Do you know Johnny Cash's song I
hung my head? A man goes out to practice shooting, early
one morning. Not paying
particular attention to his surroundings, he fires into the distance
and his bullet shoots a rider down. I always felt this song captures the fixed and unforgiving essence of doom, how one single
moment, one single action, can make your entire life tip over, to merge
the real and the nightmares. Perhaps we've all been at the threshold
of such moments? Perhaps not. But it is the kind of texts that sends
ice cold waves down one's spine (well mine), because it tells and foretells life's potential for horror.
Abdelhamid Ben Hadouga's
novel 'The South Wind' sends such shivers, only they will be burning, as burning as the
guebli-wind.
The story is set post-independence (the novel was published in 1971) and the Algerian
government is about to implement its land redistribution plan.
Nafissa, a young university student, returns to her home village for the holidays. As soon as she is home, she begins to miss
Algiers and her student life there. Everyday spent locked
up in her home makes her feel more contempt and scorn for
what she sees as a suffocating patriarchal society, one that forces women
into the role of mere obedient puppets at best. She begins to loath her
mother Kheira, and to decides to renegade against her wealthy
landowner of a father Belkadi whom she overhears telling her mum he has decided to marry her off, Nafissa, to the Mayor. This mayor is the former
fiancé
of Nafissa's now dead-sister. Whether Nafissa likes it or not, whether Kheira likes it or not, Belkadi has decided, and besides, these women's likes or dislikes are not even a consideration. Nafissa's naïve
attempt at an escape tips her life over, and that of two others, into a
dark and petrifying end. "And all for no reason" as Johnny Cash sings.
While
this was written in the late 60s and describes what I imagine to be
the mentality, partially, of this decade and the previous one, it perfectly mirrors my
current experience in Algeria so far. I wonder how deeply anchored the mentality and the
clash that BenHadouga describes, but still today, I've met his description of men's and
women's condition and beliefs and it is as live and kicking as a new
born baby vampire. What I'm pretty certain of is that the
village-city or village-capital separation no longer applies, perhaps because
the composition of Algiers and large cities have changed.
Abdelhamid
Ben Hadouga was a prolific Algerian writer, born in 1925, who wrote
in Arabic. He is one of the most important figures of the Algerian novel and of Algerian literature, with Mohammed Dib. SNED editions translated
him into French in 1978. Ben Hadouga passed away in 2012, Waciny Laredj wrote his obituary here.
You can find a very
good synopsis of TheSouth Wind here. If you're in Algiers you can find Ben Handouga's South Wind at Kalimat Library for 650DA.
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