Being a woman out of her country: testimony
Aicha Bouabaci
Then, I felt deeply disappointed and I came to some conclusions at the same time. Why talk about an issue in its totality since I was personally involved in it: "Immigrants and refugees in the Mediterranean". Am I not Mediterranean, living out of my country in a special condition, in a European non-mediter-ranean country, which has a tradition in immigration? Am I not concerned with all these men and women who live next to me, whom I daily meet in the underground or on the buses and who fleed their countries, victims of war and misery? Have I not been involved in the defense of human rights, so many times, using the only arm I possess: writing? And I told myself: If tomorrow, during our gathering around this table in Limasso1, women are to speak about their special condition of immigrant or refugee, why shouldn't I speak about my own special condition out of my country inhabited by noice and wrath I, who would be unable to define my status in the German territory, unable to fill in an official document and who would find myself constrained to add this observation: "I work and I live with my children in Germany since this date but I could not say when we will leave because we will leave, this is for sure I do not know what we will do tomorrow, where we will be tomorrow, we wait...".
I left my country in the Autumn of 1994. I followed my husband who was transferred in an official post in Frankfurt on Main in Germany.
My husband's professional regulations dictate that he is accompanied by his family during his professional appointments abroad. Government professional regulations, which apply to me, authorise the civil servant to (temporarily) suspend functions in order to follow a spouse when he or she is transferred either within the country or abroad. I am therefore the spouse who follows...
Our children followed too. According to the dictionary's definition of this movement, emigration means leaving one's country and establishing in another, temporarily or permanently.
But my country and fellow countrymen never considered me as an emigrant and people that we met and have been close to during our peregrinations in several countries, have never regarded us under this label. Neither did institutions of the welcoming countries, which have always granted us a special status. Exchange of presents preceeded. According to international protocol. Mundane emigrants?/ Special tourists?
As for me, I have never considered myself bélonging to any of these categories, since I was not much concerned with honours. But, it's true, I can appreciate, to the extend of its own merit, this possibility of settling for some time, to go out and entertain, to transplant the seeds of one's culture elsewhere and to collect seeds from that of one's hosts. In order to understand,`to get to know, to see closely, to listen and to touch. Cross fingers of the encounter. This is my wish. Or my delirium? I would prefer "wish": because experience showed me that to my appeal for overtures, similar sounds responded: rather inciting than aggressive ones. Two voices, looking for each other, finding and trying out each other, I think this is what we call Dialogue, and I have deep faith in dialogue between cultures.
But lets continue our vocabulary research. Since I was not regarded as an emigrant at home and an immigrant in the welcoming country, was I therefore an expatriate? Expatriate oneself, according to the dictionary, means leaving one's homeland and
establishing oneself elsewhere. Therefore, I emigrated means I expatriated myself since I left my country in order to live elsewhere. I, personally, don't believe that I emigrated, that I left places that belong to me and to which I belong, by personal choice, in the frame of a decision. It is a third party's decision, a third party's choice and it represents, for both my husband and myself, an obligation sometimes pleasant, sometimes hard but never neutral which we must respect. Since it must converge with the interest of both the State and the career.
People emigrate driven by economic motivations. This case during colonization, it still is. By political motivations too. One may also emigrate driven by other motivations, other than misery, danger or fear. Sometimes, to change exile. To leave the exile felt in one's own country and instead choose "spaceculture" exile thousands of kilometers awayl To expatriate oneself from a circle. How this "ex" prefix sounds violent to me! I feel it is dangerous, provocative towards memory. I feel as if a giants hand heavily passes over every trace of "man", weights it and blows over every seed; to disperse them away. Beaten memory. Existence on homeland is obliterated. Scenery of desolation. I don't want this deadly "ex". By leavinq my country at that moment, I also left death, the death that took away my friends, my familiar ones and many anonymous people. I had eyes full of tears and I wished I could stay.
And "immigration" started... In Germany, a country the history of which I had observed and language I had heard in colonized Algeria.
My native town was a garrison one. We lived next to the barracks. Foreign Legion soldiers' barracks, most of whom originated from Germany or German speaking countries. Later on, I had always wanted to learn this language...no doubt to hang on to this sweet childhood.
Germany presents, nowadays, a variety of different languages and nationalities. Multiplied northern frigidity. Reserved welcome everywhere. But I am always embarrassed by frontiers the ones that enclose, maltreat, make you smaller. Like an hypnotist, I would like to stand in front of them and diminish them with a glance. Just one. A powerful one.
I find myself being regulated, as well as protected by a special status. You must not get intimidated, for example, by the boorish personnel of the big department stores. There could be an arm to counterattack these indelicate persons, at least one used by a French friend, "because, you see, from the moment one doesn't speak good German...", "ich bin nicht Asil land!" she said (which means: I am a regular resident here; I pay my taxes...). Ich bin nicht Asil land! I am not in search of a refuge!
In search of a refuge: what a painful reminder of my country's permanent situation, these words that I have so often heardl I often observe my young fellow countrymen, carefree, with no discretion, walk up and down Zeil, this huge pedestrian road of the town centre of Frankfurt on Main: and I am torn between tenderness for this sacrificed youth and embarrassment for the deviating behaviour exhibited by some of them. The ecomomic refuge started for their sake: hundreds of young Algerians, attracted by the power of the Deutchmark and the comfortable and joyful life of Europe, rashed here. What a bait! We often see them dressed in jeans and leather jackets, two, three or four together, chatting noisily, arrogant. As if they wanted to convince themselves and convince others that they felt at home. Justified selfdefensel It is so cold here!
I have often attended transactions in underground stations: two hands exchanging something, with a rather discreet movement; words sometimes detached, sometimes violent; money; negotiations.
