A Stranger Stranger

If you took introductory French language in college or in AP classes, you probably read The Stranger by Albert Camus.* The exaggeratedly simple language of this existentialist writer is perfect for language teachers and learners who want some substance for discussion, as well as an accessible text. Camus' book (published in 1942), is a classic of literature and philosophy.

I've reread the book from time to time, and always admired its brutal simplicity in creating a totally affectless man. The relationship of Meursault, the narrator, to the pre-independence environment in Algeria really never came to my mind very much until this week when I read The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, an Algerian journalist based in Oran (published in 2013).

Daoud's book retells the story of The Stranger from the point of view of the younger brother of "The Arab" who is murdered by Meursault, Camus' narrator. Of course Camus' book is fiction, but in the retelling, it was an actual occurrence, of great importance to Daoud's narrator, who wants to make the Arab victim into as real a person (or character) as Camus' Meursault.

One key to Daoud's story: Camus never even names this victim, but only calls him, "The Arab." I confess that I never really noticed this nor comprehended the attitude it indicates, and that I accepted the word of critics who suggested that this is part of the existential nature of Camus' text. But it's also part of the colonialist text -- and Daoud doesn't use a critical voice, but shows you the meaning of this by creating his own character, the brother of "The Arab," who was a small child at the time of Camus' events (1942) and is an old man when he tells the story 60 to 70 years later. The man and his mother are like the ghosts of Meursault and his mother in The Stranger.

As I started the book, I thought it was just a kind of screed about how European writers ignore the humanity of the citizens (or in Algeria, subjects) of colonial powers. I read:

"I’m going to outline the story before I tell it to you. A man who knows how to write kills an Arab who, on the day he dies, doesn’t even have a name, as if he’d hung it on a nail somewhere before stepping onto the stage. Then the man begins to explain that his act was the fault of a God who doesn’t exist and that he did it because of what he’d just realized in the sun and because the sea salt obliged him to shut his eyes." (The Meursault Investigation, pp. 5-6).

The more I read, the more I admired the accomplishment of this author in illuminating just what the people of Algeria suffered before, during, and after their struggle for independence. Or what one reviewer called "a specifically Algerian version of the absurd condition, a commentary on post-colonial failures... For its incandescence, its precision of phrase and description, and its cross-cultural significance, The Meursault Investigation is an instant classic." (The Guardian, June 24, 2015),

Daoud's approach to showing these attitudes is impressive and powerful. For example, his narrator describes his childhood during colonial times --

"I still have memories from that period: an old priest who would sometimes bring us food, the jute sack my mother made into a kind of smock for me, the semolina dishes we’d eat on big days. I don’t want to tell you about our troubles, because back then they were only a matter of hunger, not injustice. In the evening, we kids would play marbles, and if one of us didn’t show up the following day, that would mean he was dead — and we’d keep on playing. It was the period of epidemics and famines. Rural life was hard, it revealed what the cities kept hidden, namely that the country was starving to death. I was afraid, especially at night, of hearing the bleak sound of men’s footsteps, men who knew that Mama had no protector. Those were nights of waking and watchfulness, which I spent glued to her side. I was well and truly the uld el-assas, the night watchman’s son and heir." (The Meursault Investigation, p. 29.)

Eventually, Daoud's narrator shows you how his humanity was removed by the conditions of colonialism and also by the conditions of the struggle for independence, where Algerians expelled the French, took their houses (which he himself and his mother also did), and then in a way, turned on one another. Near the end, he wrote:

"I’ve lived like a sort of ghost, observing the living as they bustle about in this big fishbowl. I’ve known the giddy feeling that comes with possessing an overwhelming secret, and that’s how I’ve walked around, with a kind of endless monologue in my head." (The Meursault Investigation, p. 138). 

*Note: A quick google check offers information on the use of Camus' The Stranger in AP classes right now, so I think at least some students are still reading it in elementary French, as we did in my distant past.

This review copyright © 2019, Mae Sander for mae's food blog at blogspot.com.