On the walls of the Cellier des Chanoines, in Lodève (Hérault), an exhibition, titled “The Brave”traces the surprising fate of these Algerian women, hired sixty years ago to take care of the lice, named after the list, the thread that moves on the loom. In a black and white photograph, Fatna Bensot Benameur, in her sixties, points to the fourth floor of a building. “where we lived with my parents”She tells her daughter who is accompanying her on the visit that day. The Cité de la gare, made up of three buildings and built on the outskirts of the town where Fatna spent a good part of her life, has not existed for a long time. But his daughter Kemla, 32, emotionally recounts her family history as she tours the exhibition.
In 1964, sixty Harki families, These Algerian soldiers committed to the French forces during the Algerian War, landed in Lodève by decision of the service for the reception and reclassification of French Muslims of the Ministry of the Interior. Located half an hour north of Montpellier, this city nestled in the foothills of the Larzac plateau was then in full economic decline and depopulated. The authorities intend to rely on the skills of Algerian women, in their art of weaving, to revitalize this former textile bastion, specialized in sheets for troops, fabrics intended for the uniforms of the French army.
“While they were in the transit camps where the Harkis had been grouped after 1962 [à la suite des accords d’Evian, qui ont mis fin à la guerre d’Algérie], in particular in Rivesaltes, explains the historian Mélanie Torrès-Arnau, The women were asked: “Do you know how to knit?” and, from this rather informal recruitment, families were selected with the aim of relaunching the weaving workshops. » To carry out its project, the ministry commissions Octave Vitalis, former workshop manager of a carpet factory in Tlemcem, northern Algeria, to “ supervise the women and test their knowledge,” reports the historian.
an uprooting
While the men are dedicated to felling trees in the forest of Notre-Dame de Parlatges, the women, most of them very young, return every morning to their workshop, which they call “the factory”and making Berber rugs in an old military barracks. The children are cared for in a daycare center, also created by the ministry. “We work in quite difficult conditions, recalls 75-year-old Zora Kechout-Fournier. We only went to the bathroom at certain times, all at the same time. It was very cold or very hot. We really weren’t prepared to work this way, or even to live in public housing. It was uprooting. »
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