In this blog post, I will briefly summarize Asia Zebar’s life and major works, and analyze the key issues regarding language, identity, and women raised in her 2003 novel ‘The Disappearance of French’.

The Life and Works of Asia Zébar

Asia Zébar, whose birth name was Fatima-Zohra Imalyène, was born on June 30, 1936, in the coastal city of Cherchell, Algeria. The town is also known for its ancient ruins near Tipasa, a site made famous by Albert Camus. Her father was a primary school teacher with modern views; thanks to him, Asia Zébar was able to escape the fate of early marriage that many girls in Arab families faced at the time and grow up in a relatively free environment, attending French schools where she learned French, Ancient Greek, Latin, and English.
After passing the baccalauréat in 1953, she entered a preparatory class for the École Normale Supérieure, and the following year, she moved to Paris to enroll in a preparatory class at the Lycée Fénelon. She became the first Algerian woman to be admitted to the École Normale Supérieure de Sèvres, where she majored in history; however, she was expelled for participating in a solidarity strike organized by the General Union of Algerian Muslim Students (UGEMA) and failing to take her exams. It was at this time that she published her first novel, ‘La Soif’ (1957), and first used the pen name “Asia Djebar.” Written in her youth, this novel is often compared to Françoise Sagan’s ‘Au revoir, Tristesse’ and earned Djebar the nickname “the Françoise Sagan of Islam.”
In 1958, Zébar married Ahmed Ould-Louis and moved to Tunisia with her husband, where she worked as a reporter for the newspaper ‘El Moudjahid’, covering refugee issues. These experiences served as the backdrop and foundation for her novels ‘Les Impatients’ (1958) and ‘Les Allouettes naïves’ (1967).
From 1959 to 1962, Zebar continued her cultural activities while researching and lecturing on modern and contemporary Maghreb history at the Faculty of Arts in Rabat, Morocco. In 1962, immediately after Algeria’s independence, she returned to her homeland and was appointed a professor at the University of Algiers, where she taught modern and contemporary history. However, in 1965, when the Algerian government implemented a policy of Arabization and mandated that history be taught in Arabic, she refused to comply and left for France.
After the 1967 film ‘The Innocent Larks’, Djebbar stepped back from literature for about a decade to devote herself to film. From 1974 to 1980, she taught French literature and film at the University of Algiers and directed documentary-style films. Her 1978 film ‘La Nouba des Femmes du Mont Chenoua’ won the International Critics’ Prize at the Venice Biennale the following year, and her 1982 film ‘La Zerda ou les chants de l’oubli’ received the Best Historical Film Award at the Berlin Film Festival the next year.
In 1980, Zébar decided to return to Paris; she later explained that the reason was “because there were only men on the streets of Algiers.” From this point on, she refocused on writing fiction, publishing short story collections such as ‘Women of Algiers in Their Apartments’ (‘Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement’) and works with strong autobiographical elements, including ‘Love, Fantasia’ (‘L’Amour, la fantasia’), ‘Ombre sultane’, ‘Loin de Médine’, and ‘Vaste est la prison’. Having already demonstrated her awareness of and interest in women’s issues through her film work, she explored the experiences of Algerian women and issues of inequality even more intensively in these novels.
In 1995, Zébar moved to the United States after being invited by the University of Louisiana. Beginning in 1997, she served there as Chair and Director of the Institute for French and Francophone Studies, where she led research collaboration between French and American historians and initiated joint projects with institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris 7 University, and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
In 1999, she earned her Ph.D. in literature from the University of Montpellier III with a dissertation titled “Francophone Maghreb Fiction: Between Language and Culture—A 40-Year Journey: Asia Zébar, 1957–1997.” After receiving her doctorate, she was elected a member of the Royal Academy of French Literature in Belgium.
Continuing to write while teaching at the State University of New York starting in 2001, Zébar published ‘La Femme sans sépulture’ (The Woman Without a Grave), a strongly autobiographical work, in 2002, and in 2003, ‘The Disappearance of French’, a work dedicated to French—the language imposed upon her and the language of her writing. In 2007, she published her final novel, ‘Nowhere in My Father’s House’ (‘Nulle part dans la maison de mon père’).
Asia Zébar published a total of 12 novels, including ‘Thirst’, as well as short story collections, narratives (‘récit’), plays, poetry, and essays. In 2005, she was elected to the Académie française to succeed a departing member, and her admission was granted in June 2006. She thus became the fifth female member and the first writer from the Maghreb to be admitted.
During her lifetime, Zébar was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on several occasions, and her works written in French have been translated into more than 20 languages. However, ‘Nowhere Is My Father’s House’, published in 2014, was the first of her works to be translated and published in Arabic. She passed away in Paris on February 6, 2015, at the age of 78, and was buried in her hometown.

