, and the faithful need not pray with a relic in order to connect with the divine, for baraka literally rubs off onto the faithful in a way that Christian holiness cannot. The relics of Catholic saints jealously hold their powers to themselves, mere bones that represent a baraka now elsewhere and otherworldly. But a generous and living baraka can be transmitted in many different ways: through song, dance, tears; through the ingestion of henna, earth, or saliva; through prayer, animal sacrifice, or the exchange of gifts.46 Despite this frenzy of life and joy, death too is very much a part of the veneration of Muslim saints, for the most important sites of pilgrimage are tombs and shrines, where the dead saint is believed to retain a presence.47 The Muslim saint has many functions: to assist people with everyday problems, to prevent and heal sickness, to make barren women fertile, to bring good fortune, and to protect and enlarge crops. But the most important role of the saint is to hold up the universe: “ranks of saints assist the main saint, the Pole or Axis [. . .], in supporting and preserving the world in its place.”48 It is a wonderful image: a “main” saint, holding the world in its place, with rows and rows of others supporting his or her shoulders and elbows. Perhaps two “secondary” saints take the burden when the main saint needs a break. Muslim sainthood is much closer to Sister Regina’s idea of the world being dotted with living holy people than the Vatican’s version of sainthood governed by rules of death and documentation. In Islam a person’s holiness may be recognized in life, and therefore holiness is not such a rare commodity as it is in Christianity. Each town has its local saints, both living and dead: “Whenever one comes to a town, the first thing one ought to accomplish is to kiss the feet of the saints who are full of life, and after that, the honor of pilgrimage to the tombs of the saints found there.”49 The fact is that saints hold the universe together in life as well as in death. But to be a Muslim saint today is a lonely and difficult job. Like writers and other mediators, saints too have come under attack in your country:


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by both Islamic modernists and fundamentalists for different reasons. Modernists reject saints as relics of medieval superstition and obstacles to the realization of a rational modern form of Islam. Fundamentalists (both Sunni and Shi‘ i), who are intent on the Islamization of society, reject saints as heretical innovators and as distraction from ideological activism.50

Saint Cruser, Saint Tahar: heretical innovators, holders of the universe. One could not pay a writer or a saint a bigger compliment. Mother Brunner’s Holy Hands After showing me the shrine, Sister Regina led the way upstairs to the museum, which tells the story of the founding of the Sisters of the Precious Blood, and of the order’s journey from Switzerland to America in 1844. In one corner of the room, dedicated to the first period of the sisters’ history, stood the box that had carried Saint Victoria’s bones over the Atlantic. Since its journey, the narrow wooden case had been filled with shelves and transformed into a storage unit. It stood empty in the corner of the room behind the door. Cases along the walls displayed eyeglasses, clothing, and other items used by the founders of the order, the mother-son team of Maria Anna and Francis de Sales Brunner. The rooms upstairs echoed the shrine below: many of these objects were wrapped in the same red thread used in the reliquaries. A painting of Mother Brunner hung on the wall. She had been an elderly woman, a sixty-eight-year-old widow, by the time she received her calling to religious life. The painting showed her in peasant’s dress, crucifix around her neck, arms crossed at her waist, and holding a book in her left hand. With her index finger she marked a place in the book, as if she had stopped reading for a few minutes for the sake of her painter, and gazed calmly, solidly out from the canvas. Below the portrait was a photograph of a pair of hands. When Mother Brunner’s body was exhumed before she was brought to North


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America and reburied at the Motherhouse cemetery in Dayton, Ohio, witnesses attested to the fact that her hands looked fresh and lifelike, “but turned black when the air reached them. [. . .] [A]n old man was present and when he saw the hands, he excitedly said that he was sure this was Mother Brunner’s grave because of the way her hands were folded. He remembered them folded in that way when Mother Brunner prayed.”51 One of those onlookers must have photographed the hands as a record. “Of course, the incorruptibility of the body is a sign of sainthood,” I said meaningfully. Sister Regina smiled. The sisters’ campaign to have her canonized had been unsuccessful. This woman in the painting, captured in what appeared to be a moment of reading, had been illiterate. In order for the process of canonization to go forward, it was necessary to tell, to write, one’s life story. It was not enough for others simply to tell of her holiness. “There are many holy people among us,” said Sister Regina, “unrecognized saints. But in order to be recognized these people must write.” Since my return to Chicago, I have regretted not having photographed the portrait of Mother Brunner. A question has remained with me: why represent an illiterate holy woman holding a book? Not just holding a book, but marking a place in that book as if she were reading it. The portrait depicts a layering of relic upon relic. This woman’s hands are already a relic (the photograph of her uncorrupted flesh attests to her saintliness, even if it is not recognized), but in these holy hands she holds another relic: the book, which too acts as a relic, is itself a relic, mediating between the divine and the mortal, the living and the dead. Books, not only holy ones, often mediate between the living and the dead. In his article on the Gayo religious tradition on the island of Sumatra, John R. Bowen describes the belief that Muslim saints inhabit a “parallel community of humans [. . .]. They grow rice, live in a village, pray in a mosque.”52 This parallel universe of saints where the dead


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carry on as they did in life is not unlike Milan Kundera’s heaven for writers, described in Immortality, where books provide a link to the other world. By reading the texts of dead authors, a reader may momentarily step into the afterlife, and the author, in turn, momentarily comes back to life. Like the tombs, amulets, and clothing of the Muslim saints, the book possesses a literary baraka, a power to transport the reader and to unite the living and dead for an instant. In Christian terms, where pilgrims pray while holding the bones of a saint (remember Saint Peregrine), the book here replaces the bone as mediator. The book is a hypothetical skeleton—it is not a bone, but acts as such—and inversely, the bone is a hypothetical book. The Afterlife of Jean-Paul Sartre In the absence of living mediators we turn to another realm: we look to the dead to intervene in situations that have become unmanageable here on earth, and we look to books as a space for communication between the living and the dead. In a play called Madah-Sartre, in which Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir come down from heaven to attend the funeral of an assassinated Algerian writer, Alek Baylee has staged this impulse. On the way back from the funeral, Sartre and Beauvoir are kidnapped by the gia (here, the acronym stands for “Groupe International Armé”).53 They are separated: Sartre is taken by the men and Beauvoir by a chorus of seven veiled women. It is your funeral, Tahar: “The funeral of a writer. Poet or novelist, he was also a journalist.”54 There are echoes of others too: Kateb Yacine, Rachid Mimouni, and your friend, the slain bookseller Vincent Grau. For the length of the play, Sartre engages in a debate with monsieur Madah, a caricature of an Islamist, in which the latter tries to convince Sartre to convert to Islam. After several days of discussion about the Koran (which Sartre reads at Madah’s request), about the importation of foreign Islamic traditions into Algeria, about Sartre’s politics and atheism, and


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Madah’s anti-Semitism and misogyny, the conversation turns to heaven, and Madah tries to convince Sartre that his conversion would make God happy. But Sartre explains that he inhabits a heaven where God is a woman and goes for a drink with her friends, the writers, at the end of a long day. Sartre: “I saw her having a drink with Coluche55 and Kateb. They looked like they were having a really good time. Coluche was even telling them about his latest gig in paradise . . .”56 This is the heaven of Saint Cruser as I imagine it. It is an afterlife where saints, Christian, Muslim, and otherwise, hold the universe in place, taking turns bearing its weight when their shoulders get sore, and where writers are fearless since they are already dead. The irony of Madah’s threat to kill him if he refuses to convert is not lost on Baylee’s Sartre: sa rt r e : What do you plan on doing to me now? I’m already dead. You can’t kill a ghost. ma da h: But you can kill a man a second time . . . By discrediting his impious body of work.57

Madah is correct. One can kill a writer a second time. Not in the way that they tried to kill Mimouni again, by desecrating his body, but by desecrating his work and by letting the memory of him fade into the dark corners of our consciousness. You knew this well, Tahar, but phrased it inversely. You said in your elegy to Mammeri that the best homage one can offer a writer is to read his work.58 But there is another way to kill a writer a second time, and that is to allow the terrible moment of his death rob him of his life’s work and joys; to allow his life to crystallize into a single moment of violence. Martyrdom: a senseless death inscribed in memory.59 Cruser is marked as a martyr: his/her violent death is all we remember of this life lived, a death made all the more senseless by the erasure of the life from our memory. The real tragedy of Saint Cruser is not in the manner s/he left this earth, but in our forgetfulness. You


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too are a martyr, Tahar: a senseless death inscribed in memory. But let us not kill you again with forgetfulness because we cannot bear our sorrow. Post Scriptum Forgive me, Tahar, for disturbing your rest in this way: for unearthing your bones and exposing them to the cold air of the world of the living. Like the Merina, we shall dance, your skeleton and I—not to keep you silent, but to let you speak. You, buried by words of sorrow, of pain and anger: “Complaints. Condolences. Dirty tricks”; “Targeted as in marketing”; “dead in the name of a chosen race of degenerates, which has selected murder as its profession of faith and Satan for its master [. . .] dead and leaving us crippled, disarmed, in an abyss without a tomorrow”; “slaughtered in a cowardly manner in the shabby parking lot of an impersonal apartment complex”; “killed not because [you were] modest, but because [you were] lucid.”60 The Museum Saint Several months have passed since my return from Maria Stein. After much reflection, I have come to understand that there exists one shrine to Saint Cruser after all—in the Elkader museum, where controversy erupted over a portrait display. The person depicted there is neither Abd el-Kader, as identified by the curator, nor is it a portrait of Osama bin Laden, as some visitors have mistakenly believed. It is Saint Cruser who lies there behind glass, waiting to be recognized in a town that inexplicably named itself for a rebel from a place thousands of miles and several centuries away. The name Elkader has sent many on their own thinking journeys—Ed Olson, the Iowans who traveled to Algeria, the children in Mascara who read about this Midwestern town at school, and the Algerian delegates who arrived in Elkader to take part in the parade alongside dairy queens and pork prin-


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cesses. (What must they have thought?) In christening the town thus, Timothy Davis did the people of Elkader an enormous service. Its name will always send people down their own paths of discovery in hope of finding out what the connection between Iowa and Algeria could possibly be. Elkader illustrates how individual lives are bigger than themselves: Abd el-Kader’s life stretched beyond itself through both time and distance, giving a name to a place he never saw. And Cruser, in his or her infinite wisdom (don’t let the beard fool you—Saint Wilgefortis famously grew a beard at will to make herself unattractive to men) has surreptitiously deposited a relic there. With Cruser’s help something magical is about to happen in Elkader: a dialogue with the dead. Like Abd el-Kader and Cruser, Tahar Djaout is bigger than his own life. A writer’s journey does not end with death; it continues through books and via underground passages, the openings to which can be found in the most unlikely places. To find them we must follow the saints.


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SIX

Voyage Immobile

“On the planet of words, there are no haunted houses. From the beginning, writing for me meant leaving the figurative, it was the search for other figurations, the search for meaning elsewhere.” —t a h a r djaou t

S

everal years ago, a few colleagues and I invited an Algerian author who was in Toronto for the International Writers’ Festival to dinner. We were in the process of putting together a literary anthology about archives and hoped that she would contribute something. Sean and I picked her up at her hotel in a cab, and we met the others at an Argentinean restaurant known for its slightly bohemian atmosphere and good food. Over dinner I asked if she had returned to Algeria recently. Of course, she replied, she had returned to visit her dying father. It’s frustrating the way no one will visit Algeria anymore, she said. Everyone thinks that when they land, Death will await them at the airport! The anthology project turned into a fiasco, complete with a battle over intellectual property theft. Mercifully, this author never contributed to the book, but the dinner was wonderful. She talked for two hours straight. Death waiting at the airport. I often repeat this phrase in my head, chiding myself for my inability to summon the courage to visit Algeria. But how can I go to a place so soaked in blood? After five years or more of reading about massacre upon massacre.


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But Death doesn’t await you at the airport, my other half says. You should go. Stop being such a coward. I would love to see the mountains of Kabylia, the Saharan sands, the gorges, and the Hoggar sunrise said to be so beautiful. To taste the sweet water of El-Goléa and even the salty water of In-Salah. But not after the monks of Tibhirine, kidnapped and beheaded. Not after so many writers shot dead. After the musicians, the young men, the women, and the children. No. Don’t be such a coward. I’ll have to go differently, to invent my way there: through the “[i]mmobility of discovery. Moving immobility. Like when one travels inside a piece of music.”1 These are Djaout’s words. He understood about imaginary journeys. “I am reduced [. . .] to traveling in my head.”2 Coward. Yes. Inventing Algiers I stand on the deck of the ferry. There is a bitterly cold wind, and my eyes are swollen with fatigue, despite having spent the night in a cabin. I lay awake last night listening to the sounds of the ship: women huddled in corners cooking savory meals on tiny gas stoves; men gathered on the upper deck to play cards, smoke, and carry on a loud discussion punctuated with sudden bursts of laughter; and small feet pounded up and down the hallways as children wore themselves out before bedtime. But now the ship is silent and sleeping. Only the sounds of the wind and the sea. Before me I can see the city of Algiers, “the smoky, the trembling.”3 It rises up out of the water, all white walls and curving pathways, glowing orange and gold from the rising sun. Mountains loom behind it. The crossing from Marseilles has taken nineteen hours. I pull my hat down lower onto my forehead, wishing I could be less conspicuous, less blonde, even less


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female. Isabelle Eberhardt traveled here dressed as a man and cloaked in her alter-ego of Si Mahmoud so many years ago. It was an easier disguise to pull off then: a pair of pants, a sailor suit, or a burnoose, and everyone was convinced of (or at least would play along with) the sex-change.4 I wish I too could do that, but now I fear the only real invisibility would come through wearing a veil. To feel safe by disappearing. To wander the streets free of piercing gazes, incredulous looks—this is what I want. To travel southward “to tame the vastness, to smooth the arrogance of the mountain masses and to give myself the courage to face a world without women.”5 I am traveling light, with only a few garments, Djaout’s L’Invention du désert (The Invention of the Desert), my notebook, and a guidebook tucked into my backpack. The latter is not very encouraging for those planning a journey to Algeria. Information has not been updated because the writers of the Lonely Planet series have been unable to return to the country since the violence broke out, and the section on Algeria in the book on North Africa is prefaced by the following: “At the time of writing, almost 70 foreigners had died in the fighting. The vast majority of Western residents, together with thousands of Francophile Algerians, have taken the hint and left. Tourism has been reduced to the merest trickle, and even that may now have dried up.”6 The designation of those who left for France as necessarily Francophile is curious. Most Francophone Algerians, certainly Francophone writers, have maintained a fraught relationship to France. The memory of the torture of Algerians at the hands of French soldiers, of the burning alive of entire villages in caves during the nineteenth-century French conquest, combined with the uneasy welcome that Algerians receive in France today has made this relationship difficult, to say the least. Assia Djebar called her own French language education a poisonous gift, and I think it is a good way to describe the relationship between the people of these two places,


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inextricably linked for over two hundred years. “Francophile Algerians”: a detail, to be sure. Hardly worth getting worked up about, but as it turns out, this small inaccuracy is a sign of things to come. Before turning out the light in my berth, I came across another odd passage. I am not sure what to make of it, so I have come to the morning air of the upper deck to contemplate it as Algiers draws closer. In the “Religion” section of the guidebook, two short paragraphs have been dropped in as an amendment to the new edition, one of a small number of revisions completed without the author’s return to Algeria. You can tell that this is text that has been added later because it is set in a font slightly smaller than the rest: It was only a few years ago that Algiers was described as a place where “the hemlines were higher and the veils few and far between.” What to wear has become a much tougher decision after Islamic militants shot dead a schoolgirl in the street for not wearing a veil—and two veiled students were killed in retaliation as they waited for a school bus. The incidents followed threats by both sides. “You’ll die if you don’t wear the veil. You’ll die if you do wear the veil, too. So shut up and die,” wrote poet Tahar Djaout before she herself was killed in 1993.7

Stunning. Over the course of my research I have found conflicting versions of Djaout’s death, of his birth date, and of who bears responsibility for his death, but I wasn’t prepared for this. Tahar Djaout here has been transformed into someone unrecognizable: a woman killed for not wearing a veil, for writing poetry. And worst of all, he has become a poet who tells her sisters to shut up and die. I know this quote. At least I know its distant relative, so often cited in the wake of the murder of the mustached, bespectacled, and decidedly male writer’s death. Again and again, Djaout’s most-famous phrase is


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quoted: “Le silence, c’est la mort / Et toi, si tu parles, tu meurs / Si tu te tais tu meurs / Alors parle et meurs”—“Silence is death / And you, if you speak, you die / If you remain silent, you die / So speak (out) and die.” Sometimes, instead of the word parler (to speak), the word dire (to say) is used. This phrase, like the man who spoke it, has reached the status of folklore or folk wisdom, and returns in the form of novels, poems, and songs. In Hafsa Zinaï-Koudil’s novel Sans voix (Voiceless), for example, the reader will find the following passage: “Ah! My friends, my sisters! Misfortune has struck again! Thought has been assassinated, the poet is dead! He said ‘If you remain silent you die. If you speak, you die. So speak out and die.’”8 It is not even necessary to name the poet whose words these were. Etched in the collective memory, they have become a kind of mantra or credo for journalists in Algeria.9 Everyone knows this phrase, it seems, but no one can be sure of how or when she or he first heard it. If a source is given at all for this phrase, it is simply Ruptures, the newspaper Djaout founded the year of his death. No issue number, page number, or date are ever given, and the bizarre fun-house mirror version of the quote given in my guidebook is no exception. So be it, I decide on the deck. On this journey I will be invisible. I too can be a fun-house mirror version of myself, “dizzy and multiple,” like Djaout’s Ibn Toumert, like the narrator of L’Invention du désert, and like Djaout himself.10 No longer so female, I will travel as a man, a twenty-first-century Si Mahmoud/Isabelle Eberhardt, or a doubly gendered Cruser, and slip undetected through the streets of the Casbah. The ship begins to stir as the passengers prepare for arrival. The children who had pounded down the halls the night before are roused from too short a sleep. Tearfully, they rub their eyes and pull at their hair. A little girl of around three years of age eyes me suspiciously, sucking her thumb as her mother wrestles her out of pajamas and into socks, shoes, and a dress, all


