contact
any and every other news item/update/tidbit's gonna be posponed a little longer, because of this:
we made contact today with a priest from france who knew my grandfather. he is somewhere in his seventies, I think, retired, but his voice is young and sweet. my dad and I are going to try to adjust our travel plans to accomodate a longer layover in france. this priest lives in La Roche sur Yon, a little village in the west of france, not far from the atlantic coast, and we'd need a night or two to arrive in paris, make the trip by train to see him, then return to paris for the last leg of our flight to algiers.
my dad was nervous, formal:
bon soir,
mon nom, achrati ahmed.
je suis le frere d'achrati slimane.
d'algerie.
exactement...
and then everything opened up. we talked for about twenty minutes, my dad first, then me, introducing ourselves and asking about his life now and his time in algeria, and answering his questions about us. he lived in al Qasool about a year, he said, and then left for Chad, where he spent another few years living among Muslims. he remembers my uncle, who was probably close to 7 at the time, but not my dad, who is younger. in france he's been volunteering at interfaith events, conducting marriages between muslims and catholics and so on.
my dad asked at one point if we could stop in to see him on our way over to algeria. he protested and said apologetically he thought he didn't have anything he could give us. my dad told him it'd be enough just to meet him face-to-face and thank him for his friendship toward my grandfather. he relented. we have his email address now; I'm going to write him and ask him if he wouldn't mind if I filmed it.
finding him was sort of a happy accident. I'm still not clear on the details. my uncle farouq, my dad's half-brother who lives in Oran, has a friend who went to France and told someone there about my family. word got around to this man, the priest, whose name then made it back to uncle farouq. this happened about a year or so ago, but my dad had never made contact and I'm not sure if any of my other uncles have talked to him. my uncle ali had what we thought was his phone number, but neither the number he gave us nor the spelling of the man's name were correct. my uncle slimane, the one the priest remembers, had the correct spelling of his name but no number. we found his number today through the magic of the internet, and the rest happened as it happened.
I am thrilled, and exhilarated, and I can't wait to meet this man.
or the rest of my family. on the phone with Slimane today I got to talk to my cousin Nibras, who's about my brother's age and who sounded so excited about our coming -- he asked for my email, we had to shout it back and forth to one another over the bad connection, and we laughed and laughed. for the last two months I've been getting more and more nervous and panicky over this trip, over meeting my family again and feeling foreign and being unable to speak with anyone. it vanished with this phone call.
I still don't know when we're leaving, exactly, but I have a few more weeks to earn a little more money, buy gifts, buy the clothes I'll need and take care of everything else that needs to be taken care of before we're off.
and I'm so happy. :)
we made contact today with a priest from france who knew my grandfather. he is somewhere in his seventies, I think, retired, but his voice is young and sweet. my dad and I are going to try to adjust our travel plans to accomodate a longer layover in france. this priest lives in La Roche sur Yon, a little village in the west of france, not far from the atlantic coast, and we'd need a night or two to arrive in paris, make the trip by train to see him, then return to paris for the last leg of our flight to algiers.
my dad was nervous, formal:
bon soir,
mon nom, achrati ahmed.
je suis le frere d'achrati slimane.
d'algerie.
exactement...
and then everything opened up. we talked for about twenty minutes, my dad first, then me, introducing ourselves and asking about his life now and his time in algeria, and answering his questions about us. he lived in al Qasool about a year, he said, and then left for Chad, where he spent another few years living among Muslims. he remembers my uncle, who was probably close to 7 at the time, but not my dad, who is younger. in france he's been volunteering at interfaith events, conducting marriages between muslims and catholics and so on.
my dad asked at one point if we could stop in to see him on our way over to algeria. he protested and said apologetically he thought he didn't have anything he could give us. my dad told him it'd be enough just to meet him face-to-face and thank him for his friendship toward my grandfather. he relented. we have his email address now; I'm going to write him and ask him if he wouldn't mind if I filmed it.
finding him was sort of a happy accident. I'm still not clear on the details. my uncle farouq, my dad's half-brother who lives in Oran, has a friend who went to France and told someone there about my family. word got around to this man, the priest, whose name then made it back to uncle farouq. this happened about a year or so ago, but my dad had never made contact and I'm not sure if any of my other uncles have talked to him. my uncle ali had what we thought was his phone number, but neither the number he gave us nor the spelling of the man's name were correct. my uncle slimane, the one the priest remembers, had the correct spelling of his name but no number. we found his number today through the magic of the internet, and the rest happened as it happened.
I am thrilled, and exhilarated, and I can't wait to meet this man.
or the rest of my family. on the phone with Slimane today I got to talk to my cousin Nibras, who's about my brother's age and who sounded so excited about our coming -- he asked for my email, we had to shout it back and forth to one another over the bad connection, and we laughed and laughed. for the last two months I've been getting more and more nervous and panicky over this trip, over meeting my family again and feeling foreign and being unable to speak with anyone. it vanished with this phone call.
I still don't know when we're leaving, exactly, but I have a few more weeks to earn a little more money, buy gifts, buy the clothes I'll need and take care of everything else that needs to be taken care of before we're off.
and I'm so happy. :)