Bianca Abdi-Boragi

Barbary Fig

The Barbary fig, or the prickly pear cactus, is found in Algeria, in Northern Africa.  “A sweet fruit, surrounded with thorns. Like childhood amidst war.’’ R. Balun. In Abdi-Boragi’s Barbary Fig, Ghalia, a mature woman living in France, has a phone conversation with her daughter, who asks her to travel to Great Kabylie-a region from Northern Algeria-to visit the grave of Ghalia's mother.  Ghalia categorically refuses.  She remembers fragments of her childhood as part of the Kabyle tribe during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) against the French colonial empire, and remembers also one of the many abandoned villages in which she and her mother managed to survive until life became impossible.

The Kabyles are an ethnic group indigenous from Northern Africa today still living in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.  This short film, in a sense, depicts the path of an exile, back through the path of memory.

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