The Algerian Fig War

The Fig tree with my Son Casimir, “Cass” (5 years old), standing by the huge branches.

Shortly after Algeria gained its independence from France in 1962, when they sought to bring in outside technology to help them in their struggle to once again become a sovereign nation, the company I worked for, Teledyne Corporation, made a contract with them and formed a company composed of 49% Americans and 51% Algerians. I was assigned to be one of the “technical experts” sent there to help manage our interest and instruct the young Algerian students on petroleum exploration technology. We were referred to as “CT” or “Citizens Technique” which gave us an unusual government protection with a special license in what was still an otherwise very dangerous place, but with a fine, (almost) protected, way of life.

So that is how I ended up as an expatriate in the war-torn country of Algeria in the ‘60s, where we were assigned a beautiful villa on the Mediterranean near the small seaside village of Moretti, just outside the capital city of Algiers.

Our villa was surrounded by a wall about 18 inches thick and eight feet high, with embedded glass shards on its top. At its entrance were tall gates of iron bars with only two entrances, one for the car and another for people to enter. In addition, the villa itself had stone walls about one foot thick and all the windows had the same iron bars, and the doors were three inches thick, clad in steel plate.

Obviously, it had been the home of the people referred to as “Pied Noir” (Colonial French) who ruled the nation for the 132 years between 1830 and 1962. Many of these people were second- or third-generation French living in a colonial situation, and some may have never known their Mother France. But they still needed such protection during the many years of their occupation of Algeria.

My story here involves that beautiful, if slightly overgrown, garden adjoining our villa. Among the other plants were two huge fig trees. The figs were very large, not what we usually see in the United States. They were about the size of a small peach. The trees were so large that on the lower horizontal branches a person could actually walk out on them. During the long fig season our maid would go out and pick fresh figs for us to enjoy. However, there came a time when she announced to my wife, Shirley: “Madame, je ne comprends pas, mais hier il y avait beaucoup de figues presque mûres, mais aujourd’hui il n’y en a plus. “Madam I do not understand it, but yesterday there were many figs almost ripe, but today they are all gone.”

My chore was to figure out just what was happening in our garden at night. Since our kids only ate one or two at a time and the birds could not have been getting them at night, there was no real reason why they were disappearing, so I started paying more attention to what we thought had been a safely guarded garden.

THE ATTACK

My first night on watch, I heard a rustling in our garden. Looking out the window, I saw a ladder being put up against the outside of that tall wall. Then two men climbed it and when on top of the wall it was lifted up and placed inside. So that is how they were getting to my fig trees!

Clad in the native kaftan I usually slept in for comfort from the heat, I seized the only weapon available, a sword. We were not allowed firearms but I had several antique swords in the house, that I had purchased. I took a long, curved cavalry sword for protection and went outside, telling my wife to keep watch and to turn the floodlights on when I was under the fig trees.

There they were, the culprits, up in my fig tree! Understand that we were considered valuable scientists needing to be heavily protected by the government, and it actually turned out these two men in my tree were some of the very same guards hired to do that protection. They, too, were not allowed firearms in that war-torn country, but they had carefully placed their “garde kepi” (police caps) on the ground, that being about the only thing that showed their station in life. With those hats on the ground they were up in my tree picking figs.

I demanded that they come down, while poking at them with my saber, but they only climbed higher into the tree. So, I took my sword and skewered those two little police hats with it, and waving the caps around on the end of my sword, explained that I had evidence of them being there. This brought them back to the ground. They were both crying and slobbering all over me, and told me that they were just hungry. I am sure they really were, because in that war-torn country they were underpaid. And as underclass Muslims, they were lucky to have even a “nothing job.” Conditions for them were very, very sad.

So, to get them to stop slobbering on me, I made it clear that the law could be informed of their entering my garden and stealing if they ever did it again. Muslim law can actually have the hand of a person cut off for this offense, in addition that they would be losing any chance of ever getting another job. I made it clear that I wanted them to protect me, not to be their victim. I explained to them that all they needed to do was call the maid to the front gate during the day and she would give them figs and other things to eat or drink. I then unskewered their little hats and gave them back, telling them to get their ladder and get out of my yard forever.

The next day, the loud bell hanging on our gate rang, and there they were. The maid had a bag of food for them, and after that, my villa had about the best protection possible in our little village. Thinking back, I could have been in real danger that night, but as it turned out, I had won the Algerian Fig War and had another great story to tell for the rest of my life.