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The singer returned with his mother to a land left in 1962. They had dinner with the essayist Kamel Daoud, who tells what this return also means for Algeria.
By Kamel Daoud
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Patrick Bruel spent four days in Algeria. In Tlemcen, where he was born sixty-three years ago, in Oran, where they found his father’s house, in Algiers, to say “goodbye”. For this return that he wanted to offer her for her birthday, it is her mother, Augusta, 87, a serene, affable woman, with a peaceful air, who accompanies her. She stands back, smiling, as though immersed in an old, softened dream. She has the calm of someone who has taught children for a long time. About this highly publicized trip of the star to Algeria, the country of his birth and his roots, the newspapers headlined “a dream come true”.
Perhaps it should be reversed: it is reality that can become a dream. For Algerians. They lack so many happy dreams. Because the question has been asked…