Algiers, Third World Capital

May 21, 2018
The behind-the-scenes work of post-WWII liberation movements comes to the fore in this gripping memoir from Mokhtefi, an “innocent American” whose 1951 move to Paris after college leads her into an unexpected and awe-inducing life of revolutionary activity in Algeria and beyond. After renting a room in a cheap hotel on the edge of the North African quarter in Paris, Mokhtefi (née Klein) becomes involved in the Algerian immigrant labor struggle and soon an essential fixture in the Algerian war for independence thanks to her skills as a translator. Algeria’s war of liberation from France (1954–1962) changes the course of Mokhtefi’s life, rerouting her in 1960 to a New York City office where the “hands and feet” of the Algerian revolution operate, and eventually to Algiers, which becomes a hub of activity for numerous liberation movements. The arrivals of Eldridge Cleaver and several fellow Black Panthers as the party splits triggers a tumultuous period of clandestine activity and international intrigue that concludes with Mokhtefi’s 1974 deportation from Algeria. Despite her pivotal role aiding various leftist movements, savvy handling of delicate situations, and connections to world-historical persons, Mokhtefi remains humble throughout, even when describing hobnobbing with singer Miriam Makeba during a Pan-African music festival while trying to convince a drunk Nina Simone to perform. Mokhtefi has never been back to Algeria, but she makes palpable the turmoil and fervor of her experience there while sharing unbelievable stories previously known only to their participants.

June 1, 2018
Mokhtefi (Paris: An Illustrated History, 2002) offers a memoir of international radical activism, from helping Algeria and Africa shake the yoke of colonialism to helping the Black Panthers establish a revolutionary outpost in exile.The narrative sometimes reads like a memoir of high society, though the glamorous names include Eldridge Cleaver (with whom the author had a close and complicated relationship), Timothy Leary, Frantz Fanon, Jean-Luc Godard, and Simone de Beauvoir. It was an era derided by Tom Wolfe as "radical chic," when revolutionary militancy became a fashion statement and a New York girl who presented herself as innocent as well as idealistic could find herself in the center of it all. "Life was exciting and eventful," writes Mokhtefi. "I was the fly on the window, looking in, beating its wings." As a translator and facilitator whose adventures took her from New York to Paris to Algeria to elsewhere in Africa, the author found herself getting relationship tips from Fanon, who had asked her what she wanted; she replied, "to put my head on someone's shoulder." Not revolutionary enough, he responded and counseled her to "stay upright on your own two feet and keep moving forward to goals of your own." Thus she did, though one senses that the sexual tension with Cleaver might have amounted to something if he hadn't declared her off-limits for everyone, including himself (making her apparently the only female to whom he was attracted that he considered off-limits). Mokhtefi has mixed feelings about the man whose life he credited her with saving and whom she considered a great revolutionary leader early on. He beat his wife, he murdered a man for having a sexual relationship with his wife, and he "had a reputation for throwing fat on the fire," taking dangerous situations and making them more dangerous. Still, "despite the things about him I despised--his killer instinct, his womanizing--I admired the man."A firsthand account of a time when so much seemed up for grabs.

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