Zahia Rahmani - France, Story of a Childhood

The prologue to France , a series of vignettes recounted from a child’s perspective, establishes the novel’s austere voice, which many French reviewers have described as épuré , or stripped down. One example: “A man is sitting on the floor, in a corner. The room is dark. He is silent and gaunt. I am told, ‘It’s your father.’” The spartan language draws the reader in. Our father calls us a whore for daring to watch television. Our brother comes home in a casket. Our mother is dying. Rahmani is also frugal in describing her characters’ appearance or movement. The narrator kneels in a garden, kisses a boy on the lips, holds her mother’s hand.

Rahmani’s bare-bones style, however, does not exclude lyricism or poetry. France is lush with both. Like the Kabylian legends to which Rahmani pays homage, the novel begs to be read aloud. (Remember that the opening lines prepare us for “a symphony.”) The author confirmed her preoccupation with the spoken voice of her work during our Paris meeting. She recounted that she read every passage in her novel six or seven times until she was satisfied “que ça sonnait bien,” that it sounded right. I did the same with my translation, relishing the gentle rhythms of the text. When describing Hocine’s endearing English girlfriend, Mandy, the narrator adds, “My brother marries this melody.” The musicality continues throughout the novel:

We scare one another in the dark forest, the trees picking up the echo of our voices, lighters in hand, bolting at the slightest noise, waiting for dawn, leaping roebucks, feeding ourselves with strawberries as tiny as teeth, rolling our bodies in beech leaves, smelling nature as if with a snout.

One of the most striking stylistic departures in the text comes in the form of an emotional op-ed written in 2002, on the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Algerian War, and first published in the French journal Drôle d’Époque . In this essay, titled “Everything / One I Left Behind,” reality dramatically reasserts itself. The author lambastes both France and Algeria for the abuses of the postcolonial era.

It is useful to recognize the sociopolitical context surrounding the writing of France , which was, in large part, a response to national unrest in France. In the fall of 2005, two young boys from the long marginalized Clichy-sous-Bois housing project outside of Paris were electrocuted as they fled city policemen. Their deaths prompted a wave of riots that swept the poor suburbs of France’s major cities. The urban violence, which lasted nearly three weeks and primarily involved second-generation immigrants of African and North African descent, left some ten thousand cars in burned husks, hundreds of damaged buildings, and the country shaken by the upheaval of racial tensions.

The cry of protest threading through France —against the racial tensions at play in a contemporary “France on fire,” the injustice of a fifty-year-old conflict that continues to punish its actors’ children, and the burden of ignorance in a small town—is evident, though the narrator’s allegiances to her native and adopted lands are mutable. However, it would be a mistake to view Rahmani’s novel as predominantly political commentary or representative of Harki fiction in France.

True, the themes Rahmani explores in France and her other novels mirror those found in works written by other Harki children: collective silence and guilt, and the role of Harki mothers as guardians and transmitters of family history and cultural identity. And like other authors who write about the Harki experience, Rahmani uses dueling languages, specifically French and Kabyle, to convey the cultural challenge of integration. (Fortunately for the reader, Rahmani reveals the richness of the Kabyle language through her own translations.)

But, for this reader at least, the relationship between Ourida and her daughter transcends the novel’s historical and political context. Some may be struck more by the author’s insistent voice, railing against racism and familial reprobation, the poignancy of the narrator’s struggle to find her place in between two cultures, the historical backdrop of a nuanced conflict that continues to fester, or the lyricism of the prose. Regardless, what Rahmani expressed to me is true. France is not a Harki story, or even a French story. It is a universal tale of oppression, pain, and rebellion. Transmission, heritage, and family. Identity and belonging. And most affecting, maternal love and the moments that precede a great loss.

Note: The reader can certainly understand and appreciate France without any knowledge of the Harkis. However, some historical background provides for a more in-depth understanding of the work, and was vital to my own interpretation and subsequent translation of Rahmani’s novel. An excellent English-language resource on the subject is The Harkis: The Wound That Never Heals , by anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano. Building on extensive research and in-person interviews, Crapanzano explores the lingering psychological impact of the Algerian War on the children of the Harki. To illustrate this, Crapanzano often draws from the small field of Harki literature, citing, for example, Rahmani’s writing as a compelling example of the “ambivalence that the [Harki] children feel toward their fathers.”

Tonight, I lead a symphony, no omissions, no embellishments. I have few instruments. Percussions and flutes. Standing, I conduct a breath.

In the back, a voice calls me, “Mademoiselle, mademoiselle?”

Like the dry crackling of a tree leaf clenched in one’s hand, I hear, “The jury wants a little serenade, not this score.”

With my back turned, I nod. I start over. There are few instruments. Nothing omitted, nothing embellished. I remove the breath. A beat.

They interrupt me.

“This is impossible. Without a piano, without a violin, you can’t. It can’t be done! Play us something else. You must have a short movement, a memory, a landscape?”

I lower my head.

I open my hand. The leaf unfolds. I look at it. I see nothing but broken paths. I let it slip away. I leave the stage.

It’s dawn. I get up.

For days my mother has been sick. Her heart. I return to her bed.

This morning, I lie down beside her.

“My daughter.”

And she closes her eyes.

My head against her shoulder, my hand holding hers, I curl up, I’m frightened. Suddenly, I’m tearing down walls. I fall into childhood.

I run up to an iron door. I enter. It shuts behind me. I’m out of breath. Someone tells me I deserve this, it serves me right. This happens in Algeria, I’m maybe four years old. Outside, children bang and throw rocks. I tell them, “My father will come back, he’ll come back and beat you all.” My left eye is bleeding.

We are woken up. It’s the Red Cross. Quickly, my mother grabs us. We drive to Algiers.

A man is sitting on the floor, in a corner. The room is dark. He is silent and gaunt. I am told, “It’s your father.”

I don’t move. Men in suits come and go. We are many. More and more. Everyone waits.

One night I am put in a truck. In the morning I gaze at the ocean from the deck of a boat. That night I leave the port in a truck. I walk and sleep in a hangar. The next day I leave again. We drive. The vehicle stops. A soldier lifts the tarp, the sky is blue, the sun warms us, nature is beautiful. It’s wonderful.