The Architecture of Memory

Recalling how they lived in a single house that was occupied by several Jewish and Muslim families, in the generation before Algerian independence, Joelle Bahloul’s informants build up a multivocal micro-history of a way of life which came to an end in the early 1960s. Uprooted and dispersed, these former neighbours constantly refer back to the architecture of the house itself, which, with its internal boundaries and shared spaces, structures their memories. Here, in miniature, is a domestic history of North African Muslims, Jews, and Christians living under French colonial rule.