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Rating: On the night of September 22, 1997, in Bentahla, a village on the outskirts of Algiers, a group of Islamic terrorists, during the height of the last Algerian civil war, managed to eliminate, without any form of opposition, at least 500 people including many elderly and children, exterminated with rudimentary bombs, throat slittings, and other similar atrocities.
Oum Saad is one of the many family mothers surviving in a cave, and furthermore forced to coexist daily with the fratricidal conflicts that for years have bloodied the roof of Africa. Paradoxically in Arabic, her name means "Mother of Happiness". When life is cruel.
The day after, the news begins to spread, covering families still unaware of what happened a few hours earlier like a shroud. Oum has just learned of the death of her brother, her mother-in-law, and her niece. With a lump of venom stuck in her throat, she puts on the first rag she finds in her hands and boards, accompanied by a relative, Zobeida, the first vehicle heading to Bentahla. After laboriously passing some checkpoints and other obstacles, she arrives at a place that can easily be compared to an infernal circle. Hundreds of screaming souls in search of news about killed relatives, forced paths to avoid stepping on previously placed mines, mutilated bodies piled on the sides of the roads. The terrorists spared no one. Oum continues through the turmoil in search of the bodies of relatives to bury. They lead her to a school turned into a morgue, attempting to recognize someone but it's not easy. It's difficult to withstand so much horror. Zobeida, who perhaps has a stronger stomach, tries to calm her and begs her not to scream at the sight of the corpses. As if it were a normal thing.
Among the rows of corpses, she recognizes her brother. Her vision blurs, and her senses begin to give way. A policeman supports her and invites her to rinse her face. Tears are trying to besiege her eyes, but she holds on, a little longer. How can one endure in the face of heaps of mutilated limbs, burnt bodies, decapitated ones? Can one imagine a worse hell? With the remaining bit of courage left, she asks for information to get the bodies at least for burial. The same officer who had accompanied her to the bathrooms indicates she should go to the El Harrash hospital. There she meets Abdel Fattah, a nephew who emerged unscathed from the massacre, who perhaps, as much as possible, gives her the only less painful news. If such a thing can be said. The bodies had already been transported to the cemetery for burial, and none of their loved ones' corpses were lost.
Oum collapses onto her knees, leans against a wall clad in light tiles, and while Zobeida tries to lay her down, she slightly tilts her head and emits that scream of despair that touched every corner of the globe. Hocine Zaourar is a war photographer trying to capture as many images as possible in that funereal chaos. And it is at that moment, while the pain slowly overwhelms Oum, he has the time to take that photo that mixes emotion and agony. Immediately afterward, the paradox. When fate strikes fiercely.
The photo is immediately distributed to the major television networks, and France 2 mistakenly attributes it to another news concerning a mother who lost eight children in the massacre. Panic and falsehood reigned supreme until Algerian television crudely dispelled the macabre myth. Ignorance and bigotry did the rest. Some accuse Oum of lucrative manipulation, which leads people to avoid her, to demonize her. Meanwhile, the photographer made his fortune. If all this is possible.
Anyhow, that heart-wrenching scream pierces the heart. That despair or, if possible, release still hurts. And Oum still suffers while she gazes with emotion at the photos of her lost relatives. In her cave.
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