Saïd looks around… “A herd to be exploited, sold and shorn
by France (he says ‘Francia,’ as if referring to a woman’s first
name). Today the mountains throb, the wind swamps the streets
and the walls with flags, a victorious vegetation, and all of us,
they, I, we badly conceal our… (107)”
There are several interesting elements to what Saïd expresses in his dismay over the state of Algerian society as he stands in the street observing the passersby of his generation. He refers to his fellow countrymen as “sheep.” The French treated them as sheep who were good for the French economy in that they provided cheap labor and useful raw materials to the colonists. Yet it is his reference to France as a woman in this act that is particularly intriguing to the allegory.
Traditionally the nation is a woman, but what occurs when two nations collide? It is it necessary to impose genders upon both nations? Does the dominant nation assume a more masculine, aggressive overtone? Certainly in some contexts it does, but in others, particularly in the case of colonial occupation, the dominant nation retains her feminine identity, but it is more robust and controlling and often manifests itself in the form of a Madame: a woman who takes advantage of the less-fortunate women and utilizes them to her economic advantage. As such, France is indeed “Francia” because France is prostituting Algeria in all of the products that would foster the growth of Madame Francia’s economy. The tone becomes more sexual when we read of the “throbbing mountains” and “the wind swamps (107).” The “throbbing mountains” refers to the metaphorical breasts of the Algerian nation and the “wind swamps” to the nation’s womb, now barren because of “Francia” and her client states. Algeria the nation is truly manifest in the postcard constructions in which prostitutes portray indigenous Algerians for French colonists to mail with the personification of Algeria home to France, with notes on the progress of colonization and civilization scribbled on the back. The herds of prostitutes both real and metaphorical take the place of the nation as a pure and strong entity. The nature of the colonial economy and its recovery thus becomes a manifestation of a socio-sexual hierarchy that is based on the exploitation and the regeneration of gender roles and dominance within a single sex in order to provide economically for the dominant entity.
Aïcha’s grandmother, Yemma Hadda, is symbolic of the “authentic,” noble Algeria as opposed to the new hybrid Algeria. Yemma Hadda moved from city to town, harem to harem. As her funeral progressed to the point of burial, it is observed by the narrator that Yemma Hadda’s body
was as if, on the wooden board, the authentic past of
the city was being transported through the streets… For
the first time, as he spoke the word city, Saïd didn’t think
of a foreign place (109).
The irony is in Said’s acknowledgment of the city as a non-foreign place because of the movement of a dead woman within its walls. Algeria has been re-born through Yemma Hadda and as such, the city is no longer a Parisian mecca in North Africa, but an indigenous capital. The “authentic past of the city” is now on display, but it has been somewhat altered because Yemma Hadda is dead, yet because of her character in life, she is guaranteed paradise, and as such Algeria is re-born in the heirs of Yemma Hadda: the new citizens of Algeria who because of their hybrid identities will be punished by civil war and the governments of the emirs.
Conclusion
The nation of Algeria is historicalized and sexualized by the women who are highlighted by Djebar in her novel: these women in their stationery and mobile harems escaped for what seemed like a moment, but was really seven long years of war. They are constructed as sexual beings both in their stereotypical, Orientalist construct within the harem but also in the way they embody the nation that was violated. A careful re-reading of Djebar’s work demonstrates her own growing paranoia at the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a response to the failures of the socialist system and the subsequent relegation of women to the backchannels of Algerian history and the French archives. Women, Djebar realizes, are being systematically used, abused and then punished all in a series of a procedures to liberate the nation from colonial political and social tyranny. Every attempt to revive the pre-colonial, indigenous utopia of Algeria falls upon women as the patriarchal establishment attempts to manage their sexualities of both the nation state and her female citizens. As a result, Djebar consciously makes the eerie prediction that indeed, the women of Algeria and Algeria herself will be punished for her zina crime that France committed against her and which she failed to prevent as a result of her own circumstances. The re-education of the Algerian public is fraught with a violent, zealous Islamic revival, one that the women of Djebar’s novel were conscious of when the reality of the post-war period began: this they realized finally when madness engulfed them and the women warriors were relegated to the harems of mental asylums, neo-indigenous schools, and to the abandoned homes of the medina.
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