Issues Raised by ‘The Disappearance of the French Language’

‘The Disappearance of the French Language’ is Asia Zébar’s eleventh full-length novel. It is composed of the present and past of the protagonist, Berkan, who returned to his homeland of Algeria after living in exile in France for 20 years, as well as his letters, an unfinished novel he wrote, and the stories of the people around him. This work is characterized by frequent shifts in narrator and point of view.
The novel is divided into three parts. Part 1 begins with a first-person narrative of Berkan’s present-day story after his return in the fall of 1991. However, the narrative soon shifts to the third person, and in the sections recalling his childhood, the first and third persons alternate.
Part 2 takes place one month after his return and is told by two narrators: Berkan and Nazia. The subtitle of this section is “Love, Writing,” and it consists of Berkan and Nazia’s brief yet intense romance, Berkan’s diary, and the coming-of-age novel ‘Youth’, written by Berkan. Unlike Part 1, in Part 2, Berkan consistently appears as the first-person narrator, and Najia also narrates her past in the first person.
Part 3 tells the story of what happens after the protagonist, Berkan, goes missing. Since Berkan—who is also the narrator—has disappeared, the supporting characters take his place, resulting in a shift in the narrator and point of view. These surrounding characters include his younger brother Dris, his former lover, the French woman Mariz, and Najia, the Arab woman with whom he fell in love after returning home. Dris and Mariz each show how they cope with and come to terms with Berkan’s disappearance in their own ways, while Najia, who appears at the end of the novel, serves as the narrator of a letter sent to Berkan—unaware that he has gone missing.
‘The Disappearance of French’ is noteworthy not only for its structural experimentation but also because it comprehensively reveals the themes Zébar has consistently explored, as well as her hopes and concerns. The major themes addressed in the novel are as follows.
1) Women’s issues, particularly those facing women in Algeria, are a central theme in Zébar’s novels. Her debut novel, ‘Thirst’, and her second novel, ‘The Impatient Ones’, deal with young women living in the bourgeois milieu of colonial-era Algeria, while her later works, ‘Children of the New World’ and ‘Innocent Larks’, depict the contributions of Algerian women during the War of Independence and explore the growth of Algerian feminism. Furthermore, even during her brief hiatus from literature when she devoted herself to film, women remained a primary focus, and the issues facing Algerian women continued to be explored in her works from the 1980s onward, after she returned to fiction. In particular, ‘Algerian Women in Their Homes’ is a collection of short stories that focuses on gender inequality in post-decolonial Algeria, while novels such as ‘Love, Fantasia’, ‘The Queen of Shadows’, and ‘The Prison Is Vast’ explore inequality through a blend of autobiographical elements, historical records, mythology, and fiction.

