This youth who dreams of immigration and even risks living without papers abroad rather than continue “being consumed like a candle” in the country they continue loving passionately. A divided society where a golden youth without taboos flocks to Algiers’s trendy discotheques while the underprivileged youth of Belcour, the Kasbah, Bab el Oued or the suburbs hesitates between rebellion and resignation. In the evening, near the port, dozens of small groups of young adults linger around the cargoes bound for Europe, hoping each night to illegally embark and never see Algeria again.
Between beer, hashish, rap and raï, their despair surfaces without violence, but as time slips away, the less daring give up. For the past 20 years, I have watched with sorrow this youth under 30 — almost half of the population — never stop gazing across the Mediterranean, their eyes filled with longing for a horizon they may never reach.
The Hirak — the wave of Friday demonstrations that began on February 16, 2019, in Algeria — once surged through the streets with a force that made the impossible feel suddenly close at hand. It carried a raw, collective hope, and a pride that rippled far beyond the country’s borders. Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who won the presidential election in 2019, has now been in power for six years. From the first days, his presidency stood face to face with a restless and determined protest movement. The arrival of the Coronavirus temporarily silenced the chants, but it could not erase the anger, the hunger for justice, or the memories of millions marching as one.
