Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25059
] ] ] they will do well in school and move to the city. He has told them he has nothing and they understand what must be done. After we eat a dinner of salad, meat and eggs we watch cartoons with the children. He is happy that his chi ldren can grow up in the country and not in the city. I ask him about fear. He says they have no fear because fundamentalists aren't allowed here. I begin to understand that the tight social structure makes no room for strangers or conflict. In fact the Berbers are free from many of the religious, political and social � j, . , problems that beset the cities and artificially created villages in the Triangle of Death. The real tragedy of Algeria is not the jihad vs government battle, it is the constant enrichment of a privileged few and the relentless crushing of these spir ited people. Not news, just reality. LAND OF THE BRAVE I now know that I must face up to my fears. Where are the most dan gerous places? I head for the journalists' compound. In Algeria, local jour nalists are grouped together in a heavily guarded walled-in area. My driver cruis es in past the heavy security and I pick a newspaper office at random. It seems things are serendipitous, I have chosen the offices of EI Watan, a newspaper run by Omar Belhouchet, a defiant man who has survived an assassination attempt while picking his daughters up from school. While waiting for Belhouchet in a side office I rummage through the archives. I learn that journalists are not allowed to wander freely and are forbidden from taking photos unless the mil itary approves it. Most photos are taken from the hip I without the military knowing. In many cases the military has sanitized the massacre sights before the journalists are allowed in . A young woman photographer going through some files views me suspiciously. Some shots are ludicrous. A soldier points to a severed finger on a mantle. Dead terrorists are unrecognizable shredded cadavers. Two photos raise ques tions. One is of new military equipment, badges and rifles taken from a bogus checkpoint supposedly manned by the GIA. Another is of a collection of rusty swords, ornate sheep-killing knifes and homemade daggers found at a massacre sight. I am interrupted by an interpreter and she answers some preliminary ques- "They are an enigma," she answers. "Nobody knows who they are. " She cautions me against talking politics with Belhouchet. But he answers my pointed questions strongly and without pausing. He says he is a journalist because without journalists the people of Algeria would have only the government's point of view. The people would know nothing. I ask him if having Western journalists here is good for Algeria's image. He says foreign journalists are here only for the benefit of the elections. Normally they are not welcome. [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [