DZ | 2019-2020

I am from a country where many stories stay untold, big stories as much as smaller ones.

Those stories are neither really secrets nor really said. 

They are like a floating truth that we grow up with, live with but don’t put words on. We only feel it. 

There is no exception to my family: we just don’t really tell.

Maguie is one of those stories.

She grew up in the 1950s as an orphan in the French countryside, born and raised as a Catholic. During her young age she faced many traumas. At 18 she met some "Arabs" at Poitiers, had a fling with one of them, who asked her to come with her to Algeria. She said yes.

After a while in Algeria, she met someone else, a Kabyle, my grand-father Messaoud. He had already two wives, had 4 children and was over 40s. I don't know if it was really love but it was something strong enough that Maguie never left us.

She saved the whole family during the Algerian war from the French military. She fled with them to Morrocco. She stayed in Algeria with them after the war. She still stayed after Messaoud passed. She stayed during the Algerian civil war.

Younger, I remember asking “Is Maguie a family member?” and being answered “somehow”. It was only years later that I started to assemble the pieces of the puzzle.

Just before she passed, I visited her in our family house in Algiers, we talked about her life and finally through real words: “I was your grand-father’s mistress after all”, she said. I smiled.