The Veil Rises Slowly and Frenchness Lingers

In the blaze of morning sunlight the buildings are white, elegant and French in downtown Algiers. Although the streets are named after Algerian martyrs, their design is French colonial. White stucco, palm trees and street cafes appear in regular sequence and converge at a large square or park. Their sharp angularity seems out of place in this hilly city decorated with Islamic arabesques.

In the cafes, students converse in rapid "left-bank" slang. Shops sell French clothes and business is conducted in French. Advertisements for French cigarettes and the names of long-defunct French businesses peer through hastily painted revolutionary slogans. The green and white National Liberation Front (FLN) flag flaps somewhat ludicrously against the imposing porticos of old colonial administration buildings. First inspection suggests that Algiers is an occupied city--a French city occupied by Algerians. This is not surprising in light of the fact that the French ruled Algeria for over 100 years. However, it is surprising that 14 years after an extremely violent war in which an estimated 1.5 million people died out of a population of 12 million, French culture is still so much intact. Despite the government's efforts to establish new priorities--Arabization of language and culture, agrarian reform and self-management along Cuban and Soviet lines, and increased emphasis on the tenets and taboos of Islam--French ideas and ways of doing things persist.

Part of the reason they persist is that the more Puritanical aspects of the Islamic religion impose harsh restrictions on social life. Many people, especially the young, cling to French ways as a means of countering or protesting these restrictions.

A respectable young Muslim in contemporary Algerian society observes a strict set of family obligations. If his family is poor, he must provide for it. He is discouraged from marrying or leaving home unless his family can survive economically without him. When he does marry, the marriage is usually unofficially arranged by his parents. There is little that he can do about this situation since it is practically impossible to meet women other than through a family connection. A medical student who lived in the conservative provincial capital of Constantine summed it all up one day. Shaking his head sadly he said, "The men are in the streets looking for the women, and the women are at home waiting for the men...you know, the two never meet."

When they do meet there is no "respectable" place to go. Many restaurants outside of Algiers refuse to serve women, and most of them close at 9 p.m. The only thing the medical student could safely invite me to do was to go home and meet his family. His house was filled with unmarried sisters who clustered around me and giggled. They proudly showed me their bridal gowns and insisted that I try one on. When I did so, they led me out to their blushing brother.

Family honor and masculine pride depend upon the respectability of women in the family. If a girl gets a bad reputation her whole family is disgraced. Moreover she forfeits her right to a respectable husband. Slights to family honor or masculine pride are the most frequent causes of vehement argument and violent crime. Once, while dancing with some friends, a man who was not part of our group asked me to dance. Midway through the dance I was yanked from the floor by one of my friends. I had committed a grave offense by not asking the group's permission to dance with a stranger and had consequently hurt everyone's pride.

This incident was particularly significant in light of the frequency and piety with which my friends expounded on the evils of the Islamic code of honor. These friends were not "typical Algerians." They were literary malcontents who spent much of their time in cafes discussing how alienated they were from Algeria. Most of them came from poor families in rural areas and most of them had been disowned or denounced by their families for rebelling against Islam. They had come to Algiers lonely and displaced and had found each other. In effect they were brought together by their rebellion against social conservatism and kept together through the reassertion of social conservatism.

Obedience to masculine law is still sanctioned by Islam and symbolized by the veil. Although the future preponderance of the veil is dubious, it still prevails as the norm. Most young women in the cities wear Western clothes, but the vast majority in rural areas retain the veil and traditional caftan. In certain instances the veil seems ridiculous, such as on a long bus ride.

Long-distance buses have every modern contraption--airplane seats, music, and even a copious box lunch. The women scuttle onto the bus, swaddled in layers and layers of travelling caftan; only their eyes are visible. In the more conservative southern regions women are supposedly allowed to expose only one eye, though it is often attested that they observe much more with that one eye than other people do with two.

As soon as the journey begins the music comes on and nothing happens until lunchtime. When the box lunches are distributed there is a slight commotion punctuated by titters and whispers. This is because traditionally women are not allowed to eat in public. Unfortunately there is no place to hide on the bus, the journey is long, and the novelty of a box lunch is tempting. Some of the real stoics hold out, but most women break hastily into their provisions and sneak bits of food underneath their veils when they think nobody is looking.

Right after the revolution, the government came out in favor of "lifting the veils," both literally and figuratively. By figuratively, it implied the destruction of the mentality and behavior commonly deemed appropriate to the respectable Islamic woman, and putting women to work, particularly in factories. The outcry was so great that the government soon abandoned this line. Many Muslims interpreted removal of the veil as a profound threat to the spirit of Islam. The government couldn't risk alienating the Muslim population and decided instead to take the opposite stand, supporting the veil as an example of the fact that Islam and socialism were ideologically compatible.