Women’s Issues

Although Asia Djebar had previously addressed women’s issues with such intensity, her work ‘The Disappearance of the French Language’, published at the dawn of the new century, does not seem to tackle these issues with the same fervor as her earlier works. Unlike her other works, the protagonist is a man, and it is somewhat unusual that there are no direct references to women’s issues—perhaps because he is a man. However, women’s issues are revealed through his attitude, his recollections of the past, and the characters surrounding Berkan.
The Algerian women seen through Berkan’s eyes as a child are limited to his family—including his mother and grandmother—and those around him. These women generally embody the traditional Arab societal image of women who are submissive to men, and neither men nor women raise any issues regarding this. The most striking example is the complete absence of any mention of women in the first protest Berkan experienced and participated in as a child. Even in that protest, in which young boys also took part, the women did not participate actively but merely cheered from the sidelines.
Family meetings in Berkan’s household are depicted as gatherings exclusively for men. In meetings attended by his father, his older brother Alaoua, and the young Berkan, the women—including his mother—are mere spectators. Berkan raises no objections to this injustice. As a teenager, Berkan underwent his coming-of-age ritual at the “immodest” house next door, and although he records this experience in his novel, there is still no mention of women’s rights there. It is difficult to conclude from this alone that Berkan had absolutely no awareness of women’s issues. He was still a child at the time, and it is highly likely that he was simply following custom.
As an adult, Berkan seems to have broken free from the unconscious patriarchal customs of his past. Although his status as a foreigner is a special circumstance, his attitude toward Mariz and toward Najia—whom he met as a visitor and later fell in love with—reveals traits closer to those of a Frenchman than a typical Arab. If so, how should we interpret the fact that there are almost no references to Algerian women in the adult Berkan’s narrative? Considering that Asia Jebbar strongly incorporates autobiographical elements into her work, Berkan can be viewed as her alter ego, despite their different genders. This raises the question of whether his change in attitude might reflect a shift in Asia Jebbar’s own interests—specifically, a slight distancing from the subject of her focus.
Issues concerning Arab and Algerian women are primarily raised through Najia’s recollections. The patriarchal aspects of Arab society appear in several instances in Berkan’s recollections. Najia, who is Arab but has a lifestyle and way of thinking similar to that of Westerners, expresses strong aversion to the reality of Arab men oppressing women and harboring prejudices as she recounts to Berkan her experiences upon returning to her homeland.
While recounting an anecdote about a taxi driver, Nazia cynically concludes, “All the women here will dress modestly,” prompting Berkan to object. However, Najia immediately follows up by saying, “Perhaps he would have preferred to see me covered from head to toe in a black chador,” criticizing the persistent oppression of women in Algeria. Through Najia’s narrative, which blends dissatisfaction and protest, we can see that Asia Zébar’s concern for women has not entirely disappeared.

Language

When discussing Asia Zébar and her work, another element that always emerges alongside women’s issues—and is most frequently mentioned—is the question of language. Her awareness of and reflection on the issue of writing in French began early on, and her interest in language and culture came to strongly dominate her work, particularly in the late 1990s as she submitted her dissertation and published essays. The title of her dissertation, submitted to the University of Montpellier in 1999, was “Francophone Maghreb Fiction: Between Language and Culture—A 40-Year Journey: Assia Djebar, 1957–1997,” and the title of the essay she published shortly thereafter was “The Voices Around Me.”
As one might expect, Asia Zébar first learned Arabic through her family and then acquired French while attending French schools. Standing at the boundary between two linguistic spaces—spoken Arabic and written French, the language of the colonizer and the language of the colonized—she chose French as her language of writing. For her, French was a language that “bestowed boundless treasures” and served as a “window through which to view the world’s diverse spectacles.”
However, no matter how fluently she used French—as if it were her native tongue—it remained for Assia Djebar “their” language, and fundamentally, an “external language.” Consequently, she inevitably felt limited when expressing herself in French. In particular, when it came to expressing intimate emotions related to love, French could not easily replace Arabic. She confided that whenever she tried to express those emotions in French, the words she had learned and used seemed to slip away from her. She felt that if French was a kind of “mask,” then her native Arabic was the language that allowed her to confirm a sense of “belonging.” These experiences are reflected in the character of Berkan in the novel.
While living in exile in France, Berkan falls in love with a French woman named Mariz. However, he feels an unquenchable thirst within that relationship. There is a scene where he feels a sense of loss and becomes despondent because Mariz cannot understand the words he casually utters in Arabic. The intimate conversations between the two are merely a mixture of Arabic dialect and French, failing to achieve genuine communication.
After returning home, Berkan feels the thirst that remained unquenched in his relationship with Mariz being satisfied through his encounters with Rashid, a fisherman he meets near his seaside villa, and with Najia, a college classmate of Driss’s who is visiting. Although the conversation with Rashid is trivial in content, the fact that it is conducted in the Arabic dialect he used in the Kasbah puts Berkan at ease and fosters a secret complicity and mutual goodwill. The dialect-based conversation with Rashid stirs excitement in Berkan, as he rediscovers a “dance of language” composed of countless lost words and revived images.
Berkan is a character who aspires to become a writer but faces difficulties. While working as a section chief in the administrative department of the social security fund in France, he wanted to write but was unable to put his plans into action; following his breakup with his French lover, Mariz, he quit his job, returned home, and attempted to write. However, even after returning home, his plans made no progress. It was only after meeting Najia that he became determined to write.
Nazia stands in contrast to Mariz; if Mariz symbolizes France and the French language, Nazia symbolizes Algeria and the Arabic language. After making love, Nazia chattered away in Arabic before leaving, and Berkan, feeling a “lack of sound,” regretted not having recorded her voice on a tape recorder and resolved to transcribe her story into writing. However, he wonders whether he can truly translate what she said in Arabic into French. Berkan believes he has no choice but to write while accepting the inevitable distortions, yet he doubts whether such writing can truly serve as a consolation for her absence.
Nevertheless, through the process of writing, Berkan begins to overcome the conflict between the two languages—Arabic and French. In “Winter Diary” from Part 2, Berkan writes a “Poem Dedicated to Najia” and confesses that, thanks to her, he has sought to reclaim his own voice and discovered his own rhythm. His French undergoes a transformation: it is no longer the French spoken by the French, but rather “Sabir”—a language in which Arabic elements have been incorporated, acquiring the rich colloquial quality of an Arabic dialect.

