A Boy from Algiers

My name is Salman and I am from Algiers. On most days I wake up and my anne helps me get dressed and I go to a school in the city. It’s only a short walk, we used to live outside of Algiers but we moved into the city when I was really young, so I’ve only seen our old house in pictures and heard about it from my baba. At school I speak French, with my friends I speak Arabic, and at home I speak Turkish. I’m having some difficulty learning French… It’s really different from Arabic and Turkish! My teachers can be really mean and sometimes don’t help much too. Right now I’m trying to memorize the Internationale in French, I even got a copy of it in French and Arabic from one of my teachers! I’m very fortunate to be able to go to a nice French school in Algiers, my anne and my teachers always try to remind me. There are so many little boys and girls in the Sahara that don’t get such a nice education, they say. I feel really bad for them when I hear about that. Even though some of my teachers can be mean it is still a good thing.

I don’t go to school on Fridays. There are some French students that still go to school on Fridays but the teachers try to make it so we don’t miss too much. My anne and baba take me to the masjid for prayers on Fridays, so I would end up missing most of the school day even if I did go. I like to talk to the imam’s daughter, she is really nice. Not during prayers though, outside of the masjid I mean. My little sister is still learning her prayers, but I’m starting to know enough of the Holy Qur’an to recite the holy words of God with more certainty than when I was younger. I still struggle sometimes though… There’s some words in there that I just don’t understand when I first read them. I’ve had my own copy of the Holy Qur’an for a while now, so I bring it with me when I go to the masjid and when I’m walking around. My anne and baba didn’t put me into a madrasah like some of the other kids in our neighborhood so I’m not memorizing it the same way as those kids but it is still such a beautiful book. After prayers my anne and baba and my little sister like to eat at one of our favorite restaurants in Algiers, a bakery ran by a good friend of ours. He was trained in France and came back to serve French and Arab foods. I especially love the makroudh he makes. He fills it with dates that grow in the hills outside of the city, and it is so sweet and precious when it fills your mouth. Fridays are days when my mouth is full of sweetness, the sweet beautiful words of the Prophet and the precious little sweetness of the makroudh our baker friend makes. I look forward to Fridays a lot.

One day I was walking around with some of my friends, a couple of boys named Mehmet, Ali, and Osman. We had some hard candies from a street vendor, brought in from France, and as we were walking this lanky Frenchman saw me and smiled. He was wearing a grey suit with sleeves that were just a bit too short for his arms, and his face was all wrinkled from smiling so much in his life. As we walked by he patted my head and asked where we got the candies. Apparently he has a little girl who would love something just like that, so we pointed out the vendor and kept on walking. I think this must have been a Saturday, we had the whole day free so we were walking around the city. We went into a theatre and saw this new movie from America called Spartacus. It was about this man in the old Roman Empire who became a slave and led a great big rebellion against the Empire. I didn’t understand some of it, but it was really such a fun movie! I especially liked the action scenes during the rebellion. Some of my friends were children of freedom fighters who helped liberate Algeria from France, Ali and Mehmet are, so they really liked it.

A few nights later I was having trouble sleeping so I was awake way later than I should have been. Don’t tell my baba, please don’t. But, while I was awake, I overheard my anne and baba talking to each other. Baba sounded really stressed. He wasn’t angry sounding, he just sounded stressed. Baba doesn’t get angry easily. He is a big man, with sloping shoulders and a long dark beard, and he likes to wear dark coats and turbans sometimes, so he looks scary sometimes but he is a gentle man. My anne is the complete opposite, she always looks loving, with her long brown hair wrapped up underneath her hijab, and her arms always holding me or my little sister or my baba close in a loving embrace. But they were talking quietly in the night now. Baba was saying something about moving to Turkey, saying stuff like “We used to have such a nice big estate” and “We can’t live here anymore, we just can’t.” I don’t understand what he’s trying to say. Algiers is such a nice city! The people here are so nice, the sky is such a beautiful blue, the dates and the makroudh our baker friend makes out of them are so sweet. If we left Algiers I wouldn’t have Mehmet and Ali and Osman and the imam and his daughter and the nice Frenchman and our friend who runs the bakery. My anne was arguing for staying, saying stuff like “Salman and Aisha have never been anywhere else in their whole life, this is their home, we can’t just leave.” My baba sounded pretty deadset though. I don’t really understand this. He sometimes gets all sullen and weird, like he dislikes this new Algeria, but its really much nicer now than what I know about Algeria back when France ruled it.

I was really worried when my baba came back home with those papers one afternoon. It was after I got back from school so I was there when he walked in holding a bunch of papers with stamps on them and lots of writing in Arabic. He went into my anne’s room and talked with her but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. She walked out and seemed a bit angry with my baba, walking outside to sit on the front steps without putting her headscarf on. I was really confused, but when I asked my baba he just said that she disagreed with something he was doing. I knew what he was talking about but didn’t want to say because then he would know that I overheard him. So I went to my room and tried reading a bit more of the French-Arabic copy of the Internationale that I got for class, and I frowned when I found a French word I didn’t understand at all, and went to go ask my baba. It had been a bit of time, and my anne was back inside. When I asked baba what the word meant he said it meant slaves, and frowned. He doesn’t like that I’m trying to memorize the Internationale. It’s fine though, I still have to know it. I want to know it, anyhow. It’s a really good song! Just because baba doesn’t like its philosophy doesn’t mean it’s a bad song. He doesn’t talk much about it, but I figure it is because of how many of the places he used to own were taken and given to their tenants back when Algeria was liberated. It’s okay now though. We have this nice house in Algiers, and I have all my friends, and we have the beautiful beach and the beautiful sky.