statement that really helped to show her command over the French language. She accepted the language but did not accept the social or cultural ideas behind the language. In this Djebar showed us that she did not embrace France. She did not align herself with it nor did she sympathize with the way it treated her country. Throughout the book we saw that, to her, the French were infidels and invaders. And through the torment and agony she recorded, we saw Djebar never lost sight of Frances cruel place in Algerian history. These facts affected Djebars marriage to the French language. She never felt truly comfortable in French or Algerian settings. Djebar stated that, even where I am composing the most commonplace of sentences, my writing is immediately caught in the snare of the old war between two peoples.(216) We see this point re-iterated over and over again in the novel. Constantly Djebar struggled with her place in her traditional and non-traditional worlds. From Muslim postures that felt uncomfortable, to French culture that never seemed to make sense, Djebar always seemed to be at odds with her worlds. She certainly relished the freedom she had found in using the French language, but never forgot where she had came from. Evidently the distinction between the two cultures could be greatly felt. Chapters such as the French Policemans Daughter helped to illustrate that fact. Between the open affection and many other issues, Djebar found the French culture problematic. Even with those problems, Djebar found French to be a liberating avenue from which to escape the enclosed world that she lived. However liberating French was, its freedom was not absolute. For even in this marriage of language we find a completely new layer of constraints that match the sociological constraints of her culture. Djebar loved the French language and the liquidity of freedom it gave her. But, she could not bear to have it be used to embrace any emotional co...
