These words, written on 16 January 1957 and taken from Feraoun's journal tracing the unfolding of the Algerian War from 1955 to 1962, are evidently those of a man in love with his native land, supporting wholeheartedly his people's reclaiming of their territory and honour. Born in the village of Tizi-Hibel in 1913, Feraoun was, like Amrouche, a Kabylian, educated in French schools, who sought to imagine a more harmonious future for his compatriots despite the antagonisms of the War of Independence, and who believed in decolonisation, but not necessarily in the relinquishment of all French cultural influence in Algeria. Unlike Amrouche, however, who tried to play the role of a negotiator between the French colonists and the FLN, Feraoun was a humble schoolteacher, who used his writing precisely not in order to make political or ideological assertions, but to testify as honestly and plainly as possible first to the poor living conditions of the people of Kabylia and ultimately to the everyday horrors of the revolution. Assassinated by the OAS in March 1962, Feraoun was nevertheless above all a pacifist. His writing documents the idiosyncrasies of the local culture he fought to preserve, as well as the violence inflicted by both sides during the struggle for independence, and he advocates above all respect for human life rather than full-blown revolutionary activity. In sharp contrast to Fanon's call for the use of violence in the fight to end colonial violence, Feraoun laments the ruthless tactics of the FLN and fears the potential authoritarianism of party leaders, and his writing turns away from political ideologies in favour of a more open-ended, humanist understanding of the victims’ shared suffering.