Towards Independence 1960–1962 121
and then savagely repressed by the Prefect of Police, Maurice Papon:
nine people were killed when they were forced against the barriers of
the Charonne metro station. Five days later, a huge procession paid
homage to the victims.
The Evian agreements were signed on 18 March 1962. The cease-
fi re was supposed to take eff ect the following day. The confl ict had
left 400,000 dead, of all categories, the vast majority of them being
Algerian. From April onwards, Europeans started to leave en masse
for metropolitan France. But Jackie, who still hoped that the dif-
ferent communities might be able to coexist, advised his parents to
remain in El Biar. A few weeks later, there was a general stampede.
Most people were taken by surprise, especially those Jewish families
who, like the Derridas and the Safars, had been settled in Algeria for
so long that that they had never dreamed they would have to leave
the country. Crowds jostled on the quays, even though ships were
now taking on considerably more passengers than the authorized
limit. Endless queues of cars formed on the road from Algiers to
the Maison Blanche airport. Many people preferred to destroy their
luggage and set fi re to their cars rather than abandon them.^17
It was Derrida’s sister and her family who arrived fi rst. As
Marguerite recalls,
Towards the end of May, we received a telegram from Janine
and her husband to say they were coming, without any further
details. We spent two whole days in Orly, not knowing which
plane they might have managed to get on board. There was
complete confusion. Finally, Janine came alone with her three
children: Martine, Marc and Michel. Everyone found a pro-
visional refuge at our place in Fresnes. There were eventually
seventeen of us in our four-room fl at. We had got a few beds
together, but the children slept on the fl oor, on cushions.Martine was eight at the time. She still remembers some aspects of
their stay clearly.
It was pretty complicated to organize. Jackie often took my
brother Marc and me to Paris. Sometimes, he’d have to leave
us for quite a while inside his 2CV, in the courtyard of the École
Normale Supérieure – or maybe it was the one in the Sorbonne?
He told us that he was going off to feed ‘Sophie the Whale’
with tins of sardines. He asked us to be patient, as ‘Sophie’ was
quite prickly and he was the only one she would allow near
her... It took me several years to understand that Sophie was
philosophy.^18A few weeks later, it was the turn of René and his family to leave
Algeria.