Brothers

I spent the day riding my bicycle all over the M’Zab valley, and then out of the valley to the desert above. The M’Zabites fled persecution to settle here in the cracks of the desert plain, creating a place so unique and consistent in its architecture that it is now protected by UNESCO. With Ghardaia at the center, the villages of Beni Isguem, Bounourra, Malika and El Latouf connect to fill the valley.

Futbal at Malika Haut cemetary

Soccer at Malika Haut cemetary

Wandering through Malika Haut late in the day, I was invited in for a cup of coffee by a guy walking home with an armful of baguettes. He led me into a garden where we sat on blankets and looked at his meticulously organized and labeled photo albums and goofed around with his four kids. “These albums”, he told me, “will be my cadeaux to my children one day, so that they understand a little of their parents and a little of their past”.

Ben Aoumeur Nadir enjoys disguises, and he shows me an astonishing array of portraits I would never have imagined were the same person. In one street shot, even a blind man with a cane turns out to be Nadir fooling around with his friends. These were his younger days, however.

Nadir has since become a focused, organized man. He told me he approaches each day with a precise plan, because without such a plan a man will fall into the void (“La Vide”). His words were spoken with some emotion, perhaps with the respect of someone who has once survived drowning in the ocean, and still now and then will stare out to sea.

He buys and sells dates, climbs and manages palm trees for others, manages a store now and then, and works on a municipal road construction crew at night. “This is what I must do to live, to stay strong, to be responsible to my family. As you can see, however, I still have plenty of time to be with my children”.

Nadir’s father kept four wives and produced twenty-nine children (For him, he says, one wife is as much as he can handle). Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me so much then to return to Chez Said a few hours later, sit down to a late dinner with Ben Aoumeur Mohammed, and discover I had just had coffee with his half-brother 10 kilometers distant.

Ghardaia, Algeria