History and the Voices of the Colonized

History is often written by the victors. However, Asia Zebar seeks to reconstruct a more complete history—viewed from multiple perspectives rather than just one—by incorporating the voices of the colonized, who have long been excluded from this narrative. In this way, she hopes to reveal other aspects of history that have been obscured by Western-centric discourses of domination.
As an intellectual from a former colony who majored in history, Asia Zebar denounces the bias inherent in records shaped by the conqueror’s perspective, as well as the hidden brutality and harms of colonial rule, and deeply feels the need for a subject-centered historical narrative as a means of decolonization. She had already made such an attempt in ‘Love, Fantasia’; in that work, Asia Zébar shed a more multidimensional light on the tragedy of Algeria by capturing not only the rulers’ records but also the voices of the colonized—particularly Algerian women who had lost their husbands, sons, and brothers—amid France’s invasion and colonization of Algeria.
In ‘The Disappearance of French’, stories from before and after independence unfold through Berkan’s childhood memories and Nadia’s recollections. Berkan learns from Rashid, a fisherman, that events amounting to nationalist protests had already taken place in the Casbah before independence, and he recounts an incident in which he was summoned by the principal for drawing the Algerian flag instead of the French flag.
Among the stories Berkan shared with Rashid was the death of his uncle, Mouloud. Having returned from France—where he had been a boxer—to become a barber, his uncle was an eccentric who would cut hair only for those he liked, and he was also a drug addict. As a child, Berkan helped his uncle buy drugs and one day witnessed his death firsthand. His uncle was neither a political hero nor a nationalist hero, but he was a “pure and unpretentious hero,” an “unfortunate and vulnerable hero,” and in a certain sense, even an “absolute hero”—a figure who, before his death, had asked everyone for forgiveness.
What Berkan revives through his uncle’s death is a history of the precarious situation before independence, viewed from the perspective of the oppressed. These seemingly trivial events are presented as evidence that the War of Independence was by no means suddenly initiated at a single moment by a great figure or an organization, but had already been prepared by the most humble of people. Although recollections from the internment camp in 1960, as well as the stories Nazia recounts about her grandfather’s death and her father’s mental breakdown, were excluded from the official record, they remain as vivid history attesting to the War of Independence and Algeria’s political turmoil.

