TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT
There are environments in which the harsh asymmetry of combat between the colonial army and the liberation forces is attenuated, as if these same environments were a part of the colonized people itself. The Night provides such an environment, conducive to clandestineness and surprise guerrilla attacks. Daho Djerbal talks about this relationship between anti-colonial movements and the Night, in the context of the first months of the Algerian War of National Liberation, which began on the first night of November 1954.
Writing about the Night for a city child is not always easy; even less so for a child born in a colonial city where wartime nights were often synonymous with curfews. But this child of parents who experienced the rural exodus has formed a phantasmagorical and supernatural representation of this phenomenon, handed down from generation to generation through popular myths and beliefs. The colonial school, with its knowledge and openness to other worlds, did not completely erase this phobia of the night.
At the crossroads of two cultures and civilizations, for many people of my generation, the night was experienced as a world of darkness populated by evil creatures, but also by men-at-arms in military apparel threatening anything that might disturb the established order.
In the Global South, during the 19th century and much of the 20th century, colonial peoples lived in arid or semi-arid zones and their culture was predominantly rural laborers. Agro-pastoralism, transhumance, and nomadism were the rule, sedentarization and urban culture the exception. Clearly, the natural cycle of day and night was not experienced in the same way by some people as by others. Colonial occupation of the land, European-style urbanization, and the establishment of settlements in the plains and mountains disrupted ancestral rites and customs. For those who fell victim to the expropriation of their land and the misery that followed, it was necessary to overcome the disquieting strangeness of the Night.