Story: Algerian story

Warning signs

In 1985, whilst on a weekend visit to Blida, I came across an exhibition set up on the Place 1er novembre, next to the former French colonial bandstand, with tables laid out with books, and posters and paintings on display behind the tables. But it was the people presenting the exhibition who caught my attention: all young men, many of them just teenagers, dressed in pristine white djellabas and crocheted skull-caps. All of them sported wispy beards that gave away their youth. The books on display were all in Arabic, concerned with Islameyat, Islamic matters, but the paintings were more remarkable: garish portrayals of ‘the Great Satan’ astride a nuclear missile, colonial massacres and torture being carried out by French troops, and – to my immediate discomfort – flag-burning bonfires featuring the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack . Not once in the previous two years had I encountered this Iranian-style ideology and iconography anywhere in Algeria, and no Algerian – no matter how indignant about the French colonial period, or the injustices committed by the State of Israel against the Palestinians – had ever voiced such opinions about the twin rôles of Britain and America in the political consciousness of the Islamic world. But here – and this was in 1985 - was the evidence before me, and I studied the young men behind the tables closely (for there were only men there), to try to find any common ground between these people and the men and women from Blida, Médéa and the northern Sahara whom I had been teaching for the last two years, and whose unguarded personal warmth towards me as a foreign visitor to their country had allowed me to forge a personal bond with them. I could see none. As with religious absolutists of any hue, their most distinguishing characteristic was a vacancy behind the eyes, the absence of what Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb describes as ‘le regard’..l’essence de la vie’, the ‘look’ which is the essence of life, engaging the viewer and the object in a dynamic relationship of mutual recognition. The refusal to look somebody directly in the eyes is a negation of the existence of both parties, and this was what I found with these young men. I left the square as soon as I could. I did not know it at the time, but I had just come face to face with the ‘ikhwa’ or ‘frères musulmans’, so named after the Egyptian ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ which had had a significant influence on Algerian politics since before independence. This movement, which from the early 1980’s was allegedly backed by the government to counter the activities of Kabyle independence movements at the university of Algiers, would later take legal and political form as le FIS, the Islamic Salvation Front, an organisation which over the next few years would change the course of Algerian politics and history through its various armed offshoots, which have had a substantial but poorly understood impact on France, Britain and the USA in the last decade of the twentieth century, eventually signing up as "Al-qaeda in Algeria" in 2006.

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My previous encounter with a ‘barbu’ ("bearded one") had been considerably more convivial, verging on the tragi-comic. In Algiers for a few days leave from the college, I had enjoyed a delicious lunch at the restaurant ‘Hôtel des Anglais’ on the corniche, including half a bottle of ‘Cuvée du Président’, Algeria’s full-bodied premium red wine blended from the choicest grapes of Côteaux de Mascara, Médéa and Tlemcen. Afterwards I went exploring in le Golfe, the residential area uphill of the city centre, where comfortable villas looked out over honeysuckle-laden walled gardens over plunging ravines. A call of nature resulted in my being directed by a passer-by to the outbuilding of a small mosque, which appeared to contain a long metal urinal at knee level, (not dissimilar to the type currently in vogue in the most cutting-edge European nightclubs), and two cubicles. On the verge of availing myself of the urinal, which rather curiously had metal taps at either end, a sudden attack of shyness caused me to retreat to one of the cubicles instead. While inside, somebody came in to the outbuilding and banged roughly on the door, which I had not bolted properly. ‘Shut the door, will you, Mohammed!’ was the gist of what he said. As I emerged sheepishly, I found myself face to face with the Imam of the mosque, who seemed pleasantly surprised to find a ‘Roumi’ on his premises, and excused himself quite unnecessarily for his abrupt manner. He then went back to join his colleagues in perform his ritual ablutions (including the face and hands) in the metal trough which I had erroneously identified just minutes earlier as a public urinal. I can only put down to divine intervention the change of mind that had saved me from not merely causing a diplomatic incident, but from making a personal contribution to the long litany of woes that Muslims attribute to uncivilised ‘Christians’: ‘They pee in the wash hand basin, I have seen it with my own eyes…’