The Desert in Algerian Fiction

The Desert in Algerian Fiction Mildred Mortimer Desert: a region rendered barren or partially barren by environmental extremes, especially by low rainfall. I N ARABIC, “Sahara” means desert. In effect, it represents two worlds: one, the oasis where water assures that gardens bloom and man imposes civilization; the other, unending miles of barren stretches, unbridled nature. We may approach the Sahara objectively, applying scientific rigor, or subjectively, reacting to its beauty and immensity with a personal emotional response. Historically, it has evoked two distinct reactions. To the mystic such as Charles de Foucauld, desert landscapes encouraged the development of spiritual life. To the explorer, the desert has represented a space to conquer. In the writings of Saint-Exupéry, for example, it is a measure of individual strength and fortitude. The crossing of the Sahara, the first step to conquest, is a theme that holds interest today as it did in the nineteenth century. As Jean-Robert Henry has noted, modern civilization, with its emphasis on progress, needs to hold on to a vision of a world where the sense of the atemporal and eternal exist: “Quelle plus belle illustration concrète, sensible de Fimmuabilité de la nature et des hommes non modernes que le désert?” 1 Wedded to this idea of a return to the desert is the notion of a return to the wandering life of the nomad. Sedentary man is drawn by his imagina­ tion to recreate a life of freedom, one of limitless space. France conquered Algeria in 1830 and by 1870 had pacified the Sahara as far south as Ouargla and Bechar. The effect of the French con­ quest on French art and literature was heightened interest in the Sahara as a source of exoticism. The writer Fromentin, the painter Delacroix, drawn to the Sahara, to its people—nomads and oasis dwellers—and to its landscapes, depicted this world for nineteenth century France. In the early twentieth century, André Gide and Ernest Psichari used the Sahara 1. Jean-Robert Henry, “Le désert nécessaire,” Autrement, hors série no. 5 (novembre 1983), 17-34, 29. 60 S prin g 1986 M ortim er as background to a personal journey, Gide focusing on sexual liberty and Psichari on mysticism.2 Although Albert Camus’ Algerian landscapes are mainly Mediter­ ranean—Algiers in L ’Etranger, Oran in La Peste—two short stories, “La Femme adultere” and “ Le Renégat,” both published in the collec­ tion L ’Exil et le royaume (1957), are set in the Sahara. The protagonist of “La Femme adultère,” a French woman in her forties, accompanies her husband on a bus trip to the desert. Although she has dreamed of an exotic oasis, Janine discovers dust and stones. However, when she returns at night to a fort she had visited during the day, she has a power­ ful mystical experience described by Camus in erotic terms. The second story, “ Le Renégat,” concerns a former Catholic missionary who is tor­ tured, mutilated, and forced to worship the fetish of a cruel desert people who inhabit Taghâza, city of salt, in the southern reaches of the Sahara. Both Janine and the renegade are Europeans isolated in an alien environ­ ment. Yet Janine experiences a mystical revelation, a communion with nature in the desert, whereas the renegade, whose final act is to murder the incoming missionary, is put to death by the desert people of Taghâza. Unable to “civilize” this territory whose people and physical environ­ ment are brutal and hostile, the renegade, in contrast to Janine, is con­ quered. The desert for Janine remains ambivalent; for the renegade it symbolizes death. In his study of L ’Exil et le royaume, English Showalter speaks of the desert as representing for Camus “the mirror of humanity’s existential aloneness in a barren, meaningless creation.” 3 With independence in 1962, Algeria inherited the Sahara. To some extent, this region has represented a new world, for Algerian cadres are for the most part northerners. In this North-South interaction, as with most others in the modern world, the North supplies its modern tech­ nology to the South. In this particular case, it is to a...