Les Cles Retrouvees

FINDING LOST KEYS

When Benjamin Stora's mother died in 2000, he was clearing out her bedside table and found the keys to the apartment in Constantine that they left in 1962. Finding these keys also unlocked the door to memories.

War is a background noise that suddenly grows louder. In August 1955 when soldiers installed a machine gun in the four-year-old Stora's bedroom to shoot Algerians fleeing in the streets below, he just didn't understand. A few years later when he caught his parents talking in hushed voice, he heard about their fears and their plans to leave. But his life and childhood were also full of happiness and warmth. Benjamin Stora's memories are visual, colourful, sensory. He describes the wonders of the hammam, surrounded by women, swimming at Philippeville beach (now Skikda), the local cinema showing American westerns, and the fun of public holidays.

These scenes and images reveal the relationships between different communities, living close together but still separate. Between his mother's day-to-day Arabic and his father's French, the blond teacher at the local state school and the rabbis at the Talmud school, the clamour in the Jewish streets and the fascinating modernity of the European quarter, revealing history through the texture of a life lived.

The historian Benjamin Stora is a professor at the Université Paris-XIII and a prolific author. He has published at Stock: La Dernière Génération d'octobre, Les Trois exils: Juifs d'Algérie and Les Guerres sans fin: un historien, La France et l'Algérie. He recently published Le 89 arabe with Edwy Plenel (2011) and Camus brûlant, avec J.-B. Péretié (2013).

Benjamin Stora, historien, professeur des Universités et président du conseil d’orientation du Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, est l’auteur de très nombreux ouvrages, dont, chez Stock : La Dernière Génération d’octobre (2003), Les Trois Exils. Juifs d’Algérie (2006), Les Guerres sans fin (2008) et Les Clés retrouvées (2015).