The Wounds That Cross the Mediterranean:

 

Lilia Hassaine’s “The Bitterness of Migration” (Mararat al-Hijra) brings a novel to Arabic readers that explores the complexities of migration and belonging. Translated from Hassaine’s original French novel “Soleil amer” (Bitter Sun, 2021) and published in Arabic by Al-Arabi Publishing House in Cairo in 2024, the novel spans generations and the two shores of the Mediterranean, examining the hopes and disappointments of Algerian migration to France while focusing on family relationships and dual identities. First published in 2021, “Soleil amer” was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt that year and won the Cannes Literary Prize in 2023. As Said Khatibi observes in his essay, “Lilia Hassaine: Between Algeria and France, a Story That Has Not Ended,” the novel is an intersection of nostalgia and uprooting, migration and displacement, assimilation, fractured identities, and brotherhood.*

 

“The Bitterness of Migration” is a story told in three parts across four decades, from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. Though the novel begins and ends in Algeria, the characters’ experiences take readers from the town of Djemila in northern Algeria to the suburbs of Paris. Said, Naja's husband, emigrates from Algeria to France to establish a livelihood at an automobile factory, leaving behind his wife and three children. He makes this journey to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Kader, who had migrated and built a financially comfortable life in France alongside his French wife Ève. Naja and her three daughters — the eldest, Maryam, the middle child, Sonia, and the youngest, Nour — eventually join Said after five years. The novel explores the family’s struggle to integrate into a society that “differs radically — particularly in cultural terms — from their native home in the Setif province of northeastern Algeria,” writes Khatibi.

 

The novel encapsulates the many challenges that immigrant families face in their new, unknown homes. As widespread unemployment and workforce downsizing hit France, Said receives a promotion offer that makes him the target of racial discrimination at his workplace, called a “dirty Arab” by some. This treatment leads him to turn down the offer, leaving Naja to work as a domestic helper to cover household expenses.

 

When Naja becomes pregnant with twins, she and her husband make a decision that ultimately leads to the tragedies of two families: Said convinces her to give one of the infants to the wife of his brother, Ève, who claims to be infertile. Separated, the twin boys Daniel and Amir lead vastly different lives without knowing each other’s true identities, believing they are cousins. Daniel, who was adopted by Kader and Ève, lives in affluence. Raised in a bourgeois French environment, he is stronger and more outwardly adapted to French life. However, the boy experiences a deep yearning for roots and keenly feels the disconnect.

 

Meanwhile, Amir lives in the impoverished conditions of Paris’ immigrant housing complexes. France’s immigrant housing complexes, or the HLMs (Habitation à Loyer Modéré), serve as a symbol of isolation and marginalization. Drug usage and violence run rampant in the housing complex, establishing a dangerous reputation for these immigrant spaces. As Hassaine writes in the novel, “The further Parisians stayed away from these places, the wider the chasm and the deeper the rift between the two worlds grew, fueling intolerance, racism, and a fear and hatred of the ‘other.”’ The novel seamlessly weaves the family’s interpersonal and emotional challenges with historical events, tracing the shift from the golden age of public housing to systemic marginalization and neglect through the 1970s and 1980s. It is also conscious of other events that deeply impacted Algerian immigrants, such as the repatriation of Algerians under former President of France Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

 

Though gifted in art and academically bright, Amir is more fragile, quiet, and reflective than Daniel, struggling with speech and expression in early childhood. He is raised within the struggles and marginalization intrinsically tied to the immigrant experience in France’s housing projects (HLMs). Amir is forced to give up his academic pursuits to help support his mother financially, and ultimately lives a tragically harsh life after being unable to overcome the trauma of being sexually assaulted by the owner of the bakery he works at.

 

It is only after the death of Said that the true nature of the twins’ relationship comes to light. Prior to his death, Said had given Daniel a sum of money, yet Daniel squanders the money on drugs after Amir and his real mother, Naja, refuse his offer of financial assistance. Meanwhile, Amir, bearing the trauma of his assault and feeling betrayed by this city that “seemed to have completely abandoned him, as if he were no longer part of it,” succumbs to drug addiction and dies of an overdose.

 

Ultimately, the novel’s exploration of identity, exile, and dual heritage reveals the complexities of living between two cultures and struggling to reconcile the past with hopes for the future. As Said Khatibi observes, “Lilia Hassaine’s voice challenges the stereotypical existence lived between Algeria and France. She is deeply invested in the destinies of her characters as they grapple with the past and dream of a fulfilled future.” Through the struggles of her characters, Hassaine chronicles the lives of immigrants in the Parisian suburbs, from their role in the industrial workforce, the racism they endured, the War of Liberation in their ancestral homeland, and their subsequent flight to the land of their former colonizer in search of a livelihood, writes Khatibi. “The Bitterness of Migration” explores the plight of children born or raised overseas, torn between the traditional, conservative upbringing of their parents and the openness and secularism instilled by the French school system. In Khatibi’s words, “The novel resonates deeply with the present day, as the questions of identity and integration it raises remain at the heart of ongoing debates in France; in telling the story of past generations, it speaks just as powerfully to the current one.”