In the footsteps of Camus

PARIS - French and Algerians have decided to go all the traces of the writer Albert Camus in his beloved native Algeria, where he creates pride but politics incomprehension, 50 years after his death.

•    "Camus is a national heritage to be discovered: the talent, generosity of a genius," told AFP the Algerian novelist Yasmina Khadra, director of the Algerian Cultural Centre in Paris.
  
     Artists and intellectuals from both countries will lead in April a "caravan Albert Camus" in 14 cities in Algeria (9) and France (5) days of readings, lectures, theatrical performances, will be held on such sites illustrated by the writer as Tipaza and Oran, said William Luchelli, host club Camus Mediterranean.
  
     It is his "carnal love for this land of Algeria, this love for life above everything."
  
     Mayor of Oran Saddek Benkaa, "historian of the period that Camus spent in the city," says the author of The Stranger will be celebrated from January 21. "We especially tried to decipher the characters of “La Peste,” famous novel, which happens in Oran, for example behind the hero, Dr. Rieux, is hiding Dr. Cohen, who healed Camus typhus, he says.
  
     In a book, " Camus, an Algerian passion" (Editions Koutoubia), Stéphane Babey says that people in Algeria today, "most do not read Camus, unlike the intellectuals," but they feel an immense pride for the Nobel Prize writer, a Nobel in literature awarded in 1957 the age of 44.
  
     The leader of the scavengers of Belcourt district of Algiers where Camus grew up with his mother poor and illiterate, was even nicknamed "Mohammed Camus'", reports this French writer of Algerian unknown father.
  
     Mr. Babey reveals also, like Camus, the Algerian passion for football, while the Islamists had banned sport during "the dark years of terrorism" in the 1990s.
  
     Death in a car accident on January 4, 1960, Albert Camus remains a mythic figure of French literature, both for his taste for justice by his extraordinary itinerary, from the neighbourhoods of Algiers to the Nobel Prize.
  
     A misunderstanding still exists on his silence about the war for the independence of Algeria (1962), unlike Jean-Paul Sartre.
  
     Some have criticized his remarks including "I believe in justice but I will defend my mother before justice" - a phrase of 1957 for condemning the indiscriminate attacks, which was taken out of context, according to the philosopher Michel Onfray.
  
     "There is always a misunderstanding but I can not blame this great writer, a "man of courage," replied Yasmina Khadra.
  
     Saddek Benkaa rather puts forward the friendship with Camus for Arab militants. "We forget also reports on “Poverty in Kabylia”, Camus young journalist in 1939, denouncing the suffering and starvation of the Muslim population, said Mayor Oran.
  
     In a recent forum for the newspaper “Le Monde,” the former lawyer Wasssyla Tamzali, director of women's rights at Unesco, said she was shocked one time: "These men he called Arabs why did he refuse to call them Algerians? " But, she added, in the 1990s, "when my country awoke in the grip of a fratricidal war, then I went back to Camus the moralist who refused" unjustifiable violence ".
  
      
  Ennaharonline/ M. O.