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the while pointing at the approaching city and speaking excitedly in the lilting voice mothers use with their small children. I smile at the girl, who looks away quickly, pretending that she hadn’t been staring at me at all. With my small pack on my back, I slip through the crowded stairwell, and make my way downstairs toward the exit, conspicuous for my lack of luggage. Most travelers on the ferry are loaded down with cardboard boxes and enormous bags, big enough to fit an adult inside. Many are traveling with cars—these are the people lucky enough to be able to afford a couchette. Those less fortunate have spent the night sitting in hard chairs or crashed out on top of parcels and cartons. The noise is deafening now. We have entered the harbor. Two hours and no small amount of paperwork and scrutiny later, I have made my way through customs and exit the ferry docks. It is almost nine o’clock, and the morning sun is growing hot. I squint against the glare of the skyline of Algiers, a place that has been described as a temporary encampment. The city is supposed to be grand, but contains villages within it. Goats and sheep are kept on roofs and in courtyards of the Casbah, laundry hangs everywhere. This place is bursting at the seams. Young men here sleep in shifts. A younger brother is given the bed to use from ten in the evening until morning, at which point his elder brother may come home and use the mattress. School also happens in shifts, with too few teachers to accommodate the rapidly growing population. The medina,11 my guidebook says, has become a slum. Nonetheless I want to see it for myself: “To encounter the Medina is to find oneself facing savage, unimaginable practices. Intruders are forced to question themselves and to reconsider any value system that they had as city dwellers, citizens, modern men and women, prior to this encounter.”12 And so, secure in my newfound invisibility, I head toward the pedestrian lift that takes


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me up to the Boulevard Zighout Youssef, and hang a right towards Place des Martyrs. By the time I reach the square it is after nine, and the orange I ate on the deck at sunrise is no longer sufficient. My head is beginning to swim from lack of sleep and hunger, and I feel sticky and uncomfortable in the sun. The café I duck into just up the road is dark and crowded with men drinking from tea glasses or tiny coffee cups, smoking, and reading the paper. Two play backgammon by the open window at the front. I sip my coffee—good French-style coffee—and gingerly tear off pieces of my pastry, pulling out L’Invention du désert to read. Djaout’s first real literary success, it is about a writer who finds himself in the north, in a cold city (Paris), where he begins the task he has been assigned by a publisher: to write the story of the medieval Almohade Dynasty. In the end he decides to write the story of Ibn Toumert, founder of the Almoravide (not Almohade, as assigned) Dynasty, and vanquisher of the Almohades. He begins the project in a city experiencing its first real winter since 1956, and the writer starts out on a mental voyage into the desert, into hot spaces, where he follows his subject.13 He sets out on a journey retracing Toumert’s steps across the Maghreb and into the Middle East, during the course of which the writer’s subject begins to inhabit him. Toumert and the narrator meld, the voices become confused, and time collapses as the twelfthcentury man resurfaces in the narrative present. The landscape of the desert inhabits the writer too: “has inhabited me since an indeterminate time.”14 Setting out on this quest, the narrator in search of Ibn Toumert describes the pleasure of driving fast: “I like to feel the fieriness of speed and the fragility of existence on the road. When the car is hurtling at 130 km/h without succeeding in conquering the distension of the dunes, one feels the distance shrink between living and dying, between fullness and annihilation, between compactness and emptiness.”15 It is the same desire one feels when standing at the top of a very


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tall building, the deliciously terrifying idea that you could just let yourself fall over the edge and into oblivion. Seductive and dangerous, this in-between space. And here I am, a writer from a cold country in search of an author in this hot desert land. But Djaout wasn’t from the desert. His roots were in the mountains of his birth and in this city where he spent most of his life:

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It is always with confused emotion that I return to this place that I love and hate equally, Algiers, the second city of my childhood, Algiers, where I must stop each time before continuing my voyage so as to find a bit farther in the back country the tomb in which, mummified and intact, sleeps the memory of my first years. Algiers cuts with light and grubby beauty.16

I am not sure what I expect to find. These are the streets he walked, but what is left of him here, other than the Maison de Presse renamed in his honor? Perhaps I have been secretly hoping that if I set out on this journey, Djaout would find me, haunt me, accompany me somehow, as Ibn Toumert did him for a short while in L’Invention du désert. If I invented Algeria, perhaps Djaout would come. But now I understand that this will not happen. I am alone in Algeria with nothing but an outof-date Lonely Planet to guide me. In the end—this is something I notice for the first time in the café, a little too late—even Djaout’s narrator is dissatisfied with the manner in which he is accompanied and haunted on his journey: I would have liked so much to have the vibrating and virgin head of the ancestor for such a voyage; I would have liked for Ibn Toumert to accompany me not as book to write, not as the pisssmell of old documents, but as incontinent blood that pushes me to defy the sun, and that fills me with warlike tricks as the desert ensnares me in its traps. I would have liked for Ibn Toumert to camp himself so sovereignly within me so that between my fingers the sun could suddenly take on all the properties of water. I


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would have liked my head to be filled with symbols so that everything that flows, sand or water, would meld, so that everything murderous would purify. But the ancestor is not at my side, will never be at my side. He is but a distant idea that perhaps I will one day turn into a book, so as to put an end to its deambulations, to stop its transhumance inside my head.17

And so Djaout for me, I think, rubbing the space between my eyebrows, massaging the thought in, eyes fixed on the passage. However much I would like to find him here, to have him accompany me on this journey, the author is not at my side, will never be at my side. “Is this seat taken?” “I’m sorry, pardon me?” I look up from my book. A young man is standing in front of me with a cigarette in his mouth (unlit) and a coffee in his hand. He gestures toward the chair at my table with his chin. “Of course, sit down.” Which he does, then lights his cigarette. “Français?” he asks, looking at the book in front of me. I drain my coffee cup and shake my head, but don’t elaborate. He looks like he’s between twenty-five and thirty. Takes a drag and jutting his lower jaw out, exhales upward. His eyes are a light greenish-brown, hazel. His features are fine, and his hair very curly and short. He looks tired. Like he hasn’t slept in weeks. He takes another drag and looks at my book. “What are you reading?” he asks, trying again, and nodding at the novel. It now lies face-down on the café table. When I tell him, a look of recognition flickers across his face. “Djaout? Yeah, I know him. Poet, right?” “Yes, that’s right,” I answer. “But I prefer his novels. I’ve never been a great reader of poetry. This one, L’Invention du désert, is the reason I came here, to Algeria.” He looks puzzled.


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“I’m looking for something that will help me finish a book I’m writing.” “Here? There’s nothing left. Everyone’s trying to get out. Those who could emigrated long ago, and now there are no more visas. The rest of us just bust our asses trying to survive, like conards.” He says this last word—assholes, idiots—slowly, in a sing-song and tired voice. A light tone for heavy words. Of course he’s right. What am I doing here? I speak anyway. “Well, it’s kind of a hard question to answer, what I was expecting to find,” I say slowly, signaling to the barista for another two coffees over my companion’s shoulder. The young man’s drained his cup as well, but I don’t want him to leave yet. A sudden desire to talk has come over me. “This novel, the one I have here, is about an author who becomes possessed by his subject, by the guy he’s writing about. The author follows a man’s footsteps through the desert and eventually the person he’s following becomes part of him. I want to do something similar with Djaout. Walk the places he walked in hope of finding a piece of him. Or a trace.” “Sounds romantic.” He says this wryly. “I guess,” I say, embarrassed at the sound of my plan explained aloud to a stranger, especially now that Djaout himself has revealed its misguidedness to me. In my imagination at home it had seemed different, not so naïve. I can feel my ears burning, so I take the book, with the spine in my right hand and shuffle the pages, backward as always, as if reading a Hebrew or Arabic text. I don’t know why I do this. Perhaps to get a different perspective on things. The coffees arrive. He thanks me. “What’s your name?” he asks. “John.” I lie. It’s easier this way. “And you?” “Kader. Abdelkader.” “Of course it is.” I laugh, shaking my head. “What?” he asks, looking vaguely offended. “Nothing, no, I’m sorry. It’s just that—” I don’t even know


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where to start, but the hazel eyes are looking increasingly alarmed, so I take a deep breath and try. “It’s just that Abdelkader is a name that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. In a way, Abdelkader brought me here too. It’s part of the search for Djaout.” “What does Abdelkader have to do with him?” “Nothing, really. It’s really a connection that I’ve imagined. It started when I heard about this funny place in America.” And I tell him the story of Elkader. Two more coffees later, and I’m buzzing, but Kader and I have become fast friends. I’ve learned a lot about his life, grateful for the opportunity to listen and not have to continue to explain my quest. He works nights as a security guard at the hospital. Every morning he stops at this café before heading home to sleep. The coffee has no effect on him, apparently. He has three brothers and two sisters. The eldest, Leila, is married and lives with her husband in Oran, but Yasmina still lives at home with him and M’hamed and his mother. His father died five years ago. Tarik, the eldest brother was a policeman and was killed in 1996. Kader’s twin Youcef is in prison. I don’t ask why. 11:00 a.m. I am following Kader up a narrow lane. His apartment is just up the hill, he says. The streets are busy. A woman veiled in white hurries by with a basket followed by another, unveiled. Her heels clunk clunk clunk on the stones beneath her feet. Water trickles by in a shallow gutter at the side of the lane, and little faces peer out from behind every doorway to see the stranger Kader is leading home. I pull a grimace at one of them and hear an eruption of giggles behind me as we continue up the alley past a patch of graffiti spray-painted on the rough wall. Kader shoots me a grin over his shoulder. His mother is away at her village, he told me, extending the invitation. There is room at the apartment, and “you won’t find Djaout in a hotel” he said with laughter in his eyes. I agreed


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to follow him, in part because I was too tired to protest, and because I knew he was right. Half an hour later I am lying in his mother’s room on clean sheets that Yasmina has put on the bed. I fall asleep on my stomach, right arm tucked under my pillow, and L’Invention du désert under my hand. • • •

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I have a bellicose dream. An unrelenting great captain, I sow terror in my apartment. My head protected by an anti-fear mask, a never-ending roll of cartridges around my body, I track Ibn Toumert, who is retrenched in one of the four rooms of my home. But more than once I forget the object of my ambush to spray with a generous blast one of my daughters behind a door-knock or a cat coming to beg for the warmth of my eiderdown. I listen for the rain falling outside, but the noises of the house entreat my ears too much: Ibn Toumert won’t stop coming and going as if to taunt my vigilance, I who aspire to one thing alone, that he be forgotten and allow me to kill him in this way. Intermittently I see his muscular and dry desert-man body slide behind pieces of furniture. In the end he plants himself squarely in front of me; the few hairs sticking out of his nostrils tremble with indignation. I pull the trigger hard. I have emptied the cartridge. Ibn Toumert considers me disdainfully and says: “It’s because you are barren that you have murderous impulses. You want to eliminate me simply so that you won’t have to talk about me anymore.”18

This is the narrator’s dream, not mine. Bensmaïa calls him the “narrator-trekker,”19 but really he’s a narrator-tracker who follows his subject across time and space, eventually hunting him down: “I must, at all costs, create for myself a reputation as a tracker. I track like a creature of patience, however rugged the lookout.”20 Having grown to hate him, once the narrator locates his subject, he tries to kill him. Unsuccessfully, as it turns out, and the author finds himself mocked by his subject.


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In L’Invention du désert the reader and writer are complicit. They take part in the same hunt, the same task. The narratortracker is accompanied by the reader-tracker, the latter pursuing the former, as the former tracks his subject: The multiplicity of the lines of flight crossing Djaout’s text and the ambiguous character of the metaphors overdetermining the main signifiers—the desert, of course, but also the text and history— demand a radically new position from the reader. We must still read, and read with caution, but with the clear stipulation that henceforth, “to read” no longer consists merely of searching for a signified hidden behind the words or fragments of narratives that have come from nowhere. Rather, to read is to undertake a voyage more like that of Tarkovsky’s Stalker than that of a tourist, even a tourist who appreciates Francophone literature.21

Both reader and writer become Mendinants, wanderers of the Medina, “for whom the Arab city is experienced as an operator of analysis of what is at stake in the adventure of writing and, at the same time, as a generator of topoi that completely transform our relation to time and space and force us to experience a new kind of relation to writing and thought.”22 Elias Canetti, Claude Ollier, Abdelwahab Meddeb, and Hédé Beji all use this same expression. “‘To walk’ has become synonymous with ‘to write,’ and ‘to write’ (and to read) is what feeds the desire to lose oneself in the city-labyrinth to the point where meaning and/or meanings dizzily collide.”23 The role of the Mendinant, or perhaps the idea of the Mendinant, depends on a fictional relationship with one’s subject, place, and even with oneself. It is “a character whom the writer creates (for himself or herself) in order to be able to think (himself or herself); in order to conceive the exile that is his or her language [. . .].”24 To read L’Invention du désert, therefore, one must voyage too. Invent one’s own way to the desert, tracking the author, his narrator, and his subject, making them one’s own subject in turn.


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This is my dream: Surrounded by books about death and bones, I sit at my place at the art library. My head protected by a widebrimmed hat, a bedroll under my chair, I track Tahar Djaout, who remains, as always, just beyond reach. I can see him disappear behind the book shelves, down the alley. Eventually I know he will make it to the desert, where I will no longer be able to find his footprints. He never looks back, and I strain to keep my eyes on him. More than once I become distracted by Matt, the librarian’s assistant, or by an incoming e-mail. I listen for the wind against the windows. Djaout keeps moving, slowly disappearing into the distance. I, who only aspire to one thing, to catch up to him, am losing ground. Intermittently I see his dark head pop up over the horizon as he makes his way. In the end he disappears. I think to myself disdainfully—it’s because I am barren that I couldn’t see his face. • • •

When I wake up the book is on the floor by the bed and I have a trickle of drool running down the side of my face that ends at a little wet patch on the pillow. I sit up slowly and look at the clock. It’s 5:00 p.m. I feel heavy from having slept too much too early. I won’t be able to sleep normally tonight, but I’m still exhausted. I go to the kitchen for a glass of water. Through a crack in the door I can see that Kader is still sleeping, the sheets around his waist in a crumple. I creep around the kitchen, careful not to wake him. He will go back to work at midnight, and needs his rest. Yasmina has left a note on the table, saying there’s food in the fridge and to help myself. Some cheese, fruit, and a slice of bread. I sit at the table with my guidebook and L’Invention du désert, opening the novel to the section on Tehouda. It is the city of La Kahina, the Jewish-Berber woman warrior, whose mausoleum lies lost in the sand: Tehouda. City melted into dust. City of crumbly earth in the crease of the desert. A mound the color of anonymity like the


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nature surrounding it. No commemorative plaque. There isn’t even a road sign. For those who inventory localities Tehouda is not a historical place, it isn’t even a place at all. Tehouda does not exist. Nevertheless, it is there that the history of the Maghreb played out.25

The desert swallows its past. Cities disappear, eaten by its sands, “welcoming and murderous.”26 Places become non-places, erased by the migrating dunes. A metaphor for the country itself, perhaps. So many eaten memories: of the war, of language, of local traditions, and of the dead. A necrophagous society feasting on memory is how Djaout described his country on more than one occasion.27 I have read about In-Salah, the place of the salty water. It is a Sudanese-style town built in the red mud of the region. On the western edge of the town and behind the mosque stands a dune, which is slowly drowning the town in sand. At one end of the dune, In-Salah is disappearing, but at the other end it is resurfacing at the rate of around one meter per year: The amount of sand on the move actually remains fairly constant, so while it is swallowing up a building on its leading edge, it is uncovering one behind it which may have been under the sand for a generation or two. Once the ruins of a house have been uncovered, it is established who it used to belong to and then that person’s relatives rebuild the place and move in.28

The desert does not simply bury the past, it also uncovers it. This dry climate preserves ruins and artifacts—this we know from Egypt, from Israel, and from the rest of the Middle East. Yes, the desert brings on amnesia, but it also preserves forgotten objects. Eventually, as in In-Salah, the lost memory will be revealed. In a library a book may disappear into the stacks, misshelved and forgotten, but one day it will be found, recovered, uncovered, and its text will once again see the light of day. To go in search of one thing almost always results in finding some-


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thing else. This is the beautiful accident of research. As I sit at Kader’s kitchen table with my plate of fruit, cheese, and bread, it occurs to me that on some level I must have known when I set out for Algiers that my search for Djaout was a pretext. It was inevitable that I would not find him here, but that I would nevertheless find something else worth the journey. I am still sitting with my book when Yasmina comes home. She has curly hair that grows out from her scalp like a dark halo, and wears a long flowered skirt paired with a faded blue sweater. Weighed down with shopping bags, she walks into the apartment, holding the keys in her mouth, and wedges the door open with her hip. I dash across the room to grab a few of her parcels, and she drops the keys into her palm. I feel her eyes study my profile as I set the packages down by the refrigerator and wonder if she has seen through my disguise, but when I turn to look at her, her smile betrays nothing. Down the hall I hear a door click. Kader is up. The shower hums, and the pipes knock faintly inside the walls of the apartment. I chat with Yasmina as she prepares dinner. I guess that she is around twenty-three years old. She tells me that she is finishing her nursing studies. Next year she hopes to work at the same hospital as Kader, who now joins us. Refreshed and sweetsmelling. How long will I stay? Yasmina asks me as she serves the meal onto plates. Kader fills the water glasses. I don’t know yet, I tell her. I’d like to make my way to the desert soon. Once I’m there, it will depend on what I find. “I insinuate myself into the desert . . .”29 Kader offers to take me to the desert. He borrows his cousin’s jeep for the journey. Rachid used to run tours into the Sahara and the Hoggar, but went bankrupt in 1989. The jeep is old, but here, like in other hot places—Australia, Cuba—people keep their cars on the road for decades. We must prepare for the voyage south carefully. I have been warned against the dangers of the desert by many people, including Djaout:


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Someone once told me the story of a German tourist (Oh, no! It wasn’t Hölderlin!) who was suddenly seized with panic because of the weight of the desert between In-Salah and Tamanrasset. He had been driving for hours and hours without respite from the constant furnace and the constant silence. Then, a screw came loose inside his head. The tourist stopped suddenly, angrily started to smash the windows and windshield of the Land Rover then took off like a madman into the ocean of rock and sand. A truck driver en route to Tamanrasset picked him up, half-dead, at the side of a road.30

He was driven mad, that tourist. Like Ibn Toumert in Paris, who tries to bust out of his author’s head, kicking like a madman to escape the prison of his skull.31 Like the young American who set out to cross a section of the Australian desert on bicycle, taking only a liter of water with him. (I no longer remember where, but I saw a television documentary about this a couple of years ago.) Aboriginal trackers were called in to help find him once his parents became worried. When they finally rescued him he was circling back on his own footprints in a state of delirium (“Yes, sometimes the desert takes revenge”32), the bike long-abandoned. A camera crew was on hand to record the manhunt, but in the excitement it had missed the shot of the actual rescue. The medevac crew had already reached him and given him water to drink when the cameraman realized his mistake, so back down he went, half-dead, onto the sands that had almost swallowed him, to reenact the moment of deliverance. But this time he was rescued with a fresh, cold bottle of water in his right hand, beads of condensation gathering on its plastic ridges. The subject of water always excites Sean whenever we talk about the Australian desert. I only need to mention something casually—how I would like to see Uluru (Ayers Rock), or drive across the Red Center one day—and he invariably launches


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into a sermon about how much and how often one must drink to stay healthy there. One liter per hour, he repeats, gesticulating vigorously, his voice rising. One liter per hour, I recite under my breath, as I help Kader load heavy water-filled canteens onto the roof-rack of the jeep. We are heading south in the morning. Southbound 0 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5

“I do not head southward to enjoy myself or in search of unedited sensations. Rather, it’s a way for me to look inside, because the desert has inhabited and illuminated me for an indeterminate period of time.”33

6:00 a.m. The desert occupies 85 percent of this country. The route from Algiers to Tamanrasset is one thousand kilometers long. Kader wants to stop in Biskra, the first oasis town in the Sahara, and only a few hours away. We will smell it before we see it, he tells me. The sulfurous baths welcome new arrivals. 11:00 a.m. Neither of us has spoken for a long time. We have both tired of our license-plate game. The last two numbers on the plates of Algerian cars identify the home wilaya of the vehicle: 16 Algiers, 11 Tamanrasset, 25 Constantine, 06 Bejaia, and so on.34 I have mastered every region in Algeria. There is a comfortable silence between us, and I watch as road signs fly by the jeep’s window. Kader takes a swig from a thermos full of water and then offers it to me. I take it, grateful to wash the dust from my throat. He speaks: “I’ve been doing some writing too, you know.” “Really?” “Yeah, at the hospital. The night shift is usually pretty quiet, so I started bringing a notebook with me about a year ago.” “What do you write in it?”


