Algeria has a rich but little exploited history

With its permanent and enforcement and receptions of Dalimen, Adib benazzifaitune is a process.Leprimo-romaneytraverstempSetTEmpSettl’espacedans unquispolicières uninvilitière at the imprintehistoric marked, quiexploreleseandresd’u colonial sinister sinister sinister sinister.

Freedom: “Basse tide” is your first enhancement recently by Dalimen editions.How was the writing project born to this book and what was the trigger?Adib Benazzi: From a very young age, I have always been fascinated by history in general, and the history of Algeria in particular.Child already I traveled the bookstores of Algiers with my father from which I often came out with a comic strip on the history of the country.One of them marked me.She illustrated the terrible seat of Constantine in 1836.I was seven years old and these images still resonate in my head.As of adolescence I wrote my first news, one of them, published in the Lycée Journal, told the story of a Numidian warrior who opposed Rome.More recently, I came across a thriller that happens in Siberia and which fascinated me.It was the click!I said to myself here, I have to write a contemporary novel that mixes both a strong anchoring in the history of Algeria and traveling in unsuspected lands.History and travel, adventure are part of my life, so it was natural that I make the pillars of my story.

Walid, the character-narrator, Seretrouvemrégrégré mixed him with a dismal history and the very childcare, which are just up to the 19th of the French occupation....I wanted to create a novel whose police intrigue leaves a bit of the beaten track, where the reasons for the crime are nestled in the little explored meanders of our history.The history of peoples, our story is never all white or black, it is made of gray nuances.By this story, I wanted to show how the history of Algeria and France are tangled and the complexity that this generates.However, I wanted to take a step back and get out of this Algeria/France bubble by placing it in a global context and thus better put into perspective.This is the reason why, in my story, this story mixes with other historical events such as the Lebanese civil war, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the Indian Prime Minister in the early 1980s, or the'Epic of Rommel in Libya.Obviously, these events were not chosen at random, and there is a common thread.I often say that if I lived in Algeria or in France, I could not have written this story, that I would not have had the necessary hindsight.Being a bit far from this "bubble" and evolving in an Anglo-Saxon environment completely disconnected from this story, I think, a lot helped.

How do we manage to achieve a fresco of this dimension without getting lost in the meanders of the history and the turpitudes of man precisely?My main goal was to create an attractive novel, pleasant to read, with sustained rhythm, with strong characters and where the reader can learn things.It was therefore necessary to show a lot of rigor to maintain this course.Indeed, all the elements that did not serve this goal, I set out to eliminate them, and it was sometimes painful.For example during my first draft, I described the differences between Emir Abdelkader and Ahmed Bey, the Bey of Constantine, the attempted contact of the Emir Khaled (the grandson of the Emir Abdelkader)With President Wilson or the epic of Mustapha Kamal (the future Atatürk) in Libya at the beginning of the 20th century.All these elements are very interesting, but did not bring anything to the understanding of the plot and above all risked losing the reader and breaking the pace.So I deleted them.For the characters, it was the same process.I wanted to give them enough depth for the reader to understand their motivations, the (often deep) source of their discomfort, their ambitions, experience feelings towards them, whether empathy, disgust or other ...,All without altering the pace.Throughout this story, so I set out to try to find a balance between depth and rhythm.It was not always easy.

Antihero par excellence, Walid goes from the young first well installed in Manhattan, careerist and opportunistic at the start of the novel, to the vigilante ready to die for the truth, even if it means perpetrating many crimes.Isn't it paradoxical to present this character in this way?I love antihero!We can always identify with them.Too perfect heroes… much less!Through this story, I wanted to show that even a character like Walid, that nothing predisposed to become vigilante or humanist, was able to transform, in pain certainly, with a lot of clumsiness and sometimes showing violence, butIn the end, transformation there was.Even a character like him could set himself against the established order.And therefore show that we are all capable of this transformation, and that in all of us is a hero/heroine is.Besides, the history of Algeria is full of "antihero" who were other than "ordinary" men and women who, in a hurry by history, have accomplished the extraordinary.Also, I like the idea that in each of us, including the most abject people possible (like Walid at the beginning of the novel), there can still be a background of humanity.

At the beginning, we discover a walid destroyed by the murder of a girl in Tamanrasset, introspective then "disgusted" of himself, until we discover an immeasurable force in the service of the truth.Should each being on earth pass, in your opinion, by this way, metaphorically of course, in search of “its” truth?Absolutely !Finding your way, your way, your vocation, your passion ..., there is only that which can give us this crazy energy which pushes us to accomplish unsuspected exploits, to surpass ourselves!But before you get there, you have to go through an essential step, where unfortunately many fail.This step is the questioning.In the novel, Walid took time to understand that in fact he had not succeeded and that in addition to that, he had been an abject being.He had to agree to face himself, to question himself and finally to say "I don't know".It can be painful, but it is the obligatory passage to discover its truth.If we think we know everything, we cannot discover ourselves, we cannot change, we stagnate and somewhere, we die at low fire, suffocated by our certainties.

You go back to the birth of a deadly conflict between the Uffia, a tribe having really existed, and the Tidjani under the colonial yoke.You oppose their fictitious ancestors, Mohamed El-Suffia and Moulay Tidjani, the first faithful companion of the Emir Abdelkader, and the second who made allegiance to France in your novel.Hatred crosses the generations, but it takes courage to stop this murderous cycle, to which Walid puts an end...

On the historical elements of my novel, I play a lot, on purpose, on the vagueness between proven historical events and fiction, I would therefore like to emphasize an important point: the tribes Offia and Tidjani have existed and the misfortunes that fell onThese tribes at the start of colonization are very real.On the other hand, the characters in the novel from these tribes are fictitious.Indeed, hatred crosses the generations, and through this story I wanted to show how and why.This hatred which is often transmitted in the unsaid generation after generation.Breaking this cycle is very difficult because it requires treating the source of trauma and often questioning.It is an exercise that can prove to be very painful and which often requires great wisdom.The problem, which is unfortunately common, is that as long as the problem is not "treated", this hatred, this resentment continues to be transmitted and this cycle seems endless!

You also evoke the opening of colonial archives through the company of one of the characters -infairela light on these murders of children ... The opening of these archives is a complex subject which is the subject of state negotiations, and that exceeds (unfortunately) all of us.On the other hand, we are entitled to wonder why some of these archives are still confidential?One can easily imagine that they must lock up unreferring truths, on one side as on the other.From a romantic point of view, this opens the door to all kinds of literary fantasies.This is the reason why the subject of the archives occupies a place of choice in the novel.More broadly, for me the subject of these "secret archives" is also metaphorical, because it represents our "3000 years" of history that we do not search enough for my taste.Algeria has an extraordinarily rich story, but so little exploited.A story that has had a major influence on the whole Mediterranean and beyond and yet so little known outside our borders.Our colonial past, as painful as it is, is only a drop of water in our history.

There is also talk of Hirak in your novel, freedoms, responsibility of everyone to take charge of the common destiny of Algeria.How do you look at the Smile Revolution?Like many Algerians, I have been amazed by this movement, by its pacifism, by this extraordinary momentum that has traveled the country.The Algerian people have shown great political maturity and incredible collective intelligence.This contagious joy, this effervescence, this new hope upset me.Lehirakatecettemarée bassiareveévéléAn pepperd’tragande wisdom buried under the waves of fatalism for too long.This low tide also revealed to us, because suddenly we were all capable of the greatest civility, to have clean streets, to include all the sides of the company under the same banner.Like all tides, she comes and goes, to make sure that she only brings out the best.

Interview carried out by: Yasmine Azzouz