The smile is there despite everything. Dressed in a blue tweed jacket over a gray shirt, rectangular glasses on his nose and now short hair, Boualem Sansal emerged from silence this Sunday. The 81-year-old novelist and essayist was Laurent Delahousse’s guest on France 2’s 8 p.m. for his first speech since his release from prison on November 12, before another interview on France Inter this Monday morning.
The opportunity for him to look back on his year of incarceration for “undermining national unity” after comments to the far-right media “Frontières”, in which he considered that Algeria had inherited under French colonization regions previously belonging, according to him, to Morocco. Facing the journalist, Boualem Sansal said he enjoyed his return to freedom.
“We find life, scents, murmurs”
“After ten months, we find life again, scents, murmurs and things that we don’t understand very well,” he said. It takes a few days to restructure your ideas and your reactions. There are things that excite me: the smell of coffee drives me crazy. I dreamed of this so much. »
The writer was reassuring about his health, a subject of concern during his incarceration: “I’m fine. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. For this I was treated in a completely remarkable manner by conscientious, serious doctors, who took a liking to me and who did more than their duty. I came out of their hands healthy. »
The man considered the conditions of his detention to be “those of any prison”. “We are reduced on all sides: movement, we cannot speak, we cannot act as we want, no contact with other prisoners or especially with the outside world in any way. I didn’t even have a lawyer. I was cut off from the world, he said. Life is hard in a prison. The time is long. We get tired, we get exhausted and very quickly we feel like we are dying. »
It is also impossible for him to read behind bars. “There is a library. What did I find there? Religious books, mainly. Qurans, stuff… And in French, I found some butchered, rotten drafts, old books, eaten by moths,” he clarified while claiming not to have been able to write “psychologically”. “But I was thinking about the book that I will write later,” he nevertheless insisted.
“I had a hood. I didn’t know who I was dealing with.”
Boualem Sansal also returned to his arrest on November 16, 2024 at Algiers airport, Algeria. “It’s astonishment. We don’t think about anything,” he confided, swearing not to have been able to get his bearings for six days. “I had a hood. I didn’t know who I was dealing with, he continued. I didn’t see what reason would push the authorities to arrest me. There was one in fact: for several months, between France and Algeria, a war was declared following the declarations of President Macron who formally recognized the Moroccan nature of the Sahara. That’s where it all started. »
Although he is now free, the octogenarian believes that his speech is now “restricted.” » “I’m not talking to you in a natural way. I control my every word, he conceded. I am afraid for my family if I return to Algeria, with my wife. I’m afraid that this time they will also arrest him to force me further. I think of my cellmates who will now be arrested and questioned, to find out what I may have said to them. I think of Christophe Gleizes (sports journalist currently imprisoned in Algeria)and he is not the only one, there are several dozen political detainees for bizarre reasons. »
During an interview with “a very authoritarian old man, or the boss of the secret services or someone very important” according to him, on the eve of his release, Boualem Sansal was questioned about the comments he might make upon his release. “I told him that I have never criticized Algeria. I criticize a regime, I criticize people, I criticize a dictatorship. Why would I criticize Algeria? he says he then retorted. I only know the red lines defined by the Constitution, and the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. So there is no red line with me. »
PODCAST. Boualem Sansal: story of the writer’s liberation
At the G20, President Emmanuel Macron indicated that he wanted to build a relationship for the future with Algeria. And your own line? asks Delahousse. “I have always been for reconciliation between France and Algeria. It should have been done in 1962, as the Germans and French did after the Second World War despite the atrocities. We missed the boat, believes the writer. At that time, we could have done it. We didn’t do it, we postponed it from year to year. Sixty years have passed, we are still using speeches from the war of liberation,” he regrets.
He will return to Algeria to collect his belongings
Since his release, the now ex-prisoner has confirmed having been received by the French president. And intends to see “his friend” Bruno Retailleau again soon. “We called each other. He was obviously very happy to know that I was free,” he said. Could his very offensive attitude towards Algeria have been an obstacle to his release? Laurent Delahousse asks him again. “In a way,” he concedes. “But with or without Bruno Retailleau, they would have reacted in the same way,” he tempered.
“We have even linked you to the extreme right,” Delahousse tells him. To which the writer responds that he has friends “from all parties” and does not choose them “based on their political affiliation”.
Before concluding, he wanted to return to Algeria “as soon as possible, for a few days at least to collect my things”, having asked Emmanuel Macron to check with the Algerian president that he could enter and leave the country. He also promised new writings.