Leïla Sebbar was born in Algeria to a French mother and an Algerian father, both teachers until Independence. She studied in Paris and has lived there for the last twenty years. She is a leading writer on Algerian feminist themes.
Dorothy S. Blair first became interested in literature in French from Africa in the 1950s. In addition to her own work of criticism, she has published translations of many books written in French by African writers, concentrating more recently on woman writers from the Mahgreb.
First American edition published in 2014 by
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Copyright © Leila Sebbar 1982, 2014
Introduction and English translation © Dorothy S. Blair 1991, 2014
Originally published in France as Shérazade, 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts (Editions Stock, 1982)
First published in English in the United Kingdom by Quartet Books Ltd.
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ISBN 978–1-56656–988-0
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Glossary
Babylon, derogatory term used for the decadent Western capitals by immigrants, usually those from the West Indies
Beur, person of North African origin (Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian), usually second-generation immigrant, bom or having grown up in France. This word is verlan (backslang) for Arabe, as pronounced with strongly rolled R and voiced B by North Africans.
burnous, long, loose woollen cloak with hood
CAP, Certificat d'Aptitude Professionnelle, a technical diploma
DASS, Département d'Action Sanitaire et Sociale, Social Welfare Department
Eid, feast day, Muslim religious holiday
fouta, length of striped material worn by rural women of Maghreb round their waist, over their dress
haïk, veil, square of woollen cloth in which women envelop themselves in North Africa when venturing out of doors
harissa, an extremely hot, spicy, red-pepper sauce
harki, Algerian who volunteered to fight in the French army against the forces of Resistance during the Algerian War; repatriated to France, they were called 'French Muslims'
IRCAM, Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique-Musique (Institute for Research and Coordination of Acoustic Music)
kanoun, a brazier
mechta, a hamlet
medresa, Qur'anic school
merguez, a hot, spicy sausage
moujahideen, partisans, fighting for Independence during the Algerian War
pied-noir, person of European origin who Was bom and lived in Algeria, but left during or after the Algerian War to settle in France
RER, Réseau express régional, suburban line linked to Paris Metro at Châtelet and Charles de Gaulle-Etoile
Roumiette, dim. fem. of Roumi, Roumia (f.), derogatory word applied by North Africans to French or other Europeans
Sonacotra, Société Nationale de Construction de Logements pour Travailleurs, by extention, the immigrant workers living in the blocks of sub-economic flats, built to house them
Sonatrac, Société Nationale de Transport et de Commericialisation des Hydrocarbures, National Society for Transport and Marketing of Hydrocarbons
willaya, a Department in Algeria
ZUP, Zone à urbaniser en priorité, priority urban development area
Introduction
Leïla Sebbar was bom in Algeria in 1941 in Aflou, a remote village on the High Plateaux, and grew up during the Algerian War of Independence in a rural area near Tlemcen where her parents – a French mother and Algerian father – were schoolteachers, like the parents of Julien Desrosiers in her novel, Sherazade. There are clearly autobiographical echoes of the author's family in the story told by one of the colleagues of Julien's father (cf. pp. 17–19).
Besides many novels and short stories, Sebbar also wrote for the newspaper Sans Frontière, which caters for the Third World immigrant population of France, and which also features in this work.
Sherazade is set in Paris, where the author has lived for the past twenty years, but it is not the conventional Paris known to tourists, and the English reader may have difficulty recognizing the topography where her protagonists act out their marginalized or clandestine existence: the squats and flea markets, the working-class districts of Barbès, Jaurès, Crimée, around the Metro stations and boulevards of those names, where many immigrant families have congregated; the outer suburbs of Vanves and Le Kremlin-Bicêtre to the south and Bobigny to the north-west – with their bleak high-rise housing estates – and the Fleury-Mérogis Prison to the south of the capital . . . However, if tourists are not familiar with the Horloge (Clocktower) area in the Halles – the site of the old food markets -where Julien lives, they will easily recognize the Pompidou Centre for Art and Culture (Beaubourg) and the Forum des Halles with its many fashion boutiques, the haunt of Sherazade, Zouzou and France.
Except for Julien Desrosiers, the cast consists of drop-outs, delinquents, drug-addicts, runaways, revolutionaries, and the porn-merchants and yuppies who attempt to exploit them and usually end by being ripped off in their turn. The former are all children of the immigrant proletariat: from Guadaloupe and Martinique, from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Poland – mechanics, car-assembly workers for Renault or Citroën, dustmen, mineworkers. These youngsters – their ages range from seventeen to twenty-seven – are part of the youthful sub-culture of Paris: independent, unassimilated, unscrupulous, often intelligent, sometimes violent, very much as Julien's film-director friend envisages the heroine of his projected film: '... a gang-leader, rebel, poet, unruly, adept with a knife, expert at karate, fearless, a fugitive from ZUPs, hanging around housing estates, basements, underground carparks, wandering the streets, as illusive and frightening as a war-leader . . .' It could be London, New York, any large city with an ethnic mix and rootless, alienated youth. But these are, for the most part, Beurs, the untranslatable name given to the second generàtion North Africans, bom or growing up in France, with their own independent radio station, Radio Beurs, and catered for by the newspaper Sans Frontière.
There are no gratuitous descriptions, but Leïla Sebbar catches their individual voices, especially in the long unpunctuated passages in Flaubertian style indirect libre, the spoken or unspoken 'stream of consciousness' which she transcribes with faultless accuracy and through which her characters reveal the essentials of their backgrounds and experiences.
The eponymous heroine shares many of the characteristics of her streetwise companions and squat-mates; she is wayward, insolent, impulsive, exploitative, fearless and totally amoral. She works peripatetically in fashion boutiques in the Halles district, but supplies her basic needs by shoplifting. She takes part in burglaries and armed hold-ups. Yet she seems to retain a certain intransigent innocence, purity even. She is never tempted by drugs nor the easy opportunities of casual prostitution, like her compatriot