In Naja’s eyes the fear and wonder remained for the wind which, at a certain point in the followingnoon, blew the sand to cover everything, houses, men and animals around the remains of the Roman city of Djémila, at the foot of the mountains of Aurès, in the Algerian province of Sétif. It will take her some time to scan the sky with another expression from the windows of the popular building in the Paris banlieue where she joined her husband Said, selected by Renault recruiters for the Boulogne-Billancourt workshops directly in the village of her five years ago.
With her are also her three daughters, Maryam, Sonia and Nour who will grow up in France and will measure themselves simultaneously with the challenges, promises and contradictions of a rapidly evolving society and with the effects that all this will produce within to their own family, not always able to let the young girls take full advantage of the opportunities that, at least in appearance, are offered to them. Although it is around the birth of two boys, twins separated by necessity and reunited by life, that the outcome of the story told by Lilia Hassaine in Bitter sun (and/or, pp. 135, euro 17, translation by Alberto Bracci Testasecca), at the center of the novel by the writer and journalist born in Corbeil-Essonnes in 1991 into a family of Algerian origin, there are thirty years of French history read through the eyes of the daughters of Maghreb emigration who grew up, and often were born, in the banlieues of the country.
From the province of Sétif, in Algeria, to the tenements of the banlieue of Paris: the scenario that forms the backdrop to the personal trajectories of the protagonists of «Bitter Sun» tells of two worlds and the way in which they met, clashed and, sometimes, also loved. How was the novel born?
First of all there is a true story. My mother is from Sétif, and the starting point of the story is inspired by real events, by a family secret that she revealed to me at one point. More generally, I wanted to tell a part of the story of France that is little known to most, if not completely unknown: that of Algerian immigration to this country, with all its consequences of hopes and disappointments. I wanted to talk regarding uprooting, regarding the utopia embodied by the tower blocks built in the banlieues in the 1960s and 1970s, analyze this central period in French affairs, an often happy phase, but also the way in which at a certain point things started not working more.
At the center of the story are two twins who are separated and grow up in as many families which, in some ways, seem to illustrate the different paths followed by Algerian emigration to France. A way to tell readers that what today appears distant and sometimes irreducible is actually the result of the same story?
That of the twins is a true story, even if I naturally had to invent a path, a destiny for them, reconstitute parts of reality and others of pure invention, as in all novels. However, I immediately understood that this story also contained an important symbolic aspect: that of twins who are separated but who actually have a lot in common, even if they were separated at a given moment. Moreover, the whole novel is crossed by various separations: starting from the one between two countries, which provoked the Algerian war. The first separation, that between the twins and their mother following childbirth, that between the brothers themselves. And also the separation between the city and the suburbs starting from the construction of the residential complexes of social housing that have sprung up in the banlieues, on the edge of the metropolis.
Her novel is first and foremost a story regarding women. Women who, like one of the protagonists, Naja, seem to suffer a double defeat: on the one hand, emigration to France does not keep the promises of well-being and happiness and, on the other, in Algerian families, once they arrive in Paris, we see impose roles and obligations that make them even less free than in their country of origin. An often forgotten story?
When the first cités were built in the 1960s (social housing districts that arose in the suburbs starting from that of Paris, ed) those women began to cultivate the hope of a better life. Algerian families went to live side by side with Italian, Spanish and French families. The social and ethnic mix that took place in those buildings allowed mentalities to evolve. Each brought their own culture and there was no talk of religion at all. The women exchanged recipes, the Italian neighbor offered a plate of pasta to her Algerian neighbor who she reciprocated by preparing desserts. The women argued, compared their opinions, spent time in each other’s houses. And inevitably, in contact with other cultures, it evolves, reflects on itself and on others. At the time, also thanks to these connections, many young Arab women were able to build their own path of emancipation. Then, when those buildings started to fall into disrepair, and only the poorest families were left to live in those areas, the trend reversed. The mixing of the past has become increasingly rare and this is the basis of the growing difficulties we are still experiencing today.
Said, one of the protagonists, leaves Algeria in the late 1950s following being selected by Renault’s envoys to work in the Boulogne-Billancourt factory. Twenty years later, President Giscard d’Estaing, on the contrary, will try to send those same immigrants who have meanwhile built a life in France “back home”. What does this tell us regarding French democracy?
In the 1960s immigration was necessary for the growth of France, those workers were needed to build houses and build highways, to carry out the hardest jobs, to do the “dirty work”. And in that era there was no one who was left without an occupation. Racism started later, with rising unemployment in the 1970s and 1980s. At that point the French government effectively offered financial aid to those who had meanwhile arrived to work and make a living here, explaining that it was support so that they might “return home”, thus implying that they were not at all in France. It is a part of the history of this country that is not told in schools, which is why it was so important for me to talk regarding it, since it allows us to understand why many children and grandchildren of those immigrants do not feel “French” today. They have the feeling of belonging nowhere, of not being “at home” anywhere: both in France and in Algeria they are considered “immigrants”. They have the feeling that there is no specific space for them anywhere.
In 2018 Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the faults of French colonialism in Algeria, also speaking of the use of torture by the Paris military. Then, in 2021, the historian Benjamin Stora presented Macron himself with a report that evokes the need for a “reconciliation of memories” between the two countries and proposed the creation of a joint museum. How do you evaluate these initiatives?
From my point of view, publicly acknowledging those responsibilities was already a big step. However, access to Algerian war-related archives remains complicated, despite Macron’s promises. It is a period that is still somewhat of a taboo in France, although I have the feeling that things are moving in the right direction. The generation that participated in that war is now retired and I truly believe that in twenty years everything will be different.