I Was a French Muslim by Mokhtar Mokhtefi
Author:Mokhtar Mokhtefi [Mokhtefi, Mokhtar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2021-09-21T00:00:00+00:00
* * *
â
In the village, soldiers are everywhere, as during the Second World War. But theyâre not Englishmen stationed here before going into battle against Nazi imperialism. Theyâre French conscripts here to bolster a racist, unjust, freedom-smashing system. Thursday, July 5, the day of the strike, my parents are up before dawn, as usual. After drinking his coffee, my father goes to the mosque for the early morning prayer, then comes back home. He sits down to read Sidi Khellil, his religious mentor. Two hours later, there are heavy, loud knocks at the door. My mother lets out a few words of malediction and goes to answer the knock. Mustafa and I follow her. From behind the door, she cries, âWhoâs there?â A voice with authority replies: âTell Miloud to come open the butcher shop.â From her limited vocabulary, she finds the right French phrase:âHeâs sick.â The voice continues: âTell his son to come supply the army.â
Mustafa and I move away from the door. He tells me that my father has a contract to supply the army with meat and that if he refuses to obey, thereâll be consequences. I suggest that he tell them heâll serve them and will close up again afterward. And so it is. âThe stores are all closed,â Baba says, âand in the streets all I saw were soldiers.â
The atmosphere in the village is nothing like the last time I was home. Withdrawn, mistrustful, nobody knows whoâs a Messalist and whoâs a Frontist. According to Mustafa, Yahia Ferhat was captured and killed. He was supplying a Messalist group of soldiers. At Christmastime I had given him money to pay for army boots the combatants had ordered. Frontists from the Liberation Army arrived in the village and executed him. Iâd known Yahia all my life and donât doubt his patriotism, his good faith. The maquisards with whom he was in contact were fighting against the French army in order to free the country. They sold him on their way of thinking. Like others in the village, he was part of Messaliâs cult.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Spare by Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex(4199)
I Have Something to Say by John Bowe(3283)
Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire by J.K. Rowling(3046)
Unfinished: A Memoir by Priyanka Chopra Jonas(2918)
Never by Ken Follett(2882)
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey(2437)
The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman(2300)
Machine Learning at Scale with H2O by Gregory Keys | David Whiting(2292)
Fairy Tale by Stephen King(2071)
Will by Will Smith(2043)
Think Again by Adam Grant(1860)
Rationality by Steven Pinker(1765)
The Storyteller by Dave Grohl(1661)
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber & David Wengrow(1571)
The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly(1571)
The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom(1532)
Invent and Wander by Jeff Bezos & Walter Isaacson(1506)
What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey(1473)
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr(1435)