"Ahmed de Bourgogne" The Impossible Autobiography of a "Clandestine"

Abstract

The article deals with the problematic reconstruction of the tragic autobiography of a clandestine. The book, Ahmed de Bourgogne is born of the collaboration between the clandestine ex-convict Ahmed Beneddif and the renowned French writer and social scientist Azouz Begag, both of whom are of Algerian origin and belong to the same beur generation in France. Begag who had already published his own, widely acclaimed autobiography, Le gone du Chaaba, renders Bennedif's fluid oral testimony into a structured literary account, thereby molding the self-representation of the subaltern subject. By adopting Beneddif's oral odyssey Begag writes his other unlived destiny--that of the anti-hero which, through personal perseverence, he was able to escape. Indeed, the encounter between Beneddif and Begag, crowned by the co-signed autobiography Ahmed de Bourgogne, provides both sides of the North African immigrant community's story in France. For Beneddif Ahmed de Bourgogne becomes the last chance for salvation, for Begag it becomes an act of redemption. The Beur Star and the Algerian Clandestine The parish of Saint-Michel in Lyon, France, is a well-known refuge for the down-trodden and the under-privileged of every race and ethnic group that seek its help. Father Christian Delorme, the activist priest who heads the parish, has regularly hosted hundreds of cases of desperate individuals and families in the parish residence. (1) He has frequently intervened on their behalf to rectify their situation whether with international organizations or with the French authorities. His political and social activism have also brought him into very close contact with equally militant intellectual circles working for human and political rights of various disadvantaged individuals and groups within France and elsewhere. In 1998 Father Delorme's parish became the ground for what one may consider the meeting of opposites: a highly successful young beur writer, Azouz Begag (2) and a clandestine Algerian ex-convict in France, Ahmed Beneddif. (3) Both men are of the same beur generation, however Begag holds the French nationality while Beneddif does not. Both were born in France to Algerian immigrant workers during the late 1950s and early 1960s; both consider France, not Algeria, their home and the country of their hybrid cultural, social, and political identities. They only came to discover Algeria, their parents' country of origin, late in life and as reluctant visitors. Begag and Beneddif went to school in France but while the former became a renowned writer and social scientist, the latter spent most of his adult life in prison cells and clandestine camps all over Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Both men sought refuge at the parish residence almost at the same time: Beneddif arrived there in 1997 to seek a solution for his illegal status in France, while Begag moved into the parish in 1998 to paste together some pieces of [his] personal life that had fallen apart. (4) Two men in crisis, each occupying a lonely room in the parish. Their identical homelessness drew them closer as their glaring differences parenthetically receded to the background. They ate together, went jogging together, and as the days went by, Beneddif began to recount fragments of his broken life to Begag who had not dared question him about his past. Eventually, the fragments took shape and Beneddif began to reconstruct the entire nightmare of his long clandestine journey in Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, and finally France. Beneddif's retelling of the nightmarish fragments was systematically accompanied by the appearance of a painful rash of red pimples on his neck that robbed him of sleep and rendered him physically immobile. It was this highly charged encounter that produced Ahmed de Bourgogne, the unprecedented literary testimony of the as yet unspoken tragedy of a clandestine's life. …