La Smala à venir [Future Smala]
What an odd moment it is when desire begets a map! All of a sudden, the eye withdraws beyond the world and takes on a near-transcendent point of view. Perhaps the divine is revealed during these moments, moments of war or confrontation, of peace and safeguarding. Maps are projections of history, where the relation between politics and the other are revealed as being welcoming or hostile.
As for the flag, it is raised in front of a horizontal perspective. It signals that the being is either at home or away. It flaps and floats like the wave of a hand, replacing a common language. For others it is a signal: the lowest level of acknowledgement that precedes a meeting—an initial show of hospitality, an invitation before a warm welcome or a bloody conflict. As for those carrying it, the flag becomes a symbol of their rallying together, of their common living spaces, as well as of the bond that has surreptitiously joined them together, sometimes right down to their flesh, their very existence, and their common goals. And often, for its bearers, the flag is seen from below; like a shining star, it floats above them and reveals their common destiny.
But the map is also imprinted upon the flag! The three viewpoints merge together, or rather, cross paths in a multiple gaze. This is a vital moment in any cosmic or historical revolution. The sky faces the Earth in these moments. Both hold one another through the beating of an unprecedented desire. An almost inhuman desire for justice. A desire that belongs to the being itself. Justice here is that state, before any law, which holds together what is dissimilar and which causes hospitality to appear in the first instance: welcoming or even meeting my enemy.
Two flags, or standards, flap in the wind here. Warlike and peaceful at the same time. Carrying two circular, revolutionary maps. Everything is upended: for a moment in time perspective is suspended, hypnotised by the marking of territory. The eye discovers movement! The map is no longer on a flat surface. It floats in the air, turning back and forth upon itself, mimicking the tumultuous agitation and movement of humankind. The map on the flap is the sign of history, of its cycles, events, and hidden sides. Here, the North no longer has the advantage over the South. Justice holds everything within a continuous vibration.
La Smala is thus the fate of all earthly estates that wish to be carried to heaven with a flag. La Smala: a shifting estate, a resisting, warrior capital city that guarantees hospitality amidst the conflict. La Smala is an “estate” made up of strategies for resistance and desire for justice. Its foundation is perpetual, yet fragile due to the fact that it cannot settle down once and for all, it must remain a dwelling or a state to be.
La Smala is no longer a proper noun. It no longer represents a historical moment in the Algerian resistance to the French coloniser. La Smala written across a banner becomes the mark of a cosmic cycle and a continuous revolution.
“But the sea takes and gives memory,
and love fixes the eye diligently,
and poets establish that which endures.”
Friedrich Hölderlin, Remembrance (English translation by James Mitchell).
Arafat Sadallah
Nidhal Chamekh
