A Former Algerian Army Officer Loses His Pseudonym

February 21, 2002

By ALAN RIDING

PARIS, Feb. 20 - From childhood, Mohamed Moulessehoul

dreamed of being a writer. Yet by the time his fiction was

recognized, no one knew he was the author.

As an Algerian army officer, he was required to present his

manuscripts for approval by military censors. To circumvent

this rule, he adopted a woman's pseudonym. So it was as

Yasmina Khadra that he became known in Algeria and Western

Europe.

In France, at least, some critics thought the name suspect

because several of his novels dealt in gruesome detail with

the savage civil war that has pitted Islamic

fundamentalists against Algeria's army-backed government

over the last decade. But it was only a year ago, after

retiring from the army and moving to the South of France,

that Mr. Moulessehoul revealed his true identity. Now, he

thought, he could at last savor the life of a writer.

"I was always jealous of writers," he recalls in

"L'Imposture des Mots" ("The Deception of Words"), a

nonfiction book just published here. "I didn't denigrate

their works, I didn't question their talent. I was just

jealous of their luck. They were free, they traveled, they

mixed with crowds at book signings, they enjoyed happiness

and success while I could not even accept the literary

prizes I was awarded."

But if Mr. Moulessehoul believed that his double life was

now over, he was wrong. In Algeria he was a soldier who had

to camouflage the fact he was a writer. In France he was a

writer who was not allowed to forget that he had been a

soldier who fought in a war that had cost thousands of

civilian lives. Critics and intellectuals who had embraced

Yasmina Khadra were now leery of the retired Major

Moulessehoul.

His talent was not at issue. His books, written in French,

have won praise here for their unflinching portrayal of a

country being torn apart by fanatical violence and their

detailed descriptions of how aimless Arab youths become

Islamic extremists. His novels have also been translated

into German, Italian and Spanish, while one, "Les Agneaux

du Seigneur," was published in the United States as "In the

Name of God" (Toby Press). All these carry the name of

Yasmina Khadra.

In January, a few months after leaving Algeria, Mr.

Moulessehoul decided to show his real face to coincide with

the publication of "L'…crivain" ("The Writer"), an account

of his childhood and youth, starting at age 9 when his

father placed him in the military cadet school of El

Mechouar in Algiers. It also covers his teenage love of

writing and ends when he becomes a junior officer at age

20.

As he began to promote "L'…crivain" in Paris, he was

confronted by another book about Algeria, "La Sale Guerre"

("The Dirty War"), by Habib SouaÔdia, an exiled Algerian

army second lieutenant who describes atrocities that he

says were committed by Algerian soldiers in their war

against the Armed Islamic Group. Suddenly Mr. Moulessehoul

found himself defending the Algerian army against Mr.

SouaÔdia's charges.

He strongly denied that the army had carried out massacres

of civilians, but he also sensed that not everyone believed

him. After all, by his own admission, he had been involved

in combat units. Finally, out of frustration, he issued a

long formal statement. "I declare solemnly that, during

eight years of war, I never witnessed nor had reason to

suspect any army involvement in the even the smallest

massacre of civilians," it said in part. "The Algerian army

is not a rabble of barbarians and murderers."

But the experience shook him. "I really thought that people

wanted to know what was going on in my country," Mr.

Moulessehoul, 47, said in a recent interview. "It wasn't

the case. When I looked for my friends, I discovered I was

alone. For two months my phone didn't ring. I was totally

isolated. I had to reinvent my own points of reference. And

for that I had to understand what had happened to me."

The result is "L'Imposture des Mots," a short book in which

he describes what occurred when Yasmina Khadra became Major

Moulessehoul. More than an attack on his critics and

fair-weather friends, it is a painful self-examination in

which, in the style of a novel, he resuscitates characters

from some of his earlier books to criticize, challenge and

advise him. The question that he had to face, he writes,

was: "Now that I am no longer a soldier, who am I?"

"I am a man who comes from a different universe," Mr.

Moulessehoul, a small wiry man with a grave manner,

explained over coffee in a modest Left Bank hotel. "All my

life I was a soldier. I didn't even know how people lived

in Algerian civilian life. When I left the barracks and

went into town, I felt like a foreigner. When I visited my

family, I was a foreigner. Everything about civilian life

was foreign to me."

