The architecture of memory

the long version

Recalling the way they lived in a single Algerian house that was occupied by several families, Jewish and Muslim, in the generation before the independence of Algeria, 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 now dispersed, these former neighbours constantly refer 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.