Wednesday, April 26, 2006

MEMOIR: An encounter in the Casbah

One of the most popular movies during the late 1930s was "Casbah," which starred Hedy Lamarr and Charles Boyer. The film was about a notorious thief, Pepe Le Moko, who escapes from France with a fortune in jewels and finds refuge in the mazelike and inpenetrable Casbah, the "native quarter" in the city of Algiers. The movie introduced most Americans for the first time to the Casbah's picturesque alleys and souks and created an exotic image of life in France's North African colonies.

In the spring of 1957, I found myself walking in the footsteps of Pepe Le Moko through the narrow streets and alleys of the Casbah. I was the only American in a group of about a dozen European journalists transported by the French army to Algeria to report on the war against the FLN, an Arab guerrilla force that was fighting for independence from France. We were in the Casbah observing an operation to search for rebel caches of weapons.

I arrived in Algeria as a participant in the NATO Journalist Program. Under the program, an individual NATO country annually plays host to journalists from all the other NATO countries. (I do not know whether the program still exists.) The program was designed for the visiting journalists to report on important military and industrial facilities in the host nation.

France was the host nation in 1957, and I was the U.S. representative. I was selected because I was then Business Week's Washington correspondent covering the defense and industrial mobilization beat. The term "industrial mobilization" had a special meaning at that time because the cold war with the Soviet Union was at its peak. The U.S. was spending billions of dollars to build and maintain idle arms production lines that could quickly be activated in case the cold war turned into a shooting war.

I confess that my selection that year did not reflect any special professional prominence on my part. I was picked largely because a friend of mine, who was a State Dept. budget officer, discovered that the department had funds allocated to finance the NATO program.

The program's existence was virtually unknown to members of the press, so there were few if any applicants. At my friend's suggestion, I applied. I never knew whether I had any competition for the assignment. But my professional credentials were appropriate, and I was picked to go to France for a month, all expenses paid by the State Dept., to tour that country's key military bases and factories that manufactured armaments. This was press junketing at its best!

So what was I suddenly doing in the Casbah in Algiers? In 1954, the Algerian Arabs began a battle for independence. The fighting had become so violent that, shortly before our group's arrival in France, a division of French troops committed to NATO and stationed in Germany was deployed to Algeria to fight the rebels.

France was severely criticized by other NATO members for the move. France justified the deployment by arguing that its battle against the Algerian nationalists was an element in the cold war against the Soviet Union. It charged that the Soviets were supporting the FLN guerrilla army.

With my group touring French military facilities at home, the nation's Foreign Ministry decided to fly us from Marseilles to Algeria as part of a campaign to convince its NATO allies that the war against the FLN was indeed a battle against Soviet allies. We were not asked whether we wanted to go. But we went willingly, even though few if any of us regarded the French claim as credible.

We trudged slowly through the Casbah streets, protected by a detachment of French paratroopers. Staring angrily at us, the Arab inhabitants in the streets moved quickly out of our way. From windows on both sides of the narrow streets, other locals cursed and threw rubbish at us.

A short, stocky man dressed in civilian clothing marched in front of us, guiding our group through the maze of the Casbah. One of the journalists pointed to our guide and, in French (which I do not understand), asked the paratrooper captain who the civilian was.

In the flow of the captain's French response, I caught the word "Israelite." That was one word of French I did understand, knowing it to be a synonym for the more common word "Juif." We had just passed a synagogue a few blocks earlier. The synagogue was deserted and surrounded by barbed wire. I recalled that our guide had halted briefly there, staring at it sadly as if the structure had a special meaning for him.

Knowing that our guide was a Jew, I assumed that he was Sephardic and spoke Ladino, the local Jewish language based on medieval Spanish and sprinkled with Hebrew words. When our group halted briefly, I approached the guide and in my best high school Spanish, said to him: "Yo estoy Judeo Americano" (I am an American Jew).

The man became quite emotional. He embraced me, kissed me on my cheeks, and pulled a Hebrew prayer book out of his pocket. He then began speaking rapidly in Ladino, mistakenly thinking that I was fluent in the language. I could only respond: "No comprende." He then began speaking to me in French. And sadly I had to tell him again that I did not understand him.

Fortunately, I had become friendly with Holland's representative in our group, Jan van der Plume, a reporter for a Dutch Catholic, labor-oriented newspaper. Like so many Dutch people I have known, van der Plume was fluent in several languages. I asked him to be my English-language interpreter.

The civilian guide told us that his surname was Ben-Hamou. As I recall, his first name was David. He had been born and raised in the Casbah. Virtually all of Algeria's Jews had fled the country, he said. They had been well treated by the French colonial rulers and were not active in the nationalist movement. They were thus harassed by the Arab Muslim population, and most of them had migrated to France or Israel.