He even wrote in a foreign language, although some French

is still spoken in Algeria, a former French colony. "I have

trouble speaking French well," he said. "French is my

writing language, my language of introspection, solitude,

isolation, reflection, concentration, but never my language

of daily communication. For some Arabs, to speak French is

to perpetuate colonialism."

Being an outsider, he said, also helped him notice what

other people took for granted. It was as if, rather than

living in Algeria, he was always visiting the country as a

researcher gathering material for his writings. He had

already published six novels in Algeria under his own name

in the 1980's before the army ordered that all manuscripts

be vetted by military censors.

"They were books about daily life in Algeria," he said.

"They weren't provocative. I didn't dare deal with real

problems. But I drew attention to myself when I won a small

prize in France for a collection of short stories. They

then decided to put a stop to my adventure. I think perhaps

they also wanted to make sure that other soldiers didn't

follow my example."

Unwilling to submit to censorship, he gave up writing. But

after several months of "inner rage," as he put it, his

wife suggested he take two of her first names - Yamina and

Khadra - as a pseudonym. (The "s" in Yasmina was added by

his first French publisher.) She also agreed to sign his

contracts. "Thus she became the novelist, and I was her

ghostwriter," he said.

Mr. Moulessehoul now felt freer to address the mounting

political crisis facing Algeria. He could not find a French

publisher for his first two books as Yasmina Khadra, but he

says the works were prescient: "The Caliphs of the

Apocalypse" portrayed Algeria tumbling into Islamic

extremism, and "The Way Things Are" described the army's

unpreparedness for an internal war.

The war itself began after the Islamic Salvation Front

easily won the first round of general elections in December

1992: the Algerian government canceled the second round and

began arresting Islamic leaders. The war then escalated

with the mobilization of the more radical Islamic Armed

Group, which included Algerians who had participated in the

"holy war" against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

In 1994 Mr. Moulessehoul wrote "In the Name of God," but it

was four years before it was published in France. On Nov. 1

of that year he witnessed a terrorist attack during a

ceremony at a cemetery in western Algeria. "The bomb was in

a tomb," he recalled. "One minute, boy scouts were smiling

timidly at cameras. The next moment, they were being torn

apart. I was totally stunned. All I knew was that I was

engaged in a war without mercy. Then, after a month, I had

a book in my hands. I can't even remember how I wrote it."

The book, "Morituri," finally brought Yasmina Khadra to

the attention of French readers. Several books followed,

with "¿ Quoi RÍvent les Loups" ("The Dreams of Wolves"),

the last published while Mr. Moulessehoul was still in

Algeria. This is also the book that best describes how an

Islamic fundamentalist is formed, a question that, he says,

the West must understand in its fight against terrorism.

"The war is lost if the West plays the game of the

fundamentalists, which is violence, because you cannot

frighten someone who accepts death with devotion," he

explained. "You have to convince the man who has chosen

fundamentalism of the absurdity of his choice, but that's

the job of the mosque. You cannot separate fundamentalism

and Islam. Fundamentalism is the cancer of Islam. It has to

be cured immediately because, the more time passes, the

more it spreads."

In the case of Algeria, though, Mr. Moulessehoul also

blames what is known as "Le Pouvoir," or "The Power," the

small clique of generals, politicians, diplomats and even

intellectuals who have long ruled the country.

"They are the men who decide the fate of the nation," he

said, "but they are people who have no nation. They are

delinquents who abuse their power to steal with total

impunity."

Mr. Moulessehoul says he can still return to Algeria, where

his books are also on sale, but he has now chosen to make

his home in France. In the future, though, he intends to

look away from his past. "I no longer want to write about

myself because that will lead to schizophrenia and

paranoia," he said. "I also don't need to write about

Algeria. My new novel is set in a faraway country. I'd like

to think I am a writer who can understand man wherever he

is." But for that, he conceded, he first needed to write

"L'Imposture des Mots."

"It was both a therapy and a questioning of the whole

environment that destabilized me," he said. "And it has

allowed me to free myself. I can now find my own points of

reference without anyone's help. And I am no longer afraid.

The solitude weighs on me, but it is my only protection. I

now live in total serenity."