Kaddour by Rachida Brakni | Stock

"At the time of my father's death, the text La Place by Annie Ernaux came back to me like a boomerang. This book, which I discovered at the age of twenty-five, had moved me and had a very strong resonance in me. Our stories, our past, our trajectories were not the same and yet a common base constituted us. The one made of a fierce desire to extract himself from his condition without ever cutting himself off from his roots or denying himself.

From the announcement of the death of my father, Kaddour, on August 15, 2020, to his burial six days later, my mourning seems confiscated to me as la maison is always full of an uninterrupted stream of visitors. It is also six days of fear as the complexity of the situation related to covid makes it uncertain whether his body can be repatriated to Algeria as he wished. Six days during which I escape to summon our memories. What I know about his miserable childhood in Algeria, from his arrival in France which he will crisscross at the wheel of his truck, until the fall, bruised body. But also what he passed on to me, the relationship to the land, to language, and to books.

I drew his portrait to give flesh and to bring out of anonymity these uprooted men reduced to their condition as workers, torn between two countries. And above all, I wanted to pay tribute to the man without whom I would not be the woman I am. »

R. B.