Discourses of Control, Torture, and the Political Turmoil of the 1990s

Asia Djebar’s aversion to the dominant discourse that wields absolute power over historical records is evident in several scenes. For example, when a news anchor reports on the anti-French protests that began in Belcour, a suburb of Algiers, stating, “Since the Casbah remains calm, we assume order will be restored easily,” Berkane’s older brother, Alaoua, becomes enraged and joins the protest, waving the Algerian flag himself. In this way, anger toward controlling discourse is expressed in everyday life.
Furthermore, the “classical” music blaring in the detention center where Berkan was held—intended to drown out the screams of those being tortured—symbolizes the discourse of the ruling class, which seeks to conceal and manipulate the course of history. The methods of torture endured by Berkan, who was a teenager at the time, are shocking. Worse than being stripped naked, laid on a wooden plank, and beaten was the “sand torture,” in which fine sand was poured steadily into his screaming mouth. In that moment, Berkan screamed in terror, feeling as if his eyeballs were about to pop out and his intestines were being forced out. This experience of torture haunted his memory for decades afterward; it was so intense that, during a theater rehearsal, he wondered if he could turn that scene into a painting.
However, such extreme torture was merely a form of suffering unique to the colonized. Mariz is simply puzzled, unaware of what the painting signifies, and Berkan does not reveal the details of his story. He asks himself, “How would I have appeared if I had confessed to my French girlfriend that this extreme torture was not China’s, but entirely France’s?” Through the reality of torture—which, though not widely publicized due to concealment and manipulation, undeniably existed—Asia Zébar once again reveals that the history of the victors is not complete.
In ‘The Disappearance of the French Language’, a critical perspective on the Arabization policies unfolding in Algeria during the two years following Berkan’s return home is evident throughout. As a reaction to current events, this can be read less as history and more as an expression of political consciousness. The young Berkan first developed his political consciousness at the Beni Messou detention center, where he was imprisoned after attempting to lead a protest while clutching the Algerian flag.
At the time, the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the Algerian National Movement (MNA) were both active, advocating the same nationalist cause; however, when the FLN led the large-scale armed uprising of 1954, the MNA was branded a traitor. In that situation, a prisoner affiliated with the MNA was brought into the cell block housing FLN prisoners, and Berkan threatened and mocked him with a knife—only to be stopped by Brahim. Through this experience, he learned the lesson of putting himself in others’ shoes and received his first political lesson, which taught him to stop judging situations based on simple black-and-white logic.
In ‘Youth’, Berkan’s autobiographical coming-of-age novel, an episode involving the salute to the French flag is recounted. In mid-January 1962, as negotiations between representatives of the French government and the National Liberation Front were scheduled and the atmosphere was filled with the spirit of independence, a movement arose within the camp to defy the rules set by the French military. A proposal was made to refuse to salute during the flag-lowering ceremony. However, in the midst of this, a French non-commissioned officer brutally assaulted an Algerian youth who refused to salute, breaking his arm, and the detainees could do nothing but stand by helplessly.
Berkan repeatedly states, “There were barely ten armed soldiers, and 700 prisoners who had agreed to salute the flag of the French Republic,” expressing his anger at their failure to resist this injustice. He concludes Part 2 with the words, “After a considerable amount of time had passed, I finally saw in that beaten prisoner the image of our entire nation, which had avoided protest for the past few years.” As the narrative shifts from historical events to a perception of reality, a subtle tone of reproach toward the public’s passivity in the face of Algeria’s political turmoil and repressive policies during the 1990s becomes apparent.
Part 3 features a more direct critique of the situation in the 1990s. The story is set in September 1993, a time when Algeria was in extreme turmoil, with terrorism and assassinations by Islamic fundamentalists rampant. The political situation in Algeria from independence through the 1990s can be briefly summarized as follows:
After independence in 1962, Ben Bella took office as president, and a socialist one-party system led by the National Liberation Front was established. In 1965, Boumedienne ousted Ben Bella and became president; the one-party dictatorship continued under his rule, and he too died of illness. Benjedid Chadli, elected president in 1978, was not significantly different from his predecessors, but as public dissatisfaction with economic and political conditions intensified, he introduced a multi-party system in 1989 and began the transition to capitalism.
However, a group dissatisfied with these changes emerged: the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), an Islamic fundamentalist party. With the support of the urban poor and the youth, they secured more than half of the votes in the 1990 local elections, overwhelming the National Liberation Front, and also won a landslide victory in the first round of the 1991 general election. As a victory was expected in the second round as well, the military, led by General Nezar, staged a coup in 1992, ousting President Chadli and installing Mohamed Boudiaf as president.
The government declared a state of emergency, imprisoned dissidents, outlawed the Islamic Salvation Front, and began attacking the group. In response, armed groups supporting the Islamic Salvation Front launched an insurgency against the government and carried out terrorist attacks targeting cabinet ministers. During this period, Boudiaf was assassinated in June 1992, and in 1993, terrorist attacks were also carried out against the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Labor, among others.
The civil war between government forces and FNS supporters resulted in countless casualties, and the harsh Arabization policy drove many intellectuals to flee Algeria and seek exile. This historical and political context, intertwined with personal memories that are either omitted or obscured in Asia Djebar’s works, reveals a complex historical reality that cannot be fully explained by the victors’ accounts alone.

