122 Jackie 1930–1962
At fi rst, it had been the OAS who tried to stop us from leaving.
More recently it had been the FLN. We were requested to be on
one side or the other; those who were considered as ‘lukewarm’
were particularly hated. We abandoned our chemist’s shop in
Bab El-Oued, and left on 15 June. All we took were bits and
pieces, like for a holiday. But it was high time for us to go. On
the road to the airport, there was yet another kidnapping that
day.^19When the referendum fi nally came, on 1 July, there was a crush-
ing majority in favour of independence. Even without waiting for
the offi cial results, a jubilant crowd invaded the streets of Algiers,
brandishing green and white fl ags with the red star and crescent.
The pieds-noirs who had not yet returned to France got a move on
now that they were faced with a choice between ‘the suitcase and
the coffi n’. Two weeks later, just after examining at the Sorbonne,
Jackie returned to El Biar to help his parents pack a few things.
René was reluctant to set foot in Algeria again; he had witnessed
too many horrors during the fi nal weeks he had spent there. Pierrot,
Janine’s husband, and his brother Jaquie Meskel also left with
Derrida and his parents, trying to save as many of their things as
possible, but Pierrot and Jaquie were immediately threatened and
had to go back to France in a hurry. So, in spite of the risks he too
was running, Jackie remained alone with his parents. The following
days, they did their best to clear René's house, then Janine's, leaving
the villa in the rue d’Aurelle-de-Paladines until last to be cleared.
But the containers were already full and they could take little with
them. They closed the door behind them, hoping that they would be
able to get back a few months later, once the situation had calmed
down. The place was immediately fi lled by neighbours, who actually
paid them rent for the fi rst months. Then the house, which Aimé and
Georgette had only just fi nally paid for, became the property of the
Algerian state. In France, René and Pierrot would need to become
embroiled in a great deal of bureaucracy in order to prove they had
a right to stay and fi nd businesses to take over. Gradually, like many
other ‘repatriated’ people, the whole family ended up together in
Nice.^20
Even though he had long since left El Biar, Derrida would never
forget the pain of this loss. Over the years, he would refer with
increasing frequency to his inconsolable ‘nostalgeria’, a neologism
which he had not invented, despite what one might imagine. It was
originally the title of a poem by Marcello Fabri, written in the 1920s:
Algiers, I dreamed of you as if you were a lover,
perfumed you were, and fi lled with sunshine and hot spice;