Meriem's Harki

Repudiated by her first husband for being deemed infertile, Meriem married Azzedine, who had become a harki, or an auxiliary in the French army—not out of political conviction or allegiance to the French colonial regime, but out of sheer hunger. When independence was declared, they fled to France on the same boats as the pieds-noirs, or European settlers, and other colonists. In France, they and their children endured the weight of exile, the stigma of perceived betrayal, the sting of injustice, and the racism of a country that had never truly considered them.