Readers of memoirs of Algeria’s War of Independence from France (1954–62) become aware that these works not only engage the writer’s memory in bringing past events to light but grant the memoirists important perspectives on their war experiences. Through memoir writing, former combatants come to understand how the anticolonial struggle — in its multiple facets — transformed their lives, affording them new perspectives on the world and their place in it. Mokhtar Mokhtefi’s memoir presents such a trajectory. Originally published in 2016 in Algiers by Éditions Barzakh, the text first appeared as J’étais Français-musulman: itinéraire d’un soldat de l’ALN. The translator is Mokhtefi’s widow, Elaine Mokhtefi; she has prefaced the English-language text. Born in Berrouaghia, Algeria, in 1935, Mokhtar Mokhtefi joined the Armée de libération nationale (ALN) at the age of twenty-two in 1957, three years after the war had begun. He trained as a radio operator and headed a communications unit during the war. Following independence, he became president of the Union générale des étudiants musulmans algériens, and studied sociology and economics in Algiers and Paris. Mokhtefi left Algeria for France in 1973 and later moved to New York, where he died in 2015 shortly before the publication of his memoir. The youngest son of a butcher and the only one of six children to continue his studies beyond elementary school, Mokhtefi owes his remarkable trajectory to a schoolteacher who recognized his intellectual talents and convinced the boy’s father to allow the son to continue his education, insisting on the opportunities that education would offer the family. Mokhtefi’s memoir contains three parts: ‘Childhood’; ‘Awakening’; and ‘Soldier in the ALN Signal Corps’. The first two parts deal with his early life within the family, showing him initially as having been completely integrated into his community, and the outward journey, first to Blida as a boarding student in high school and then to Constantine as a maître d’internat in a high school there. Both sections trace the journey away from home that grants him political awareness of the injustices of colonialism and results in the young man’s sense of alienation. He writes: ‘I feel mutilated, bouncing back and forth between the traditional family, the village, and my life at the school and the city’ (p. 90). He poignantly admits to the gap that his French education has created between his world and his parents’ world: ‘Without seeking it, I am conscious of being mentally estranged from them’ (p. 141). The third part describes his war experiences: his training as a radio operator for the ALN; his life in the army; and his contact with important political figures such as President Houari Boumediene, whom he characterizes as extremely disciplined but cold (p. 242). Mokhtefi’s memoir is a fascinating read. I suggest, however, that the francophone public read the work in French to best capture Mokhtefi’s spontaneity and personal literary style, and recommend the translation to anglophone readers who otherwise would not have access to it.
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Open Access
Jun 1, 2023
