Algeria

I spent about ten days in Algeria, my third visit to the country. The capital, Algiers, is known as 'la Blanche' in French because of the white buildings climbing the hill from its harbor. It is a beautiful, slightly run down city, not yet touched by the corporate investment that has swept so much of the world. It still has the look and feel of a city in the 1950s, which I like.


Algiers lies at the heart of what was once called the Barbary Coast, the legendary redoubt of pirates and privateers who preyed on European ships in the 16th and 17th century.

The most powerful of the corsairs was Barbaroussa, or Red Beard, who plied the Mediterranean on behalf of the Ottoman Turks. His base was Algiers.


The pirates and privateers took many European captives, which they would either sell into slavery in North Africa or hold for ransom. Among the most famous of these captives was Miguel de Cervantes, who was held for five years in Algiers. The site where he was purportedly held later became a monument, which then fell into neglect. It is being renovated now that there is peace in the country and tourism feels possible again.


Cervantes tried to escape several times until a ransom was finally paid. He went on to write Don Quixote and in the book there is a chapter drawn from his experiences in captivity.


This is the cave in which he is said to have spent some of those years. It is now filled with materials being used in the site's restoration.

In 1830, Algeria fell to the French after being attacked by various parties fed up with the pirates and privateers. The country became a French colony and the city was rebuilt with a French face.

It is filled with white colonial buildings trimmed in royal blue.

I went there to interview this man, who claims to have been a victim of the American 'extraordinary rendition' program, in which terrorist suspects are whisked away from their homes and sent secretly to countries where torture is allowed. He says he was taken from Tanzania to Afghanistan where he was held for a year before being returned to his home country, Algeria. Here, he is showing me scars on his wrists that he says were the result of having been hung from the ceiling by his arms. I'm trying to verify his story now.

For nearly 700 years before the arrival of Islam, North Africa was largely Christian. Saint Augustine was born in what is now eastern Algeria.

I went to visit the Papal Nuncio, or the Vatican's ambassador to Algeria, who lives in a former convent behind this church, Notre Dame d'Afrique. The Nuncio is Chinese. He has been in Algeria for two years now, but he first served here as Nuncio 25 years ago. He is an interesting guy. A nun served us mint tea and biscuits in a room furnished with white sofas.

We talked about Algeria and talked about the Catholic church and Islam.
Notre Dame d'Afrique was built by the French in the late 1800s - it was completed in 1872.

It sits on a point north of Algiers overlooking the sea. It is a beautiful spot. Men gather there in the evening to play dominoes.

At the time that the building was built, there were hundreds of churches all over Algeria serving the large French population that had settled in the country.

The church houses a black statue of the Virgin Mary.

The words, 'Pray for us and for the Muslims,' are written above her in gold mosaic tiles on the interior of the church's dome.

The inscription is repeated in marble with an Arabic translation near the entrance of the church.

There are few Catholics left in Algeria, but some Muslim women come to pray and leave offerings in front of the statue. The practice is frowned upon by fundamentalist Muslims.

Outside, is a bronze statue of a saint that once held aloft a cross. The arm was sawed off one night during the 1990s civil war with Islamist extremists.

This is a view of Algiers from the church's esplanade. Just beyond the distant point, over the crest of the hill, lies the famous casbah, or the old fortified city that was considered the 'Arab quarter' under the French.

It is a maze of tiny streets through masses of white stuccoed buildings joined together into blocks. The casbah was a center of resistance in the war of independence with the French and more recently a center of Islamist holy warriors fighting the current Algerian regime. On my first visit to Algiers in 2003, I was warned not to go there. Today, everyone says it is safe.

This is a picture of the casbah in the 19th century. Little has changed.

The street signs date to the French colonial era and are identical to those used in Paris.

The rooftops are used as terraces to relax, or as playgrounds for the children.

Occasionally, you see a handprint like this in the doorway to a building. It represents the hand of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet, Mohammed, and the five fingers represent the five 'pillars' of Islam (profession of faith, daily prayer, giving alms to the poor, fasting during the month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca). It is meant to ward off evil.

The views from the casbah are beautiful. White and blue are the dominant colors.

Both Algeria and France remain scarred by and obsessed with Algeria's war of independence. This is a famous still from the movie 'Battle of Algiers.' The actor, Jean Martin, portrays Colonel Mathieu, who was appointed to crush the Algerian rebellion.

This is a monument to the martyrs of the war for independence. It stands on a hill above the city - a rather unfortunate architectural statement.

The war won Algeria independence in 1962, but the country quickly fell into the hands of the Algerian generals who had watched and waited from abroad. They leaned heavily toward the socialist states that had helped during the war with France and they lived off Algeria's oil and gas revenues without doing much to develop the economy. With politics closed off, people turned toward religion.

By the time the political system opened up after the oil shock of the 1980s, the Islamists had the broadest base of support. They were on their way to assuming power through elections in 1992 when the generals stepped in and stopped the democratic process. The Islamists were enraged and took to the hills. They started fighting a guerilla war against the government.


But as the Islamist movement splintered, it turned against itself, with the most extreme factions slaughtering people more inclined to make peace. Whole villages were massacred in the late 1990s. The Islamists' favored cutting throats and dumping people down wells. This is a picture of a man I met during my trip to the country in 2004 who was searching for the remains of two of his brothers. He is at the edge of a well that a former Islamist said might contain their bones.

On this trip, I visited the founder of the Armed Islamic Group, the movement that is blamed for carrying out most of the massacres. His name is Abdelhak Layada. He was caught in 1993 and condemned to death but was released in March during a 'national reconciliation' amnesty program.

This is a picture of him inside the front door to his house, pierced with bullets from an Army assault in 1992 - from which he obviously escaped. It is strange to spend time with someone who is responsible for so much misery. After visiting him, I spent the evening with a family that had been attacked by the Armed Islamic Group and lost a son and daughter during a nightmarish evening of violence.
After the depressing stuff, I decided to take a road trip to Kabylia, the land of the Berbers, the original people of North Africa and the reason it was called the Barbary Coast. It's a mountainous region where people speak Berber. The written language looks something like Phoenician:

The script isn't used much anymore. Berber is now sometimes written with the Roman alphabet and sometimes with the Arabic alphabet.

On the way, we stopped and bought a basket of fresh figs. They were delicious.

We stopped in a town where they made hand 'rolled' couscous. Couscous, I discovered, is basically a form of pasta.

The family we visited made a big couscous for us. It was pretty good - though couscous isn't my favorite dish in the world.


I wanted to go south to the desert, but didn't have time. This is a picture I took when I was in Tamanrasset in southern Algeria in 2004. The people there are called Touaregs. I've wanted to go back since then - maybe take the kids down for a camel safari in the desert.


This is a picture of the Sahara that I took from the airplane in 2004 on my way back from Tamanrasset. I've been into the Sahara and in deserts in other places, but never deep into the 'erg' as it's called in North Africa - the sea of dunes.