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“Whatever comes to mind. Sometimes just my thoughts, nothing in particular, but I like to write stories too.” “Oh yeah? Would you let me read one?” “They’re in Arabic.” “Oh.” “I could tell you one from memory if you want. The one I finished last week.” “Sure, what’s it called?” “No title yet.” It’s about a pilot whose wife is killed. He’s a commercial pilot who flies medical supplies all over Africa. So, he comes home from a trip to Sudan and the house is empty. He phones his wife’s sister, thinking perhaps she has gone there for a meal, but the sister tells him she has not heard from his wife in two days. This alarms him, because his wife and her sister are very close, and they see each other regularly and speak on the phone every day. He begins to panic and calls everyone he can think of, including the hospital, his wife’s hammam, and her friends. Nothing. He searches the neighborhood, going into every bookstore, café, library, grocery store. He walks for hours until he comes home dejected. By this point he is desperate and no longer knows what to do, so he goes to the car, planning to drive somewhere, although he’s not sure where. And that’s where he finds her. There is blood everywhere. She is sitting in the front seat of the car—he recognizes her form in the darkness. Her head sits at a strange angle. He moves closer and sees now that her throat has been slit. He can’t think, can’t see anything. He supports himself on the hood of the car and vomits painfully before running out the door, leaving the body of his wife where he found it. As he sits in the dark of his kitchen that night (he has not moved since the terrible discovery in the garage), he receives a call from his employer. A pilot is sick and the airline wants to know if he will take his place and fly an impor-


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tant shipment to Mali. He will need to leave immediately. The pilot accepts. When he takes off that evening, the air traffic controllers will report later, he veers off course immediately. It is strange, because it is a clear evening and visibility is good. Moments later the plane loses radio contact. It never lands, no crash site is ever found. Three other people were on the plane as well: a copilot and two technicians. The fate of the crew is a mystery. “What happened?” “I don’t know. I think maybe he was trying to reach his wife, or maybe the plane disappeared into the sea, or in the desert.” “It’s a sad story.” “Yeah.” 6:00 p.m. Biskra is now far behind us. The sun has gone down over the horizon; Kader rubs his eyes. We switched places an hour ago, and we will soon stop for dinner and to set up camp for the night. It’s been a long day, but we’ve made good time. Tomorrow perhaps we’ll take it easier. Kader turns his high beams off as the jeep dips down over a ridge. An eighteen-wheeler passes us in a great whoosh of dust. I hold my face up to the emerging stars and close my eyes, feeling the cool air rush over me through the open window. I relax into the desert’s embrace.


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SEVEN

A Posthumous Interview with Tahar Djaout

j ul i ja š uk ys : It is December 16, 200_. I am joined today by

Tahar Djaout. Most dialogues of or with the dead take place in Hades (Lucian and Fontenelle, for example) or in Purgatory (Dante, most famously), and some take place in Heaven, but I thought that it would be most fitting to conduct this interview in Elkader, Iowa. It’s a cold and wet day here, with winds coming from the north, but the people of this town have lent us a corner of their public library for our conversation. Welcome to Elkader, Tahar Djaout. Allow me to say that I am very sorry not to have met you in your lifetime. In fact, I only became acquainted with your work after reading Assia Djebar’s Le Blanc de l’Algérie, where she writes very eloquently of your death, as well as the deaths of many of your colleagues. ta h a r d jao u t : I’m flattered that she thought to include me in her book. And I’m glad that you found your way to my texts, no matter the circumstances that led you there. In my reading of your work, I started with the moment of your death and worked backwards. In doing so, I suppose I am guilty of an impulse that, on the other hand, I have been trying to fight over the past couple of years: namely, to read your life and work first and foremost through the lens of your death. I wonder how you feel about the fact that your work is now being read—at least by some—in the shadow of your death? It’s a strange honor to enjoy such a surge of interest in my work at a moment when I can no longer really enjoy it. I must admit that part of me is annoyed that it was my death that


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sparked interest in my life, even though on some level I understand this impulse, as you say. I too may be guilty of a similar kind of death-interest in my reading of Kafka, whose work is so compelling because we know that he had instructed for it all to be destroyed. Texts are more interesting in the shadow of destruction. Perhaps the same can be said of lives. The way people slow down at car accidents. In a way, yes. But surely there’s a way of examining the aftermaths of disasters with something other than a simple voyeuristic fascination. Of course. Sorrow is a human experience, so we can often recognize ourselves in other people’s tragedies. This is what distinguishes a voyeuristic observer of pain from a compassionate one: the latter understands that the tables could turn at any moment. I was in Jerusalem for a short time this past year. I arrived in a neighborhood where a popular café had been bombed only two weeks earlier. And then, the week after I arrived, a restaurant was blown up in Haifa by a suicide bomber. We heard about it from a neighbor, and I remember sitting shocked in the living room trying to process the news. After a minute or two my friend Yaron looked at me grimly and said, “now you are beginning to understand the experience of your author.” He was right. For the rest of the month in Jerusalem I walked through the city in fear. Any noise would make my heart stop. In a small way, as a result of that experience, I think I have a sense of what it must have been like for you in Algiers—this feeling that death could come at any moment. There’s a fear in that kind of situation—the situation that we experienced in Algeria in the 1990s—that is almost threedimensional. It becomes its own creature, taking on a concrete form. You can feel it creeping along beside you as you walk in the street. Strangely though, and I’m sure this is the case in Jerusalem as well, one gets used to it. Death threats became


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almost routine for me. And I learned to live with them. Saïd Mekbel told of how you refused to change your habits, despite the threats. Do you think you should have acted differently? Your question is meaningless, there is no revisiting those decisions. And even if it were possible, Saïd and I are now in the same place, despite the fact that he was somewhat more vigilant than I where safety was concerned. In the end, the result was the same. Do you see Saïd often? Yes. He remains a close friend. Is he well? Still working hard. Do you follow the events in Algeria? Yes, as best we can, but as you can imagine, one’s perspective changes somewhat. How do you mean? You’ll have to find that out for yourself. I’d like to talk about your text The Last Summer of Reason. Did you know that it has been translated into English and that the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka wrote a foreword to it? Yes. I love the idea. It’s amazing to think of my book being read on the subways of New York City or here in the cornfields of Iowa. The original French text was published in Paris by Seuil. There’s a note at the beginning of the text indicating that the manuscript was found among your papers and that you had just finished it. Is it true that it was finished? I think no text is ever finished, at least no text of mine. For me, each text captures the moment I made the decision to publish it. When I go back and look at my books there are always things I would like to change—move a word here, pare down a sentence there. But books are like children. You love them with all their faults.


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You did once go back and change a text that had already been published . . . You mean L’Exproprié. Yes. You’re right. I think L’Exproprié is a good example of how the fact that a text is published does not mean that it’s “finished” in any absolute sense. L’Exproprié was published too early. I was too young, too ambitious. A few years after the first publication I found myself wishing that I had sat on it for a while, and allowed it to ripen. So, when the opportunity presented itself to go back and rework the text, I seized it. Would you want to go back and revise it again? No, I don’t think so. Not because L’Exproprié has no faults, but because the time came to move onto other things. Writing evolves throughout a life, and there’s no need to hide these signs of growth and development. You always made a living by writing. You were a journalist by profession. How did these two modes of writing—the literary and the journalistic—intersect? Did you privilege one over the other? Poetic writing, literary writing has always been foremost in my mind. Journalism was what I did by day, but the poetry and the novels fed me in ways that the writing of columns could never have done. That said, in the last couple years of my life, my work as a journalist had begun to take on an increasing importance. Algeria needed people to speak bravely and in the most public of fora. That’s what Ruptures was all about. It was an attempt to create a space for opposition to the government, to the intégristes. It was an attempt to create a third way, if you like. During this stage of political engagement through the publication of Ruptures, a stage that became the final one of your life, did you continue to write literary texts? Of course. This is precisely the period that gave birth to Le Dernier Été de la raison. I wanted to find a way of writ-


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ing through the claustrophobia that continues to plague the ordinary Algerian today. Boualem Yekker is a prisoner of his bookstore, of his city, of his country. He has no way out, and nowhere to go. The young and old alike dream of leaving the country, and there has been a great exodus already: many of the best Algerian minds now live overseas. Some, it is true, have returned. But it is not easy being Algerian. At least two generations have been lied to about their history, and a collective amnesia has long since set in. What does it mean to be Algerian now? It was a very short honeymoon for my country after independence. We very quickly began cultivating the society that we see today: divided and traumatized. Before your death you said that Algeria was living through a period that was simultaneously “positive and tragic.”1 You saw in the disastrous aftermath of Algeria’s first experiment with democracy the possibility for transformation. Yes, and this is precisely why we founded Ruptures in January 1993. Abdelkrim Djaâd, Arezki Metref, and I saw the need for an independent voice, one that would not be afraid to speak frankly. The name of our newspaper wasn’t accidental. A rupture, or perhaps a series of small ruptures, was what we were hoping to cause. Over the decades Algeria had been lulled into a state of intellectual slumber. But starting with the October demonstrations of 1988, then following through to the election disaster and up to the 1993 assassination of Boudiaf, Algeria found itself in crisis. The word “crisis” comes from the Greek for “choice,” so a crisis is always an opportunity for choice— for change, growth, and movement forward. At Ruptures we had hoped to be part of a break from the past, out of the sleepiness and a move into something new and progressive, toward an Algeria of tolerance, openness and democracy. Do you think you were successful? I think it was a good start. As you know, Ruptures didn’t survive for long. I personally only edited twenty issues, which


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lasted about six months, and my colleagues managed to continue for some time after my death. Perhaps for about two more months or so. I’m not really sure. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States, President George W. Bush issued an ultimatum to the countries of the world, saying that they were either with the United States, or they were with the terrorists. In rereading your first editorial in Ruptures, I was interested to see that you set out your mission in exactly opposite terms. You wrote: “We will refuse [. . .] the blackmail whose purpose it is to confine us within the kind of logic that goes ‘it’s either me or the one facing me who’s even worse,’ ‘if you are not with me, you’re against me.’”2 I wonder if you could say a few words about the spirit of reconciliation in this inaugural editorial. The real spirit of reconciliation in Algeria was, of course, embodied by the late President Mohamed Boudiaf. He began something that seemed miraculous. He managed to transcend the anger, the generational divide, the ideologies, and to speak with kindness to all concerned. He was a great man, and it was his spirit that guided our first steps in Ruptures. The title, Ruptures, is a nod to him, since he was the first to use this word to describe the kind of change he imagined for Algeria. A few years ago a French journalist described you as an eradicator, an “éradicateur.”3 Is this a reasonable characterization of you? It seems counter to your belief in democracy and openness. Dialogue would of course be central to any process of reconciliation and democratization. How do you respond to this characterization? I imagine people call me an eradicator because my colleagues and I announced early in our venture with Ruptures that we would publish no interviews with the intégristes, with gia chiefs, or with fis representatives. Does this run counter to democratic principles? Perhaps, but at the time Algeria was going through such a crisis, and we felt it was necessary to take a hard line.


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In the past I’ve characterized this as a family crisis: one part of the family wanted to go forward, and the other part wanted to pull us back into the stone ages.4 That was the choice we were faced with. Would you take the same eradicator position today? I wouldn’t have called my position that of an “eradicator.” When people remember you, they describe you as a very modest man. One of my favorite anecdotes about you is one of mistaken identity, when you were sent to cover the story of the aftermath of the earthquake at El-Asnam. [laughs] Yes, in fact, the entire staff of Algérie Actualité (not only I) was relocated to El-Asnam, and I was sent out to the neighboring villages to cover the event from their perspective. I’ve never been one for fashion, and I went off in my usual attire of jeans and sneakers, with the intention of pounding the pavement, talking to people one-on-one, and gathering some interesting stories. I was driven by a chauffeur, a very elegant man, who had lived overseas for many years, and, as always, he was dressed in an impeccably pressed three-piece suit, white shirt, and tie. He completely outclassed me in my grubby duds. Well, when we arrived at our destination, the villagers immediately grabbed the chauffeur: looking at the two of us, they had (perhaps logically) concluded that he was the one to talk to. They laid out the situation in the village for him in great detail, lavished him with attention, and all this around a heavily laden table. The chauffeur had a great sense of humor and a healthy appetite, so he played along, and I was free to wander through the village and track down my stories. It wasn’t until several hours later, once I had completed my interviews, that the villagers understood who was the journalist and who was the chauffeur!5 It’s an incident that reminds me of Gogol’s Inspector General. It would have made for a good episode in a novel. Unfortunately I never got to use it. You manage to communicate what one could call Algeria’s


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absurd side very well, both in Les Vigiles, a novel about the trials and tribulations of an inventor caught up in the machinations of a town’s self-appointed spies, and also, to a certain extent, in Le Dernier Été de la raison. You write there, for example, that weather forecasts have been banned, because only God can know the future, and that it would be blasphemous to try and predict rain or sunshine. Another one of my favorites is that spare tires have been banned, since carrying one would betray a lack of trust in God. I wrote about this aspect of Algeria with great affection, but also in hope of showing the truth. In my novel Les Chercheurs d’os there is also a kind of absurdity described: the country is being crisscrossed by people digging up the bones of their brothers, sons, and husbands who fell in the Algerian war of independence. But no matter how busily we go about transporting the bones of the dead, all this activity only serves to conceal a deep, deep forgetfulness. How autobiographical is your writing? It’s surprising how many people ask me this. Why do people read fiction if what they’re after is real life? Why continually search for the key to a novel that may not have a keyhole? I once discussed this issue with Mouloud Mammeri, and I will answer your question by quoting him: “The story that a novel tells never happened exactly as [the author] tells it. But it is not at all a paradox to say that art lies in infidelity, by which I mean in the distance that the artist introduces between his or her creation and the lived reality. All art is mediation.”6 In your lifetime you were very cagey about your religious beliefs. You never answered directly the question of whether or not you were an atheist. How would you answer this question now? I wouldn’t. But I will tell you this—such questions are less important now than in life. Perhaps then we could talk a little bit about your experience of the afterlife.


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One of the most interesting experiences has been meeting Saint Augustine. He remembers Algeria fondly, and likes to get to know others from his native country. Sadly, he finds that there are fewer opportunities to make contact with the living there. How so? The saints, for the most part, wait for an invitation to intercede. The invitation can come in a number of forms, but as you’ve surmised from your travels, a place name is a good way to make contact. I spent my youth in the Haut Casbah of Algiers, and a close friend of mine lived on the rue Saint Augustin. One day, on my way to pay my friend a visit—it was in the ’60s or the ’70s, I’m not sure exactly when—and noticed that his street’s name had been changed. Overnight Augustine found himself erased from the map of Algiers.7 Already so few traces of the Bishop of Hippo were left in our country. His remains had been evacuated to Europe (as you know, some of his relics have even made it here, to America) centuries earlier, so that channel had already been closed. Over the centuries the memory of him faded, and then finally his name too was evacuated, and with that, one more passage was sealed off in the cosmos. This is why Elkader is such an important place to us. It is perhaps one of the few points of contact that remain. And the Emir? How does he feel about Elkader? He’s eager to talk to you about this himself. Both he and Cruser send their blessings.


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NOTES

1. Welcome to Elkader 1. In other regions, most notably in Kabylia, Abd el-Kader met with great resistance and failed. See Julien 180. 2. This account is based primarily on Aouli, Redjala, and Zoummeroff, particularly 389–442. See also Étienne. 3. Abd el-Kader was first known as the “Sultan of the Arabs” (although Vista Clayton asserts that he did not accept this title; 52–53), the “Emir” (“Commander” or “Prince”), and finally “Emir el moumenîn” (“Commander” or “Prince of the Faithful”). He is most often referred to simply as the Emir. See Blunt 36 n.1, and Clayton, 52–53. 4. For more on Abd el-Kader’s protection of Christians see Blunt 267–72 and Churchill 314–18. Blunt’s account reads: “Abd el Kader’s heroic action had been the means of saving 12,000 lives. Yet he claimed no credit to himself for what he had done. When Bellemare wrote to congratulate him, he replied modestly: ‘I do not deserve your praises, for I was only an instrument. Tell this to your Sultan and mine. As I passed through the streets of Damascus I saw him walking before me, saying “do this”, and I did it; “go this way”, and I went; “save this man”, and I saved him.’” (Blunt 272). Churchill cites fifteen thousand as the number of Christians saved (Churchill 318). 5. Elkader Historical Society. 6. Price 237–38. 7. History of Clayton County, Iowa 577–80. 8. “‘Ambassador’ from Algerian Sister City,” 1a. 9. “‘Ambassador’ from Algerian Sister City,” 3a. 10. “Iowa Ambassadors Home.” 11. Olson. 12. “Elkader, Mascara.” 13. Monson. 14. Ties between Elkader and Mascara have since been reestablished following an initiative by Bensadat Benhouna, a visiting professor from the University of Algiers and native of Mascara. Benhouna visited Elkader in April 2005 (“New Cultural Opportunities” 1).


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Notes to Pages 10–16

15. In 2005 Elkaderites raised a thousand dollars to build a new children’s playground in Elkader City Park. The playground is dedicated to the memory of Idriss Jazairy Jr., the two-year-old son of the former Algerian Ambassador to the United States, Idriss Jazairy, a friend of Olson and the town of Elkader. The Ambassador’s son died tragically in a fire in Algiers (“Local Residents Donate” 1). 16. No bibliographic information was provided with the original clipping. The same article can be found under a different title. See Biggers. 17. “L’Algérie devient un site mortuaire, elle risque d’être demain le cimetière des libertés les plus élémentaires. Seuls les cyniques et les inconscients peuvent parler de la démocratie. Non, en cette fin du mois de décembre 1991, il y a défaite de la démocratie en Algérie, il y a défaite de l’intelligence, il y a défaite de la raison” (Djaout, “Facture” 3). 2. The Death of the Author “Il faut toujours se méfier des hommages post-mortem” (Tahar Djaout qtd. in Saâdi 13). Kundera 228. “Du dur métier d’être algérien” (Djaout, “La Haine” 8).

