Chapter XXXVI: 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.

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?”