Word: algerians
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...reasons for Charles de Gaulle's electoral triumph in Algeria last November was his giving Algerian women the vote. The woman who took most advantage of the offer was Néfissa Sid Cara, a schoolmarm who is the sister of a well-known pro-French Moslem politician. Running for the French National Assembly, she allowed no men to attend her meetings, and she had but one plank to her platform. "We want French law," one weeping woman told her. "My husband left me." "My husband took away my sons," said a veiled woman. "You must give them back...
...twelve-year-old girls (the right of djebr), often to men they had never seen. In classic Koranic fashion, husbands could get rid of a wife simply by saying, "I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you," or by tearing up the marriage papers ("breaking the cards," in Algerian slang). A woman had no legal rights over her children and could be cut off without a sou of alimony. Gradually, from behind innumerable veils, the cry went up: "Kif-kif la Française" (roughly: Let us be just like the French lady...
...Middle Ages, was exempted from it. For the rest of Algeria, compulsory child marriages will be forbidden, and courts will rule on divorce, custody over children and alimony. Though Néfissa's bill does not outlaw polygamy, it does the next best thing: an Algerian girl will be free to say no to a man who already has a wife...
...desperate moments, Algerian rebel leaders spoke of "spreading the war" by involving Tunisia and Morocco in it too. The rulers of Tunisia and Morocco, torn between natural sympathy for their Algerian "brothers" and their own economic links with the French, hope to stay out. Three years after winning independence from France, both countries are plagued with poverty, unemployment and threats to authority...
Bourguiba has become, in many senses, a prisoner of his Algerian guests. He has allowed them to establish supply depots, training camps, mutual-aid societies everywhere, and in the process the Algerians have infiltrated every branch of Tunisian administration. Bourguiba sees himself as a mediator between the French and the Algerians, but finds no takers. Says harassed Habib Bourguiba of his own land, with more truth than immodesty: "A stray bullet may kill me and the country would be plunged into anarchy...