The Algerian writer, Mansour Kedidir, has published his latest book, “Moroccans of Algeria, Rafle au couchant”, published by “La Croisée des chemins”.
This 344-page novel (medium format), broken down into X chapters, looks back on the tragic and painful affair of the deportation and expulsion of thousands of Moroccan families from Algeria, under “the fallacious motive of being simply Moroccans”.
Covered with a photo of a camp of Moroccan refugee families expelled from Algeria, taken in 1976 in Nador, the novel depicts in detail the tragedy of this deportation and its resonance in the minds of the victims. Nightmare nights locked in halos of remembrance, passing from the sweetness of a home to the fear of a deportation spent in tents and nocturnal rustles.
Mansour Kedidir begins his book with the transcribed letter addressed by the Algerian National Liberation Front to the “Moroccan Brothers! “, which reports that “If the Moroccan people have wrested their independence, the war of liberation continues even harder in Algeria”.
“On this anniversary of the outbreak of our revolution, we are sure that you will express more strongly than ever your solidarity with your Algerian brothers”, is it written in this letter which ends with “Vive le Maroc-Vive l’Algérie – Long live the United Arab Maghreb”.
On the cover of the book, the author wonders about the Algerian government’s blindness to this deportation. “How could he admit that a man of this stature (Boumediene), who had accomplished great feats of arms from the base of Oujda, had committed alongside his Moroccan brothers for the liberation of the Maghreb . Who could believe that a man who harangued crowds, distributed land to small fellahs, nationalized oil and mining exploitations belonging to multinational companies and defending the rights of oppressed peoples in Third World forums could have set foot in the mud? putrid”.
The novel focuses on the tragic story of Adel and his father Allal, the latter known to have participated in the Algerian liberation war, who were terrified by this expulsion orchestrated by the Algerian authorities, arbitrarily and without warning, to Morocco.
Mansour Kedidir is the author of several works, including “The anger of the steppe” (Thought editions; 1987), “Blessed be the death of the natural child” (ENAG, 1999) and “The longest night” ( Apic editions, 2015).
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