KABYLIE
The Kabyle country lies to the northeastern extremity of the
department of Algiers, with a small portion lapping over into
the department of Constantine as far as Bougie. It begins at
Palestro, runs down to the sea, and is bounded on the south by
the road from El Kseur to Bouira. It seems curious to speak of a
country in the middle of a French department, and yet its physical
boundaries are as defined as its people. Like the wild men of the
Aurès, the Kabyles are hardy mountaineers of the same race—the
Berbers. Perhaps a little purer than the people of the Aurès, who
undoubtedly intermarried with Roman soldiers when the Empire fell,
whereas their cousins of the north have remained intact since the
days when the foreigner had not set foot in Africa.
The actual area of the country is about thirty-eight hundred square
miles, and is composed of great mountains running up at some points
to an altitude of six thousand feet, and deep in snow from December
to March.
Unlike the people of the Mzab, the Kabyle types vary considerably,
and though the majority are tall, blond men, one notices many who
are small and dark. They have the same spirit of independence as
the Berbers of Ghardaïa, with the great difference that they are
all warriors and brook no interference. There is no area in Algeria
which has caused so much trouble to the French, and even now the
inhabitants consider themselves superior to all other races, and
only accept the foreign rule because they have to. In spite of
this these people never seem to have had any sort of main state,
and though the word _zouaoua_, from which is derived the appellation
of the French regiment _Zouaves_, is the name given to this group
of Berbers, they have always been a divided nation; and it is only
since the French fully pacified them that they have ceased to be in
a perpetual state of internal war. These wars usually originated as
vendettas, it being admitted that a man killed required another man
killed and that all disputes about land must be settled by the sword.
Before this period each village was a kind of little republic of its
own with the principle of government of the people by the people,
that is to say that the _Djemma_, or local council, was supposed
to be composed of all the men who had attained their majority. As a
matter of fact this was rarely put into practise, and the government
of the village lay in the hands of the heads of families, the elders
and a few young men of note. These men elected an Amine, who presided
over the assembly, which decided every detail concerning the daily
life of the community. The Amine had, however, little real power,
as his position depended on the good-will of the other members over
whom he presided, and who could by a simple ballot dismiss him. It
was a state of absolute socialism, and the man of good family or
the richest farmer had no more authority than the poorest laborer.
Moreover, to this day there is no distinction of class; there are
no fine houses for the prosperous; the beggar and the rich man
wear the same rags and live in the same squalor. The _Djemma_ still
exists and the simple stone seat on which the worthies sit can be
seen in any village. The wars or vendettas also continue, but in a
somewhat more discreet manner, and though they still speak of the
_Cof Oufella_, the clan of the higher levels, and the _Cof Bouadda_,
the clan of those below, the French do all they can to keep order.
They are all naturally industrious farmers, and though the
difficulty of cultivating this steep land, combined with the
density of the population, makes farming no easy matter, the
results are amazing. The growing of cereals holds a minor place
in their agriculture, and their attention is chiefly directed to
trees, especially the fig and the olive, of which the fruits are
regularly exported. Owing to the overcrowded population, however,
one finds few large landed proprietors, and the ownership of
property is carried to the most ludicrous extremes. For instance,
a whole family may own a fig-tree without owning the land on which
it grows, and cases have been known of a man who owned an olive-tree
hiring out the branches to the olive exporters.
The family ideals are the same as among all Berber groups: absolute
respect for the head of the family, precedence for the males, but
unlike the modern Arab family, no position at all for the women. It
is true that polygamy is much rarer here than in the rest of North
Africa, but this is largely due to economy rather than to anything
else. Otherwise the wife is an absolute slave, and one is at once
struck on the roads by the sight of Monsieur riding his mule while
Madame trudges behind. As soon as a girl is of marriageable age,
and often before, she is bought, and from that moment she must
do all her husband’s work, bear and bring up his children and,
if he wishes, be divorced. Even if he dies she is not allowed to
keep her children, who are taken over by the man’s family as soon
as weaned. Moreover, no woman can inherit from a man. When she has
passed the period of bearing children she is relegated to the status
of a beast of burden. Against this she has much more liberty to go
about unattended, and she is not veiled. Small compensation!
It is hard to instil different principles into these wild people,
as they are very hostile to all forms of European interference,
and it is with the utmost difficulty that the children are made to
go to the French school.
What is still more extraordinary to note is the fact that men who
have been educated and who have actually been to Europe will return
to their villages and, without the smallest hesitation, rebegin their
old life, sleeping on the floor near their donkeys or their horses,
while the women chop wood and do the rough work. Neither are these
isolated cases as, since the war, many an old soldier, realizing
the unequal struggle in his own country, has gone to France as a
workman in a factory, and during that period has made money which
has been regularly sent back to the family in the mountains, but
once weary of Europe he has returned to his people to lead the same
life as before. Berbers they were two thousand years ago, Berbers
they are still, and, like the men of the Mzab and of the Hoggar,
of the Aurès and of the Riff, they remain unaltered, and there
seems little prospect of anything changing them.
