Arab Women in Algeria

Hubertine Auclert, Jacqueline Grenez Brovender

• Publisher: De Gruyter Poland
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9783110427363
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

The book presents the first English edition of Hubertine Auclert's Arab Women in Algeria which offers a unique picture of Algerian society in late 19th century.

Hubertine Auclert (1848-1914) was one of the foremost militants for women's political rights in France from the mid-1870s. She lived in Algeria from 1888 to 1892, where she investigated the customs and traditions that defined the condition of women. She witnessed both the exploitation of women and that of the colonized people; in doing so, she drew a picture of colonial Algerian society. While women were mistreated by men (sale of prepubescent girls into marriage, forced marriage, repudiation permitted only to men, polygamy), Arab men were mistreated by the colonial administration and excluded from the government of Algeria. She denounced the contradictions and hypocrisy of French justice, which often enforced, for their own interest, the "anomalies" of Muslim law in contradiction with French law.
The last chapter of the book comprises of several striking anecdotes that illustrate the author's theoretical views.

Jacqueline Grenez Brovender is a freelance translator and a former lecturer in French at Tufts University.

Denise Brahimi-Chapuis taught in French and Algerian universities about the relationship between France and the Maghreb and its effect on women.

1 Women, Arabs, and Assimilation

Patriotism and love of liberty
inspire respect for the country
and the liberty of others

When one reaches Algiers, this earthly paradise, and leaves the boat where so many honest people have talked of legitimately acquiring a hundred hectares of land by lending twenty-five louis¹⁶ to the Arab owner, one is immediately struck to see, under the brilliant light and the bright blue sky, on cobblestones sparkling like steel, shocking bundles of dirty linen.

These bundles move toward you, and then you notice that they are held by dusty feet, topped by a head so wrinkled, worn, furrowed, and hewn that it no longer is a human face; they are statues of suffering embodying a race tortured by hunger. These ageless and sexless creatures, out of place in this fairy landscape, in their once white rags, are not old women: they recently became mothers. An adorable baby is on their back, entwined in their haik.¹⁷

Wives of evicted landowners, famished mouths unwanted by their tribe, these poor females wander, driven away from everywhere, hunted down, brutalized, insulted in all languages by all the races that have settled on their fathers’ lands. When, exhausted, they want to stop and squat down in order to nurse their infant, there is always someone to tell them that they dirty the ground, and to push them away, yelling that their lice-infected bodies block traffic. But hunger has sometimes dried up the mothers’ breasts; so for fear that their starving babies will become corpses in their arms, these heroic women make them suck the blood spurting from their incised veins!

In Algeria, there is but a very small French elite who think of the Arab race as human. Foreigners, French civil servants, Jews, colonists, traffickers, all of them have less consideration for the Arabs than for their sheep; Arabs are here to be crushed. To push them back into the desert in order to seize what has not yet been taken, such is the dream.

French Algerians, declaring that fanaticism makes Arabs non-civilizable, persist in doing nothing to lift them from an ignorance that makes it possible to exploit and dominate them. They have exclusive use of the money taken from the natives who say, “There is a clever system of solidarity between us and the Europeans: we have a common purse where our hands pay in and theirs freely draw from it.”

© 2014 Hubertine Auclert

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

When you have looked long enough at these mouquères,¹⁸ true living skeletons, thinking that the jewelry case is too splendid for such ugly jewels, the guide who guesses your thoughts smartly says, “There are some beautiful ones,” and his raised finger indicates, at the top of the Algerian amphitheater, a pile of large oddly tumbled sugar lumps: houses with snowy white terraces and multicolored shutters. If you are curious and you question him about this spectacle of whiteness stamped with indigo, he answers with a wink and a mischievous smile, “That is the Casbah!”

Named after the ancient citadel, this Arab quarter presents a vision of paradise but also evokes some frolicsome thoughts; for while it contains hospitable houses, it also conceals Muslim women kept under lock and key by jealous Arabs.

This old corner is less safe, says Councilor Ben Larbey, than the forest of Yakouren¹⁹: it is a tangle of multi-tiered alleyways and dead ends darkened like tunnels by ramshackle houses. In the dim light one sometimes sees a man lying in a pool of blood, or a stabbed woman, and always a door half-opened on the azure interior of a house of ill repute. Well-to-do Arabs flee this unsafe quarter, and collectors compete with the government for old ironware and ancient earthenware found in buildings difficult to rent.

All African races can be found in the Casbah. What is interesting is that they all live there oblivious of their neighbors, keeping their costumes, their habits, and their mores. This natural autonomy should be a lesson to the civilized people who attach so much importance to the opinion of their peers.

One sees only men everywhere, walking around, selling, buying, working. Thresholds and stone steps are the natural pillows of the yaouleds (little boys) and serve as workshops for silk winders and leather embroiderers.

This quarter which, like inland Arab towns, has the feel of a male monastery also has the feel of a flower boat.²⁰ Sexual relations are without mystery: not only do Oulad Naïl²¹ women, lying on cushions, adorned and covered with jewels, offer themselves to the passersby’s adoration like Madonnas on altars, it is not rare to see couples smile, kiss, hug, embrace, tumble right in the street; without any concern for passersby as though hidden by a dune in a fold of the desert, they abandon themselves in full public view to amorous transports!

The tall Arabs, resembling draped sphinxes walking in the Casbah’s tortuous streets, do not look at all like the Kabyles with their brightly colored woolen tunics who, a few feet from them, shout in pidgin French, “Charcoal! Charcoal! Eggs, ladies, oranges, nice! Nice!”

