(5 of 10)
More than anything else, Ferhat Abbas wanted to be a Frenchman of Moslem faith. (At that time, an Algerian Moslem who wanted French citizenship was obliged to abandon his "personal Koranic status," i.e., Moslem practices, such as plural marriage, which conflicted with French law.) In Setif, a drab Algerian copy of a French provincial town, where he opened a drugstore upon leaving the university, Abbas divorced his first wife (a Moslem), married Marcelle Perez, a handsome, full-blown blonde of Alsatian origin. She was Algerian-born and an expert at preparing that favorite North African dish couscous,* and to this day is more fluent in Arabic than her husband.
Cafe Companions. Too mercurial and visionary to be a good organizer, Abbas had eloquence and personal charm. As president of the influential Algerian Moslem Students' Association he traveled frequently to France, where he sat up until the wee hours in Paris cafes talking politics with other young North Africans. (Among his cafe companions: Ahmed Bal-afrej and Habib Bourguiba, today respectively Premier of Morocco and President of Tunisia.) All that was needed to transform Algeria "from a colony to a province," he liked to say, was legal equality between Algerian Moslems and other Frenchmen. And when World War II broke out, Ferhat Abbas, at 40, enlisted as a medic in a Senegalese outfit. "If I am killed," he said in a goodbye statement, "someone else will continue my task. Vive la France! Vive l'Algerie!"
When he returned unscratched to Algeria after the fall of France, Abbas began to sing a different tune. The Nazi victory over the French army damaged France's prestige in her colonies; the U.S. landings in 1942 filled North Africa with heady talk of the Atlantic Charter and a brave new postwar world. Called into private conference with U.S. Minister Robert Murphy (who was trying to whip up Moslem support for the war effort), Abbas emerged with a bold new line: "Henceforth an Algerian Moslem will ask nothing else but to be an Algerian Moslem."
Challenge & Response. Bold as his new stand sounded, events were about to leave Ferhat Abbas far behind. Unnoticed by him—and by the French—a new generation of leaders was emerging in Moslem Algeria. They were a tougher lot. They had seen something of the world in the French army, had learned at first hand about violence, stealth and collective action. Impatient with the political soul-searching and ringing manifestos so dear to Abbas, they preferred the doctrines of fiery Messali Hadj, the artisan's son from the religious center of Tlemcen, who since 1926 had been working for total independence from France. Unlike Messali—who spent most of his time under house arrest or agitating among the Algerians in France—the young postwar nationalists were practical, disciplined men.