Subjugation
Harun states, “My brother’s name was Musa, He had a name. But he’ll remain “ the Arab” forever. That last on the list, excluded from the inventory that Crusoe of yours made…For centuries, the settler increases his fortune, giving names to whatever he appropriates and taking them away from whatever makes him feel uncomfortable. If he calls my brother “ the Arab” it’s so he can kill him the way one kills time, by strolling around aimlessly. For Your guidance, I ‘ll tell you that for years after Independence, Mama fought to be awarded a pension as the mother of a martyr. As you can imagine, she never got it, and why not, if you please? Because it was impossible to prove the Arab was a son- and a brother…How can you tell the world about that when you don’t know how to write books?” Harun’s assertions in this passage allude to the subjugation the Arabs in Algeria were subjected to during the colonial epoch. Musa is one of the victims of the calculated dehumanization and repression. Arabs are viewed as substandard beings whose demises are regarded as trivial. Musa’s mother’s failure to secure pension specifies the challenges that Arabs faced in the bid to get justice for their assassinated kin. The settlers trivialize native Arab names for they consider them inapt. Moreover, the settlers have an edge, for they utilize their language (French) to exonerate themselves from their delinquencies. The settler’s language is rendered superior to the Arabic language; hence, the settlers swiftly dismantle Arabic identities which are typified by their names.
Poverty
Harun recounts, “We left Algiers - on that famous day when I was sure I’d spotted Zubida - and went to stay with an uncle and his family who barely tolerated us. We lived in a hovel before being kicked out by the very people who’d taken us in. Then we lived in a little shed on the threshing floor of a colonial farm where we both had jobs, Mama as a maid of all work and me as a chore boy. The boss was this obese guy from Alsace who ended up smothered in his own fat, I believe. People said he used to torture slackers by sitting on their chest…It was the period of epidemics and famines. Rural life was hard, it revealed what the cities kept hidden, namely that the country was starving to death.” Harun and his mother endure life-threatening paucity which is typified by the lack of decent housing and insufficient food. The Arabs are more prone to deficiency than the colonists considering that the colonists are the dominant proprietors of the farms. Arabs are compelled to take on lowly contracts due to the unjust sharing of wealth between the settlers and Arabs. So, besides oppression, the Arabs are forced to endure boundless poverty. The epidemics contribute to families' suffering and paucity. Both cities and rural regions present the predominant challenge of poverty to the Arabs.
