Ahlam Mosteghanemi, the author of Memory in the Flesh, writes her work of fiction with a distinct male voice, using male mental processes to frame her drama; and with the blood-soaked voice of Khalid, the male conscience of Constantine and Algeria remembers the “innumerable offensives” and offenses suffered at the hands of the French during the struggle for independence and what followed afterwards. .

Khalid’s words pay tribute to personal sacrifices by the sons of the movement, his loss of one arm, the loss of life for others; and with his narrative, Khalid also tells the cost of Pyrrhic victories for both colonizer and liberated; for not only does Mosteghanemi show how in spite of winning daily skirmishes France ultimately lost her colony, but how along the way to self-determination, far too many Algerians disremembered their history, their inner-voice and self-destructed.

Indeed, throughout Mosteghanemi’s narrative, the words of Fanon are visible at every turn. Liberation means the right to make mistakes; and as the new nation blunders her way through fits and starts, rife with corruption and poor choices, from Ahlam’s choice of marriage partner to the sad obsession of Hassan to find an administrative job, (when teaching – an honest profession was his authentic design), the blood of Algeria gave her sons and daughters “the right to govern themselves badly” and make folly.

Mosteghanemi tells readers in her novel that every artist comes to “understand the world” through the eyes of one precise linear point. With Hemingway, the locus was the sea; with Moravia the spot was desire; with Al-Hallj the moment was God; with Miller the mark was sex; with Baudelaire the pin-point was sin and damnation; and with Khalid, the summit was a bridge from which to leap over or fall, fight or surrender, love or hate; live or die, in the wretched dichotomous realm of nations and people’s souls.

From the beginning, the activist artist searched for a way to resolve the triadic conflict that raged within the walls of his mind: the guilt of initial leave-taking, the sorrow of present circumstances, and the angst to return home; and with colors and shadows, Khalid worked out his deliverance in an artistic rendition of a bridge that first took him to the mountains—a representation that would forever span time and space, and visually render his spirit free to come and go.

Nationalism in the novel travels the promise of release from oppression and slavery to ultimate disillusionment. As told by the words of a former warrior, his countrymen are in a self-indulgent stupor of “petty daily concerns” and fail to pay tribute to history. Forgotten are the revolution heroes, men who sacrificed sight, limb and life for liberty; and this loss of memory gashes the collective nucleus of nation; and the original mental splendor as conceived by her founding martyrs.

The hopes of a nation lie on the shoulders of a former warrior, a warrior’s son and his daughter, and the consciousness of city and country. Khalid’s call to life is truth, free of shadows; and it is embodied in Khalid’s only commandment to nation and daughter, “Consider only your conscience, because in the end, it’s the only thing you live with.” The shadows are the “uniformity” of thought, as symbolically expressed by his countrymen’s garment; for uniformity ran counter to Si Taher’s highest hope, a “dream…to see Algeria freed from the superstition and worn-out tradition that had oppressed and destroyed…” Indeed, Algeria forgot to ask, “What did our revolutionary martyrs die for? And instead wore “the same sad and gloomy colors” of life as their coat of honor.

In post-colonialism, women “wrapped in their black veils” no longer symbolized “a mechanism of resistance,” but rather a society that lacked color of imagination. The “dragged…lost steps” did not lead to a “deepening [of] consciousness” but rather to “ill-tempered customs officials” with petty dreams of a morally worthless higher government post.

The narrative of nationalism as told by Mosteghanemi is an ongoing tale with past heroes who return home; and through fate and death, Khalid replaced his brother’s corpse; he would now instruct his brother’s children, provide for his brother’s wife, and record his account of history. The shadows of his former self stayed behind with his paintings, no longer needed, for Khalid not only returned to a location, but his homecoming also hailed the return of spirit to his initial call. ““Don’t love bridges anymore,” he says, for history has called him home.