Book Review: Mon père, ce harki by Dalila Kerchouche

I picked this book up at the bookstore in the Institut du monde arabe in Paris in January 2018. I had vague notions about "harkis," but didn't really understand anything about this group of Algerians. Given my work on gender in Algeria between 1954 and present day I wanted to round out my understanding.

I found this definition of harki (masc) and harkette (fem): quelqu'un qui soutenait les Français pendant la guerre d'indépendance. Kerchouche explains this is "une quête harkéologique" for her. Like many, she wants to understand why her Algerian parents seemed to side with the French and how their lives in France unfolded the way they did. She follows their route when they left Algeria and were forced to move from camp to camp.

The writing is powerful. Kerchouche's style is pithy but accessible and sometimes poetic. So many of her observations resonated with my background knowledge on the Algerian war of independence, civil war, and how Algerians have fared in France. Although I should have been, I was not prepared for the brutality her family and other Algerians faced. I had to put the book aside several times as the U.S. media was flooded with horrific stories of young children being separated from their families at the U.S. border. I had the luxury of tuning out these tragedies, unlike those who endured and continue to endure them.

Some of the more poetic passages:

• "Chez nous, l'ascenseur social a grillé les étages...Jolie vitrine de l'intégration. En apparence, oui." (27)
• "On est sortis des camps mais on est restés derrière la grille."(28)
• "' On m'a volé mon enfance', m'a dit un jour ma grande soeur Fatima. 'Et moi, mon passé,' lui-ai-je répondu."(33)
• Kerchouche visits near a camp where her parents lived a throng of women recognize her and surround her. "Clouée sur place, je me laisse emporter par cette spirale humaine. [...]Je ne pensais pas qu'il y avait tant d'amour en enfer."(128)
• "Sur la porte verte d'un garage, un tag hurle 'harkis en colère' dans les champs silencieux." (131)
• "l'avion ralentit, mon coeur s'accelère." (208)

Some of the recurring themes and resonant ideas:

• être entre deux (neither Algerian nor French)
• loving and hating Algeria
• loving and hating France
• silence
• forced enduring poverty (garnishing wages, withholding checks, rich supervisors demanding offerings from impoverished families)
• attacking masculinity by shaming, beating or killing men in front of their families
• the replication of colonial Algeria in the camps in France, largely due to the pied noirs who worked there
• lots of non-French words. Ex: un gourbi, la mechta, un djebel, un oued
• the corruption, manipulation and hypocrisy of the FLN
• the importance of and education but how much of a struggle it was to get one
• effectively being imprisoned in the camps as if they were war criminals and not the allies that they were, often they are run like "microdictature" (pg 139)
• like Haiti "une vie de soumission et d'éternel colonisé. Résignées, anesthésiées aussi par un fatalisme ancestral qui les empêche de se révolter..." these families face nothing but misery (pg 145)
• women suffer more than anyone being trapped in the camps, but they pass that on to their daughters too by policing their attire, limiting their access to school and encouraging them to marry young (148)'
• "le chef de camps domine les harkis qui... dominent leurs épouses, méres qui dominent les filles. Et les enfants les plus âgés frappent les plus jeunes. Chacun et le bouc émissaire d'un autre."(176)
• is being a harki being a traitor to Algeria?
• "le peuple algérien, enlisé dans la lutte contre l'islamisme depuis 10 ans, a-t-il 'pardonné' aux harkis?"(206)
• fear of Islamist militants in Algeria
• in fact in many families one person worked for the FLN and other worked for the French, hedging their bets and trying to keep their families as secure as possible (pg 221)
• le FLN cont de nouveaux colons (stealing independence and the country's wealth, preventing its true independence) (222)
• contrary to the "mission civilisatrice" the French did very little to improve Algeria (228-229)
• for the Islamists religion is a pretext, an excuse to steal, rape, pillage, etc. And "tout le monde les connaît. Ce sont des jeunes du douar, attirés par l'argent facile."(241)
• just like during the war of indep, under the Islamists/civil war people live in fear of being coerced, tortured, massacred, etc.  (242)
• sometimes harkis carried out torture and other violence against other Algerians (252-253)
• if her family had stayed in Algeria she would likely be illiterate, impoverished, and living in terror. Despite what her family went through she has a better life today thanks to them. (270)
• "Oui, je suis une fille de harkis. J'écris ce mot avec un grand H. Comme Honneur."(277)

Overall, this book was an excellent complement to my prior knowledge about Algeria. It was eloquently written, thought-provoking and moving.