My childhood
My family comes from Moka, a village of Lesser Kabylia perched high upon the blue mountains of the Djurdjura. My father and my mother were bound by a deep affection from their earliest years.
(Cf. Nomade, page 28). My mother (1918-1991) and my father (1911-1992) raised us in a cocoon of love that remains for me an example of conjugal harmony.
In the photograph one sees my mother with Abderahmane standing (1932-1993)
And in her arms, my brother Mokhtar (1937-2016).
My parents had 7 children, 5 boys and 2 girls.
My sister was born in 1939. She was married very young (Cf. Nomade, P.33).
When I came into the world in the midst of her boys, and with my sister’s departure, my father became one of the happiest men on earth. He called me “Yamanda”, which in Kabyle means my little diamond.
I was always spoiled by my father, under the stern gaze of Yemma, my mother. My mother raised me in the most absolute rigour there could be, but it is that which made me what I am today.
Childhood memories
On page 40 of Nomade, published in 2017, I write:
From my earliest youth, revolt was the driving force of my existence. My mother fed it. This woman who gave me life bound me within the labyrinth of our shared memory. It is by following this endless tunnel that I seek her as I write. I feel her, I breathe her in…
Yemma, today you are no more
I come to knock at your door
Virtual or real, that parts us…
This door that is neither of wood nor of iron
No lock…
I should like to open it a little, only to thank you for bequeathing to me your sense of fairness and your so boundless humanism. As a little girl I was taught that in the beginning was the Word, but for me, in the religion of my faith, there is no beginning without love, there is no life without Dadda, my father, and Yemma, for they are love.
(…)
This is the homage I offer you, like a prayer, and God Almighty is my witness.
Farida Sellal — youth