Sometimes, they end up by conciliating: 10 D.M. They speak in Algerian Arabic. I watched similar situations in Moroccan Arabic but in these cases, violence excelled they don't even realise that passing by people can understand; we are in Germany!
I often wish to take these young brothers and young sons by the shoulders, and ask them: "Why?" but, I don't have the right to say: "Go back home!" What do they get at "home"? They are young and youth is synonymous to life. And down there, people die by tens, hundreds, thousands... We also often watch them, stuck on the payphones of Zeil, speaking loudly with people back home. The voice full of joy and emotion, they ask for news of the father, the mother, each one of the brothers and sisters, repeating names and questions: "How are you? How are you all?". As if they wanted to exorcize absence and nostalgia... I always feel touched by cases like this They go on: "What do you need? Tell x that I bought him a leather jacket, what would he like? A bicycle?...Yes, I am well, even very well!"
Even very well: it is him who says so. What kind of life has he here? Made of instability and offence. Here too, there is no hesitation for police identity control of people with dark skin colour ... Algerians or others. But I often recognise these young brothers... With no documents, hands in the pockets, embarrassed or trying to run away. Desperately. At the end: prison sometimes repetition and deportation. For these young people, betrayed by their dreams, for these people expelled, the plane they board, drives them to death 2. To hell.
And they don't want it! They want to stay here.
Riots in prisons took place twice; in 1994 and in 1995. With hostages. Against deportation. "They" refuse to leave the place they chose to establish in. Where does individual liberty start? Should it be measured like milk doses for a baby's feedingbottle? And should it always end in imprisonment? And doesn't this apply exclusively to expatriates originated from disinherited countries, like my own and in the case of Algeria, I would stress "disinherited" because it used to have a precious heritage and because this cultural and socioeconomic heritage was squandered.
Sometimes my young fellocountrymen hav`e the good fortune of meeting a German young woman by origin or by naturalization thanks to whom they can legalize their status, wedding for love or solidarity, or both at the same time. So much the better. This way, some of them can study and work at the same time. Small jobs that give the feeling of security, so much needed by every human being.
Even I, later on, strongly aspired for this feeling of security; in my turn, although my background, my status were not precarious. My husband's mission in Germany suddently ended. Less than one year. This obstacle led us to painful questions and of course to "choices": If our country was not, at all levels, in a tragic situation, we would have left without emotion, without stress. Since it would be a return to homeland, wouldn't it? But down there intellectuals are killed, and I am one, women are killed, and I am one, teachers are threatened, schools are burnt. My family worries about me and I rather worry about my children. So much effort on their behalf, so many sacrifices in a few months in order to lessen heartbreak due to the separation of their country, their family, their friends, successive mournings, and to become acclimatized to the welcoming country, to its language and educational system. To see this movement irremediably broken; to impose on them other things; in the opposite direstion. We therefore chose to stay for their sake And I changed status... I "became" an emigrant, without really being one. Choice inflicted by extreme urgency. I had to remain for some time, at least for some months. Not more. Chaos would not take away my country after all I refused this ending with all my power. To be an emigrant for some time is not that serious. Temporary emigrant: it sounds like a challenge: "You see, I am here; I take benefit of the hospitality of the welcoming country; but only for some time; by no means, do not move; do not bother; I know the way back!" Within the frame of this temporary character of my stay, I cannot even claim advantage from social laws, provided to people with precarious economic status. I am lucky to be welcome in this territory. I must be satisfied with this luck.
There is no mutual aid network. No financial aid. No one association behind me, NGO or not, from home, here or anywhere else. I must fight against language difficulties, complicated regulations.
I live as if I was an ordinary citizen, with capacities common to ordinary citizens protected by law, with a future here; but without contraints. As if I faced none. As if I was in an obviously comfortable situation!
I can consider myself as having a special status, that of not having any, according to the official vocabulary. Now, I can also say: "Ich bin nicht Asil land". I drudge; I pay my taxes even like a rich woman. I offered a decent life to my children.
Nobody forbided me to return home. I return often to see my family, always accompanied by anguish... Neither do I think that I found a refuge here; academically speaking: "Place where one finds peace, calm, serenity"; my family and I certainly took shelter against danger (or dangers) but I don't feel secure here; for thousands of reasons. And I would be lieing if I said: "Here I found peace, calm, serenity". I am therefore not a "refugee", for this reason and for all the other reasons which this status implies on the economic and political level.
Here, I certainly found a normal life, like the one I would have had in my country where life and common sense are not compatible.
Here, I evolve alone, among some friends and acquaintances, Germans and citizens of other nationalities among which my own; Africans, whose natural joy of life is often bored by an insidious nostalgia; Middle Eastern ones, Latin Americans, Europeans and others. I rarely meet them, but I know they are there, full of friendly feelings Also, among some enemies of my country and others, because I think my truth shakes their centainties. But is this truth unreal? In this very moment, I can't keep from quoting this very beautiful poem of the French Guillaume Apollinaire consacrated to the dreams and faith of the emigrants:
The eyes full of tears, you watch these poor emigrants
They believe in God, they pray, women feed their children
Their odour fills up the air of St Lazare Station
They have faith in their star like the three wise men
They hope to earn money in Argentina
And return home with a fortune
A family carries a red eiderdown like you carry your heart
This eiderdown and our dreans are unreal 3
As for me, I have this dream: I am not an emigrant/immigrant; I am not a refugee, not an exile, since my heart is down there; since Algeria is here. I am a woman out of her country expecting to return.
1. 5th Annual Conference of the Association of the Women in the Mediterranean
Region, Limossol, Cyprus.
2. There is also the plane arriving from Algiers which is expected by the
police... on the bridge, ready to send back the illegal ones.
3. Guillaume Apollinaire Zone in Alcools, Gallimard quoted in Autrement
edition no 22, page 119.
