The Victim

The fiction is set in a hamlet at the foot of the Blida Atlas. A dumb-and-deaf woman, nicknamed fittingly Bekkoucha, was accused of bearing an illegitimate child, named Salem. Yet, Salem could no longer stand up to the tag of bastard. He gave up studying till he unveiled the truth: who is his genuine father? Meanwhile, he fell in love with Safia, the daughter of Belkacem Bouakkaz. The Bouakkaz family moved to the town, lodged the time being by the magnate Hadj Boualem, a wealthy landowner… During the season of harvest, Hadj Boualem trusted in Bouakkaz to steer the operation back in the countryside. The honest sheikh took his wife and headed up the hills, leaving his only daughter Safia a prey between the claws of the tycoon, who deflowered her. Betrayed Salem slumped in despair and disheartenment… The Victim is an autopsy of a society, laden with myths and superstitions, naivety and foxiness, complacency and avidity. It depicts the contradictory post-Independence events, like the struggle between good values and evildoings on the behalf of national interests and religious bigotry, love, and injustice, and the dichotomy between town’s lifestyle and the countryside’s.