As in the Mzab, the villages differ considerably from those of
the Arabs of the plain. Here again we find the town built on a
pinnacle. Practically every peak in the Kabyle Mountains is dominated
by a group of houses which cling dizzily above steep precipices. The
houses themselves are small, low and squalid; the better ones consist
of three rooms very slightly separated from one another. One room
for the men, one for the women and children, and one for the animals,
but there are many cases where men and beasts all dwell together.
[Illustration: The Departure of a Caravan in the Far South]
[Illustration: Market Looking toward Trajan’s Arch, Timgad]
[Illustration: Praetorium. Lambèse]
The men are poorly dressed, and one never sees the prosperous white
robes of the Mzabite nor the costly burnous of the Arab chief, but
in spite of their rags they stalk along the road, stick in hand, the
head high, and a look of defiance in their clear eyes. The women,
on the other hand, wear brilliant colors—red and yellow and green;
their heads are wrapped in high turban-like head-dresses consisting
of many scarfs wound one above the other. Their faces, unveiled,
are handsome and, contradictorily to their status, have usually an
expression of great gaiety. Like most people who have never known
anything better, their lot seems to them normal, and they have no
other ambition.
They are all very superstitious—childishly so, and they carry
countless antidotes against spells and the Evil Eye. Their courage
is proverbial, and they callously bear pain. A man who had been
stabbed in the abdomen was seen to push back his intestines into
the gaping wound, mount his mule and ride off to the nearest French
authorities to make his complaint. A doctor once said that if he
saw a Kabyle cut in half he would not give a death certificate
until he was sure that the heart had stopped beating!
Unfortunately space forbids my recounting countless anecdotes and
stories about them. Like the Mzab, this is a country where one can
linger quietly for some weeks and never have a dull day.
The road from Bougie to Michelet runs first of all along the foot of
the Kabyle Mountains, giving one an excellent idea of the isolation
of this district from the rest of Algeria. Great barren peaks rise
up and the red earth of the slopes contrasts brilliantly with the
olive-yards and fig plantations.
Shortly after Akbou we meet the road from Sétif to Algiers via
Boaria, which can be taken if the suggestion to run straight through
to Algiers from Timgad has been followed, or if one is making
straight from Bougie to Algiers via Palestro. Our own course is to
the north and, turning sharply to the right, the road begins to climb
steeply up into the mountains. It is a magnificent drive, and the
panorama from the Col de Tirourda is one of the most superb in North
Africa. The whole of this great system of mountains is around us,
chain succeeds chain, with the quaint little villages perched on the
top of every point of vantage. It is as new a scenery as the Mzab,
and one is hardly able to realize that barely a week ago one was
staring across those desolate plains of stone and rock. The road
winds on along the edge of precipitous slopes to Michelet.
Here there is an excellent Transatlantic hotel which, unlike most
of its sisters, is open summer and winter, Michelet being a holiday
resort for the overheated business men of Constantine and Algiers.
If one has time, there are many delightful excursions to be made
from here, but to carry out the program we must leave the following
morning. The road continues circling along the side of the mountain;
little villages appear on the hilltops and give place to other
villages until the fortified town of Fort National is reached. From
here the gradient is very steep down to Tizi Ouzou, where lunch
can be taken if the more preferable picnic has not been consumed
under a group of fig-trees.
From Tizi Ouzou the road runs dully back to Algiers through tobacco
plantations.
And so the journey is over, and though at first the mind will be
unable to grasp all that has been seen and that feeling of a long
evening at the cinema will hold it for some time, little by little
the ever-changing scenes will detach themselves in order and remain
photographed on the brain as an undying memory.
The vine-clad Mitidja, the Atlas, the rolling plain of the Sersou
and the Hauts Plateaux, the rocky desolation of the Mzab, the golden
sands of Touggourt contrasting suddenly with the cosmopolitan crowd
at Biskra, the silent ruins of Timgad and the business town of
Constantine, the first view of the hills and the sea, the blue and
scarlet of the _corniche_ road to Bougie, and the towering peaks of
the Kabyle peopled by a strange race of the past, until the white
city of Algiers is reached, with its palaces and its gardens and
its damp atmosphere.
All these things will gradually unwind themselves from the recesses
of the brain, to form one vast panorama, and as one sits at home
a few weeks later one will say to one’s self incredulously:
“Did I really see all this in a fortnight, and all in the same
country?”