Of Gods and Men

You might remember that just a few weeks ago I met a pied-noir, a French woman born in Algeria when Algeria was France.  I actually met another one just a week or two later.

Well, today I met a woman who was sort of the opposite of a pied-noir.  I shared a table with her at a café, and she talked to me almost the entire time we were together.  She was so very interesting.

Jacqueline was born in France, in the north--"I am a Northist!" she exclaimed--and married a Muslim man, even though she was a Christian.  They remained married for 62 years, despite their religious differences, until his death two years ago.  (It was a little amusing when, my friend with me thought she said 72 years of marriage.  She then told us that she's almost 84 years old, and so we were doing the math and I thought, "There's no way this French woman got married at 11 or 12 years old.  No way."  She clarified the number by saying, "Six.  Two.  Sixty-two.")

In the 1960's, when Algeria fought France for her independence, and all the pied-noirs had to leave Algeria and return to their "home" country that was not their home...Jacqueline and her husband moved to Algeria, since it was his home country.  She learned Arabic and set up life there, and lived there for quite some time.  (At one point she told me she lived there for nearly fifty years.  But then she told me she returned in 1996, which would only have been around thirty years.  I know I'm no good with numbers, and especially when they're being said in another language...but I think maybe Jacqueline also was not good with numbers, or maybe just her memory is failing.  She later told me that a particular event which occurred in 1996 happened in 1982.  Hmm...)

She told us stories of how she would explain to her Muslim in-laws why she could not, under any circumstances, convert to Islam.  Stories of her clothing design business in Algiers.  Stories of how things have changed there from the Algeria she had grown to know and love as home.  How her husband saw the bad coming and thus bought her a small house on a small piece of land in the heart of Marseille so that she would have a home to come back to whenever they left Algeria for good.  Stories of her children and grandchildren.

She has a son and a daughter, which is "the treasure of a king," she said.  Her son is an artist, and has many of the typical woes of an artist.  Who wants to buy paintings?  No one, that's who.

One of his paintings is a huge mural of the monks who were killed for refusing to leave the people they'd come to serve, a story now made famous by the movie Of Gods and Men.  She said her son had been so sad the day he heard the news of their death, she wasn't sure if he would paint again.  The people of his village loved the monks.

"Wait, what?  Your son knew the monks?"

"Bien sûr!  (Of course!)  We harvested honey with them.  I had 85 beehives of my own alongside theirs.  They were so kind to all.  Everyone in town loved them, even though they were Muslims. The monks really showed God's love to them...especially when they would not leave out of fear of the terrorists.  My son was devastated when they were killed.  He painted the mural when the one who escaped the kidnapping finally returned to the monastery."

I'd heard about these monks, but hadn't had a chance yet to see the movie.  Now to have met someone who knew them, who had worked alongside them.... To hear of the impact they made with their lives and think about legacies left behind.

It was a rich conversation...and all because I sat down to share a table with a little old French lady named Jacqueline.