Greece in tatters

By Dda Stavisky

If the title has scared you, calm down and do not worry – it is only a metaphor of a distant time. Greece is fine, so do not worry.
In fact, it’s simple the title of a journalist’s article… no, no! It’s not that! This is the title of an article by a writer and journalist author given to an investigation into the Kabyle realities of the 1930s. It is the first article in this series on Kabylie.

The author, ladies and gentlemen, is Albert Camus, existentialist writer who regarded this world as absurd, author of “Myth of Sisyphus”, “The Fall”, “The Plague”, “The Stranger” , “Misery in Kabylia” and “The First Man” among others!
This title, evoking Greece, has raised an uproar among the “black-feet”, the “white-collar” and so on.
This almost unanimous hostility comes more from the fact that Camus dared to compare these “indigenous savages” of Kabylie (according to the Turkish, French or Arab occupiers), this poor Kabylie to the prestigious Greece herself! To Greece, whose “masters” the French hold alone, claiming their inheritance.
So the comparison with Greece has been treated as “singular assimilation”, to say the least.
Beyond this disturbing title, the colonial authorities did not want to recognize the devastating facts of the wars of colonization against the Kabyle.
After establishing Algeria in 1962 the French state has not since thought to return the land confiscated to the Kabyle, land stolen during the conquest of the 19th century and especially following the revolts of 1871.
Today the French state always remains poised against Kabylia simply because they voice their discontent with the usurper who still occupies our lands.