It was in the midst of the fight against the Coronavirus and far from my country, forced into exile, that I decided to create this website which brings the truth about Farida SELLAL.
With this scourge of the Corona that is descending upon humanity, we do not know what tomorrow holds for us, for you, for me, and for the whole of the earth.
All of Mankind, whether of the East or the West, of the north or the south, whether their skin be yellow, black or white, the Corona shows us the true understanding of our existence on earth, that the only truth in the world is the one that is within us.
Whether I am this or that… whether I am what I declare to you in writing it, is not important; what matters is the ultimate truth that is within us. The knowledge I have acquired and which is part of me, this knowledge, my chief wealth, the one that will never leave me, is the one I wish to share with you.
Here you will find my biography, with my journey and, above all, that which led me to establish peace and serenity in my heart and my mind. It is the desert that taught me to reach that strength, the one that is within us. When I had become lost in the Timissao, in the depths of the Algerian desert, I remained alone for three days and three nights. I was only 28 years old; today I am 68… It took me all these years to understand. Yes, I have finally understood, and today the Corona is teaching a lesson to the whole world : Peace in the world will come only with peace within oneself.
Peace comes only with truth. Truth is established within oneself, when one becomes truth in its wholeness and not as an entity.
This is why I present myself as a woman of the desert, through my life experience, my writings, my lectures and my cultural commitment with the association « Sauver l’Imzad », which I have chaired since 2003.
I thank all those who do me the honour of appreciating the information I present on this site. I hold a special thought for all those who will share their impressions with me, for I am and will always be listening to you.
Farida SELLAL
“The most beautiful gift my husband gave me in these 46 years of marriage.”
19 June 1978, the late President Houari Boumédienne was to inaugurate the Trans-Saharan Algiers-Tamanrasset road. It was at that moment that my husband was called to take up his post in Tamanrasset as Chief of Daïra (Sub-prefect).
I was pregnant with our first child. This transfer overturned our whole existence. I was outraged by it, but the wisdom of my mother assured me: “Paradise is on the soil of your country, my daughter; join your husband, you will find the greatest happiness“.
And so it was that I joined the desert.
Assouf N’Ténéré, I wrote it as a hymn to our Sahara and in tribute to my parents, to the people of the desert and to this desert that I came to know thanks to my husband, in testimony of my gratitude.
Assouf recounts that extreme situation in which melancholy, joy and sadness intertwine.
Through this book and these photographs, I filled the void it left within me. A void yet overflowing with happiness. That is what Assouf is, this unspeakable emotion that perhaps only the images still vivid in my memory will be able to convey.
My husband followed my work from afar and discreetly. One day, when he was about to leave on a mission, he left on my worktable this preface, which was his most beautiful gift.
Preface by Abdelmalek Sellal
ASSOUF N’Ténéré (Published by Casbah Editions – 2015)
I fear I may not be able to find the right words to preface this work, a mirror of a majestic land haloed with history.
The exercise is doubly arduous for me. First of all, the reserve I have imposed upon myself for years as a servant of the State, in deeds as well as in words, is not compatible with the necessary elaborations of a text of which Marville said : « The Italians call the preface ‘‘la salsa del libro’’: the sauce of the book. If it is well seasoned, it serves to whet the appetite, and disposes one to devour the work ».
In the second place, the author is my wife and the companion of my life for forty years. The risk is real that I may drift toward a preface of our life as a couple instead of dissertating objectively on the work she offers to readers.
And so, before writing the lines that follow, must I not warn of an acknowledged subjectivity and apologise for a discretion that has become in me a second nature ?
Nevertheless, I would like to tell you of the joy that is mine in recalling those years of simple and shared happiness. No, this is by no means nostalgia but, quite simply, the reminiscence of moments spent in a distant land called the Sahara, and more precisely the Hoggar.
It is indisputable that the end of the nineteen-seventies constituted, for the author and myself, the point of departure of an intellectual enrichment and a flowering of knowledge acquired by the grace of a nature made of mysticism and melancholy.
To have left in 1978 Algiers the white, the luminous, the mild, the vibrant, the imperial, for an unknown region, seemingly inhospitable, seemed like a wager, an adventure.
An inner force had decided our destiny. I had deliberately resolved to change course and take up my new office as chief of daïra in Tamanrasset, out of a duty of conscience and love of the homeland.
In my innermost self, it was also a questioning of an unjust world, where humanism was in the process of disappearing.