From my notes:
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The first time I tried a cigarette was in Algiers at 22. Lame, as you’d think someone who’s spent their life roaming around the wild would have had a cigarette somewhere that stays open after 8 pm.
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I keep very vivid memories of this one night in Algiers. I was there with a friend. On a week day at 11 pm, I told her I really wanted to go out, to which she replied something like: You’re not in Casa, there’s no such thing as walking to a bar at 11. We still went out and walked for about 20 minutes until we found a bar. My friend ordered a bottle of red wine and the men sitting at the table next to ours caught our accent and started wondering subhanallah about Morocco’s alcohol policies. Which I beautifully relate to as my own personal anthem is “fill in the gap”.
It was just weird that we spoke the exact same language minus a few words and yet, none of the guys understood why my friend and I, both Schengen visa holders at the time thus allowed to travel around Europe, were vacationing in Algeria. I could feel it raised suspicion. And their suspicion made me later, at another bar we went to, raise my own suspicion at whether or not it was safe to leave my passport in my bag and go dance with my friend. I remember also one of them, the oldest, was the headmaster of a primary school. That my friend, who likes stories also, went on to invent a persona and say she’s an actress in Morocco. I remember the youngest one of them, perhaps in his late thirties, hitting on my friend at the first bar, then hitting on me at the second bar. He’s the one who had the cigarettes. They had a flavor like cinnamon or something and I didn’t know back in the day cigarettes could have flavors other than stink. I couldn’t finish the cigarette. I actually barely smoked half of it also because I didn’t know how to.
Next thing I know, I’m on a train ride five years in what has become my second country with Celia, who has become one of my closest friends. We’re traveling from Algiers to Wahran to meet another of my close friends, Abdo, and his family. We’re playing scrabble but Algeria is big and the train ride slow, so we move on to playing another game.
I’m not feeling okay at all because Morocco was just hit by a magnitude 7 earthquake and over 2000 people passed may Allah rest their soul. It happened 4 hours after I landed in Algiers’ airport.
I get out of the airport, take a taxi and head straight to Celia’s place. I can’t wait to hug her. I go to her place and she introduces me to leave-in Pantene curls cream. Prior to this, I grew up thinking Pantene was a Moroccan brand. Turns out it’s USian of course. I shower and then we go to a pizza place, all communist attire. Would not look good in Morocco.
We eat then head back to Celia’s place. I go on instagram and see Youssef Ouechen’s story. There has been an earthquake in Morocco. No one knows much about its extent. A few minutes in, I start seeing photos, videos. It’s terrifying. I call my mum. The Iron Lady has a baby voice as if she had just cried. Never heard her so fragile. My mum’s life isn’t easy, and neither is our relationship. She says she was in her room sleeping and the walls started shaking. I’m so anxious and so sad. Both because I’m not sure about the short term aftermath, if other earthquakes are to come in the next hours/days, and because we don’t know a thing about the impact and the “casualties”. I hate this word but I’m putting it here until I find a better one. I’m devastated, all of a sudden, my mum is 3 years old and scared.
The news starts to come in and the High Atlas is where the crack occurred. Several victims expected. My heart aches so bad. So fucking bad. Celia doesn’t want to sleep, she stays by my side throughout the night as I’m thinking about how far I am. The irony is I’m a few hours away by car from Morocco. But I’m logistically New Zealand-far. It would take 2 days to go back home. I’m scared because Moroccan websites are blocked in Algeria. Not even just media outlets, but any type of website originating from Morocco. I even see a meme saying this is not an earthquake, just Morocco taking distance from Algeria, which would have been very funny if the situation wasn’t a tragic one. I find it really disgusting given the circumstances. Celia puts a movie, The Talented Mr Ripley. I’m surprised the next day to find out I fell asleep around 4.30 despite the anxiety. The anxiety of coming face to face with the absurd reality. I’m two days and a vpn far from Morocco. And for the very first time since Algeria became part of my life, I feel far from home.
The next morning, my body wakes up to the alarm of imperialism, of filth. Calls from 7 to around 1 pm from media outlets. I’m reminded of what it is like to be a North African to the West. Either invisible, "anthropologized", or "sensationalized", except that for the last one, you get the privilege of being spotlighted not because of what you do, but for what has been done to you by the ones that look like you making you de facto a hero in some sort of weird logic only "them" grasp. At least you get to choose one of the three. First is best in my opinion. No added value good value. Would I have taken these assignments, my photos would have been German. Meaning photos where the injured, the dead, and the tired aren’t twerking for the White. Have y’all seen photos from Germany’s floods and Italy’s fires? Have y’all looked for the bruised legs and wrinkled eyelids? Have y’all found them? I guess not, cause they weren’t to be found nowhere. Would I have taken these assignments, I’d be on a plane back home.
Anyway all you need to know is it took a sunrise to feel home again and let go of the logistical worries. It took people to wake up to the news to feel home, in its unapologetic tribal sense.
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From my notes:
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Over the years, Algeria reminded me how it feels like to photograph for the first time, outside of any kind of frame, project or context. It brought me back to photographing before making images, just for my own self and my own pleasure. So far everything I photographed in Algeria from 2018 to 2023 I’ve never shown.
Having been like a lot of us, broken inside, powerless and angry since October 7, I told my friend Abdo how I didn’t have the heart to do anything let alone an exhibition. He replied that it is exactly because of how we feel that our experience and voices, again outside of any sort of conceptual or political narrative, are important to share with our own community.
And I realized how something as basic as sharing images of Algeria, my happy place, with my friends and acquaintances, the majority being from Morocco, is at the end of the day, not as basic as I thought.