Ben-Hamou had decided to remain, although he did not explain why. He was employed by the French police as a secret agent, an extremely dangerous occupation considering the circumstances.

At one time, Algeria had at least 100,000 Jews. The bulk of them were Sephardim whose ancestors had fled from the Spanish Inquisition during the 15th Century. The others were descendants of Jews who had lived in Algeria before the Arab Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 7th and 8th Centuries, and had assimilated into the Sephardic culture.

Ben-Hamou was surely one of the last Jews in Algeria. I often wonder where he was when Algeria finally achieved independence from France in 1962.

13 Comments:

Blogger Akka Ballenger said...

Greetings,

I have just discovered your blog and I think it is great. With your permission, I will keep eading you - you have a fan here.
I am also an ex-journalist, but my reasons are different. Maybe one day, I will return to this path.
All the best, Akka.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006 3:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you for commenting on my blog. Your blog is delightful and I'm going to add your site to my blogroll. I'm also going to send a link of my blog to my Dad living in Florida. He's in his seventies, active in his local synagogue and I suspect will share many of your perspectives. You're definitely on my list of blogs to read regularly.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006 9:49:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Continue to enjoy your writing, but what a sad tragic story this is. What a commentary on human beings.

This account serves, once again, to raise the perplexing issue I have never understood since I first became aware in my childhood. What happens to a person's humanity that they can turn so cruelly on others, causing them to have to flee their homes and worse?

I am aware of the factors that come to play bringing about all this, but when we cut all that away, we still come down to the individual and what kind of rationale they must make to live with themselves to have even have been a party to such happenings, in the name of ....?

Today, we continue to see the same happening to different groups, in different parts of the world despite all the loud protestations such would never happen again. What is required for this to cease once and forever?

Thursday, April 27, 2006 5:31:00 PM  
Blogger goldenlucyd said...

Why aren't we Jews asserting our "right of return" to Arab countries from which, after hundreds of years we were forcibly expelled and our property confiscated? Or at least, what about reparations?

Well??

Thursday, April 27, 2006 7:26:00 PM  
Blogger Observer said...

Mort:
Re:Your press junketing at its best.---This reminds me of my pleasant stay in Paris in 1964 and that ze French,zey are peculiar people.
For two months I was on a temporary assignment at a local firm in the 17th arrondissement, not far from Place Clichy. I used to take my noon meal, usually alone
in a small restaurant. It was the kind of place where the regulars kept their own napkins in little pigeonholes in a wall- mounted stand and a steack au poivre cost only NF 4.80 (about US$ 1.-).--- Occasionally I was joined by one guy or another from the local firm who raised my heckles with their reminiscing how life was really good during the Vichy period. Real old stalwarts who still expressed prices in old Francs. They also liked to talk about the partial destruction of their navy at Mers- El-Kebir by the Royal Navy in 1940. Our conversations were in French, mine fractured. One of them, probably in an attempt to be friendly, said to me: "Monsieur, I don't like the English." Surprised by this sudden sign at intimacy I asked him why. His answer: "Because they killed Jean d'Arc."

(Apologies for the lengthy comment.)
Ivan

Friday, April 28, 2006 9:26:00 PM  
Blogger Observer said...

Correction.
I meant to ty Jeanne d'Arc.

Ivan

Saturday, April 29, 2006 12:16:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Jan van der Plume, a reporter for a Dutch Catholic, labor-oriented newspaper"

Would that be Jan van der Pluim of the Volkskrant newspaper ?

Sunday, May 07, 2006 5:06:00 AM  
Blogger Mortart said...

I assume it is the same man. From the "volks" in the paper's name--meaning "people"--it seems obvious that the paper is "labor-oriented."
Are you Jan? If so, please contact me and provide your e-mail address. And if so, I remember your affection for Bols liquors and how you introduced me to them.

Sunday, May 07, 2006 1:52:00 PM  
Blogger Mortart said...

For those interested in the sequel to this tale, the respondent above was not Jan. I e-mailed the Dutch newspaper, Volkskrant, and was informed that my friend Jan died in 1984. He had been the newspaper's chief editor during the previous decade. So I still don't know who is "Timri."

Monday, May 22, 2006 1:43:00 PM  
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Thursday, July 06, 2006 11:37:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Gotta kick at ur Algiers, Casbah piece. My buddy and I,(me?) followed a youngster who was taking us to "his sister" for u-no-whot. We lost sight of the kid and found ourselves deep in the Casbah with not even a penknife between us and wearing the dress whites of sailors. We wandered around the friggin' place and damn near got killed.I wrote of this some time
ago and, if interested, holler!
patgluck@sbcglobal.net (M.O.T)

Saturday, July 22, 2006 10:23:00 AM  
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