Characters and the Situation in Algeria

Driss, who opens the first chapter of Part 3, is Berkane’s younger brother and a newspaper reporter who primarily writes critical articles. He repeatedly receives “letters of death” in the mail from fanatics of the Arabization policy. The letters contain white cotton, a small amount of sand, and a piece of paper bearing the word “traitor”; at the newspaper where Driss works alone, three people have already received such letters. Facing direct terrorist threats, they are forced to move frequently or hide in safe houses.
Driss vaguely tells Mariz that he is simply moving around frequently and being cautious. However, no direct, strong criticism of Algeria’s current situation is voiced by Driss himself. The situation in Algeria is not explained in detail; rather, the negative effects of the Arabization policy are mentioned through Mariz’s words. Mariz is concerned that the flow of exiles from Algeria has surged, with newspaper journalists and writers leading the way, and French speakers from various professions—including professors, labor union activists, and doctors—fleeing their chaotic homeland to seek refuge in France or Quebec. She wonders if this might lead to the sudden disappearance of French from Algeria, just as Arabic disappeared from Spain.
The character who voices the sharpest criticism of Algeria’s current situation is Najia. She strongly condemns the Arabization policy, particularly as it relates to language. She says: “But have you ever felt the hatred contained in the harsh words of the fanatics on the other side, in their shouts? As for their Arabic—I’ve studied Arabic as a literary language, as the language of poetry, the Arabic of the Nahda, and the Arabic of modern novels, and I can even speak some of the dialects from the Middle East where I’ve lived—but I can’t understand the Arabic spoken here. It’s confusing and chaotic—to me, it’s a language that’s lost its way! It has nothing to do with the tender words my grandmother used, nor with the love songs once sung by popular singers in Oran. “Our women’s language was one that overflowed with love and vitality, even in their sighs. It was a language for songs composed of words that carried double meanings within their irony and biting wit.” In this way, Najia strongly criticizes “their language”—a language created by the policy of standardizing Arabic—which differs from the various existing dialects and the language of women.
Nazia also expresses dissatisfaction with the impact of the Arabization policy on women’s attire. Recounting an incident in which she was treated unfairly by a taxi driver in Algiers for wearing a slightly low-cut top, she predicts even more extreme consequences, saying, “Perhaps if it had been a month later, he would have wanted me to be covered from head to toe in a black chador…”
Berkan’s “Winter Diary,” written in late 1991 and early 1992, reflects his concerns about Algeria’s present. He laments that the people, still bearing the scars of upheaval and war, seem to be at a dead end, faced with the choice between “the barracks or the mosque,” and that the violence between the two camps within the country has reached a state of “madness.” Berkan demonstrates that Algeria has not fundamentally changed by pointing out that society has been held hostage—in the past by France, and today by fanatics of Arabization.

