When Camus wrote of Tipasa
the ruins overcome by luxurious grass and trees
the foreboding atmosphere of a place belonging to ancient gods
the embrace of the sea under the sun… I thought, « there it was ».
Everything about Algeria, in a few pages of quiet contemplation.
Nature is the gift of the colonizer reshaping to find emptiness
A way to communicate with what came before, as if nothing was here now
For a time I believed it to be true. Entrenched myself in
capricious views built by movies and stories.
If I could just cross the sea, I would feel it too.
Overflowing me, powers of a strange land.
I have never been to Algeria. Still otherness.
Now barren land.
I only know of the war, the independence, the ugliness.
What France could not bury under a new patch of fresh soil.
But the grass must still be green in Tipasa, under the trees.
And maybe one day I will find a place amongst the branches of my history.