THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

During their entire youth men find here a life in proportion to their beauty.  Then, later on, the downhill slope and obscurity.  They wagered on the flesh, but knowing they were to lose.  In Algiers whoever is young and alive finds sanctuary and occasion for triumphs everywhere: in the bay,  the sun, the red and white games on the seaward terraces, the flowers and sports stadiums, the cool-legged girls.  But for whoever has lost his youth there is nothing to cling to and nowhere where melancholy can escape itself.  Elsewhere, Italian terraces, European cloisters, or the profile of the Provençal hills – all places where man can flee his humanity and gently liberate himself from himself.  But everything here calls for solitude and the blood of young men.  Goethe on his deathbed calls for light and this is a historic remark.  At Belcourt and Bab-el-Oued old men seated in the depths of cafés listen to the bragging of young men with plastered hair.

Camus/Algiers