The protagonist in Rachid Boudjedra’s novel “Le
Démantèlement, Denoël, 1982” was an ex-communist and participated in the
war of independence of Algeria. He was having a disease and a young female used
to pass by his lodgment to just offer the little help that she can to this old
lonely man. He started to talk to her about his memories of the war. She asked
him questions about the color of the eyes of his compatriots. About the way
they walk, eat, and talk. She showed less interest in what the old man regarded
as “history”. She wanted to see the history of her Algeria from another point
of view, a subjective point of view.
I reached Algeria in
the 4th of July. I reached home when I met my family and we talked
till late at night. When I woke up the next morning I went walking to buy
El-Watan, my preferred journal and they gave me with it a free supplement. It
is the 5th of July, the 50th anniversary of the
Independence Day of Algeria. I liked the most the photo of the old lady in the
cover since it tells much to me. Blame my lethargy or my poor French language
abilities, I didn’t read the supplements, but I gathered them, day by day, and
contemplated the photos.
I preferred to re-read Tahar Djaout’s “Les Cheurcheurs D’Os”
since I got it in French and in its translation to Arabic by Jilaly Khallas so
that I can compare the two texts and enjoy learning French and Arabic in a
comparative way.
The protagonist of Djaout’s novel is 14 year of old. Never
left his small village before. The novel starts at the day on independence when
the people are still celebrating. At the same time they decided that they
should bring back the bodies of their sons, the martyrs, who joined the
mountains and held the arms against the French army. The unnamed protagonist
had an older brother who had joined the mountains and never came back since
about two years. The parents asked our 14 years old protagonist to go, like the
others, and bring back the bones of the martyrs of their relatives.
Our protagonist was not convinced of the validity of the
idea. They chose an older relative of him named Rabah to accompany him. A
neighbor offered one of his donkeys to help them in their travel. The travel
lasted days. Most of the time they were silent. The novel tells about the
protagonist’s remembering his memories with his friend in the old days while he
was silently accompanying Rabah, not convinced of the mission given to him.
He discovers the villages around their area and few cities.
He drinks gaseous juices for the first time in his life. And saw people with
clean clothes and many cars and he felt ashamed of his own clothes and of their
accompanying donkey.
They finally met someone who seemed to know the place where
his old brother was buried. He took them to the place and they started digging.
The first skeleton found was having a golden tooth. They reburied that skeleton
and went to another place and started digging and the second skeleton was of an
animal, might be a dog.
Our protagonist’s bitterness and sarcasm reached a peak that
he agreed that they continue and he accepted to take the third skeleton in his
bag and the journey of return to the village was tasteless and absurd. Our
protagonist reached a conclusion that that only living being in his village
that now he is re-entering is the donkey that accompanied them.
I think the novel was not translated to English since I
failed to find any hint in the internet about how to write its title in
English.
I started a second novel and that was of Mouloud Ferraou,
entitled “La Terre et le Sang” since I have it in both languages: French and
Arab. I was surprised to find that it was translated to English by Patricia
Geesy and entitled: "Land and Blood”
Days later I started another search about “Les Chercheurs
D’Os” and I found an article in English that I can read freely via the net and
it was written by the same person who translated Mouloud Ferroun’s “Le Terre et
le Sang”, Patricia Geesy. I would choose the following line from the article
that I liked a lot:
“ His (Tahar Djaout) writings does not present a narrative
transcription of the factual history. It seeks rather, to establish
intertextual link with other discourses of history, conscious of the fact that,
as Roland Barthes has noted, historical discourse cannot follow or create
reality itself, it can only “present itself as a sign of a dead thing”.
The link of the article:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/396721?uid=3737904&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21100951533313
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