The transported
When my grandmother died, few years ago, I couldn't accompany her in her resting place. What I heard from my mother had me sad, thinking that her passing had brought some of the darker aspect that any and all family relations often go through during such an event.
Nevertheless, with the split of the meager possession the sweet woman had left behind her, some had been passed to me, as a memento from not only a grandmother, but also a godmother. I was glad to have something to recall her by.
I used to spend every other summer at her place, as we usually alternated from one side of the family to the other one. I had good memories of the sunny days spent in the backyard of her home, playing under the shade of the vine and exploring my grandpa garden shack in search of treasures.
Among the fondest memories I have from this time, I remember the card games we used to play after each lunch, the thyme giving its distinctive flavor to the rabbit stew my grandpa used to prepare with olives and patience, the warm smell of the garrigue shrubs covering the hills around, the suffocating Sirocco covering everything in a sandy layer...
The departure of grandma left me with a lot of souvenirs and memories, and some trinkets I never knew she possessed. When I finally came back home to my parents' home, after she left us for a well-deserved rest and peace, I received three items in souvenir of my grandmother: her first pair of hearings, her cross, and a strange hammered copper ring with a black round stone.
As almost in passing, my mom reminded me that the ring was from a travel in Tunisia, or Algeria, my grandma had made when she was a teenager, visiting her family over there. It took me some minutes to remember an odd fact one of my uncle found, years ago, as he was retracing the family trees of his parents. He traced, on his father side, almost all his ancestor, going back up in time as early as the Revolution. During the French Revolution, most of the archives, baptismal registers, had been destroyed along with the churches, so not many information remains to trace people born or dead before the end of the eighteenth century. It was a similar discovery on his mother side, with a slight difference.
The defeat of the 1870 war against Bismarck marked the end of the Second Empire in France. The armistice signed didn't sit well with the people who didn't want to see one more time nobles leading the country in a direction the people of France had try to fight all along the nineteenth century. In Paris, the internationalists, insurrectionists, anarchists, and other disgruntled citizens attempted a coup and established the Commune. In 1871, in the capital and other major cities, another revolution stepped in the dance of monarchies, republics and empires that alternated all along the century.
The uprising, however, didn't last long, even less the southern cities. Once the communards had been stopped, the Third Republic started her long reign. One of the first action for the new leaders had to exile the political opponents. Deportation became the replacement sentence for the death penalty until now.
One man, from the South, ended his career as a revolutionist in Algeria. Or, this is what the family story says. Had he been a great-great-grandfather or a great-great-granduncle, I do not know. The foggy memory of a family not too intent on looking back just mentions a deported in the roots of the lineage tree.
I sure would like to know more about his motivations. Did he fight for his ideas? For his friends? Did he just ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time? Why has he been forgotten?
When my uncle found the deportation, or transportation, orders for this ancestor, no much than few words on a paper had been given; no motivations nor explanations. At that time, my grandmother recalled then a trip she made in northern Africa in her younger time. She just talked about cousins she went to visit. She probably added some comments about a grandfather, or granduncle having rebuilt a family over there, though, the more I try to think back and recall what has been said, I end up in a deep fog, unable to hear the voice of the past.
Looking back, it doesn't matter anymore if I cannot remember whether this forefather had been exiled as a communard, or earlier, during the Revolution of 1848. The Third Republic sent away the political prisoners to New-Caledonia, not Algeria, though, our own family revolutionary figure had been send closer to home, on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea.
It doesn't matter anymore to know if he left a family, wife and kids behind him and never returned home. Or if he came back to them; or even if they joined him in exile.
I used to find intriguing the story of this ancestor who fought for his country against his countrymen and ended up discarded by his Motherland. Now, I find more interesting how this man has just been relegated as an anecdote in the collective memory of the family.
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