The Besaïd Family: Irma Ychou’s Portrait of Algerian Jews under French Rule

Irma Ychou

1947

The Bensaïd Family

When the bus disappeared, taking away their child, the Bensaïds remained on the empty sidewalk, their souls as barren as if their daughter had been carried off by death.

With a little energy, they could have prevented this departure. Lydia, still young, might have been influenced by them, she might have forgotten what she had…

Please login or register for free access to Posen Library
Register
Already have an account?
Engage with this Source

France ruled over Algeria for 132 years (1830 to 1962), the longest term of European colonial rule in the MENA region, and unlike most other colonies it was legally considered part of France. As a result, the French imprint on Algerian Jewish life ran particularly deep, though France had some degree of influence on Jewish life in every other land it ruled in the region (Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon) as well. In this fictional portrayal of an Algerian Jewish family, author Irma Ychoa depicts cultural differences among the generations, juxtaposing local traditionalism with the more recent French imprint.

Related Guide

Diverse Diasporas in the Postwar Period

1945–1973

Jewish communities in North and South America, South Africa, and Australia navigated complex local politics while creating literature that preserved their Jewish heritage.

Creator Bio

Irma Ychou

1918–1994

Born Irma Bénichou in Blida, Algeria, Irma Ychou contributed to Judeo-Maghrebi literature, intermixing the French language with Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic, and Judeo-Alsatian. Her protagonists are Jewish Algerian women adapting to challenges of identity, both cultural and linguistic, caught between tradition and modernity, Africa and Europe. The mother and daughter in La Famille Bensaïd represent a rapidly evolving trend away from tradition, the daughter in particular rejecting the notion of a compulsory marriage. Ychou used a second pseudonym, Irma Van Lawick, to write even more freely about women’s emancipation. Readers of Le Chéroub, published in 1962, were shocked by its erotic portrayal of a young woman who dresses like a boy to seduce both men and women.

You may also like

A Convoy from the Village

He remembers well how for the first time in his life he tried to cross the big street in Baghdad. With one hand his mother held onto him and with the other she held her long and wide cape, looked…
View Source

Lies My Father Told Me

My grandfather stood six feet three in his worn-out bedroom slippers. He had a long grey beard with streaks of white running through it. When he prayed, his voice boomed like a choir as he turned the…
View Source

Out of Play, the Dead

At last the time has come. Amid the returning horde, I shall be once more separated from myself. The drama unfolds between the domed sky and the crazily calm sea. Order gorges itself on conquests: it…
View Source

The Cadi and the Jewish Merchant

Toward the end of the reign of Moulay Hassan, there was a cadi whose avarice was so great that he was likened to a tomb, for the tomb, ever receiving, never gives anything back. The cadi accepted…
View Source

The Second Scroll

And then—it was after I had returned from Tiberias to Tel Aviv to attend a literary soirée—then the creative activity, archetypical, all-embracing, that hitherto I had sought in vain, at last…
View Source