While sitting in the room with the other women mourning the death of her grandmother, Aïcha’s mind wanders to describing her wartime identity as a veiled undertaker. She assumes the role of soul keeper
And I, who accompany the dead, whoever they may be,
whether newly buried or already burrowing in the sand and
mud underneath the stone, I the true shroud of the corpses,
whether the most cleanly washed or those who stink underneath
the ointments and perfumes, I who claim to be the paralyzing
shell, the last all too-real mask, because I must reestablish the
original incommunicability as new and unequivocal, I in all
the places where multiple witnesses congregate around a cold
body, because of the usual customary mores, witnesses already
forgetful, already denying but feeling the weight of their common
forgetfulness, I their inaudible voice, I meticulously reestablish
the distances, I reevaluate the relationships. (52)
In general, one can derive from this passage that women’s identity in the wartime period and in the postwar period is simply one who cares for corpses: their identity is partially founded on loss and participation in the ritual of loss. There is something distinctly maternal about Aïcha’s mourning process in that she assumes the characteristics of Islamic angels as opposed to that of a woman. The angelic demeanor is encapsulated not only in her maternal nature in birth, but also in death among women who mourn and care for the deceased in a way that men do not. She is mourning not only her grandmother, but also for Algerian women who have died and are in the process of dying as a result of the state of limbo they are placed into at the conclusion of the war.
As well as her references to death, Aïcha also refers to “the paralyzing shell, the last all too-real mask, because I must reestablish the original incommunicability as new and unequivocal. (79)” She refers to the push towards re-veiling in the postwar era and how the veil in this period has reassumed its prewar attributes of seclusion and incommunicability with the world outside of the veil.
Finally her soliloquy refers to “the usual customary mores, witnesses already forgetful, already denying but feeling the weight of their common forgetfulness, I their inaudible voice, I meticulously reestablish the distances, I reevaluate the relationships. (79)” Again, there is a reference to the post-war re-socialization of women in Algeria. Suddenly the women who were warrior sisters are returned to their positions as midwives, undertakers and women of seclusion. There is a new set of privacy laws enacted and a return to those that existed in the pre-war period. There is a “common forgetfulness” because it is a social practice that women must forget their involvement in the independence process: the new patriarchal structure of post-war Algeria denies them the right to reenact their roles as modern women fighting with men for the collective interests of Algeria. She “reevaluate(s) the relationships” because there is no longer a collective body linked by indigenous, yet mostly non-sanguine kinship ties: it is compartmentalized into families and political parties rather than a hermaphroditic national body.
It seems that even Assia Djebar’s metahistorical approach to the postcolonial period is fraught with issues of developing a historical identity for women during the period of war. There is a particular emphasis on the destruction of the female body and the female psyche, which can also be read as a national allegory. The memory that Djebar gives her women is that of torment and madness. This madness is appropriate because it illustrates through the psychological testimony of these women their own fragmented histories not only in the way in which they maneuvered and straddled a variety of social dichotomies during wartime, but the way in which they were virtually erased from the historical memory as soon as the Algerians were victorious: at once the identity created for them by the French was banished to the files of Orientalist discourse and propaganda and their role in reclaiming Algeria came at the cost of relinquishing their historical and social identities. As a result, the walls of the neo-harem were erected inside their minds and inside of Algerian society in a variety of neo-traditional manifestations. Women were moved from the prison of the harem to the prisons of the French and finally into the prisons of their minds and veils as postwar Algeria began to take shape and the push towards Islamization became stronger. As such, Djebar’s women are metahistorical because there is no real history to write them into: they are aware of their history and as such, the fragmented records of real history must be imbibed into the remaining souls of the warrior women in order to give them a fragmented identity that is written and not thought of or used to torture the survivors.
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