Martyrs and Pirates

The sun has set on the fourth day (9/27) of Ramadan. I've just heard the muezzins begin the call to prayer, starting at various times and in contrasting harmonies from the different city mosques. The calls are broadcast through loudspeakers from the mosques' minarets. For observant Muslims, who have had nothing to eat or drink since before dawn, it's a most welcome sound. The sun is making its farewell, reflecting a pastel rose over a transparent aqua band toward the east as it continues its descent behind the mountains' silhouette. It all looks so fragile and intriguing as I watch from my balcony-the bay below with ships and ferries docked at its jetties, the sun set, the calls to prayer which have echoed here for centuries, the lighthouse and bastion of the admiralty off to the left where Turks and pirates lived and worked. I feel privileged to have this view, this opportunity to experience one of the world's cultures, North African, in a particular time and place, revealing a combination of peoples and a trove of historical memory. When I first came to Algiers, I was taken aback by the prevalent use of the word martyrs. There is a Martyrs' Monument, a Martyrs' Square, a Boulevard des Martyrs and pictures of martyrs along the fence of a city park. However, when most of the people have a religious worldview, an Islamic one, this is the word that is used for a soldier who dies fighting the enemy. He is fighting for his country and for God and his given his life for the cause. The United States has many war memorials, honoring the soldiers who died fighting in them. Americans say that these men died fighting to defend freedom, democracy, or the American way. Here Islam is the motivating ideology. I just finished a book on Rais Hamidu,one of the greatest captains in Algerian naval history. The Turks ruled here indirectly for 322 years under the Regency of Algiers. The capturing of ships of competing powers, many of them Christian and thus also infidel, with their arsenals and booty provided a major source of revenue. Hamidu was one of the most important of those whom Americans would denote as corsairs or pirates. He was born of modest means in the Lower Casbah in 1770. In 1797, Hussein Dey made Hamidu commander of his personal and most imortant vessel, armed with 12 cannons. Within five years time, Rais Hamidu captured a Portuguese ship with 44 cannons and took 282 prisoners and, thereby, established his reputation. As a reward, Hassan Dey gave Hamidu a Moorish-style villa, located today in the heights of an Algiers' suburb, El Biar, and named him, Rais of the Taifa (Captain of the Marines). Hamidu lived in the villa until his death. Hamidu's death came at the hands of the Americans. The arrived in the Mediterranean with 10 vessesls, tired of paying tribute and determined to put an end to piracy. On June 15, 1815, the Americans attacked the Algerian flotilla, wounding Hamidu in the ensuing battle. Rather than suffer capture and disgrace at the hands of enemy infidels, Rais Hamidu ordered his lieutenants to throw his body into the sea. Today,he is epitomized as an authentic Algerian hero and warrior. I got interested in the subject from a book (Le Rais Hamidou by Albert Devoulx) I picked it up at the hotel's bookstore, while looking for reading material. It's in many bookstores here. Everything here is in French (or Arabic); but his book was short (141 pages) and, I thought, written for the adolescent reader. It was adulatory. It seemed to be what a patriotic American might write about one our national heroes for middle school readers. The writing, though, proved to be stiff and arcane. I don't think I learned much French I could use on the street. There was a lot of recounting of the booty Hamidu had taken, as lifted from one historical document in particular. Nonetheless,I got a feel for, allegedly, the most celebrated Algerian corsair (pirate) of the 19th century and the type of writing done to build a sense of nationalism in young Algerians.