1. “Tahar Djaout est un symbole de rupture” (Nissaya Dafatir in “Les Réactions” 26). 2. “Le symbole d’un ‘retour’ paradoxalement évolutif” (Lacheraf). 3. “ figure de l’intellectuel-martyr” (Simon). 4. “Briser la tête de Tahar, c’est tuer la pensée” (Ramsé 3); “Ils l’ont assassiné [. . .] parce qu’il incarnait la culture et la tolérance dans un pays qu’on a voulu affaisser sous la médiocrité” (Djaâd 5); “Dire la liberté, écrire la liberté, défendre avec conviction la liberté [. . .] c’est cette idée qu’on a voulu [. . .] tuer” (Mabrouki 29); “Ils ont meurtri le symbole d’une Algérie nouvelle, moderne, enfin libérée” (Abahri 4). 5. Most of the newspaper clippings from Elkader and in the Centre Culturel Algérien in Paris have no pagination. In addition, Algerian newspapers often attribute article authorship simply through the use of initials (J. S., for example). Inconsistencies in documentation regarding pagination and authorship are due to these facts. 6. Djaâd 5. 7. “Profondément aimé même si notre amour était pudique et muet” (Moussaoui 9). 8. “Et après la lecture de ses romans, nouvelles, et poèmes, j’étais ‘gonflée à bloc’: un type qui use et qui abuse de ‘vilains’ mots dans


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ses textes, sûr que mes ‘chastes oreilles’ allaient rougir de son dévergondage verbal. Donc, bardée des répliques les plus corrosives, je me pointe à l’heure, date et lieu dits. Alors là, toute mon agressivité a fondu comme neige au soleil, du bord des cils, jusqu’à la pointe des orteils, il ‘transpire’ de gentillesse” (Chantal Allaf in Djaout, “Interview inédite” 12). 9. “M. Djaout, par vos écrits complètement hermétiques, et votre vocabulaire sophistiqué, vous avez complexé mon ‘Petit Robert’ pour épater qui?” (Allaf in Djaout, “Interview inédite” 12). 10. “Mais si vous vouliez vous rallier à un plus large public, ne croyez-vous pas qu’il fallait viser plus bas?” (Allaf in Djaout, “Interview inédite” 12). 11. “D’ailleurs, en matière de viser plus bas, vous semblez avoir des problèmes de vessie? [. . .] [V]ous souillez surtout encore si c’était dans les vespasiennes, je ne trouverais rien à redire, mais comme ça n’importe où . . . ça pollue!!” (Allaf in Djaout, “Interview inédite” 12). 12. “Et pour aggraver votre cas ‘Dr. Jekkyl’ [sic], certains de vos écrits n’ont aucune ponctuation. Pourquoi?” This is Allaf’s take on Djouat’s assertion that narrators shouldn’t necessarily be equated with their authors, i.e., it’s his narrators who are potty-mouthed, not necessarily him, the author (Allaf in Djaout, “Interview inédite” 12). 13. “Tous ces écrits, sans ponctuation, je les ai écrits les yeux fermés, j’y mets un rhythme, une sorte de rhythme respiratoire qui ne supporte aucune rupture” (Allaf in Djaout, “Interview inédite” 12). 14. Human Rights Watch World Report 2002; Martinez; André Glucksmann qtd. in Messaoudi 208. This phrase could also be understood as a war against “the civilized people” or “the secular.” 15. See “Bloody Start.” 16. See “Missing Sahara.” 17. See “Bloody Start.” 18. Stora 195. 19. Stora 196; “Although [President] Chadli Bendjedid grieved over the victims of October 1988, those responsible for the repression, and particularly for the torture, were never brought to trial or even named” (Stora 199). 20. After the first ballot, senior officials of the fis made declarations outlining what was to come in their new government. They warned that Algerians “must change their customs regarding clothing and food,” that those who had voted for other parties “must announce (their) repentance publicly” (Independent 1 February 1992; Guardian 28


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December 1991 qtd. in Willis 240), and that “these elections have demonstrated that there are only two parties—the Party of God and the Party of the Devil” (Algérie Actualité 1 September 1992 qtd. in Willis 240). 21. In French the term most commonly used to designate a person or group who advocates the establishment of an Islamic state is “intégriste.” As the term has not yet entered the English vocabulary, I have chosen to use the term “Islamist,” most often used by Anglophone political scientists and historians of the Middle East. I do so with some trepidation and with the awareness that “Islamist” is not a neutral term (especially in French, i.e., “islamiste”). A good illustration of the loaded nature of this vocabulary and of the disagreement surrounding the use of “islamiste” vs. “intégriste” occurred during a roundtable discussion broadcast on the Franco-German channel arte’s program “Reportage: Khaled.” The most common objection to the term “islamiste” is that the violence perpetrated by the so-called Islamists in the name of Islam has nothing to do with the true spirit of the faith. 22. “Convicted of the murder after a controversial trial, Lieutenant Lembarek Boumaarafi of the anti-terrorist Special Intervention Unit (gis)—commanded by the powerful General Smaïn Lamari—is still waiting to serve his death sentence in a military prison in the province of Blida. Not so the general secretary of the independent Algerian Human Rights League (ladh)[,] lawyer Youcef Fethallah who investigated Boudiaf’s assassination. He was gunned down at his office in the heart of Algiers on June 18, 1994” (Aït Nadej, “Hit List”). 23. Bensmaïa, “Vanished Mediators” 13–14. 24. Jeune Afrique Jan. 27, 1994 qtd. in Willis 285. 25. “L’Algérie de Djaout,” 1. 26. “Tahar Djaout n’est pas mort” (Mokeddem 2); “Tahar survivra” (Sahar 29); “Il reste vivant” (“Institut” 2). 27. Aït Nadej, “Matoub Lounès.” 28. See Yidir 12–13. 29. “Après le terrible choc ressenti suite à la disparition de l’homme de lettres, voici venu le temps de l’amnésie qui risque de s’installer durablement. En effet, après une première commémoration (du 26 mai au 2 juin 1994) dont le programme était assez consistant, l’association organisatrice réduit les festivités, d’année en année. [. . .] L’euphorie de 1994 a laissé place à une tiédeur généralisée” (S. G.). Another journalist wrote in a similar vein in 1998, on the fifth anniversary of Djaout’s death: “Pourtant, Ruptures titrait, dans le n˚ 21, du 8 au 14 juin 1993,


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la photo du poète en médaillon, . Lors de sa mort, des milliers de plumes se sont élevées pour rendre hommage à celui qui a dit: >. Qu’en est-il aujourd’hui?” (Nevertheless, issue 21 of Ruptures from June 8–14, 1993, was titled Djaout’s Algeria Will Prevail! At the time of his death, thousands of pens were taken up to pay tribute to the one who said, ‘If you speak, you die, if you remain silent, you die, so speak out and die.’ What has happened to him today?”; Mellal 19). 30. For articles, see Bensmaïa, “Postcolonial Nations”; Gaillard; Geesey, “Algerian Fiction” and “Exhumation”; Lippert; Rodinis; and Sellin. The poetry study is Merahi. The translations, The Last Summer of Reason (Le Dernier Été de la raison) and The Watchers (Les Vigiles), appeared in English translation with Ruminator Books in 2001 and 2002 respectively. 31. “J’aurais aimé écrire dans ma propre langue, mais les choses, l’histoire, ont fait de nous ce qui nous sommes. Car écrire dans une langue étrangère telle la langue française, c’est s’exiler, se sentir étranger” (Djaout, “Tahar Djaout, il y a” 11). 32. “Nous le plaisantions souvent pour ses moustaches en crocs et son accent suisse” (Mimouni, “La mort” 28). 33. “Maints amis, au courant de notre projet, ont tout de suite estimé que le moment est mal choisi pour lancer un nouveau journal, que ni la pléthore de titres déjà en place, ni le terrain politique mouvant ne devraient inciter à tenter une expérience qui peut immédiatement tourner à l’aventure. Mais l’expérience, nous avons pris le parti de la tenter. Car nous considérons au contraire que l’Algérie vit la période des combats décisifs où chaque silence, chaque indifférence, chaque abdication, chaque pouce de terrain cédé peuvent s’avérer fatals. L’année qui vient de s’achever a vu la liberté d’expression, la démocratie tâtonner encore, se débattre dans la douleur, trébucher mais se relever et continuer à résister. C’est, en un mot, une année pas très brillante et, en cela, plus ou moins semblable à celles qui l’ont précédée. [. . .] “Après trois décennies d’errement, de fragiles édifications et des bévues monumentales, la société algérienne se rend compte que tout est à refaire, qu’il faut tout reconstruire sur des bases plus résistantes. Mohamed Boudiaf l’a bien compris, et cela lui a coûté la vie. [. . .] “Notre souhait, mais aussi notre ambition, c’est que Ruptures devienne le lieu de rencontre, l’espace d’expression et de débat de tous ceux qui oeuvrent pour une Algérie démocratique, ouverte et plurielle” (Djaout, “Lettre” 5).


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34. “Mais pour notre part, journalistes de Ruptures, nous continuerons le combat que nous avons engagé avec notre ami Tahar. Combat contre l’obscurantisme et les terrorismes. Combat pour une Algérie forte, modeste, efficace et épanouie” (Djaâd 5). 35. Law 90 of April 3, 1990, relinquished the state’s monopoly over the press and paved the way for the emergence of independent newspapers and magazines throughout the country. In a matter of months Algeria boasted the freest press in the Arab world. The law, however, “maintained the state’s monopoly over the supply of paper and the process of material fabrication of newspapers through the ownership and control of the printing presses existing in the country, as well as over distribution. That meant that the government gave a relatively formal freedom to individuals interested in producing new so-called independent publications, but in fact continued to control them indirectly” (Gafaïti, “Power” 55). 36. See Dhofari, “Feraoun,” “La Guerre,” “Une survivance,” and “Talismano.” 37. “Sur sa table, il y avait le numéro spécial de la revue américaine, African Literatures, auquel j’avais collaboré et qu’il venait tout juste de recevoir. C’est la dernière chose que j’ai écrit sur lui. [. . .] Ce même jour (vers le 20 juillet 1992), nous sortîmes du siège d’Algérie Actualité et allâmes nous attabler dans un café. Tahar me parla du nouvel hebdomadaire (Ruptures) qu’il voulait incessamment lancer avec quelques camarades. Puis, au fil de la conversation, il me confia qu’il avait reçu des menaces.” (“On his table was the special issue of the American journal African Literatures that I had worked on, and which he had just received. It is the last thing I wrote about him. [. . .] The same day [around July 20, 1992], we left the offices of Algérie Actualité and sat down at a table in a café. Tahar told me about the new weekly [Ruptures] that he wanted to launch immediately with a few friends. Then, over the course of our conversation, he confided that he had received threats”; Bouzar 12); “Il était d’une correction sans pareil. Ces derniers jours il a reçu beaucoup de lettres de menaces. Il a refusé d’y prêter attention. Loin de fléchir, il a continué à faire son travail, sans la moindre précaution.” (“He was incomparably proper. In the last while he received many threatening letters. He refused to pay them any attention. Far from bowing to them, he continued to work, without the slightest precaution”; unnamed source qtd. in Belhadjoudja 3). 38. “Tahar Ben Jelloun.”


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39. —Tahar, tu viens fermer la porte derrière moi. —Pardon, tu disais Saïd? —Tu viens mettre le verrou? —Oui, bien sûr, vaut mieux être prudent par les temps qui courent, n’est-ce pas? “C’est à chaque fois, la même scène qui se répète au moment de partir après avoir remis ma chronique à Ruptures. À chaque fois Tahar Djaout me répond de la même voix tranquille, sur le même ton paisible avec une sorte de détâchement assuré” (Mekbel 2). 40. —Ils continuent toujours d’afficher leur fameuse liste? —Oui toujours. —On y est encore tous n’est-ce pas? —Oui. “Le regard fait alors le tour des visages qui sont là, puis revient vous fixer, avec une sorte de tristesse et de mélancolie. Quand on évoque les menaces qui pèsent sur chacun d’entre nous, de toute l’équipe, Djaout est le plus discret. On a vite compris que chez lui, pas question de varier ou de changer ses habitudes” (Mekbel 2). 41. “On 9 February 1992, the government issued a statute replacing the previous legislation with martial law. This was followed by the 30 September 1992 law on terrorism and subversion according to which, for security reasons, the Ministry of the Interior can at any time order the arrest of journalists or the suspension of newspapers. On 7 June 1994, in the nation’s progressively critical sociopolitical context, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Communication adopted a confidential decree that imposed a veto on coverage or information related to security issues. In short, this meant that journalists were subjected to systematic censorship and that they could not work independently. Two years later, these laws were completed by the 11 February 1996 governmental decision to appoint to every printing house ‘reading committees’ consisting of civil servants whose function was to verify the content and treatment of security-related information by newspapers before publication” (Gafaïti, “Power” 58). 42. “Nous vous addressons au nom du fis pour vous dire d’être patient. Vous aurez très bientôt des nouvelles” (“Algérie: Silence”). 43. “Maintenant je veux comprendre pourquoi qu’on meurt” (“Algérie: Silence”). Hafid Gafaïti offers two reasons for why the journalists found themselves so violently targeted: “on the one hand, because most of them did not seriously denounce the cancellation of the December 1991 legislative elections or because they openly opposed


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the principle of a possible establishment of an Islamic republic, they were considered objective allies of the regime and therefore enemies who should be punished; on the other hand, it was assumed that assassinations of journalists would assure an important national and international coverage that would serve the cause of the insurrectional war waged against the state” (Gafaïti, “Power” 57). 44. “Là, ça fait pratiquement une dizaine de jours que je ne ferme pas l’oeil. . . . Et c’est des questions qui reviennent: qui tue, pourquoi on tue, pourquoi qu’on choisit certaines personnes, pourquoi un écrivain, pourquoi un psychiatre, pourquoi un fonctionnaire?” (“Algérie: Silence”). 45. “[V]ous êtes [un] sale communiste” (“Algérie: Silence”). 46. Reports on the number of bullets differ. Louis Gardel gives the following version of events: “Ils lui ont tiré une balle dans l’épaule et une balle dans la tête” (“They shot one bullet into his shoulder and one into his head”; Gardel). 47. “Il était entre huit heures trente et neuf heures moins le quart. Comme chaque matin, il chauffait le moteur de sa voiture. Quelqu’un frappa à sa vitre. Il ouvrit naturellement. Tahar tomba effondré. Le tueur le repoussa du siège, prit la voiture et démarra. . . . Deux balles peut-être trois. Personne n’entendit. Un crime au silencieux. Un tueur froid. Il paraît qu’on aurait même pas trouvé les douilles” (“It was between eight-thirty and quarter to nine. As every morning, he was warming up the motor of his car. Someone knocked on his window. Naturally, he opened it. Tahar fell, crushed. The killer pushed him off the seat, took the car, and pulled away. . . . Two bullets, possibly three. No one heard it. A crime using a silencer. A cold killer. It seems that the casings weren’t even found”; Saâdi 12). 48. “C’est compréhensible, les gens ont peur, car nous vivons dans une société de terreur” (Djaout’s unnamed cousin qtd. in “Film de la B.B.C.”). 49. “Un silencieux? Ou peut-être que les cigales ont dû à cet instant crier plus fort lorsque sa voiture, sans lui, a démarré” (Saâdi 12). 50. In fact Djaout was thirty-nine. 51. “M. Djaout Tahar, 38 ans, a été admis suite à une plaie par balle . . . Compte tenu des importantes lésions cérébrales, le pronostic reste très très sombre. La victime est dans un état comateux très profond. On donne très peu de chances quant à l’amélioration de son état de santé” (unnamed source qtd. in Belhadjoudja 3). 52. Belhadjoudja 3.


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53. Aberkane 8. 54. “Mercredi, 2 heures avant sa mort, j’étais encore, avec deux amies, à son chevet. “Battements du coeur . . . malgré lui, peut-être . . . Mais il bat. Effleure ta main, ta peau chaude, palpitante . . . Garde précieusement cette sensation. Parentés de l’âme, les seules qu’on ne renie jamais. Souffle régulier s’exhalant de son corps. Encouragements muets. Oui, vis encore, vis . . .” (Temimi 7). 55. “Et défilent dans ma tête des images de ces journées cauchemardesques passées à l’hôpital . . . Oui, le médecin avait déclaré dès le premier jour qu’il n’y avait rien à faire et que, cliniquement, Tahar Djaout était mort. Mais subsistait en nous, quelque part, l’espoir fou d’un miracle.” (“And inside my head pass images of these nightmarish days spent at the hospital . . . Yes, the very first day the doctor had declared that there was nothing to be done and that Tahar Djaout was clinically dead. But somewhere inside us subsisted the crazy hope for a miracle”; Temimi 7). 56. “La famille de Tahar Djaout, l’équipe de Ruptures et les centaines d’amis qui ont veillé au chevet de Tahar tiennent à remercier tout le personnel de l’hôpital de Baïnem pour sa sollicitude, sa gentillesse et sa bonté exceptionelle exprimée tout au long de l’agonie de Tahar Djaout” (“Hôpital” 6). 57. “La terre s’est renfermée sur le corps frêle du poète assassiné! L’exil ou la mort; le silence ou la mort, ont décrété ses tueurs!” (Zinaï-Koudil 23). 58. “L’Enterrement.” 59. Benabi. 60. Benabi; A. P. S.; J. G. and N. A. 61. Benabi. 62. J. G. and N. A. 63. “Tous ces illustres inconnus ont fait que Tahar ait eu l’enterrement qu’il meritait, celui d’un grand” (Ouazani 4). 64. See J. G. and N. A.; On Belabassi, see Reporters sans frontières, “L’impunité.” In “Des questions encore sur l’assassinat” Sayed writes that three out of four suspects were killed (5). 65. “À neuf heures à la radio, juste avant de clore le journal: ‘Une information que je découvre en même temps que vous: des terroristes ayant attenté à la vie de Tahar Djaout ont été tués. Un autre arrêté. Son témoignage sera donné ce soir à 20 heures à la télé.’ Je vais vous dire (. . .)


