In the spring of 1962, the air in Beni-Mazouz, a small village nestled in the mountainous wilaya (province) of Jijel, was charged with anticipation.
My father, then a young boy, remembers vividly the day the French colonial forces began their retreat from Algeria. As a convoy of more than 100 tanks and vans trundled towards the port of Skikda, he remembers a sense of freedom swelling in his heart.
“We were beyond happy,” he recalls. As far as he could see, the streets were awash in a sea of green, white and red – the colours of our flag – while voices reverberated in unison chanting “Tahia Djazair [Long live Algeria]!”
The moment symbolised the culmination of Algeria’s arduous journey, steeped in resistance, towards liberation from French colonial rule.
The brutal French invasion which began in 1830, marked the inception of a dark and oppressive chapter in Algerian history. In 1848, the government administration in Paris declared the Algerian territory across the Mediterranean an integral part of France, as though it was another domestic province.
Large-scale land theft, torture and the dehumanisation of Algerians became hallmarks of France’s settler colonial project. The Algerian government has said more than 5.6 million Algerians were killed during the French colonial period. By 1954, when the war for independence started, one million European settlers were living in Algeria.
Many people who lived in my father’s village of mostly farmers, Beni-Mazouz, are descendants of the resistance that confronted France’s military.
Among these figures was Kamira Yassi: a sturdy-handed, tattooed rural woman known for her practical wisdom and belief in the curative powers of olive oil. She was my father’s aunt, “Amti Kamira”, as he calls her, a 5-foot-2-inch (157.5cm) tender matriarch who made the tastiest chorba, a traditional spiced soup. Locally, she was revered as a fierce anticolonial nationalist. My curiosity longed to uncover more about my great-aunt Kamira, her life, dreams and motivations, through conversations with my father and family.
In 1955, Kamira became a pivotal member of the National Liberation Front (FLN), the political and military organisation dedicated to ending the French occupation. “Amti Kamira was a true mujahidia [female freedom fighter],” my father said. “She had a deep determination for us to be Algerian in the land that was always ours.”