The persistence of French language, culture and ideas can only in part be explained as a reaction against Islamic limits on freedom. It is also the result of post-war political and economic changes. The war divided the landscape of Algerian history. It lasted over seven years and left its mark everywhere.

Contrary to what most people think, the Algerians lost the war. After subjecting them to a steady onslaught of pillage, bombs, napalm and the most unspeakable, systematic torture, and after smashing the core of the FLN's leadership, the French clinched their victory by building an enormous electric fence along the Tunisian border. The fence cut the lifeline of the revolution because nearly all of the FLN's arms were smuggled across this border. However, the fence cost a fortune to guard and maintain, and there were problems of inevitable future insurrection and French public opinion. De Gaulle weighed these problems against the possibility of a decisive victory and decided to pull out. The settlement was elaborated in the Evian accords, signed in 1962. It mandated compensation for expropriated French lands and guaranteed that preferential treatment be given to French oil companies for a period of six years after independence.

The French left the city suddenly and totally. In a few days their homes were evacuated and in a few more days, they were reinhabited by Algerian squatters who later received official squatters rights. A period of near anarchy ensued when hundreds of refugees stormed the cities and begged for food in the streets. A crime wave swept the country, stimulated by a fanatical right-wing faction of the French army that distinguished itself by opening fire on as many unsuspecting groups of people as possible. In the country, peasants began seizing land that the French "colons" had abandoned, and within the FLN there were debilitating power struggles, particularly between members of the intellectual elite and the less well-educated war heroes. Even after Ben Bella established himself as premier with Boumidienne as his powerful minister of national defense there was still the problem of a colonial economy dependent upon tourism and the exportation of fruits, wine and minerals.

Conditions after the war produced a generation of hustlers. The distribution of French property was not strictly controlled, primarily because Ben Bella rejected the notion of draconian measures of nationalization and took pains to guarantee the freedom of the private sector. A tradition of dependence inclined the government to engage in the politics of international aid rather than develop its own resources. Contrary to expectations, though, financial and technical assistance was combined with rapid economic and political development.

It is easy to exaggerate Algeria's self sufficiency today because economic progress and prosperity are more visible than their impediments. French townhouses, though getting shabby, still create the aura of opulence, and all around them new roads, hospitals, apartment buildings and factories are going up. What you do not see are the cramped living quarters inside the apartments, the paucity of high level education, the low quality of many factory produced goods and the extent to which young Algerians are discontent.

This "discontent" is difficult to define, but you can feel it as you walk down Didouche Mourade, the main boulevard in Algiers. Packs of young men sit on the iron rails that line the street. Many do not have money because they are unemployed, unequipped with the technical skills Algeria needs so badly. Ten years ago unemployment was worse but easier to tolerate, because everybody else was either unemployed or poor. Now it is harder to bear because there are so many flashy new state institutions. Algeria is richer than the Algerians, and many Algerians know it.

Discontent is further aggravated by the government's censorship of political opposition groups, media and art. Opposition groups are strictly controlled. While I was there, wild rumors were circulating through the university to the effect that seven students had been shot by the police. These students were reportedly members of a reactionary Muslim group that went around protesting against the relaxation of Muslim morals, notorious for beating up women in mini-skirts. Usually the police presence is felt rather than observed in Algeria. You forget that Boumidienne has a massive intelligence organization until you realize that people are reluctant to discuss politics in public because they fear police informants.

Since 1962, much art and film has been geared toward keeping the revolutionary legends alive. These legends are considered important because they describe the common experiences which brought the nation together. They are a good starting point for the development of a modern national culture. Unfortunately, as the legends become more legendary, they become harder to believe. The French are depicted as monsters who thrive on blood sacrifice and their Algerian victims behave more and more like model revolutionaries. It is not surprising that many Algerians, particularly the young who don't clearly remember and who are sick of hearing about it, have developed a certain nostalgia for French culture. These same people are often extremely pan-Arab, but they consider French culture as part of their heritage.

This French-Arab attitude is partly a product of France's colonial policy of assimilation, and the repercussion of French and Algerian traditions and writing about "the Mediterranean genius." Camus once wrote, "North Africa is one of the few countries where East and West live together...the most essential element in the Mediterranean genius springs perhaps from this encounter unique in history and geography...the truth of a Mediterranean culture exists and manifests itself on every point."

Camus's assumption that "East and West live together" in North Africa is extremely dubious, but his concept of "a Mediterranean culture" is still widely accepted by many Algerians. It is difficult to say whether the survival of this attitude is due to the survival of a colonial mentality or to incipient "embourgeoisiement" which patterns itself after its Western and particularly French counterpart. However, it is certain that the attitude prevails. It manifests itself in countless "Frenchisms"--styles of talking, gestures, clothing and writing. France still haunts Algeria, and chances are she will continue to do so.

Emily Apter '76-3 worked for two sociologists last year in Algiers.