The Architecture of Memory

Recalling how they lived in a single house that was occupied by several Jewish and Muslim families in the generation before Algerian independence Joelle Bahloul''s informants build up a multi-voice microhistory of a way of life that came to an end in the early l960s. Uprooted and dispersed these former neighbors constantly refer back to the architecture of the home 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.