Concentration camp

Instead of posting my piece on Carrie Bradshaw the way the gods intended, I decided to tell you a piece of history not well known by anyone, even French people.

My grandparents lived in concentration camps in the 70s, for years. In France. Yes, the 70s, well after the Second World War.

The story is this:

My grandparents are Algerian, they fought on the French side of the independence war, making them Harkis, and were forced out of their country as their people were being decimated by independentists.

They didn’t choose to leave their country, a country they loved, a culture they loved, a religion they also loved. And yet, they did because they had no other choice.

France accepted them but had no means to welcome them so they left my people in concentration camps for years. During this time, my uncle was born, in a concentration camp, and when my grandparents were finally let out of the concentration camp to move into the French countryside, they had to let go of all of their culture, their religion, to assimilate to the French way.

Muslims were not common in the 70s, and Algerians were being murdered and thrown in the Seine in the 70s by the police, they were terrified of their fate. They left a country where certain death awaited them for the very same thing to happen to them when they were promised a safe haven.

Being a Harkis is a complicated fate in France. When I was a kid, everyone knew who I was by just looking at me because I looked just like my dad, and there weren’t too many kabyles or arab in the country at this time.

My primary school was segregated, with the kids of color put in the back amongst themselves because ‘we had a lot in common’, I sat next to a Morrocan kid who was neither Muslim nor close to his culture, he was French, like me. We didn’t know anything about our history, we just knew we were treated differently here. One foot in France, one foot in the homeland we knew nothing about. When it came to the cafeteria, I was not allowed meat, no matter how many times my mom and I pleaded, they always thought I was Muslim because of the color of my skin and the traits of my face.

My grandparents grew up in concentration camps and made a vow, a vow of never telling their kids what had happened to them, their friends, and their family, never telling them about their culture, their homeland, or their ethnicity. Nothing.

Like in the Rwanda genocide, those born after a traumatic event from parents who refuse to share their background develop severe mental health disorders. My father is schizophrenic, two of his brothers are bipolar, and I have 4 mental health disorders myself. This happens when one doesn’t know where they come from when there’s silence in the house surrounding a traumatic event, when you know you’re different from everyone else but your parents refuse to talk to you about it, and would rather you assimilate to whatever culture they settled in.

It’s scary sometimes. When I was in middle school, I would proudly say I was a Harkis to fellow Algerians, thinking it would make me like them, because I so longed to belong after I had moved to Marseille and discovered many people like me. Instead, they hated me, I was banished from a L’aid celebration and unable to sit at dinner tables because I was deemed the ‘daughter of a traitor’. That’s how my people are viewed: traitors. They betrayed their country by fighting for France in the independence war.

Now, I never reveal that I’m a Harkis unless it’s to my closest friend. When someone mistakes me for Asian, I reply ‘No I’m Kabyle’ which is my real ethnicity. Cabiles are northern Africans, usually from the mountains, with a lighter skin tone in winter and a magnified tan in summer, we have high cheekbones, full lips, and elongated eyes. Some pass as white, I’ve never had that privilege. I’m proud of being Kabyle, I’m proud of my unusual looks, even if sometimes it means people think I’m Asian. I don’t care. Asians are beautiful too.

I’ve decided to write this piece after my last article on feminism got me comments about reading from black feminists. The truth is, I’ve read Bell Hooks, I’ve read Toni Morrisson, Angela Davis, and many more. However, I’ve never read a book about the Harkis experience, or the Kabyle experience. My story is common, hundreds of thousands of people lived in those concentration camps in France, and yet their story hasn’t been heard. I want to read about it and understand myself better.

A book on my TBR is called the Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter. It won many prizes in France and my entire white family has read it except for me. It’s about being a Kabyle and being a harkis, asking questions about your family’s past and I long to read it. It’s the only book I know about my specific situation. It makes me sad, I wish there were more voices like that in my life, but our story has been shut out for so long, I don’t know when we’ll finally hear the reality of this massacre.

That’s why I’m so angry at the current state of the world. We are enforcing migrants into concentration camps, whether you’re in Europe or in the US, whoever comes to this country from Africa, a continent we have messed up with our colonization and refuse to let go of, these people are our responsibility. It’s our fault that the war in Gaza is what it is. That Syria is a fucking mess, that Rwanda had a genocide and so many other countries. The French military is everywhere on the African continent ‘enforcing peace’ making sure Islamic states aren’t enforced. We should welcome these people onto our soil, make them feel welcome, and not force them to change their ways to fit the French mold, don’t you get it? No one is just French anymore, we’re all mixed, a patchwork of history marked in our DNA. Let go of this idea of the coffee & cigarette morning breakfast.

I’m writing this because I’m tired. I’m tired of seeing history repeating itself as if we can’t learn from our mistakes. Politicians tell me ‘It’s more complicated, there are diplomatic forces to deal with’ okay, and? Can’t everyone make the right decision, it doesn’t seem that hard. We could easily end the war in Ukraine and Gaza if we wanted.

So that’s a piece of history for you, if you have any questions, I’ll be more than happy to reply to you. I wanted to make my history known because I’ve never read it. I’ve never had someone tell it to me either, there’s an Omerta on it, but I’m a writer, and whenever an Omerta is in place, I have to gossip it away.