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—Qui a donné l’ordre? —L’ordre est venu d’Abdelhak Layada. [. . .] —Que disait l’ordre de Layada? —L’ordre disait d’abattre un journaliste du nom de Tahar Djaout. —Pour quel motif? —Deux motifs: d’abord parce qu’il s’agit d’un communiste. Ensuite parce qu’il a une plume redoutable. Il sait s’exprimer, il influe beaucoup sur les musulmans (. . .) (Saâdi 13). 66. Stora 210. 67. “Assis sur une chaise dans un endroit non identifié, le ou les coupables se livrent à des aveux filmés par on ne sait qui, parfois à leur insu” (Reporters sans frontières, “L’Impunité”). 68. Sayed 2. 69. Sayed 2. 70. Sayed 2. 71. “La Cour avait reconnu coupable du crime de Tahar Djaout le nommé Bourrayane Sedik et l’avait condamné à la peine capitale de même que Harik Noreddine. Lors du procès, la défense des accusés avait signalé au jury que d’autres personnes avaient été arrêtées dans le cadre de l’assassinat de Tahar Djaout et que leur passage devant la Cour spéciale n’était qu’une question de jours. Qui sont-elles et pourquoi n’ont-elles pas été jugées avec le groupe de Harik? “En outre, il faut signaler que les services de sécurité avaient durant des mois accusé Mohamed Guezmir (abattu) de l’assassinat de Tahar Djaout et de tant d’autres intellectuels dans l’Algerois. Qui est donc derrière l’assassinat de Tahar Djaout?” (Sayed 2). 72. Aït-Larbi. 73. “[C]es cours spéciales n’ont pas la réputation d’être tendre avec les terroristes islamistes. Il était difficile de ne pas le croire innocent de ce crime” (Reporters sans frontières, “L’Impunité”). 74. “Trop de crimes politiques restent impunis dans notre pays. Les images de lampistes exhibés à la télévision ne pourront masquer le visage des commanditaires de l’ombre” (Reporters sans frontières, “L’Impunité”). Omar Carlier offers his own theory of who is behind the killings of Djaout and others: “Many from the bi- or trilingual generation—the most talented and the least implicated in the old internecine battles, the least greedy for material riches, the most concerned with setting the country aright while progressively integrating modern ways—paid with their lives, such as, outside the government, Tahar Djaout, or, within it, Djilali Liabès and Mohammed Boukhobza.


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Their deaths were probably the result less of the political intelligence of Armée Islamique du Salut (ais) or Groupes Islamiques Armés (gia) emirs than of the wars among politico-military clans, where some favored the elimination of common enemies. This is also the case for the assassination of top political figures, however different they may have been in terms of generation or political responsibilities and positions. Kasdi Merbah, Abou Bekr Belkaïd, and especially Mohammed Boudiaf are examples” (Carlier 207, n. 10). For more on the question of “qui tue qui” or “quituequisme,” as the rampant conspiracy theorizing, propaganda, and speculation surrounding the violence in Algeria are sometimes called, see Silverstein. 75. “[T]enues au siège de Ruptures puis à la Maison de la presse, sans pouvoir assumer ni atteindre les objectifs qu’il s’est assignées, notamment la reconversion de ce comité en une association qui tendrait vers la promotion de l’héritage intellectuel et culturel de Tahar Djaout” (Mellal 19). 76. Marrouchi wrote in 2003: “To date some sixty-nine journalists and a number of other media workers have been assassinated, and although no violence against the profession has been reported since 1999, many writers and intellectuals are still living in hiding, changing their residences frequently. But the spectacular murders of individuals who could easily be identified by profession did not overshadow the fact that vehicles were being stopped on highways and their occupants gunned down, schools were being burned and schoolteachers murdered in front of their students—sometimes along with them. By the time the massacres in villages captured the world’s attention, in the summer of 1997, reliable estimates placed the number of people killed in Algeria since 1992 at 60,000 to 150,000 (www.ina.fr/Dossiers/Algerie/). This total, of course, includes thousands of terrorists and, according to groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, a number of people suspected of being terrorists” (Marrouchi 38). 77. On Belhazar, see Metref, “Une presse” 62, n. 1. Algerian journalists, writers, and other intellectuals already found themselves under fire in the 1980s. On November 2, 1982, the leftist activist Kamal Amzal was assassinated in Tizi-Ouzou. On April 7, 1987, the journalist, lawyer, and ffs militant Ali Mécili was killed in Paris by three bullets to the head. He was the founder of the newspaper Libre Algérie, created in France and outlawed in Algeria (Mouffok 34). On October 10, 1988 Sid Ali Benmechiche, a journalist with Algérie Presse Service, was killed


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while covering one of the first demonstrations by the Islamist movement (Mouffok 5). 78. For detailed accounts on the monks, see Kiser. On the murders of teachers, see Stora, 216. 79. I compiled this list throughout the course of my research over several years. Some of the names come from Benjamin Stora and Ghania Mouffok, others from <www.algeria-watch.de>, Reporters sans frontières at <www.rsf.org> (see “Cinq journalistes”), the Norwegian Refugee Council Database, and from the Algerian press. A large proportion come from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Some of these deaths and disappearances, like those of Djamel Fahassi and Aziz Bouabdallah, have been attributed to the Algerian security forces. 80. Stora 210–11. 3. Poetry, Prose, and the Politics of Writing in Algeria 1. A fifth collection, L’Étreinte du sablier, also appeared. I do not count it here because it combines the poems already published in L’Oiseau minéral and Insulaire et Cie. L’Étreinte du sablier does, however, include a short story called “le testament de hölderlin” (Hölderlin’s Will), not included in either L’Oiseau minéral or Insulaire et Cie. 2. Louari Addi qtd. in Bensmaïa, “Vanished Mediators” 10. 3. October 1993 saw the situation for Algerian journalists change dramatically. Instead of the Ministry of Information, a Superior Council of Information was established, an ethical and financial watchdog for the profession. This council issued press cards to writers who, for the first time, were no longer regarded as civil servants working for a national cause, but as independent professionals (Mouffok 30–31). Newspapers found themselves protected from arbitrary closures and were relatively free to publish desired content, with the exception of true state secrets. This, at least, was the case on paper, although in practice newspapers found themselves under severe scrutiny by the authorities and subject to increasingly abusive closures and stoppages as the armed conflict grew (Mouffok 31). Because of paper shortages and economic difficulties, even Algerian published books are valuable commodities: “In Algeria a book is never read by only one person. People who read share texts as rare and extremely valuable goods” (Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 72). 4. Djaout only published a single book with the state-run sned, his first novel, L’Exproprié. With enal he published his book of short stories, Les Rets de l’oiseleur. The quotation is in Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 64.


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5. Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 65. It is and was possible to skirt the state monopoly on publication. Djaout, for example, published several books with the semiclandestine press Orycte. These books are extremely rare and almost impossible to locate outside of Algeria. 6. “La littérature dite > [. . .] met l’écrivain dans des situations ambiguës. En Algérie, dans les années 70, > c’était forcément être du côté du pouvoir, être contre un certain nombre de réalités, parfois de spectres comme l’impérialisme, le néocolonialisme . . . . Dans ce sens, beaucoup d’écrivains qui étaient des écrivains engagés étaient en même temps des écrivains très serviles” (Tahar Djaout qtd. in Mokhtari 14). 7. “Dans un pays où des traditions socioculturelles ne sont pas établies, écrire n’est pas aisé. L’auteur se retrouve souvent dans un domaine étranger à ses compétences. On lui demande de participer à la formation de la société, on l’implique dans le socio-politique. Donc, on le tue. On tue en lui les compétences, on le prive de l’écriture indirectement, quelquefois directement” (Djaout, “Tahar Djaout, il y a” 11). Le Breviaire du roi 8.

9.

10.


[. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] il faudra l’avoir à tout prix mes fils il est poète débauché il tire le couteau à chaque propos il prostitue la syntaxe pour en faire un vagin enfanteur de cauchemars il insulte au Verbe divin [. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .] tuez-le mes fils il couve un verbe subversif (Djaout, L’Arche 69–70). Je l’aimais uniquement parce qu’elle mettait son soutien-cul à l’envers (Djaout, Solstice 44). Ma cousine mariée fut depuis emmurée —sur les conseils de l’Imam— dans la naïve et pieuse vénération du Phallus du Maître (Djaout, Solstice 18).

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11. Djaout, Solstice 20. 12. Willis 37. 13. Of course, another reason that socialism appealed to many Algerians was simply that capitalism was associated with French colonialism, oppression, and even slavery. 14. Ahmed Ben Bella qtd. in Willis 38, n.5. 15. In 1968, for example, Boumedienne was forced to back down on plans to introduce birth control (Willis 48). 16. il faudra encore ronéotyper mes larmes

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pour rétrécir la rate des citoyens aisés et en brave poète —sur les registres de la mairie profession chômeur— tendre mon chapeau crasseux à la bonté des bourgeois endimanchés qui viennent admirer la rade d’Alger (Djaout, Solstice 20).

17.

fortifier en l’homme la puissance de dire Non (Djaout, L’Arche 49).

18. See Merahi. 19. “J’ai découvert la poésie de Tahar Djaout à la fin des années soixante-dix. Elle s’inscrivait dans la révolte et le désir de la génération d’intellectuels à laquelle j’appartenais” (Rabah Belamri, “À l’Ombre du poème” in Kaleidoscope critique 29). 20. “La poésie était une expérience fructueuse certes, j’ai écrit de beaux poèmes, mais ce ne sont que des écrits de jeunesse. Quant à aujourd’hui, je ne pense pas en écrire, mais si je sens un besoin, peutêtre reviendrai-je à la poésie” (Djaout “Tahar Djaout, il y a” 11). 21. “[L]a poésie est la parole première, la parole finale aussi. D’ailleurs, je remarque que beaucoup d’écrivains commencent par écrire de la poésie pour aller vers le roman, alors que je verrais beaucoup plus la démarche inverse, la poésie étant le couronnement de toute écriture” (Djaout qtd. in Marc Gontard, “Tuez-le mes fils / il couve un verbe subversif” in Kaleidoscope critique 43).


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22. “[L]es poèmes que j’ai écrits ces derniers temps [. . .] sont des poèmes du décharnement, des poèmes de l’ascèse, des poèmes de l’essentiel. Ce sont des poèmes dont le thème principal, dont l’obsession centrale, sont un peu le monde minéral, le désert et tout ce qui est décharné, comme les squelettes, comme les os” (Djaout qtd. in Kaleidoscope critique 42–43) 23. “Il disait préférer ce titre à celui qui avait été par lui choisi initialement: ‘l’étreinte du sablier’ qui est l’enseigne du premier des poèmes du recueil. Il insistait. Il semblait savourer, de façon pour ainsi dire gourmande, ce vieux mot re-surgi des profondeurs de la langue [. . .]. Il insistait. Il fallait que la raison lui soit rendue. Ce qui fut fait de bonne grâce, et aujourd’hui ce titre résonne d’une autre façon, et avec force, puisque la parole poétique s’y affirme, quand bien même la voix du poète s’est tue, assassinée” (Jacques Gaucheron, preface to Djaout, Pérennes 8). 24. Montaigne, Essais 6:71. 25. Montaigne, Complete Works 698. Another example of Montaigne’s use of the word: “Le monde n’est qu’une branloire perenne: toutes choses y branlent sans cesse” (Montaigne, Essais 5:189) “The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion” (Montaigne, Complete Works 610). 26. sable trou de temps où dieu lui-même s’ensevelit (Djaout, “civilisation” Pérennes 16).

27. “[E]t moi que faisais-je penché sur ces tablettes où je ne pipais goutte mais où je m’ingeniais à déchiffrer le destin du monde à venir avec ses faims véloces ses estacades de bombes H ses gigots d’anhydride sulfureux et ses ordinateurs gardiens d’immenses troupeaux de moutons et d’esclaves je me répétais que dans ce monde que les maîtres de tous bords s’efforçaient de façonner à l’image de leur faim je n’étais pas forçément [sic] perdant parce qu’on m’avait donné un poste de prof en biologie des hauteurs et qu’on me permettait d’imprimer des livres (à mon nom!) qui trouvaient même des lecteurs compréhensifs et encourageants à la parution de mon premier bouquin je reçus une pile de courrier” (Djaout, L’Exproprié 81). 28. “[C]omme si n’existait ni un territoire d’origine intact ni un territoire d’aspiration possible” (Djaout, “L’Histoire” 26). 29. “[N]e connaît son motif d’inculpation [. . .]. La seule halte possible est le recours à son enfance, unique lieu d’ancrage et d’intégrité” (Djaout, “L’Histoire” 27).


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30. “Car il me semble que l’histoire circonscrite est toujours une sorte d’usurpation. La seule histoire qui m’intéresse est l’histoire de l’individu, celle qui descelle les lèvres de chacun, celle qui donne et libère la parole au lieu de la fixer” (Djaout, “L’Histoire” 27). 31. Benjamin, Origin 45. 32. “[U]ne sorte de barque de passeur qui ne se fixe à aucune rive, car le mouillage porte en lui le danger du repli vers ” (Djaout, “L’Histoire” 27). In addition to Abdelkader and the revolt of 1870–1871, a second figure makes an appearance in L’Exproprié: La Kahina, whom Djaout calls “the sole iconoclast of our history” (“seule iconoclaste de notre histoire”; Djaout, L’Exproprié 1991, 63). In his book on the legend of La Kahina (also spelled “Kahena”), entitled Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial Memories, Abdelmajid Hannoum traces the various ways in which the legend of this woman warrior has been appropriated. A fascinating figure in North African history, the female rebel La Kahina’s origins have been described as Berber, Arab, and Jewish, and as such she has been appropriated by Berberists, feminists, by the North African Jewish community in Israel, and by the French to “prove” the European origins of Berbers. During the colonial period, La Kahina, “the anti-heroine of the Arab North Africans[,] became the hero of Jews and Berbers” (Hannoum 145). But this legend, as Hannoum argues in the final chapter of his book, has also been used to support the theory that the Berbers are Arabs: Historians with an Arab nationalist ideology no longer hesitate to maintain the Semitic origin of the Berbers. Some of them, even today, go further to articulate, from the same myth, the myth of an Arab North Africa. The Berbers are no longer close to the Arabs because of their Semitic origin, nor they are Canaanite. They are, in fact, real Arabs. Books such as The Arabness of Algeria [. . .], or The Arabness of the Berbers [. . .], or even The Berbers Are Ancient Arabs [. . .] are still published today, propagating a mythology which feeds the Arab nationalist ideologies in the Mashriq, as well as in the Maghrib. (Hannoum 126)

As such, La Kahina is the ultimate historical chameleon, simultaneously refusing and taking on all origins at once, and defending not only a bicultural North Africa, but also a more diverse one, which resembles the one Djaout argued for in his editorials published in Ruptures. In Djaout’s text La Kahina is presented as an ancestor (if not the origin) of


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the modern Algerian writer, fighting for openness, pluralism, and tolerance: “I am not of any race [. . .]” she declares. “I was born on a hinge; my birthplace defies all the atlases. I only need to pronounce my name to be accused immediately of separatism and segregation” (“Je ne suis d’aucune race [. . .]. [J]e suis née sur une charnière, ma patrie défie tous les atlas. Il suffit que je prononce mon nom pour qu’on m’accuse aussitôt de séparatisme et de ségrégation”; L’Exproprié 1991, 88). 33. “[I]l n’y a pas de personnage qui pourrait servir de fil conducteur, l’intrigue ne s’appuie pas sur la logique cartisienne des effets et de causes, et certaines parties du texte se présentent comme un assemblage de discours hétéroclites et même incohérents, à un premier niveau de lecture” (Sellin 72). 34. “Ces débuts de reportages m’ont martyrisé depuis le premier jour où j’ai embrassé la profession. Tout mon métier consiste finalement à trouver le subterfuge à même de déceler la naissance du reportage et de la capturer au moment propice. Parfois je dispose une pile de livres (des chefs-d’oeuvre classiques pour la plupart—Moby Dick, Les Liaisons dangereuses, Anna Karénine, Bouvard et Pécuchet) sur ma table de nuit pour me donner de l’entrain” (Djaout, “Le Reporter” in Les Rets 26). 35. “[E]nfant chéri, le fruit jalousement couvé” (Djaout Les Rets 29). 36. Les Rets 36. This phrase also appears in the first edition of L’Exproprié (1981). 37. “[M]étier de plume hybride qu’il exerçait de côté-ci de la ‘vitre’ en tant qu’écrivain et de l’autre côté de la même ‘vitre’ en tant que journaliste” (Farida Boualit, “Des deux côtés de la vitre” in Kaleidoscope critique 193). 38. “[J]e continue à écrire de la poésie. Je me considère avant tout comme écrivain, c’est-à-dire comme quelqu’un qui fait un travail sur l’écriture. Et ce travail sur la métaphore, ce travail sur l’étymologie, ce travail de déconstruction d’un certain univers qui était déjà entamé dans mes poèmes, se retrouve et se poursuit dans mes romans. Surtout que comme chacun le sait, la frontière est désormais imprécise entre les genres littéraires. Depuis quelques années, je crois beaucoup de frontières ont été brisées, beaucoup de classifications ont été ébranlées. Donc, je me considère avant tout comme un poète qui écrit aussi des romans et je pense que les romans que je fais n’auraient pas été écrits par un romancier-romancier” (“I continue to write poetry. I consider myself above all to be a writer, meaning someone who works on writing. And this work on metaphor, this work on etymology, this work of the deconstruction of a certain universe that had already broken into


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my poems returns and continues in my novels. Above all, as we know, the boundary between literary genres is now imprecise. It’s been several years since, in my view, many boundaries were destroyed, many of the classifications shaken up. Therefore, I consider myself above all to be a poet who also writes novels, and I think that my novels would never have been written by a novelist-novelist”; Djaout qtd. in Gontard in Kaleidoscope critique 42). 39. “Personellement, il m’est arrivé de lire chez des critiques littéraires des articles me présentant comme romancier. Je me trouve extrêmement gêné parce que je ne me suis jamais senti romancier. D’abord parce que je n’ai pas beaucoup d’imagination et l’histoire que je raconte est pour moi extrêmement accessoire par rapport à autre chose. En fait, je n’ai jamais eu d’histoires à raconter” (Djaout qtd. in Gontard in Kaleidoscope critique 41–42). 40. Djaout qtd. in Gontard in Kaleidoscope critique 42–43. 41. “[T]u vas me dire que c’est là une considération anachronique et stérilisante. Mais c’est un problème qui me colle parfois aux méninges comme une grippe meurtrière.” (Tahar Djaout’s letter to Hamid Nacer-Khodja, 3 July 1976, reproduced in Merahi 106). 42. “[C]ontrairement à un préjugé tenace, le fln n’a jamais été au pouvoir en Algérie, mais a toujours été le parti du pouvoir, la façade civile d’un régime militaire où, si l’armée en est le coeur, la sécurité militaire est le cerveau” (Mouffok 21). 43. “À l’indépendance, cette ancestralité a été confisquée par les maquisards qui se sont autoproclamés pères de la nation algérienne: vengeurs du passé, victorieux du présent, et bâtisseurs de l’avenir. De sorte qu’il n’était plus possible de contester les dirigeants puisque l’Histoire les avait choisis et légitimés; remettre en cause les hommes politiques, c’était discuter l’algérianité elle-même. Impossible donc de se référer à une autre mémoire que celle décidée par eux, dont ils occultaient tout ce qui pouvait relativiser leur pouvoir ou leur prestige” (Benaïssa 6). 44. In addition to the massacres of the Harkis (estimates of numbers killed vary from twenty-five thousand to a hundred thousand; Marrouchi 32), Marrouchi points to the terrorizing of civilians by the fln—“for every European murdered by the fln, they killed eight of their own people” (Marrouchi 30). Common fln punishments for traitors within the organization included throat-slitting (which up until then had been limited to the slaughter of animals) and mutilation of the face, especially the nose (as a punishment for breaking the rule against smoking; Hutchinson 22–23). Other victims of the wartime fln includ-