Yet another type is the stall vendor from whom the customer buys, on the street, packages of sardines, honey and vermicelli cakes, vinegar radishes, fried pimentos, red eggs, and finally the famous meat, liver, and kidney shish kebabs, spicy loubia,²² and couscous. Each of these dishes costs one sou; the clear water that Arabs take turn drinking from a common pitcher and Europeans from a glass is given free.

The diversity of races and physical types is particularly obvious in the cafés maures²³ where Arabs of all regions and social classes meet. The café maure is a large windowless room furnished with mats, a few benches, an earthenware stove on which the kahoua (coffee) is prepared, and a shelf holding tiny cups, a box of sugar, and one of fragrant mocha. Everything exotic in the Arab world can be found in the café maure; one may see there a tamed lion or else an Aïssaoua²⁴ swallowing sabers and hot coals. On certain feast days, Oulad Naïl girls dance there. The insane, considered saints by the natives, are welcome, and seeresses predicting the future are feasted and attentively listened to. While drinking their one-sou²⁵ kahoua cup, men take wagers, sometimes betting even their own wives! They also tell stories of the conqueror’s misdeeds.

United by their love of gambling and their impatience under the yoke, these men are often totally dissimilar both morally and physically. Depending on their mood, the judicial authorities take or do not take into account their mores and their customs while the administrative authorities crush them all and turn them into sheep in order to fleece them more easily.

1.1 Arabs without Representation in Parliament

Algerian Arabs who make up nearly the country’s entire population – 3,750,000 out of 4,403,000 inhabitants – are not, or only barely, represented in the assemblies whose goal is to defend Algeria’s interests. In communes de plein exercice,²⁶ the natives nominate councilors of their race, but their number cannot exceed one fourth of the elected French councilors. Of course the European majority unites against the African minority. These pariahs, councilors of pariahs, do not have the right to elect either the mayor or the deputy mayors. Needless to say they are unable to effectively defend their constituents’ interests; so they ceaselessly protest against the conquerors’ injustice. For the sake of curiosity, here is one of their protests:

“Gentlemen,
The Corsicans, who gave you so many illustrious figures, fought France for six centuries. You know they have Arab blood, don’t you?
It took France sixty years to complete the conquest of Algeria. During that time, we fought you as befits all patriots defending their land. But now that it is over we recognize that God, master of peoples’ destinies, gave you Algeria, and to this divine decree we bow with the deepest respect.
We accept your domination and this acceptance compels us to march with you. You are the army corps, we are the rearguard, sharing your fate, happy if you are victorious, unhappy if you succumb.
You are six centuries older than we are. This compels you to give us examples of morality and justice.²⁷ We shall gratefully accept all the lessons you will give us so that we can march together with you for the prosperity of the French and Muslim peoples between whom there should no longer be any cause of discord. Who says French must mean Arab too, and who says Arab must mean French too.
In 1884, we protested against the unfair restriction of the right to participate in municipal and senatorial elections that the law had previously granted us. Where is the danger in our playing a part in the election of the mayor and deputy mayors? In my opinion, there isn’t any, neither in this election nor in that of senatorial delegates. This danger exists only in the minds of those who are, and always will be, intent on sowing division between French and Muslim.
Gentlemen, we must unite in a common effort against this disloyal and dangerous spirit. In France, they are starting to understand the powerful advantage presented by the union of our two peoples; I am convinced that we shall march together in that direction and that you will approve my motion.

Ali Ben Omar Bourmady”

Doctor Ben Larbey, member of the Conseil général of Algiers,²⁸ thinks that the natives’ representation is much too small; he would like the Arabs to take part in the various political votes – legislative, senatorial – and a Muslim delegation to be sent to the government of the Republic in Paris. “The only way to win the Arabs is through the Arabs,” he said.

In communes mixtes, many more Arabs than French sit on the Conseil municipal; however, instead of being elected like the French, they are appointed by the administrator. They do not defend the douar’s ²⁹ inhabitants they represent; they are sheep who by their number insure the administrator’s authority in the Conseil. The red burnous wrapped around them is, apparently, more often given to the man who pays for it than to the one who should be entitled to wear it.

Six Arabs with the title of Muslim assessors sit and deliberate in the Conseil général of Algiers, Oran and Constantine. Instead of being elected by the natives, these assessors are appointed by the governor-general; consequently, they represent their fellow Arabs much less than the interests and whims of the governors who placed them in the departmental assemblies.

In the Chambre des délégations financières³⁰ that examine the budget and take care of all Algerian business, the 384,000 colonists and Algerians have forty-eight delegates; the 3,750,000 Arabs have only nine delegates for the civil territories, six for the military territories, and six for the Kabyle territories, only twenty-one delegates in all. But this tiny minority will allow despoiled people to take part in their country’s administration. In the sixty-three-member Conseil supérieur,³¹ there are three Muslims from the financial delegations and three native notables appointed by the governor.

Everyone knows the natives are not represented in Parliament. However, because the candidates would benefit from an increase in the number of legislative seats through an increase in the number of voters, it has long been proposed to confer civil rights upon the Arabs. The proposal to grant Arabs rights as French citizens was made by deputies elected in France. Some say that instead of revoking the Décret Crémieux,³² one should urge the natives to exercise their political rights so that their influence will counterbalance the excessive Jewish influence.

This solution would put an end to our beautiful colony’s troubles. For what is the real cause of the disputes between naturalized people and Jews? It is the exploitation of their prey, the Arab. If the Arab became the equal of his Algerian and Jewish predators, these two would immedi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Half Title
• Copyrights
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Arab Women in Algeria
• 1 Women, Arabs, and Assimilation
• 2 Women, Men, and the Arab Family
• 3 What Arab Women Say about Love
• 4 Arts, Crafts, and the Education of Arab Women
• 5 Arab Customs and Beliefs
• 6 Some Aspects of Life in Algeria
• 7 Arabs and Settlers
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover