In a rush I picked up the second novel By Faiza Guene rather than her first Just Like Tomorrow. It doesn’t matter too much because the stories are not interlinked but it would have been good to start at the beginning so to speak.
Still once opened the story is so easily accessible that you get straight into the story of Ahleme who lives with her father and brother. She is not the shy retiring type and so manages to defend herself in the housing estate in the mindset of drug dealers, criminals and those without a future.
This is not written as some sort of plea to be listened but more of an objective account of a world that to most of her readers is completely unknown.
This is about a young woman who has been denied almost everything not just as a result of poverty but because no one will believe in her dreams. She has been abandoned by her adopted country France and no longer has a place in Algeria her birthplace. She exists as an embarrassment to those that approve her immigration papers and fail completely to help her or her family.
More tomorrow…