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ed Algerian local or tribal authorities; Algerian officials and bureaucrats in the French administration, members of the rival mna, Algerians who disobeyed fln regulations or who cooperated with the French; European or Algerian police; European farmers; French political and military administrators; and the urban European population (Hutchinson 23). 45. For more on the role of women in the Algerian War see AmraneMinne, and Djebar, L’Amour. 46. Djaout, Les Chercheurs d’os 29. 47. Djaout qtd. in Geesey, “Exhumation and History” 271. 48. “Avant, quand il y avait des guerres entre tribus, on enterrait les morts en cachette, et persone ne connaissait le bilan de nos pertes. Regarde les pays intelligents: ils allument une flamme, c’est celle du Soldat Inconnu. Ça veut dire que quelle que soit la guerre, ils ont perdu un soldat, et qu’en plus il est inconnu. Chez nous, en trente ans, on a plus parlé des morts que des vivants. On les a déterrés et enterrés plusieurs fois” (Benaïssa 47). 49. Geesey, “Exhumation and History” 274. 50. Sellin 72. 51. “C’est, en fin de compte, à l’Almohade Ibn-Toumert que s’attachera le narrateur fasciné et horrifié à la fois par cette exigence de pureté qui hante l’imam fanatique” (Djaout, “L’Histoire” 27). 52. Djaout, L’Invention 18–19. 53. Djaout, L’Invention 39. 54. “L’Arabie n’est que dans la tête, dans les itinéraires immobiles. Comme lorsqu’on voyage dans une musique” (Djaout, L’Invention 63). 55. “[L]’idéal de pureté peut [. . .] trouver un sens” (Djaout, “L’Histoire” 27). 56. “On se donne l’illusion de revivre en entreprenant des voyages à rebours, mais on ne fait en vérité que rendre sa mort plus imminente. Car quel cimetière que le passé! C’est comme un champ de fouilles d’où ne remontent en surface que des objets funéraires. Tu deviens ainsi l’archéologue de ton passé; mais toi tu ne leurres pas: tu sais que l’archéologie est avant tout la science des nécrophages” (Djaout, L’Invention 188). 57. “[D]oit être le propre des gens que le présent rejette. Les gens heureux n’ont ni âge ni mémoire, ils n’ont pas besoin du passé” (Djaout, L’Invention 189). 58. Mouffok 25. 59. See Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 65. 60. The paper is characterized by Ghania Mouffok as a “guardian of


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the official word” (Mouffok 20). It first appeared in 1956 before moving its operation into exile in Tunis in 1957. “Il est l’organe d’information du fln dont il doit faire entendre la voix dans le monde, face à la puissance médiatique de la France coloniale. Dans ce contexte, il ne pouvait qu’être , un journal partisan” (“It is the information organ of the fln through which it must make its voice heard throughout the world, while faced with the media power of colonial France. In this context it could only be ‘a weapon of propaganda’, a partisan newspaper”; Mouffok 23). In 1991 the fln lost control of its two newspapers, Révolution africaine and El Moudjahid, with the resignation of Prime Minister Mouloud Hamrouche. Despite attempts to regain control of El Moudjahid and enap, the fln publisher, by 1996 the fln only retained control of El Moudhid el Ousboui, the Arab-language party weekly (Mouffok 35). 61. “[L]’hebdomadaire des années quatre-vingt” (Mouffok 21). 62. “Ouvrant une imprévisible brêche dans le silence culturel des années de plomb, Djaout entreprend à révéler à ses lecteurs leurs propres créateurs, de leur faire découvrir, rencontrer leurs écrivains, peintres, cinéastes. Sa parole attentive dévoile, creuse dans l’aphasie dans laquelle se trouve occultés, en littérature, les oeuvres et les noms mêmes, à l’époque interdits, des aînés, Jean-El Mouhoub Amrouche et Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri, Jean Sénac ou Bachir Hadj Ali, et des ‘jeunes poètes’, Sebti, Laghouati ou Farès. De semaine en semaine l’Algérie a rendez-vous avec elle-même, apprend à se connaître” (Michel-Georges Bernard, “Tahar Djaout et la peinture” in Kaleidoscope critique 217). 63. For more on the “decrèt Hamrouche” and the liberalization of the press see Mouffok 26–27 and Chaouche-Ramdane. 64. See Massinissa. 65. See Djaout, “L’Interview.” 66. Abdallah Djaballah is the founder and former leader of the parliamentary Islamic party, Ennahda. He was jailed twice during the 1980s for subversive public speaking. For more see “Djaballah Abdallah.” 67. “Nous refuserons [. . .] les logiques du genre: [. . .] ‘si tu n’es pas avec moi, tu es contre moi’. Notre ligne sera indépendante; elle ne sera dictée que par notre conscience, nos enthousiasmes ou nos déceptions. Mais nous aurons, bien évidemment, nos choix et nos partis pris. Si Abdallah Djaballah, par exemple, cherche un jour une tribune d’expression, ce n’est pas chez nous qu’il la trouvera” (Djaout, “Lettre de l’éditeur” 5).


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68. “Les constantes nationales, les sacro-saintes normes arabo-islamiques, la surenchère nationaliste et religieuse: tous les poncifs qui ont balisé le chemin vers l’intégrisme tiennent de nouveau le haut du pavé” (Djaout, “Le Retour” 15). 69. “[L]e camp islamiste qui, tout en versant dans le terrorisme et l’action armée, conserve toujours une surface politique légale à travers au moins deux partis; le camp démocratique et républicain; le camp des gouvernants qu’il devient de plus en plus malaisé de classer et qui s’éloigne en tout cas sensiblement de la mouvance démocratique” (Djaout, “Suspicion” 15). 70. “Ce n’est qu’au prix d’une rupture radicale que l’Algérie pourra sortir des marais où elle s’est embourbée. Nous savons où nous ont conduits les demi-mesures et les confusions qui prétendaient créer la qualité avec la médiocrité aux commandes, construire une société moderne avec les matériaux de l’archaïsme et de la régression” (Djaout, “Lettre de l’éditeur” 5). 71. Djaout, “La Haine.” 72. Djaout, “Fermez” 15. 73. “[L]’un des champions du courant —surnom donné aux adversaires du dialogue avec les islamistes, partisans de l’, par la force, des ;” “diatribe militante déguisée en roman” (Simon). 74. “À grand journal, petites turpitudes” (“Small Turpitudes for a Big Newspaper”) and “Tahar Djaout n’était pas un ” (“Tahar Djaout Wasn’t an ‘Eradicator’”). 75. “Le Monde s’est fait une religion de ce schéma par trop simpliste: l’Algérie est divisée en et en . Les éradicateurs (terme accolé à ceux qui s’opposent l’Intégrisme) sont aussi les suppôts du pouvoir , puisqu’ils s’opposent à un même adversaire. Ils sont les méchants même s’ils sont paradoxalement les premières victimes de la violence. Par opposition, les réconciliateurs, dont les Islamistes non déclarés aux gia, sont les bons puisqu’ils appellent sans arrêt à la paix et à la réconciliation sans s’avancer à désigner les victimes et les bourreaux” (Halli, “À grand journal”). 76. Simon is correct in one aspect of her characterization—it is true that Djaout was uncompromising in his view that dialogue with the Algerian Islamists was impossible, as the following citation illustrates: “Tout dialogue comprend des clauses et un contrat minimum, reconnu de part et d’autre. Il y a des idéologies dont la logique même est l’affrontement. Elles ne conçoivent le ‘dialogue’ qu’en termes


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d’abdication de leur interlocuteur, car elles ont une vision totalitaire du monde où n’entrent ni doute, ni concession. Des apprentis-sorciers ont décidé en Algérie qu’on peut intégrer dans un dialogue politique des gens qui nient tout dialogue politique. Pour justifier cette position, ils confondent sciemment l’idéologie totalitaire de la masse des démunis que cette idéologie a embrigadée par son discours, basé sur l’illusion d’une revanche et d’un paradis à conquérir. Le dialogue, à mon sens, ne peut s’établir qu’avec ceux qui reconnaissent de[ux] clauses, c’est-à-dire, le pluralisme des idées et des convictions, la démocratie et la souveraineté du pays. Où en est le dialogue aujourd’hui? Il y a quelques semaines, Ali Kafi dans un dicours à la nation, a affirmé qu’il n’est pas quéstion de dialoguer avec ceux qui font de la religion un registre de commerce, et quelques jours plus tard, il reçoit Nahnah et Djaballah. On est en droit de s’intérroger” (“Every dialogue comprises clauses and a minimum contract. There are ideologies whose very logic is an affront. These do not conceive of a dialogue except in terms of their interlocutor’s abdication, because they have a totalitarian vision of the world into which neither doubt nor concession enter. The sorcerers’ apprentices have decided that it is possible in Algeria to integrate into a dialogue people who negate all political dialogue. In order to justify this position they knowingly distort the totalitarian ideology of the dispossessed masses that this ideology has enrolled through its discourse, based on the illusion of revenge and of a paradise for the conquering. Dialogue, to my mind, can only be established with those who accept [two] clauses, namely the pluralism of ideas and conviction, [and] democracy and the sovereignty of countries. Where are we with the dialogue today? A few weeks ago, Ali Kafi, in a speech to the nation, affirmed that a dialogue with those who make religion a trade register was impossible, and a few days later he met with Nahnah and Djaballah. We are right to wonder”; Djaout, “Un sommeil” 13). 77. “Ceux qui ont connu Tahar Djaout savent qu’il n’était pas enclin à la violence, qu’elle soit verbale ou physique [. . .]” (Halli, “Tahar Djaout” 11). 78. “En ce siècle qui a fracturé tant de ghettos, en ce siècle où tant de valeurs sont devenues universelles, où toute personne—quels que soient son sexe, sa couleur, son pays, sa langue et sa religion—a droit au respect de son intégrité d’être humain, de ses convictions et de son opinion, les Algériens verront-ils leurs libertés fondamentales garanties et protégées, non pas dans un quelconque, mais dans l’absolu?” (Djaout, “Facture” 3).


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4. Final Projects 1. At the time of writing, the French, Belgian, and Algerian release of Kamel Dehane’s film adaptation of Les Vigiles, entitled Les Suspects (2004), was announced. The protagonist of the film is a woman named Nadia Kaci, in contrast to Djaout’s novel, where all the central figures are male. For an interview conducted after the film’s screening at the 2005 International Film Festival in Namur, France, see Dehane. 2. Kiser 127. 3. “([M]âles, bien entendu—les filles ne comptent pas)” Djaout, Les Vigiles 194. 4. “The characters, the action, and the ambience of the novel are strongly reminiscent of Kafka. Indeed, Kafka haunts Algerian literature. [. . .]” (Valensi, “The Scheherazade Syndrome” 147). 5. “Le parti unique régnait sans partage au moment où j’ai commencé à écrire mon roman. Je ne pouvais plus changer les données quand se produisirent les événements d’octobre. Les prémisses de l’intégrisme étaient présentes du temps du parti unique. C’est toute la société algérienne qui fonctionnait sur un certain nombre d’anachronismes, de tabous. Le tabou religieux et le tabou politique se sont toujours très bien donné la main. C’est bien le fln qui a commencé à transformer ces mosquées en tribunes politiques. C’est bien lui qui a arraché ces mosquées au culte avant que les islamistes ne s’y mettent aussi” (Djaout, “Tahar Djaout: ” 77). 6. Djaout, The Watchers 40–41; “tel un insecte aux antennes ultra-sensibles qui se barricade dans sa carapace, mais conserve ses sens en éveil comme autant de pièges posés sur le chemin des imprudents” (Les Vigiles 49). 7. The Watchers 7; “non pas par une quelconque conscience patriotique (de tels concepts naîtraient surtout une fois la guerre gagnée) mais par la peur irraisonnée que lui inspiraient les militaires” (Les Vigiles 13). 8. The Watchers 195–96; “Il reconnaît humblement que seul le hasard (peut-on parler d’une bonne étoile? une bonne étoile vous éclaire toute la vie) a choisi pour lui. Car il n’avait ni le flair ni le cran de certains qui avaient servi les occupants et qui, à la dernière minute, les jeux étant faits, avaient rejoint l’armée nationale, puis avaient pénétré en libérateurs dans des villes ou des villages où, quelques mois (parfois quelques semaines) auparavant, ils se pavanaient dans un autre uniforme. Menouar Ziada n’aurait pas, non plus, osé quémander des attestations de combattant à l’exemple de beaucoup qui n’ont jamais quitté leur foyer


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durant la guerre et qui aujourd’hui se trouvent pourvus de titres divers qui leur valent non seulement le respect et parfois l’immunité, mais aussi des avantages matériels: priorité au travail, pension, retraite anticipée, autorisation d’importer des biens qui ne se trouvent pas dans le pays” (Les Vigiles 208–09). 9. The Watchers 101; “Menouar Ziada a envie de dire que ce pays appartient à tous ses citoyens et qu’il ne comprend pas toujours cette manie des anciens combattants de vouloir le défendre contre son propre peuple. Et puis, défendre quoi exactement? Le pays ou leurs privilèges? D’avoir libéré cette terre confère-t-il le droit de tant peser sur elle, de confisquer aussi bien ses richesses que son avenir? Mais il aurait fallu beaucoup plus de courage qu’il n’en a pour que ce genre de discours franchisse la distance incommensurable qui sépare ses pensées de sa langue” (Les Vigiles 111). 10. The Watchers 17; “l’endroit est occupé par de dangereux intrigants depuis maintenant une bonne semaine! [. . .] La maison est sans doute investie par des professionels de la subversion qui savent dissimuler non seulement leurs plans mais aussi leur personne [. . .]. [S]’attendre bientôt à quelque coup dur” (Les Vigiles 24). 11. The Watchers 123–25; Les Vigiles 112–14. 12. The Watchers 116; “Vous ne pourrez jamais savoir ce que c’est que de travailler avec des gens dont l’intelligence n’est pas la caractéristique principale” (Les Vigiles 127). 13. The Watchers 92, 94, 97, 96; “se méfie de la culture et de l’intelligence comme de la peste,” “Des magasins de disques, des kiosques, des pressings, des salles de spectacle ont beau se transformer depuis quelques années en boutiques de nourriture, les queues n’arrivent pas à se résorber,” “les gens du pouvoir sont là pour tout intercepter: tout ce que le pays produit est pour eux” (Les Vigiles 102, 104, 107, 106). 14. “Je décris une situation que j’ai réellement vécue. J’avais passée trois années en France et j’étais retourné en Algérie en 1987. À mon retour, j’ai eu une perception très noire de la réalité algérienne de l’époque. Tous les horizons me paraissaient bouchés. Il fallait d’ailleurs que vienne octobre 1988 (ndlr: les émeutes qui secouèrent toute l’Algérie). Nous vivions une situation d’étouffement qui ne pouvait pas durer indéfiniment. [. . .] [Les Vigiles] entretient un rapport très fort avec la réalité algérienne et surtout la réalité telle que je l’ai vécue. Je sais que dans toute oeuvre, il y a une part d’autobiographie. Un romancier, un écrivain dit toujours par ses personnages quelque chose qui lui est très cher.


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Je vais vous faire un aveu. J’ai été invité à la rencontre internationale des écrivains de Montréal en 1988 et comme mon passeport était arrivé à expiration, j’ai dû le renouveler. Pour ce faire, j’ai eu beaucoup de problèmes. J’ai essuyé un refus déguisé. Dans toute la partie du roman où l’inventeur est confronté à la bureaucratie, je décris une situation que j’ai moi-même vécue” (Djaout, “Tahar Djaout: ” 77). 15. The Watchers 138; “je m’attendais à trouver une vraie machine: un astronef miniature, un robot ménager ou un ordinateur. Finalement, vous avez inventé un métier de vieille femme. Vous ne vivez donc pas ici? Vous ne savez pas que notre pays est résolument engagé dans la voie du modernisme? Sortez donc un jour dans la rue au lieu de rester cloîtré chez vous et regardez les jeux électroniques, les téléphériques, les journaux lumineux. Cela vous donnera peut-être des idées pour d’autres inventions” (Les Vigiles 149). 16. The Watchers 57; “Cette dernière est en effet devenue, après une série de réformes et son investissement par une caste théologique, une véritable insitution militaro-religieuse: levée des couleurs nationales, chants patriotiques, fort volume d’enseignement religieux. Alors, plutôt que de s’occuper des choses de leur âge, les écoliers sont tout préoccupés du bien et du mal, d’ici-bas et de l’au-delà, de la récompense et du châtiment divins, des archanges et des démons, de l’enfer et du paradis. Mahfoudh a entendu dire que des enseignants exercent parfois sur leurs élèves un véritable chantage moral: ils les obligent à faire la prière en les menaçant de châtiments divins, ils les amènent même à dénoncer les parents qui consomment de l’alcool. On lui a parlé d’une école où toute fille portant le hidjab est assurée d’avoir la moyenne” (Les Vigiles 65–66). 17. “L’école et l’université sont devenues cette dernière décennie des fortresses de répression de l’intelligence, du savoir et de la beauté. “Des livres ont été retirés des bibliothèques scolaires et universitaires parce que considérés comme laïcs, profanes et communistes” (Djaout, “Champ d’expression”). 18. See Djaout, “Les Réconciliateurs.” 19. Silverstein 651. 20. Gafaïti “Between God and the President” 76. See also Boudjedra’s fis; Mimouni’s De la Barbarie; Djebar’s Le Blanc de l’Algérie; Mohammed Moulessehoul’s Les Agneaux du Seigneur (written under the name Yasmina Khadra); and Sansal’s Le Serment des barbares. All have made this link as well.


