The first French nuclear bomb, Jerboise Bleue, exploded in 1960 at the heart of the Algerian desert. My story takes place in a small oasis, four decades after this event. Even though water has flowed under the bridge, the Algerians still do not know what really happened and no study was done on the ground to measure the consequences of this bomb that was four times more powerful than that of Hiroshima.
I have chosen fiction to treataddress this topic. I think that the symbolic and the intuitive can saidsay more things about reality.
In Algeria, we die from the effects of radioactivity in silence and ignorance. This invisible evil echoes the imagination of desert people, their idea of the devil. Helpless and disappointed by the doctor who could not treat anyone, the villagers turnhave turned to their old beliefs and accuseare accusing him of bringing the disease to the village. This alienation is only the expression of a total misunderstanding of the war, of the colonization and of the realization that, when forgettingwe forget the past, amnesia becomes a healing amnesiahealer. Thus, science and beliefs resonate in this political fable that seems out of time but that takes root and lives in reality.