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My during the civil war in the 1990s, she gave out her first novel under a pseudonym. The year was 1996 and the civil war made life dangerous for intellectuals of all kinds. Authors, poets and journalists imprisoned on a conveyor belt. Even teachers, who she was, lived under the threat. The woman who make their voices heard for their medsystrar could affect her whole family. Now she dares to reveal that her real name is Samia Benameur, but as she is known as the author Maïssa Bey she gets so hot in this article.

She writes in French because it was her first language in school in the 1950s.

- Arabic, my mother tongue, I got to learn to write much later, as ”foreign language”. It is very strange, right?

Today she lives a good life in the town of Sidi-Bel-Abbes, where she runs a library in addition to writing, but her life has been marked by war. Her father was murdered during the liberation war in the 1950s. When she was six years. When her youngest daughter was the age in the 1990s ran the bloody civil war as the worst. The daughter and her three older siblings, as well as Maïssa and her husband, risked their lives every time they left home.

- My youngest daughter was in fact trapped in a large part of his childhood. She went to school and back home. Of course she noticed our fear also. All of her generation is marked by the war.

Today, three of the children, now adults, in France. Their mother has eagerly encouraged them to move there – especially daughters who she wants to give a quieter life than she had. One son lives in Algeria with his family. If the daughters want to return, she wants to settle in the capital Algiers, where the freedom to live as one wants is a bit larger.