Because I can
8 Sep 2004 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salineaI love it when my mother tells me of her childhood in Algeria. She lived just near the sea and they always go there to play. They lived in a building and their neighbors where French colons, other Jews, Arabs, Kabyles... every kind of people. They had to heat water to bath themselves and there were a common room where my grand mother used to wash clothes.
My grandfather didn't want her to have dolls so she played with pictures of girls cut from magazine and only at school. She went to a Maïmonide school for a long time, where her brother taught and she liked it because when the teacher wasn't there she could do classes.
She told me of the smell of Rhododendron, and the light and how every morning they ran to the beach, and on the evening they drops bucket of water on the balcon, sit down and chat with the neighbors' children.
It sounds like another world. In a way, it is.
My grandfather didn't want her to have dolls so she played with pictures of girls cut from magazine and only at school. She went to a Maïmonide school for a long time, where her brother taught and she liked it because when the teacher wasn't there she could do classes.
She told me of the smell of Rhododendron, and the light and how every morning they ran to the beach, and on the evening they drops bucket of water on the balcon, sit down and chat with the neighbors' children.
It sounds like another world. In a way, it is.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 8 September 2004 12:46 pm (UTC)I crave that world for my own, sometimes. But I suspect the next generation may have that feeling about us. Perhaps.
no subject
Date: 8 September 2004 01:05 pm (UTC)Okay, maybe not the Jews, French, Arabs, Kabyles all together part.
I'm not sure what I crave... maybe just, a feeling of home. Or possibly it's just pure romantism ^^ But yeah, we don't realise how what we have is strange and new and other and will sound odd and surreal to our children ^_^
no subject
Date: 8 September 2004 05:55 pm (UTC)*chuckles* No, certainly not that. It's sad but painfully true.
Perhaps one day, maybe years from now, things can be at peace. Perhaps.
no subject
Date: 9 September 2004 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 September 2004 01:42 pm (UTC)It sounds like another world. In a way, it is.
When you put it that way, it seems a little sad, doesn't it?
no subject
Date: 8 September 2004 02:04 pm (UTC)You can never really know another time & place you know. And yet people who are so familiar to you, which are such a given part of your universe, your parents, lived them. It's weird.
Vietnam must be beautiful too. ^_^
no subject
Date: 8 September 2004 02:07 pm (UTC)It's a shame that we can't experience the life that our parents lived, not even a little.
no subject
Date: 8 September 2004 02:23 pm (UTC)I'd love to visit Algeria, but I'm not sure it's very safe currently >_>
We've got our life. And we can listen to them. But yes, it's sad.
no subject
Date: 8 September 2004 02:46 pm (UTC)Aww... Maybe sometime in the future. You're still young.
True... *sighs* And we'll have our own story to tell to others. I can't really imagine how our world would look 20 years from now. ^ ^;
no subject
Date: 9 September 2004 03:11 am (UTC)Your mom's childhood sounds lovely. My mom told me that when she was younger, they lived in this kampong where you could leave the house doors open at night and no one would be in danger because burglars were virtually unheard of then. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 9 September 2004 10:47 am (UTC)errr why ? My mum has nothing to do with Lyna's i assure you ^^
*sighs with you*
Other times...
no subject
Date: 11 September 2004 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 September 2004 03:35 am (UTC)I see your point now
Medditerranean countries all have something in common ^^
no subject
Date: 9 September 2004 07:28 am (UTC)Only from my grandfather did I hear accounts of the war itself, and those made me cry. Only time my mother has ever hit me was after she learned that I had been asking grandfather about that time.
Personally I worry the most about what I will ever tell my children about my childhood. What is there to tell?
no subject
Date: 9 September 2004 11:00 am (UTC)I didn't mention here the hardest stuff of my mother's past. The war of Algeria etc.
My grand parents weren't very keen on telling about the war either. I know my grandmother never forgave Slovakia, her mother countrie, for its collaboration with the nazis, and of course she lost several siblings and her parents to it. Most of what I know I was told by my parents. I do regret that I didn't talk more with my grandparents about it when they were alive.
I am sure that when you do have children you will find things to tell them. We might not realise it, but there's always been so many transformations around us of the world in the last twenty years.
And you could tell them about how you met Hitoshi and he chased after you half across the world :p
no subject
Date: 10 September 2004 01:43 am (UTC)A new film has just been released in Australia called The Battle of Algiers. It's apparently a documentary with recreated scenes that are supposed to look quite original. I really want to go see it and now that I have seen this post, it seems like I really should!
Caroline
no subject
Date: 10 September 2004 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 14 September 2004 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 16 September 2004 02:48 pm (UTC)