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“Les Aurès, Vivre La Terre Chahouie” (The Aurès, to live in the land of the Chaoui )

NAU

Friday, February 17th 2012

" The Aurès, to live in the land of the Chaoui" a recent book published by Chihab, is a thorough report on the people, places, arts, customs, and trades, new and old of this region of Algeria, the birthplace of resistance for millennia.This beautiful illustrated book is an attempt to visit without prior knowledge one of the many faces of the eternal Algeria.

“Les Aurès, Vivre La Terre Chahouie” (The Aurès, to live in the land of the Chaoui )

Following the meanderings of a guide developed by Father Philip Thiriez, the professor of literature who lived in the region from 1976 to 1985, the authors, two journalists and a photographer, immerse themselves in the depths of the Chaoui country through the eyes of newspaper reporters, sometimes a linguist and musicologist or just living witnesses, writes APS.

The multiple layers of resistance of the Algerian people, Berber kings fight against the Donatists of the Roman Catholic Church, strategic deployments of Kahina the first shot of November 1954, the Aurès are revisited in their contemporary complexity through those who survive, who refuse to die, what agony, what has disappeared or that already looms on the horizon.

These territories in a rich variety, hence the term semi-arid which comes into its own, the reader discovers a pool of expertise in specialized areas, sometimes futuristic, and arts and crafts masters achieving excellence.

He finds immense spaces, punctuated by towns in the name of flowers or wild beasts, spaces that men have traveled as intrepid riders, generously covered with orchards and houses to the test of time. They carved the rock, worked gold and silver, developed dance, song, poetry and created a cuisine with refined flavors.

Encompassing all that, one way of being that is beyond the caricature "Taghanant Takhassart" ( with tremendous pride loaned by Aurassiens) in the region, demonstrates that, contrary to the endangered species of fauna and flora, being the Chaoui today are steeped in uninhibited modernity, an excellent omen for the future of Algeria.

Chaâbane Hamouda, doctor of engineering, indulges his passion for solar energy. Zerrad Ali,"boxer with green fingers", returns home after years in Spain to practice modern methods of arboriculture.

Fouad Guerfi imposes his creations on a hyper closed club of haute couture, the planetary Saléha Benbrahim forges for and against the theatrical professions, while Tayeb Miloudi, Moqeddem of the mosque of Sidi Okba, considered the oldest in Algeria (seventh century), ensures the preservation of ancient manuscripts that accumulate there.

From page to page and one discovery after another, the reader is surely familiar with a mythical land which is still unknown.