Fadhma Has Mansour Amrouche

Marguerite-Fadhma Has Mansour Amrouche (1882 with Tizi Hibel in Kabylie - 1967 in Brittany), mother of the writers Jean Amrouche and Taos Amrouche, was a writer - Poète kabyle.

Biography

The mother of Fadhma, Aïna Aïth Larbi Or-Saïd, born in approximately of Taourirt Foamed in High Kabylie, is initially married very young with a man much older, with whom it has two children. With died on her husband, Aïna decides to live alone with his/her two children, and refuses the offer of his/her Kaci brother to come to live in his/her mother, as it is of habit. Then his/her brother disavows it: drawn aside from the family, it cannot even attend the funeral of its mère.
Aïna and a man of its vicinity, which proves to be same family that her former husband, falls in love. Not married yet, Aïna falls pregnant. The man, already promised in marriage to another woman of an important family, refuses to recognize paternity. Aïna is excluded from the community, and is only confined in its house of Tizi Hibel, with his/her two young children.

In this context, is born Fadhma Has Mansour, illegitimate girl of widowed mother. In its childhood, at the village, it undergoes the spite of the villagers, with many violences. In 1885, his/her mother entrusts it to the Sisters of Ouadhias: she is persecuted there by the nuns. His/her mother remarie. In 1886, Fadhma enters to the boarding school Laïque of Taddert Or-Cracked close to Fort National. She passes her certificate of studies in 1892. She turns over then to her village close to her mother, who teaches him the traditional habits and knowledge, in particular to the songs and poems Kabyles. When his/her mother dies, it leaves its village definitively, and leaves to work at the hospital of the Christians of Has Manguellet. The Sisters white, catholic, have a great influence on it, and end up converting it. It receives later the catholic name of Marguerite.

She meets another converted catholic kabyle, originating in Ighil Ali in Basse Kabylie, Antoine-Belkacem Amrouche, with whom she Marie, whereas she has only 16 years and him 18. They have eight children together: Paul-Mohand-Said (1900-1940), Henri-Achour (1903-1958), Jean-El-Mouhoub (1906-1962), Louis-Marie (1908-1909), Louis-Mohand-Seghir (1910-1939), Marie-Louise-Taos (1913-1976), Christmas-Saadi (1916-1940) and Rene-Malek (1922-). The Amrouche family, after having lived some time with Ighil Ali in the parents-in-law of Fadhma, settles with Tunis in Tunisia. Fadhma passes there the major part of its life, but does not cease thinking of its Kabylie native: “I had always remained in Kabylie, in spite of the forty years that I passed to Tunisia, in spite of my fundamentally French instruction…”

In 1930, it undertakes, with his/her Taos daughter and her son Jean, the writing and the translation in French of these Chant S Berbères, preserved until there by the Oral tradition. Belkacem, her husband, dies the night of the December 27th 1958. It undergoes many other deaths in its family, and composes itself of the poems for these children left too early. These tales are put at the honor in the Berber Chants of Kabylie of Jean Amrouche in 1939. They are also included partly in the magic Grain by his/her daughter Taos Amrouche, published in 1966. Fadhma dies the July 9th 1967 with the Hôpital of Saint-Brice-in-Coglès in Brittany (France), at the 85 years age.

In 1968, its Autobiographie Histoire of my life is published in posthumous title. Through this account, Fadhma paints the combat of the woman kabyle of the 20th century, its place between Kabylie, its language and the language of the colonial Empire, in this company kabyle which imposes many constraints to him, its religion, however exerted discreetly, but which forces it with the Exil, the habits with the name of which this same company excludes it, by punishing it hard already front even its birth, but also this Berber culture, and its songs Folklorique S which “had allowed him to support the exile and to rock have pain. ”

See too

Algerian Littérature
If Muhand U Me hand, another large Berber poet of the 19th century
Mouloud Mammeri, a “cantor of the Berber culture”

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