Because I can

[salinea]

I 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.

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Yes ! You should (and then tell me about it - we have next to nothing about Algeria as far as movies go in France - it's very taboo)

[harrytheheir.livejournal.com]

It's funny that you say that, because, AFAIK, the Battle of Algiers is a French movie.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Oh i don't doubt that. But it's a french movie I've never heard of, or watched on TV because it's just not being broadcasted. We had movies about WW2 like every weeks, but so very few about Algeria, when you compare with the way the US deal with Vietnam (and it had a similar place in our history) you can realise what I mean.