Under the Sun of Algiers 1942–1949 23
rickety barracks, and since the men teachers had almost all been
called up, retired teachers and women teachers were brought in.
For Jackie, something had broken as a result of his exclusion. He
had been an excellent pupil up until then, but had now acquired a
taste for a freer life which the surrounding chaos made easier. Over
the next four years, he took a far greater interest in the war and in
football than in the subjects he was taught. He continued to bunk
off whenever he could and, together with his schoolmates, indulged
in ragging that could be violent and sometimes cruel. As a result of
this very hit-and-miss education, he would have serious gaps in his
knowledge.
Throughout his teenage years, sport would play a major role.This
was probably the easiest way of ensuring he was accepted by the
group and his chums, in a non-Jewish milieu that he did his utmost
to make his own.
My passion for sport in general and football in particular
dates back to the time when going to school meant heading off
with a pair of football boots in your satchel. I had a real fetish
[culte] for those boots, I waxed them and took better care of
them than of my exercise books. Football, running, baseball
(taught us by the Americans), matches against the Italian
POWs, this is what kept us busy; our education was much less
important.^15On his return to the lycée, Jackie chummed up again with the
boys who would remain his closest friends until he left for mainland
France: Fernand Acharrok, nicknamed ‘Poupon’ (‘Baby’), and Jean
Taousson, nicknamed ‘Denden’, who, like Jackie, lived in the Mont
D’Or district and was one of the rising stars of the RUA, the Racing
Universitaire Algérois.* The three would often continue to play
late into the night on the Ben Rouilah stadium near the Lycée Ben
Aknoun. There is a legend, fostered by Derrida himself, that during
those years he dreamed of becoming a professional footballer. One
thing is certain: football was at that time the dominant sport for all
the communities of Algeria – practically a religion.
Fernand Acharrok remembers: ‘Like Albert Camus before him,
Jackie was determined to be a brilliant footballer.’ But there were
- At the age of twenty, Jean Taousson became a journalist at L’Écho d’Alger before
becoming close to the OAS and then following a career as a lead reporter for Paris-
Match; he also joined the circle around Charles Pasqua. [The OAS, or Organisation
Armée Sécrete, was dedicated to retaining French control of Algeria. – Tr.] In the
1980s or 1990s, Derrida spent an evening with Jean Taousson. Despite being sad-
dened by the way his old friend’s politics had evolved, he was always keen to meet
up with him again, as also with Fernand Acharrok.