I have already written about a sumptuous wedding we attended in Tlemcen, shortly after our arrival in Algeria in late 1965. (Click here for more details).

A couple of years later, when we were living in the capital, Algiers, we were invited to a second wedding, one which could not have been more different.

We had been honoured guests at the Tlemcen wedding in gratitude for the scholarship which my employers, the British Council, had arranged for a brother of the groom at a university in the UK.  I had been seated at the highest of high tables, with course after course of the richest and most varied food, while  my wife Christou and the girls had been whisked off to the women’s quarters, Christou being seated next to the young bride, who was looking forward to meeting her husband-to-be quite soon.

Our presence at the second wedding started with our trilingual housekeeper Zohra  (Berber, Arabic and French) announcing that her favourite nephew was to be married back home, adding that her whole family would be honoured if we could attend.

  (Zohra, with Sabine, in front of our block in the Cité des Asphodèles, which was mainly reserved for coopérants, that is to say people sent by various governments, European mainly, to help Algeria in the first years of independence.) 

This meant, of course, that - if we accepted the invitation - she would not only have a couple of days off, but would get a free lift the hundred or so kilometres from Algiers to the little village near Tizi-Ouzou, up in the mountains of Kabylia where she came from.

It worked out well; the wedding would be taking place during the Easter vacation both at the University, where I was teaching, and at the International (i.e. American) School where my children were pupils and Christou a teacher.  So we jumped at the chance to visit the area with someone who was from there and spoke the local language.

Having Celtic blood, I’ve always felt an affinity with the Berbers. The choice facing the Celts (whether to surrender their language and culture to a more powerful people - the Anglo-Saxons - or head to more remote areas of our islands) was similar to that facing the indigenous people of North Africa when the Muslim invasion arrived from the East.  While the vast majority converted to Islam, many also headed to the less hospitable regions: the desert and the mountains. And these still speak the various Berber dialects, which have nothing except for the occasional loan-word in common with Arabic.

In Kabylia we were pleased to see that women were not hidden away from the gaze of male strangers, nor were their faces veiled, and when we arrived at the house of Zohra’s brother we were introduced to everybody.   The children pounced on my daughters and took them away to play, while we were sat down outside in the shade and offered mint tea, which we drank while watching four women, seated along the wall, rhythmically rolling out durum wheat for the couscous to be eaten that evening, accompanying their movements with what we were told was a traditional song for that activity.

That evening different songs were sung, accompanied by a simple drum, hand-clapping, and occasional ullulations from the women. After a while the women formed a circle inside which the men started dancing, mostly solo but sometimes in pairs. Later they reversed positions, with the women dancing within a circle of men.  To westerners this may have seemed rather strange; but to the people at the first wedding it would have been inconceivable.

They would also have been surprised to see how simple the food was. All there was in abundance were fresh figs, gathered straight from the trees, and bread.  The couscous back in Tlemcen - in addition to the grain which gives the dish its name - had been swimming in a rich bouillon, with large chunks of the finest lamb, tomatoes, courgettes, onions, nuts and chick peas. The equivalent at the second wedding was the everyday fare of peasants throughout the Mahgreb:  the grain, a simple vegetable stock and chick peas.  Not a trace of meat, and that at the wedding of an elder son.

I say that, but what happened half way through the meal was both sad and touching.  Zohra quietly summoned Christou and me to leave our places and follow her to a tiny room where two lamb chops were waiting, bought and cooked just for us. Zohra rejoined her family, leaving us alone. “We can’t eat this, just the two of us”, said Christou. “We can’t not eat it”, I replied.

So two weddings, one involving a rich Arab family, both urban and urbane, the bride and groom both highly educated, speaking perfect French, yet finding it absolutely natural that their marriage should have been arranged by their elders: the other a poor family, struggling for survival in the mountains of Kabylia, making their own music and hopeful for the future.

The two events could hardly have been more different. Except that - in both cases - our little girls were petted and mollycoddled by women and children alike, and we were offered the greatest hospitality each family could provide.

                        

                             

                              Sabine with one of the little Berber girls

                           Celine with Zohra and one of Zohra’s nephews