In Women of Algiers in their Apartment, Djebar also uses a socio-historical approach in order to construct her allegory of the nation. In particular, Sarah’s account of how her mother worshiped her father and obeyed him until the day she died.
Every evening my father came home, my mother would
arrive carrying a copper bowl full of hot water and she’d
wash his feet. Meticulously. Sitting on one of the steps—I
must have been seven or eight—I would watch her. I wasn’t
thinking anything! Never, never did I say anything, no matter
what, even to myself. No doubt at the time I must have though
that scene was normal, perhaps I was present at the same ritual
in other patios with jasmine and faded mosaics like ours… I
never once got up to overturn the bowl, to say to the coupl, so
calm and serene: ‘Go to hell, you two!’ And yet I knew that
I would never in my life wash anything like that. In a way, you
Might say that the empty folklore of the copper bowl killed
Everything else… (49)
This particular passage straddles both the metahistorical and the allegorical, but it is more heavily allegorical in that the nation is embodied in Sarah’s mother. Indeed, this revelation concerning her mother washing her father’s feet comes after she speaks of her own participation in the war, and as such it is easier for the reader to see this passage more as allegory than as a metahistorical approach to war and women’s lack of a tangible identity because Sarah does give her mother a tangible identity of an obedient wife who fulfills the cultural and indigenous norms of socialization with her husband. Her mother is obedient to her father, but Sarah is resentful of this obedience. As such, the reader may substitute Algeria in the place of Sarah’s mother and her father as France. The motherland is obedient, subdued and acculturated according to the customs of patriarchy as opposed to the indigenous customs of Islam or Algerian society allows for women and the care of their husbands. The mere fact that Sarah herself rejects this ritual is more telling of the allegorical context as opposed to a feminist one.
During the description of the ritual, Sarah refers to the “empty folklore of the copper bowl” which “killed everything else (49).” Copper is the lesser of the precious metals and one of a primitive character. What is contained in this lesser bowl is the mythology of France: industrialization, intellectual elitism, fashion, and the mythological (and folkloric) attributes of French culture that are supposedly intended to better or improve Algerian society. The killing of “everything else” by the “empty folklore” is descriptive of the subjugation of the indigenous culture of Algeria under the new “French-ness” that was imposed by colonialism. In this particular anecdote, there is an overall rejection of the French subjugation of Algerian culture as it is manifest in women.
Although Algeria did not win independence from France until 1962, the feminine voice writes from exile in Tunis in March 1959
“The other women have grown silent, “ I said. “The only
one left to weep now is the mother…Such is life,” I added
a moment later. “There are those who forget or who simply
sleep. And then there are those who keep bumping into walls
of the past. May God take pity on them!”
“Those are the true exiles,” said Hafsa (72).
This passage is somewhat intriguing. It uses a feminine plural to refer to “the other women.” Algeria was the last of the Maghreb countries to gain independence from colonial rule and were engaged in the construction of their own infrastructures, separate from their sister nations. Other nations constructed in the traditional feminine, refer to “the other women [who have] grown silent (72).” When they speak, presumably outside of Algeria in Tunis, the women are looking into Algeria’s isolation from the rest of the Maghreb and the greater Middle East. They look towards their Mother Land: the weeping mother. Because Djebar is speaking consistently of women in the plural in her dialogue, the reader can assume that “those who forget or simply sleep” is again a reference to the neighboring nations who have been released from colonial rule for a period of time, leaving Algeria alienated. The final exclamation: “those who keep bumping into the walls of the past” projects one of the major themes of the book: the harem continuum by which women and the feminine are confined and re-confined to space and time.
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