I Was a French Muslim: Memories of an Algerian Freedom Fighter by Mokhtar Mokhtefi

Author:Mokhtar Mokhtefi [Mokhtefi, Mokhtar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, history, Africa, North
ISBN: 9781635421804
Google: Tgk_EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Published: 2021-09-21T23:37:28.354520+00:00

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In the village, soldiers are everywhere, as during the Second World War. But they’re not Englishmen stationed here before going into battle against Nazi imperialism. They’re 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, “Who’s there?” A voice with authority replies: “Tell Miloud to come open the butcher shop.” From her limited vocabulary, she finds the right French phrase:“He’s sick.” The voice continues: “Tell his son to come supply the army.”

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, there’ll be consequences. I suggest that he tell them he’ll serve them and will close up again afterward. And so it is. “The stores are all closed,” Baba says, “and in the streets all I saw were soldiers.”

The atmosphere in the village is nothing like the last time I was home. Withdrawn, mistrustful, nobody knows who’s a Messalist and who’s a Frontist.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. I’d known Yahia all my life and don’t 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 Messali’s cult.

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