MEMORIES OF ALGERIA

(c) Christian Rouge

christian-rouge@orange.fr 

My first travel souvenir by plane it is the Mediterranean sea and Algeria country. At the time, at the beginning of the Fifties, I was a very little boy who lived in Marseilles. My father, very elegant as usual, accompanied me at the beginning of the summer at the Marignane airport and entrusted to me with the care of the air-hostess in small a twin-engine DC3. I crossed the Mediterranean sea, the glance stuck against the porthole and I saw immense waves and boats which crossed our road. At the end of approximately two hours of voyage, the plane landed on a rammed track of cement and the ground around was burned by the sun. I went down by a small metal staircase to go to find my grandfather and my grandmother who largely embraced me. They had always lived in this country and seldom came to see me in France. My father and grandfather financed the voyage, because I was only the downward male of the family and it was natural that I will spend time with my grandparents. I remember the building where we went to the first stage. In the hall of the apartment, there was a waiting room and at the bottom the door of the cabinet of my grandfather, he was a doctor. Further in the corridor a large living room on the left with balcony on the street, cooks on the right with another balcony on the interior court, further still the rooms from my aunt, my uncle, then that of my grandparents, and at the end of the corridor the bathroom. Each Sunday my grandmother organized the Algerian couscous, it was a special tradition every week. The fatma came early to prepare the semolina, to cook vegetables and to stew the meat of lamb. A large table was drawn up and many people came to the meal. At the end the adults consumed the digestive ones and I was entitled to a small alcohol drop on a piece of sugar. The evening my grandfather was tired and fell asleep in the armchair, my grandmother came to shake it so that it will lie down. The following days, when there were no consultations, I went in the cabinet of the doctor who showed me and explained all the apparatuses that it arranged in glazed cupboards. Syringes, needles, scissors of various sizes, bandages, bottles, the balance with strip and counterweight, the pear, the nozzle and the table lit to recognize letters of various sizes. Then we were going to walk on the principal course, where there were regularly attractions, clowns, puppets and a monkey which tightened the hand with the children. Sometimes we went in a brewery where my grandfather found his friends to take aperitif and I was entitled to a splendid lemon ice calledcréponné…

The war should start soon for several years and I was not going any more to turn over in this country. My grandparents died a long time ago, and they are buried in the cemetery of the city of Bône, today Annaba. With them I shared a very particular feeling, and exchange their daily life based on generosity towards the Algerian people which formed integral part of their history.