Language and Identity — A Longing for Unity

Throughout the work, issues such as women’s rights, language, and history are generally presented against a backdrop of conflict. Binary oppositions—such as male/female, patriarchy/female submission, French/Arabic, written language/spoken language, the language of the rulers/the language of the ruled, conquerors/the conquered, and colonialism/the colonized—are repeatedly emphasized. The question of whether these oppositions always lead to an irreconcilable division is constantly raised. Asia Jebbar has likely been grappling with this issue for a long time. In this context, “The Disappearance of French” can be read as an attempt to offer an answer.
Nazia, who appears at the end of “The Disappearance of French,” is an intriguing character in many ways. She suddenly appears before Berkan, taking Mariz’s place as his lover, and serves as both the catalyst for Berkan’s transformation and the muse who guides him toward writing. Mariz, his former lover, disparages Nazia as “a woman of the unknown, a rival in love, a passing fling, a female pirate who undoubtedly stirs up romantic scandals wherever she goes—the kind of woman from the East who, upon making a bold decision to become a renegade, cuts ties with her brothers or relatives and, upon moving elsewhere, often ends up as a prostitute.”
However, Mariz also confesses that Nazia’s appearance made her feel “a sensation similar to that of a wife who, upon her husband’s sudden death, discovers he had a younger or more charming mistress.”
Although Nazia speaks Arabic, French, and Italian and holds two passports, she defines herself as stateless. She is a character who, in an effort to forget the traumas of her childhood—her grandfather, assassinated by the National Liberation Front, and her father, who fell into madness as a result—traveled across the borders of various countries, all the while questioning whether she was an exile or a refugee. Through her love for Berkan, she rediscovered “the words of yesterday, the words of the last century, and the words of our forgotten common ancestors.” By passing words to Berkan one by one in time with the rhythm, she helped him develop a rhythmic “transformed French” and guided him to grow as a writer.
In fact, Berkan had stayed in France intending to become a writer but returned home after failing to achieve his goal. His long-standing efforts to assimilate into the language and culture of the “other” seemed like aimless wandering and felt like a waste of time. Trapped in a world of opposites—French and Arabic, written and spoken language, “them” and “us,” the dominant and the dominated—Nazia gave Berkan the catalyst and the strength to break down those boundaries. If so, why did Berkan, having attained this realization, go missing in Algeria? In a society that refused to abandon its Arabization policy—which enforced Standard Arabic—was it not difficult for Berkan’s new linguistic awakening to bear tangible fruit?
In the final section of ‘The Disappearance of French’, Nazia’s letter appears to have been sent from Padua, Italy, without her knowing of Berkan’s disappearance. The letter reads as a meaningful text containing the dreams, hopes, and plans of Nazia—that is, Asia Djebar herself. Two writers are introduced in the letter. Nazia mentions that she translated the works of the Italian poet Ungaretti. Ungaretti was born in Alexandria and spent his youth immersed in Arab culture; he was exposed to the French literary tradition through his French education at a Swiss school; he interacted with avant-garde and surrealist writers in Paris; and he served in World War I. This background demonstrates how he rejected existing traditional forms and moved toward new modes of expression.
Nazia also mentions Erasmus. As a humanist of the post-medieval era, Erasmus was a cosmopolitan figure who traveled throughout Europe dreaming of “peace transcending nations and factions.” On her way to Padua, Nazia read Erasmus’s works and became captivated by him; she resolved to begin her research through his French letters. She underlines the sentence “The Earth is not the center of the world” in one of Erasmus’s writings, adds a note, and attaches it to her letter. In the context of Erasmus’s acceptance of Copernicus’s worldview, this statement serves as a reminder that the borders drawn on the basis of the Earth do not inherently exist. Ultimately, through Nazia’s voice, Asia Jebar is interpreted as expressing a hope for a deterritorialized language and culture that transcends territorialization and division.
As the epigraph for Part 3, Asia Jebar quotes a line spoken by Mathilde in Bernard-Marie Koltès’s play ‘Return to the Desert’. In that line, she asks, “Where is my homeland? Where is my land? Where is the land where I can sleep? In Algeria, I am a stranger and dream of France; in France, I am even more of a stranger and dream of Algiers. Is the homeland a place where one does not exist…?” thereby revealing her identity as a rootless being, a doubly alienated person. This quotation succinctly illustrates the themes of deterritorialization and belonging that run throughout the work.
It is regrettable that, after this work, Asia Djebar passed away without being able to further demonstrate her views through additional works. However, the issues raised in ‘The Disappearance of the French Language’ and the dream of deterritorialized language and culture presented by Najia still offer food for thought today.