PARIS LETTER
97
dples they have learned from France, whom they all oppose to a greater
or lesser degree. When Chraibi, in his novel
Les boucs,
violently de–
nounces the French for their treatment of the North African workers,
he is merely demanding that same respect for human rights he learned
in French schools. And when Mohammed Dib denounces oppression in
all its forms, rallying to a militant communism, he is only transferring
the requirements his enemies have taught him to a situation his own
country has afforded him.
These are the reasons why a French-speaking Maghrib literature
has developed at the same time as a rebellion against France. For
this
is a revolt practiced in the name of what France
has
contributed, re–
jecting her political presence while insisting on her political and moral
principles, and drawing closer to her civilization every day. The former
President du Conseil
Edgar Faure tells how during the discussion of the
Moroccan agreements he received two delegations in the same day: the
first consisted of Moroccans wearing
jallabahs
and
babushes,
speaking
French with difficulty, and loudly and sincerely insisting that the French
remain in the realm of the sherif. The second was composed of elegant
gentlemen in European clothes and speaking impeccable French, all
graduates of our universities and our institutes:. it had come to express to
the head of the state the sentiments of unyielding nationalism on the
part of the Moroccan elite which France had formed.
A last consideration, and perhaps the most surprising: French–
speaking Maghrib literature was born simultaneously among native and
French populations. It was just after the Second World War that
French writers of Algeria first became known in France: Albert Camus,
Jules Roy, Emmanuel Robles. Algeria's intellectual evolution had been
no different for them, and this people, at first dedicated to the severest
colonial and military ordeals, had now reached the point where it had
both the time and the need to express itself. But this was not the case
for only a part of the community: Arabs, Kabyles, Jews, and Europeans
all began to speak at once.
I t would be a long task to list all the works in French by Maghrib
writers. But we may choose a few of the most characteristic, classifying
them according to their subjects, for in most cases they are the same.
As always in poor countries, childhood and its sufferings, in the
form of more or less fictionalized autobiographies, occupies a prominent
place. What Camus in
L'enuers et l'endroit
did for a poor European
child Mouloud Ferraoun has done for a Kabyle boy and Mohammed
Dib and Ahmed Sefrioui for Arab girls. Mouloud Ferraoun's
Le fils du
pauure
tells how a Kabyle boy is dying of hunger but meanwhile manages