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21. Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 78. 22. Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 83, n.16; Paul A. Silverstein cites the same phrase, but in a simplified form, which eliminates the complexity of Gafaïti’s translation, namely “Le fis e[s]t le fils du fln” (Silverstein 654). 23. Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 71. 24. Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 67. 25. Gafaïti, “Between God and the President” 67. 26. “On retrouve à peu près cette expression dans tous les articles écrits en France sur mon roman mais un observateur perspicace devinerait facilement qu’une grande capacité de bouleversement est là, travaillant le texte en profondeur. [. . .] Il y a, notamment, les chapitres en italique ou surtout le dernier chapitre où le héros principal s’interroge sur sa vie, sur son nonsens, sur le sens et le bien fondé de la vie tout court” (Djaout, “Les Introuvables” 209–10). 27. The issue of the use of torture by French during the Algerian War has returned to the French public agenda with a vengeance in recent years with the publication of books like Aussaresses’s. 28. The Watchers 197; “l’eau insondable de la mémoire, dans la rade protégée de l’enfance” (Les Vigiles 209). 29. The Watchers 197; “[i]l peut reparcourir certains paysages lumineux, énumérer et savourer de nouveau les rêves qui ont stimulé sa vie—rêves de gloire, rêves de plaisir, rêves d’amitié, rêves toujours irréalisables parce que parallèles au cours étriqué de sa vie” (Les Vigiles 209). 30. Djaout, The Last Summer 33; “jeunes hommes barbus, accoutrés commes des guerriers afghans mais avec une pointe de fantaisie constituée par le mariage de tennis haut de gamme et de pyjamas, de gandouras et de vestons en cuir” (Djaout, Le Dernier Été 31). 31. “[C]e patronyme pourrait se traduire par ou ” (“Vient de paraître aussi”). 32. “La veille du lâche attentat qui atteignit Tahar Djaout, il flânait encore, entre les rayonnages des librairies d’Alger. Après un détour par la librairie du Parti, il se rendait, comme à l’accoutumée, à la librairie des Beaux-Arts, un lieu de culture qu’il fréquentait régulièrement, ami de son gérant, Vincent, avec lequel il entretenait des rapports d’amitié depuis de longues années. “C’était un habitué des librairies nous dira Vincent, il se tenait sans cesse au courant des nouvelles parutions, s’intéressant à la production de ses confrères écrivains. C’était un ‘gros’ lecteur, qui achetait systé-


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matiquement les auteurs maghrébins et parfois la littérature africaine d’expression française, quand elle était disponible’ ajoutera-t-il.” (“The day before the cowardly attack that struck down Tahar Djaout, he was still browsing the shelves of the bookstores of Algiers. After a detour via the Librairie du Parti, he arrived, as usual, at the Librairie des Beaux-Arts, a cultural spot that he frequented regularly, and whose manager, Vincent, had been a friend for many years. “He was a regular visitor of bookstores, Vincent told us, he always kept himself up to date with new publications, and was interested in the work his writer-colleagues produced. He was a voracious reader who systematically bought the works of Maghrebi writers and sometimes African literature of French expression, whenever it was available, he added”; Selkim 12). On Grau’s death: “Il y a trois mois et quelques jours, le patron de la librairie des Beaux-Arts à Alger est assassiné dans son propre espace sous les yeux de milliers d’auteurs. Affectionnant la musique, les arts plastiques et la littérature, Grau Joachim connu sous le nom de Vincent avait pris le soin de commander tous les ouvrages de Tahar Djaout, M’hamed Boukhobza et autres encore. La librairie demeure toujours ouverte et les titres de Djaout circulent toujours.” (“Three months and a number of days ago the proprietor of the Librairie des Beaux-Arts was assassinated in his own space, under the gaze of thousands of authors. A lover of music, visual art, and literature, Joachim Grau, who was known by the name of Vincent, had been sure to order all the works of Tahar Djaout, M’hamed Boukhobza, and others. The bookstore remains open, and the works of Djaout continue to be sold”; Zizi, “Tahar Djaout” 3). See also the interview with Outoudert Abrouss in “La Lame et la plume.” 33. “Tahar Djaout a été assassiné le 2 juin 1993. Quelques semaines avant, lors d’un séjour à Paris, il nous avait annoncé qu’il avait entrepris un nouveau roman, mais qu’il n’en était qu’au tout début. “Le manuscrit que nous publions aujourd’hui a été retrouvé dans ses papiers après sa mort. Il nous est parvenu après bien des péripéties. Il ne correspond pas au sujet qu’il nous avait indiqué. On peut penser que Tahar, de retour à Alger, a décidé de mettre de côté le projet très littéraire dont il nous avait parlé pour se consacrer à un récit plus directement inspiré par l’actualité. “Le manuscrit ne portait pas de titre. Celui que nous avons retenu est extrait du livre.


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“Nous n’avons pas touché au texte sauf pour corriger des inconséquences mineures” (“Note de l’editeur,” Le Dernier Été 7). 34. An homage written two years after Djaout’s death by his friend and neighbor, Amestan-Malek Bellil, makes reference to an “unfinished novel” that told the story of a protagonist living in an “Islamic republic,” suggesting that Djaout may not have considered the novel to be finished (Bellil 21–22). 35. “J’ai supprimé beaucoup de passages, en ai rajouté d’autres et j’ai travaillé en la ressérant, toute la partie qui est restée. Je sais que c’est une opération contestable car on ne revient pas toujours avec bonheur sur des traces anciennes, mais je tenais tellement à ce texte de jeunesse et je me demande si le motif essentiel de sa publication, sous une autre forme ne se rapporte pas à la première édition de ce livre tellement déficiente sur le plan technique que cela me faisait mal le voir. Je voulais en quelque sorte rattraper cette malformation. Mais je suis allé plus loin en retouchant également le texte” (Tahar Djaout qtd. in Nour 18). 36. Zumthor 47–48. 37. The Last Summer 27; “Boualem Yekker dénomme cette saison-là le dernier été de la raison. Parfois, le dernier été de l’histoire. En effet, le pays a ensuite tourné en roue libre, est sorti de l’histoire. “Cet été-là fut donc le dernier. Car, après, le temps devint sans saisons et sans nuances. Il s’était mué en tunnel dont on ne voyait guère le bout” (Le Dernier Été 27). 38. The novel ends with the question “Le printemps reviendra-t-il?” (“Will spring return?”; Le Dernier Été 125). The intertext here is Rachid Mimouni’s novel Le Printemps n’en sera que plus beau. 39. Ali Elbouliga’s name (the character who speculates on when the next earthquake will hit) comes from “avoir la bouliga,” a distortion of the French expression “avoir les boules,” meaning to be very afraid. Thus, this character’s name may be read as Ali the Fearful. 40. The Last Summer 19, 75; “trop compromettants pour être exposés en vitrine ou sur les rayonnages de la salle,” “réduite à une chose honteuse” (Le Dernier Été 20, 66). 41. The Last Summer 51; “qu’ils sont devenus comparses rasant les murs. Ils se sont voilé le visage” (Le Dernier Été 46). 42. The Last Summer 73–74; “De l’intérieur de sa librairie, à travers le triangle découpé par la porte ouverte, il regarde des formes noires, tissu hermétique qui ne laisse apparaître aucune trace de corps humain” (Le Dernier Été 65). 43. A similar moment can be found in Assia Djebar’s novel Ombre


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sultane. It is Hajila’s first moment of true transgression and revolt, and like Boualem Yekker’s store, only her triangle-eye could ever give away what is going on under cover: You are “going out” for the first time, Hajila. You are wearing slippers like an old woman, your head muffled in the heavy wool; your face completely hidden, leaving only one tiny gap exposed through which you peep to see where you are going. You enter the lift, stumbling over the folds of the heavy veil. Once you are outside, all alone, you will walk. The black triangle of your eye darts to right and left—to the right again, then . . . You can feel your heart thumping under the woollen cloth, the grip of your hand on the veil beneath your chin suddenly slackens (Djebar, A Sister 19). (Tu vas > pour la première fois, Hajila. Tu portes tes babouches de vieille, la laine pèse sur ta tête; dans ton visage entièrement masqué, un seul oeil est découvert, la trouée juste nécessaire pour que ce regard d’ensevelie puisse te guider. Tu entres dans l’ascenseur, tu vas déboucher en pleine rue, le corps empêtré dans les plis du voile lourd. Seule, au-dehors, tu marcheras. L’oeil en triangle noir regarde à droite, à gauche, encore à droite, puis. . . le coeur se met à battre sous le tissu de laine, la main soudain mollit, serre moins nerveusement le voile sous le menton; Djebar, Ombre sultane 27)

44. The Last Summer 127; “—leur proximité, leur contact, leur odeur et leur contenu—constituent le refuge le plus sûr contre ce monde de l’horreur. C’est le plus agréable et le plus subtil moyen de voyager vers une planète plus clémente” (Le Dernier Été 110–11). 45. Kruk 171. 46. Kruk 192. 47. The Last Summer 17; Le Dernier Été 19. 48. The Last Summer 117; Le Dernier Été 103. 49. The Last Summer 118; “Maintenant, c’est comme si on avait élevé un mur noir. Un mur tout autour de lui, qui l’empêche de regarder aussi bien devant que derrière” (Le Dernier Été 104). 50. “The only person to be sad perhaps would be Ali Elbouliga who, by losing him, would find himself deprived not of a beloved companion but of a reference point in the nebula of the everyday” (The Last Summer 18); “La seule personne à le regretter sera peut-être Ali Elbouliga qui se trouvera privé, en le perdant, non pas d’un compagnon aimé mais d’un repère dans la nébuleuse du quotidien” (Le Dernier Été 20).


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51. The Last Summer 132; “Boualem a accepté de mourir. [. . .] Peutêtre sera-t-il écrivain dans une autre vie? C’est vrai qu’une seule vie est trop courte pour accomplir tout ce qu’on désire” (Le Dernier Été 115). 5. Dialogues with the Dead

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1. The Watchers 205–06; “Un écheveau de ruelles [. . .] [relie] les choses de ce monde et les choses des mondes pressentis [. . .]: et là ceux qui possèdent la formule peuvent dialoguer avec les morts!” (Les Vigiles 218). 2. “Ce qui m’a toujours intéressé, c’est cette exploration des territoires intérieures” (Djaout, “Voix”). 3. Derrida, The Work of Mourning 117. 4. Davis 78; De Man 77. 5. De Man 77; See also Derrida, “Mnemosyne” 21. 6. De Man 122. 7. De Man 78. 8. Sokurov. 9. Fontenelle, Nouveaux dialogues. 10. W. H. Auden qtd. in Stover and Ryan 769. 11. Von Graffenried. 12. Von Graffenried 15. 13. Blida was one of the points on the “Triangle of Death,” located in the agricultural region of the Mitidja plain, south of Algiers. See Silverstein 656–60 for an account and analysis of the 1997–98 massacres that gave the area its dark appellation. 14. “La guerre, ce moteur de l’histoire” (Djaout, “L’Histoire” 26). 15. Quigley 54. 16. Pine 16. 17. See Quigley 54–62 for a detailed discussion of the history, process, and meaning of embalming. 18. Quigley 177. 19. Quigley 182. 20. This is not strictly true. Rachid Mimouni died in 1995 in Paris of acute hepatitis after a period of exile spent in Morocco once his teenaged daughter began receiving death threats. Some, including Rachid Boudjedra in his dedication in Lettres algériennes, have suggested that Mimouni really died of sorrow. In the same vein, Judith Preckshot writes: “It is thought that his death in Paris [. . .] was in part due to his exilic condition” (Preckshot 87). 21. See Rachid Boudjedra’s dedication in Lettres algériennes.


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22. Clymer 92. 23. See “Bloody Start” and “56 Killed.” 24. See “Bloody Start.” Human Rights Watch estimates that 125 people died each month in 2003 (approximately 1,500 total) as a result of political violence in Algeria (Human Rights Watch World Report 2003. 25. “Bloody Start.” 26. Quigley 9–10. 27. See Ariès 59. Also Musgrave 62–75. 28. Raul Escobar qtd. in Weissert. 29. Bloch; Green; Larson. 30. Green 151–52. 31. Green 152. 32. Bloch 168. 33. Green 167. 34. “Ils s’entrechoquent comme des pièces de monnaie à chaque fois que l’âne trébuche ou aborde les chemains encaissés” (Les Chercheurs 147). 35. “Et voici qu’aujourd’hui nous allons chercher son squelette hypothétique” (Les Chercheurs 28). 36. When I sent Sister Regina this chapter in June 2005, she raised a gentle objection to my use of the word “dismemberment” here. Noting that the word did not seem to fit with the peaceful atmosphere of the shrine, she worried that its use might convey the idea that the saints’ bodies had been subjected to violence in the process of translation. In most cases, she stressed, the bodies were no longer intact at the time of their removal from graves. Since I decided to retain my use of the word, I record Sister Regina’s objection. When I visited the shrine, I was thinking and reading continually about the violence that plagued Algeria during the 1990s. My use of the word “dismemberment” therefore reflects my headspace at the time of the visit, and my reading of the shrine through the lens of Djaout’s life, death, and work. 37. Le “squelette ubiquiste” (Les Chercheurs 144). 38. Ariès 328. 39. “Relics Brought in Two Collections.” 40. Francis of Sales is the patron saint of writers. 41. Albers. 42. The poor, disenfranchised youth of Algeria, so named for their tendency to hang around “holding up the walls” (the word hittiste derives from the Arabic for wall, hit). 43. Those who run the underground economy of Algeria (trabendo),


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which primarily consists of a trade in goods smuggled from Europe. 44. Clancy-Smith 162. 45. Chodkiewicz 111–12; Goldziher 259. 46. Andezian 147. 47. Ernst, Introduction xviii. 48. Ernst, Introduction xvi. 49. Ashraf Jahangir Simani, qtd. in Ernst “An Indo-Persian Guide” 61. 50. Ernst, Introduction xvi. 51. Albers. 52. Bowen 3. 53. As opposed to the Groupes islamiques armés, an armed group notorious for its brutality during the 1990s. 54. “Enterrement d’un écrivain. Poète ou romancier, il était aussi journaliste” (Baylee 15). 55. Michel Coluche was among the most popular standup comedians in France, and had appeared in fifteen films before his death on June 19, 1986. 56. “Je l’ai vue prendre un pot avec Coluche et Kateb. Et ils avaient l’air de bien rigoler. Même que Coluche leur racontait sa dernière rencontre au paradis . . .” (Baylee 92). 57. sa rt re Que comptez-vous me faire maintenant? Je suis déjà mort. On ne peut pas tuer un fantôme. madah

Mais on peut tuer un homme une deuxième fois . . . En discréditant son oeuvre impie. (Baylee 81) 58. “Le meilleur hommage que l’on puisse rendre est de lire, faire lire et étudier les oeuvres de l’écrivain” (Tahar Djaout qtd. in Benbouzid). 59. “[T]he concepts of ‘witnessing’ and ‘martyrdom’ can be linked in two ways. The first concerns the Greek term itself, derived as it is from the verb meaning ‘to remember.’ [. . .] “The second point of connection is even more profound, more instructive. The study of the first Christian texts on martyrdom—for example, Tertullian’s Scorpiacus—reveals some unexpected teachings. The Church Fathers were confronted by heretical groups that rejected martyrdom because, in their eyes, it constituted a wholly senseless death (perire sine causa). What meaning could be found in professing one’s faith before men—persecutors and executioners—who would understand nothing of this undertaking? God could not desire something


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without meaning. ‘Must innocents suffer these things? . . . Once and for all Christ immolated himself for us; once and for all he was killed, precisely so that we would not be killed. If he asks for the same in return, is it perhaps because he too expects salvation in my death? Or should one perhaps think that God demands the blood of men even while he disdains that of bulls and goats? How could God ever desire the death of someone who is not a sinner?’ The doctrine of martyrdom therefore justifies the scandal of a meaningless death, of an execution that could only appear as absurd” (Agamben 26–27). 60. “Doléances, Condoléances. Vacheries” (Ripault 189–90); “Ciblé comme dans le marketing” (Saâdi 12); “mort au nom de la purification d’une race d’élus abatârdie, qui a choisi le meurtre pour profession de foi et Satan pour maître [. . .] mort nous laissant désemparés, désarmés, dans un abîme sans lendemain” (Hamel 17); “lâchement abattu sur un parking minable d’une cité impersonnelle” (Metref, “Frère lumineux” 24); “tué non parce qu[e tu étais] modeste mais parce qu[e tu étais] lucide” (Assia Djebar qtd. in “Institut du monde arabe” 2). 6. Voyage Immobile “Sur la planète des mots, il n’y a pas de châteaux hantés. Depuis le début, écrire pour moi, c’était sortir du figuratif, c’était chercher d’autres figurations, chercher du sens ailleurs” (Djaout qtd. in Mokhtari 14).

1. “Immobilité découvreuse. Immobilité remuante. Comme lorsqu’on voyage dans une musique” (Djaout, L’Invention du désert 124). 2. “Je suis réduit [. . .] à voyager dans ma tête” (Djaout, L’Invention du désert 137). 3. “[L]’enfumée, la trépidante” (Djaout, L’Invention du désert 12). 4. Truth be told, most people saw through Eberhardt’s disguises. See Eberhardt, The Nomad. 5. “[P]our apprivoiser la vastitude, aplanir la superbe des massifs et se donner le courage d’affronter un monde sans femmes” (Djaout, L’Invention 45). 6. Simonis 438. 7. Simonis 447, my emphasis. 8. “Ah! mes amies, mes soeurs! Le malheur a encore frappé! La penseé est assassinée, le poète est mort! Il disait: >” (Zinaï-Koudil 23). Another example is Alek Baylee Toumi’s poem “Ruptu(eu)res,” which starts with the words “Le silence, c’est la mort” (127).


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9. Reporters sans frontières, “Le cas de Tahar Djaout.” 10. “[É]bloui et multiplié” (Djaout, L’Invention 50). 11. This is the name given to the old Arab quarter of a North African city, from the Arabic madina, city. 12. Bensmaïa, Experimental Nations 31. 13. Djaout, L’Invention 26. 14. “[L]e désert m’habite et m’illumine depuis des temps indéterminés” (Djaout, L’Invention 27–28). 15. “J’aime sentir sur la route l’emportement de la vitesse et la fragilité d’exister. Quand la voiture est lancée à 130 km/h sans pour autant parvenir à vaincre la distension des dunes, on sent se réduire la distance entre vivre et mourir, entre la plénitude et l’anéantissement, la compacité et le vide” (Djaout, L’Invention 27). 16. “C’est toujours avec une sensation confuse que je retrouve ce lieu que j’aime et hais équitablement, Alger seconde ville de mon enfance, Alger où je dois chaque fois m’arrêter avant de reprendre mon voyage pour retrouver un peu plus loin dans l’arrière-pays le caveau où dort, momifié et intact, le souvenir de mes premières années. Alger, entaille de lumière et de beauté crasseuse” (Djaout, L’Invention 190). 17. “J’aurais tant aimé avoir pour un voyage pareil la tête vibrante et vierge de l’ancêtre; j’aurais aimé qu’Ibn Toumert m’accompagne non pas comme un livre à écrire, non pas comme une odeur pisseuse de vieille documentation, mais comme un sang incontinent qui me pousse à défier le soleil, qui me bourre d’astuces guerrières lorsque le désert m’encercle de ses pièges. J’aurais aimé qu’Ibn Toumert campe si souverainement en moi que le soleil soudain puisse acquérir entre mes doigts toutes les vertus du liquide. J’aurais voulu que ma tête se remplisse de symboles pour que tout ce qui coule, sable ou eau, se confonde, pour que tout ce qui meurtrit purifie. Mais l’ancêtre n’est pas à mes côtés, n’a jamais été à mes côtés, ne sera jamais à mes côtés. Il n’est qu’une idée lointaine que je ferai peut-être un jour livresque pour qu’il soit mis fin à ses déambulations, qu’elle cesse de transhumer dans ma tête” (Djaout, L’Invention 76). 18. “Je fais un rêve belliqueux. Je sème en implacable foudre de guerre la terreur dans mon appartement. La tête protégée d’un masque anti-peur, un rouleau interminable de cartouches ceinturant mon corps, je traque Ibn Toumert retranché dans l’une des quatre pièces de mon logement. Mais j’oublie plus d’une fois l’objet de mes embuscades pour arroser d’une rafale généreuse telle de mes filles s’annonçant derrière un battant de porte ou tel chat venant quémander la chaleur de mon


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édredon. J’écoute la pluie tomber dehors, mais mon oreille est trop sollicitée par les bruits de la maison: Ibn Toumert ne cesse d’aller et venir comme pour narguer ma vigilance, moi qui n’aspire qu’à une chose, qu’il se fasse oublier et me dispense ainsi de l’abattre. Je vois par intermittance son corps sec et musclé d’homme du désert se couler derrière les meubles. À la fin, il se plante gaillardement devant moi; quelques poils sortant de ses narines tremblent d’indignation. J’appuie avec force sur la gâchette. J’ai épuisé le chargeur. Ibn Toumert me considère avec dédain et me dit: —C’est parce que tu es stérile que tu as des envies de meurtre. Tu veux me supprimer tout simplement pour n’avoir pas à parler de moi” (Djaout, L’Invention 49). 19. Bensmaïa, Experimental Nations 75. 20. “Je dois me construire à tout prix une renommé de pisteur. Je traque comme un monstre de patience, quelle que soit la rudesse de l’affût” (Djaout, L’Invention 40). 21. Bensmaïa, Experimental Nations 76–77. 22. Bensmaïa, Experimental Nations 33. 23. Bensmaïa, Experimental Nations 34–35. 24. Bensmaïa, Experimental Nations 33–34. 25. “Tehouda. Cité fondue dans la poussière. Cité de terre friable dans le repli du désert. Monticule couleur d’anonymat comme la nature alentour. Aucune plaque commemorative. Il n’existe même pas de panneau routier indicateur. Pour ceux qui inventorient les localités, Tehouda n’est pas un lieu d’histoire, elle n’est même pas un lieu tout court. Tehouda n’existe pas. Pourtant, c’est là que l’histoire du Maghreb s’est jouée” (Djaout L’Invention 31–32). 26. “[L]e sable acceuillant et meurtrier” (Djaout L’Invention 28). 27. See Djaout, “L’Histoire est une usurpation” 27, and L’Invention 188. 28. Simonis 530. 29. “Je m’insinue dans le désert . . .” (Djaout L’Invention 42). 30. “Quelqu’un m’a raconté un jour l’histoire d’un touriste allemand (oh, non! ce n’était pas Hölderlin!) soudain saisi de panique à cause de la pesanteur du désert entre In-Salah et Tamanrasset. Il roulait depuis des heures et des heures sans parvenir à sortir de la même fournaise et du même silence. Alors, un ressort se démit dans le chef. Le touriste s’arrêta tout à coup, se mit à casser rageusement les vitres et le parebrise de sa Land Rover puis détala comme un fou dans l’océan de pierre et de sable. Un camionneur qui se dirigeait vers Tamanrasset le ramassa,


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à demi mort, au bord d’une piste” (Djaout, L’Invention 42). 31. Djaout L’Invention 56. 32. “Oui, le désert se venge parfois” (Djaout L’Invention 42). 33. “Je ne descends pas au sud pour m’évader ou pour chercher des sensations inédites. C’est plutôt une manière pour moi de regarder vers l’intérieur, car le désert m’habite et m’illumine depuis des temps indéterminés” (Djaout L’Invention 27). 34. Simonis describes this game. 7. A Posthumous Interview with Tahar Djaout

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1. Djaout, “Les Réconciliateurs.” 2. “Nous refuserons [. . .] les chantages qui tendent à nous enfermer dans les logiques du genre: ‘ce sera moi ou celui d’en face qui est pire que moi,’ ‘si tu n’es pas avec moi, tu es contre moi’” (Djaout, “Lettre d’éditeur”). 3. See Simon’s “Algérie en noir et blanc” and Halli’s “À grand journal” and “Tahar Djaout.” 4. See Djaout, “La famille” 15. 5. Ameziane Ferhani recounts this story in “Les Armes de l’éternel adolescent” 15. 6. “L’histoire que raconte un roman ne s’est passée nulle part telle qu[e] [l’auteur] la raconte. Mais ce n’est pas du tout un paradoxe que de dire que l’art est justement dans l’infidélité, je veux dire dans la distance que l’artiste introduit entre sa création et la réalité vécue. Tout art est médiation” (Mammeri 35). 7. Djaout tells this story in “Saint Augustin” 30–31.


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INDEX

Abd el-Kader, 3–4, 6, 114, 143; Aboubekr Boutaleb, great-great-great grandson of, 9, 10; life of, 4–5; portrait of, 11, 113 Abdelkrim, Touati, 30 absurdity, 69, 141–42 Actualité de l’Émigration, 23 Afghani, Djaffar. See Mourad, Sid Ahmed afterlife, 13, 112, 135, 142–43 Aït-Oumeziane, Abdelkrim, 29 Algeria, 3; civil war, 17; conquest of, 117; deaths of journalists in, 32; journalism in, 12; legislative elections (1992), 18, 37; military regime, 12, 41. See also cultural figures, deaths of Algerian War (war of liberation), 41, 55, 65, 92; veterans, 65, 67, 76 Algérie Actualité, 20, 60, 141 Algiers, 116, 118, 120–22, 132, 136; Casbah in, 120, 143; Medina in, 120, 127 Ali, Bachir Hadj, 60 Allaf, Chantal, 16–17 Al Majal, 9 Althusser, Louis, 88 Ameur, Soltane, 31 Amrane-Minne, Danièle Djamila, 55 Amrouche, Jean-El Mouhoub, 60 anatomy museum, 97 L’Arche à vau l’eau (Djaout), 41, 46 Bab-el-Oued (terrorist cell), 29 baraka, 107–8 Baylee, Alek, 111–12 Beauvoir, Simone de, 111 Belabassi, Abdellah, 28 Belamri, Rabah, 47 Belhouchet, Omar, 31 Benaïssa, Slimane, 54–55; Les Fils de l’amertume, 56


Ben Bella, Ahmed, 44, 45 Bensmaïa, Réda, 18, 72, 126 Bibliothèque Nationale, 15 bin Laden, Osama, 11, 113 Biskra, 132, 134 Le Blanc de l’Algérie (Djebar), 135 Blida, 97 Bloch, Maurice, 99–100 bones, 97–101; anonymity of, 98; exhumation of, 93, 98–99, 100–101, 102, 113; reburial of, 57, 93; secondary burial of, 98, 99–100, 113; silencing of, 100; as talismans, 57; of the war dead, 56–57. See also relics; skeletons books: and bibliopsychological relief, 82; freedom through, 83; as mediators, 110, 111; paper shortages, effect on, 59; published by enal, 42; published by sned, 42, 74; as relics, 110; state monopoly over, 42 Boualit, Farida, 53 Boucebci, Mahfoud, 31; murder of, 30, 31 Boudiaf, Mohammed, 18, 90, 107; assassination of, 18, 22, 65, 139; policy of reconciliation of, 18, 62, 77, 140 Boudjedra, Rachid, 74 Boumedienne, Houari, 45 Bowen, John R., 110 Bugeaud, Maréchal, 5 Bush, George W., 140 cemeteries, 90–91, 98. See also bones censorship, 42, 59, 60, 73, 74, 75 Centre Culturel Algérien, 15 chefs historiques, 44 Les Chercheurs d’os (Djaout), 50, 54–57, 64, 93, 100–101, 103, 142 childhood: in L’Invention du désert, 58; in Les Vigiles, 77

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194 Claverie, Pierre, death of, 32 Coluche, Michel, 112 Committee for Truth, 31 confessions, televised, 29 corpse: denial of death, 95–96; embalming of, 95; in funeral home, 93, 94, 98; last gaze upon, 95. See also anatomy museum Cromwell, Oliver, disinterment of, 96 cultural figures, deaths of, 32–37

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Damascus, 5, 6, 7 Davis, Angela, 62 Davis, Timothy, 7 De Man, Paul, 88–89 Le Dernier Été de la raison (Djaout), 11– 12, 23, 62, 64, 77–84, 137, 138–39, 142 Derrida, Jacques, 88 desert, 130, 132, 134; amnesia of, 129; revenge of, 131 Dhofari, Temim. See Djaout, Tahar dialogue with the dead, 87, 88, 89, 114 dismemberment, 101, 103. See also anatomy museum; Mimouni, Rachid Djaâd, Abdelkrim, 22. See also Ruptures Djaballah, Abdallah, 61 Djaout, Tahar: bibliography, 21; commemoration of, 19; death of, 12, 13, 14–15, 25–27; death threats against, 23, 136; education of, 20; as eradicator, 62, 63, 140–41; as female poet, 118; funeral of, 27–28, 111; journalism of, 20, 59–63, 141; life of, 20–27; name, meaning of, 78; pseudonyms, 23; reactions to the death of, 14–16; silence surrounding the death of, 25; suspects in the murder of, 28–31; trial for the murder of, 30; on writing novels, 53–54; on writing poetry, 47, 54. See also Ruptures —Works: L’Arche à vau l’eau, 41, 46; Les Chercheurs d’os, 50, 54–57, 64, 93, 100–101, 103, 142; Le Dernier Été de la raison, 11–12, 23, 62, 64, 77–84, 137, 138–39, 142; L’Étreinte du sablier, 47; L’Exproprié, 20, 41, 49–51,


Index 79, 137–38; Insulaire & Cie., 41, 47; L’Invention du désert, 57–59, 77, 117, 119, 121–23, 126–27, 128, 131; “The King’s Breviary,” 42–43; “Ma cousine a des yeux de mer . . . ,” 44; L’Oiseau minéral, 41, 47; Pérennes, 23, 47, 48–49, 53, 64; “Quatrains éclopés,” 46; “Le Reporter,” 51–53; Les Rets de l’oiseleur, 51–53; “La Révolution et la poésie sont une seule et la même chose,” 44, 45–46; Solstice barbelé, 41, 43, 46; Les Vigiles, 50, 64–77, 87, 88, 142 Djebar, Assia, 12, 54, 55, 117; Le Blanc de l’Algérie, 135 Dreiden, Sergei, 89 Eberhardt, Isabelle, 117, 119 elegiac writing, 16, 46 El-Goléa, 116 Elizabeth II, 10 Elkader ia, 3, 125, 143; Benaoumer (Omar) Zergaoui, visit to, 9; Ed Olson, former mayor of, 8, 9, 10, 11; Muslim namesake of, 11; naming of, 4, 6–7, 113–14; significance of, 13; sister-cities program, 9 embalming. See under corpse engagement, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47 L’Étreinte du sablier (Djaout), 47 exhumation. See bones: exhumation of; Shrine of the Holy Relics L’Exproprié (Djaout), 20, 41, 49–51, 79, 137–38 Fanon, Frantz, 62 Farès, Nabile, 60 Feraoun, Mouloud, 60 Les Fils de l’amertume (Benaïssa), 56 fis (Front islamique du salut), 18, 24, 37, 61, 72, 73, 90, 140 Flici, Laâdi, death of, 32 fln (Front de libération nationale), 18, 44, 54–55, 72, 73 Gafaïti, Hafid, 72, 73–74 Gardel, Louis, 23 Gaucheron, Jacques, 48

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Index gia (Groupes islamiques armés), 17, 63, 97–98, 111, 140 Gibran, Khalil: The Prophet, 69 Glucksmann, André, 17 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 7 Gogol, Nikolai, 141 Gontard, Marc, 53 Graffenried, Michael von, 90, 91 Grau, Vincent, 78, 111 Green, Rebecca, 99–100 Guevara, Che, 62 Guezmir, Mohamed, 30 Gui, Raymond, trial of, 96 Hades. See afterlife Hadj, Messali, 44 Halli, Ahmed, 62–63 Hamrouche Decree, 60 Heaven. See afterlife Hermitage, 89 history, 55; la grande histoire, 50; hagiography rather than, 56; hijacking of, 54; and national memory, 55; rewriting of, 93 Hizb-França (Party of France), 19 Hoggar, 116, 130 hypothetical skeleton, 100, 111 immobile voyage, 13, 116 immortality, 84. Immortality (Kundera), 89 In-Salah, 116, 129, 131 Insulaire & Cie. (Djaout), 41, 47 intégristes. See under Islamism L’Invention du desert (Djaout), 57–59, 77, 117, 119, 121–23, 126–27, 128, 131 Iowa, 3, 11, 13, 137. See also Elkader ia Islamism: and dialogue with Islamists, 63; and education, 62, 71–72, 73; fundamentalist, 73; and intégristes, 138, 140; and Islamist extremists, 12; and Islamist groups, 12, 17, 18, 98, 118; movement in Algeria, 12, 18, 61, 66, 72 journalism in Algeria, 12, 19, 32, 37, 42, 59–63. See also Mekbel, Saïd; Ruptures


195 Kabylia, 13, 104, 116 Kader (fictional character), 124–25, 128, 130, 132–34 Kafka, Franz, 66, 136 Kateb, Yacine, 62, 74, 111, 112 “The King’s Breviary” (Djaout), 42–43 Kiser, John W., 65 Kruk, Herman, 82–83 Kundera, Milan, 14, 111; Immortality, 89 Laghouati, Abdelhamid, 60 La Kahina, 128 Land of the Cross-tipped Churches, 102 Larson, Pier Martin, 99 Layada, Abdelhak, 29 Liabès, Djilali, death of, 32 Libération, 28, 74 Liberté, 63 Lincoln, Abraham, 95 Lithuania, 93, 94 Lonely Planet, 117, 122 Louis-Napoléon, 5 “Ma cousine a des yeux de mer . . .” (Djaout), 44 Maison de la presse, 19, 27, 31, 122 Mammeri, Mouloud, 21, 60, 112, 142 maquis, 76 Marquis de Custine. See Dreiden, Sergei Marrouchi, Mustapha, 32, 72 Martinez, Luis, 17 martyrdom, 28, 112–13 Marxism in Algeria, 44–45 Mascara, 9, 10, 113 massacres, 17, 19, 37, 97 Le Matin, 24 Matoub, Lounès, kidnapping of, 19 Meddour, Azzedine, 31 mediation, 95 Mekbel, Saïd, 23–24, 25, 31, 90, 92, 137; murder of, 24 Mendinant, 127 Metref, Arezki, 21, 139 M’Hammed, Khaldi, 9 Mimouni, Rachid, 31, 54, 74–75, 90, 107, 111, 112; death and disinterment of, 96; Le Fleuve détourné, 74

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196 miniature poems, 46 minimalism, 43, 46 Le Monde, 62, 63 Montaigne, Michel de, 48–49 El Moudjahid, 20, 60 Mouffok, Ghania, 54 Mourad, Sid Ahmed, 19 Muslims, 6, 109. See also Islamism; saints: Muslim

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Napoléon III, 5 narrator-tracker, 126–27 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 44 necrophagous society, 129 neocolonialism, 75 neoimperialism, 75 9/11 (September 11), 11, 140 Noreddine, Imam Harik, 30 October 1988, 17–18, 66, 70, 139 L’Oiseau minéral (Djaout), 41, 47 Old Elkader, 6 Ouazani, Chérif, 28 partisan fighters, 96 pérenne, 48–49. See also Pérennes (Djaout) Pérennes (Djaout), 23, 47, 48, 53, 64 Plath, Sylvia, 43 The Prophet (Gibran), 69 prosopopoeia, 88–89 Purgatory. See afterlife “Quatrains éclopés” (Djaout), 46 Quigley, Christine, 95 Redjam, Abderrazak, 30 relics, 101, 103, 105; books as, 110; classes of, 103; as objects of medi(t)ation, 105; in reliquaries, 101, 103; translation of, 101 “Le Reporter” (Djaout), 51–53 Reporters sans frontières, 31, 32 Les Rets de l’oiseleur (Djaout), 51–53 “La Révolution et la poésie sont une seule et la même chose” (Djaout), 44, 45–46 Revue celfan Review, 23 riots. See October 1988


Index Ruptures, 19, 21–23, 24, 27, 31, 59, 61, 64, 119, 138–39; Abdelkrim Djaâd and Arezki Metref, coeditors of, 21, 139; lifespan of, 23, 139–40; naming of, 140 Russian Ark, 89 S., Tayeb. See Djaout, Tahar Saâdi, Nordine, 25, 31 Saint Anthony of Padua, 106 Saint Augustine, 103, 104, 143 Saint Bernardine of Siena, 106 Saint Blandina, 103 Saint Christina the Astonishing, 106 Saint Columba, 103 Saint Constantine, 103, 104 Saint Cruser, 105–7, 112–14, 119, 143 Saint Jude Thaddeus, 107 Saint Justina, 103 Saint Peregrine, 102, 106, 111 Saint Placidus, 103 saints, 101, 112, 114; adoration versus veneration of, 104; bodies, incorruptibility of, 110; in Gayo tradition, 110; as mediators, 107, 108; Muslim, 107–9, 111, 112; parallel universe of, 110; unrecognized, 110. See also relics; and individual saints Saint Veronica, 104 Saint Victoria, 109 Saint Vitus, 103 Saint Wilgefortis, 114 Sans voix (Zinaï-Koudil), 119 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 111–12 Sayed, Soraya, 30 Schiller, Friedrich, 7 Sebti, Youssef, 60 secondary burial. See under bones Sedik, Bourayane (Djaafer), 30 Sehaba, Mohammed, 53 Sénac, Jean, 60 Shrine of the Holy Relics, 101–6, 113; and Francis de Sales Brunner, 109; and Maria Anna de Sales Brunner, 109; and Sister Regina Albers, 102–6; and Sisters of the Precious Blood, 102, 109 Shur, Yaron, 87, 136 “silence is death,” 119

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Index Silverstein, Paul A., 72 Si Mahmoud. See Eberhardt, Isabelle Simon, Catherine, 62 skeletons, 98 socialism in Algeria, 72. See also Marxism in Algeria Solstice barbelé (Djaout), 41, 43, 46 Soyinka, Wole, 137 The Spy, 89 Tamanrasset, 131, 132 Tarkovsky, Andrei, 127 teachers, murders of, 32 Tehouda, 128–29 Temimi, Assia, 26 Tengour, Habib, 53 territories of the interior, 87, 88 thinking journey, 13, 87–88, 113 Tibhirine, monks of, 32, 65, 116 time, 59, 81 Tizi-Ouzou, 20


197 torture, 29, 31, 76; in Les Vigiles, 76 Toward a Medieval Poetics (Zumthor), 79–80 ubiquitous skeleton, 103, 104 umma, 44 veil, 81, 118; Saint Veronica’s, 104 Les Vigiles (Djaout), 50, 64–77, 87, 88, 142 Vilna ghetto, 82–83 El Watan, 19, 28 work and text, difference between, 80 writers: role in nation-building, 41; and Writers’ Union, 42, 59, 60. See also cultural figures, deaths of; journalism in Algeria Zinaï-Koudil, Hafsa: Sans voix, 119 Zumthor, Paul: Toward a Medieval Poetics, 79–80

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