What we didn’t realize was that ‘baby-sitting’ appeared to be an alien concept in Tlemcen in early 1996.  The phone call inviting us to the wedding festivities had come on the morning of the event itself and, as we couldn’t find anybody to look after three year old Celine, and Sabine, aged just four months, we phoned back to say that, regretfully, we couldn’t make it.

“Nonsense”, our host - the father of the groom – said. “The place will be full of children.  Just turn up. We’re keeping a seat for you”

Ten minutes later the huge gate opened and a young woman took Christou and the girls off in one direction while our host took me in another, through several courtyards, past tables filled with various male friends, neighbours and family, the status of the guests gradually rising as we headed towards the more private areas of the house until, finally, we reached a circular room with a circular table where I was seated and introduced to the elder brother, senior uncle and grandfather of the groom as well as the father, grandfather, eldest brother and senior uncle of the bride.

As part of the ceremony of introduction I was told how grateful the family was to the British Council for having arranged a scholarship for the groom’s brother, which made me realise why I (recruited by the Council to teach in Algeria) had been seated at the highest of high tables, the only outsider in every sense.

I can’t remember how many courses were served over the next couple of hours, but they included a whole roast lamb, cooked well enough so that we were able (using the right hand, rather than a knife) to pull pieces off and cram them into our mouths, while more chunks of lamb appeared in a delicious couscous, with half a dozen vegetables, all swimming in a rich bouillon. 

(At this period, just four years after independence, wine, beer and other alcoholic drinks were still freely available in Algeria. But my hosts served no alcohol, and we had the choice of water, coca cola and very, very sweet mint tea, quite a change from the weddings I was used to).

Eventually, after being presented with half a dozen different kinds of even sweeter cakes and pastries, we all moved into a salon where a stage had been set up for a concert of what they told me was the western Algerian form of classical music, known locally as ‘andaluz’. 

From the name I inferred that this descended from whatever music had been played in southern Spain during the period of Muslim dominance, presumably sharing a common ancestor with flamenco.

Sadly, however, what I heard that evening – for two hours or more – had little of the excitement I associated with flamenco.  No hand-clapping or dancing, just an unvarying background rhythm produced by two or three percussion instruments; no interplay between the melody instruments and voice, just a vocal sequence with the same rhythmic accompaniment, followed by an identical melody line played in unison by the various instruments – mainly the ‘oud’ (a fretless version of the lute) and the ‘rabab’ (similar to a violin, but held and bowed vertically, resting on the player’s thigh).

Various female members of the family were allowed in to listen to the music, so I was joined by Christou who told me what had been going on in the women’s part of the house. 

Celine and Sabine, it seemed, had been commandeered by some of the older girls, who spent much of the time combing and brushing Celine’s long blond hair, while Sabine was happily trying out various types of sticky food.

Christou, meanwhile, had been seated next to the bride, Aisha, the young woman resplendent in the most beautiful of clothes, wilting slightly under what seemed to be several kilos of jewelry, (including enough gold to have bought quite a decent house in Guernsey, where we’d recently come from).

Aisha had studied in France, spoke absolutely perfect French and spent much of the time either commenting sotta voce on her various huge aunties and the endless amounts of honey, nut and syrup laden pastries they were shovelling down their throats or speculating on what her husband would actually look like when they were allowed to see each other the following day. (Apparently, at the seaside the previous summer, her father had pointed towards a group of young men further along the beach and told her that one of them was the man she would be marrying). 

Christou tried to find out, with as much tact as possible, just what this educated young woman thought of the whole setup, and it seemed that she was just taking it in her stride; it was part of life and that was that.  By then it was time for Aisha to be taken away for what must have been her fifth change of clothes (and jewelry) and, when she returned, there was no more discussion of the matter.

After an hour of listening to the music while drinking very, very sweet mint tea, we wondered when we could safely take our leave.  Christou thought she should go back to the women’s quarters to see how the girls were doing, and I stayed on in the salon until a young boy brought a message saying that they were ready to leave.

An extraordinary experience all round; but not necessarily typical of marriages in Algeria.  Some other time I’ll tell you about another one we attended at the other end of the country, in the mountains of Kabylia, our hosts a Berber family rich only in the figs from their dozen or so trees.

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More about the music.

I have maybe been a bit harsh on the ‘andaluz’ music I heard that evening.  Maybe I was mislead by the name into expecting that it would be much closer to modern flamenco than would be feasible.

The name most associated with this classical music of the region of Tlemcen (just half an hour or so from the border with Morocco) was the great musician Cheikh Larbi Ben Sari, who  had died only a year or so earlier, in December 1964. He is still revered, and you can listen, on YouTube, to a concert in his memory recorded in Tlemcen in 2010, which reminds me very much of what I heard that evening, though without any singing.  

                               Here’s a link.

To hear similar music, this time with the female singer Lila Borsali accompanied by the best known Tlemcen orchestra,

                            click on this link.

But if you want something livelier, attempting to link the different forms of music heard in southern Spain and north-west Africa, listen to what is described as the “Sephardic Jewish Arabic Moroccan Gitano Flamenco song & dance Al-Andalus”.

I love it.

                             click here.

(Here’s an oud being played

in Syria in 1917)

(Click here to read about another wedding we attended in Algeria, one which couldn’t have been more different from the first).