Skip to main content

Algeria and the Silent treatment


In a small village surrounded by fruits trees, a group of women are talking under a walnut tree, resigned and dignified.

- That's it, all the oranges are gone.
- And the mandarines?
- Finished. His daughters-in-law's mothers didn't even get given any...
- Damn, we've eaten everything. Again.
- He's going to get mad.
- Yea but how much?
- Not more than last year when he made her cook makrout for him all summer, even during Ramadan...
- Her face and arms spent all summer above boiling oil.
- ...and not less than the year he discovered that the girl to whom he married his son is a moron.
- He should have known, beautiful but never married at 29...
- Why don't any of you refuse his madness? Why don't you say no to him when he asks for crazy things to punish you with?
- We can't !
- Why? What's the worse thing that can happen?
- He'll stop speaking to us.
- What ?
- He'll go silent.
- Your grandad refused to give in once. He went ape, he stopped speaking to your gran, not a word. Even once djeddim died he didn't say anything to him. You can't imagine. He just... stopped... speaking.”

It took that exchange between my aunts and grandmother for me to realise that silence is the form of violence they can bear the least. And men, just like women, cannot stand it.

There are many forms of violence the world over, and we conceptualise them using various terms and degrees. Physical, conjugal, intellectual, street-based, clan-based. In Algeria, it is often administrative. Depending on context, violence, at least for the one who is abused, works on a scale of from, and to, the least and most bearable. I have heard many stories that illustrate each form, from the small humiliations of life, to the traumatising. Women aren't the only recipient of it either, men are also, and very often. But, seeing silence come top of the list of violence's cruelest form, did take me aback somewhat. What is it that they so fear when faced with it?

Silence is death. And you, if you talk, you'll die, if you stay silent you'll die, so speak and die!
Tahar Djaout

In the context of Djaout's enjoinder to speak out no matter the threat, silence did mean death, death by murder. But when speaking leads to death, that death is due to unnatural causes. The laws of nature and life's natural order have been broken. Speech means life. As in the ancient Mesopotamian myth of Creation, the living make a great noise and won't let the gods sleep. Noise doesn't even have to be intelligible words, it's got to be sounds, gestures, proof of life. So it follows that silence, even an angered one, should be interpreted as death, a murder of the senses, a frightening pause to life indeed. In their apprehension, the equivalent of someone silent is finding a living-dead lunching among the living. And wouldn't that be a gory sight.

So speak. And don't be ashamed to sneeze out loud.





Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Moufdi Zakaria - The Algerian Ilyad

I am over the moon to have found a PDF version of the original Algerian Ilyad by the great Algerian war poet Moufdi Zakaria. As it is the original version, it is in Arabic HERE (thanks to archive.org, a fantastic e-resource for old books, you should check it out).  You can access the book in other formats too HERE . The Algerian Iliad - إلياذة الجزائـر  -  l' Iliade algé rienne  is a 1,000 line poem retracing Algeria's history in great historical details.  Throughout, Cheikh Zakaria recounts all the names that have shapped the Algeria's history. He goes through all the regions' history and their greatest most emblematic figures. This poem is so valuable and beautiful.  It should be on the curriculum of any Arabic and history cursus in Algeria.  Perhaps it is and/or you know this poem? Who is Cheikh Moufdi Zakaria? Well, on 5th of July, three days from now, Algeria will celebrate 50 years of independence. A tremendous poem was composed during

"Kan darbe yaadatani, isa gara fuula dura itti yaaddu" (Oromo proverb)

"By remembering the past, the future is remembered". These notes are taken from Mengesha Rikitu's research on "Oromo Folk Tales for a new generation" by (see also his "Oromo Proverbs" and "Oromo Grammar"). Some proverbs are folk tales are worth the detour: 1) Oromo Proverb – Harreen yeroo alaaktu malee, yeroo dhuudhuuftu hin'beektu   "The Donkey doesn't know that it is farting again and again when it is braying." (ie some people concentrating on their own verbosity are unaware of what is going on behind them) You can tell that dhuudhuuftu is the farting can't you, am betting on the sound that word makes. Oromifa is one of the five most widely spoken (Afroasiatic) languages in Africa. Its importance lies in the numbers of its speakers and in its geographical extent. The 'official' numbers point to 30 million Oromo speakers (but there has not been to this day a complete or reliable census). The majority

List: Moroccan Literature in English (and) Translation

Moroccan Literature in English (and) Translation Many readers and bookshops organise their book piles, shelves and readings by country, loosely defined as the author’s country of origin, or of where the story takes place. It’s an approach to fiction I always found odd and enjoyable. There is a special kind of enjoyment to be had by sticking to the fiction of a place and concentrating on it for a while. The pleasure I derive from this may simply be due to my myopia, and the habit it brings of frowning at a single point until a clear picture emerges, but as others engage in the same, and comforted by a crowd, it’s a habit I pursue and which is now taking me to Morocco. This journey, I make accompanied by a list of Moroccan literature in English, that is, translated fiction or literature written originally in English. It is shared below for the curious and fellow addicts. I could say that my tendency to focus on a country is how the construction of the list began, but that w