Algeria has her children

Nour El Houda Benali — Alger, Algérie — 2026-10-15

I

They counted our ports, our wells, our frontiers,

They counted our dead in their evening papers,

They paid for pens, they chartered gun turrets,

And at home, in the morning, we counted hope.

They say it, in Rabat, in London, in Abu Dhabi:

“Algeria is preparing for war — look at her.”

They say it so loudly that the lie grows,

And we, meanwhile, have not moved.

II

For we do not need to shout in order to be.

We are the house, the threshold and the key.

Our dead are in our walls, our names in our prayers,

And what we love, no one has lent it to us.

They count their aircraft, their friends, their contracts;

We count our seasons, our neighbours, our silences.

They will have to cross the sea, the sand, the thirst —

And behind every door, a family that thinks.

III

Our men are standing.

Our women are standing.

Our children know the name of our rivers.

Our mothers waged war before us, to the end.

Our sisters carry the school, and our brothers the land.

Our old men have in their voice the salt of our wounds,

Our young have in their hands what is not taken twice.

They learned history on the walls of our villages:

It never told them that we retreat.

IV

We threaten no one.

We ask for nothing.

We obey no one:

Only Allah is our Master.

We arrived here before your maps,

And the desert is long, and we, we are at home.

So say it again, repeat our defeats.

Look for them: you will not find them any more.

There is nothing to gain in what you are preparing.

There is everything to lose — and it is you who will have lost it.

V

We are ready.

Always have been.

Without fanfare, without oath, without speeches.

Ready as one is when one has never had the choice

But to stay, and to stay standing.

Only Allah is our Master.

And we are His servants — not yours.

Try.

Nour El Houda Benali — Alger, Algérie

📚 COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY (rule no. 19)

Not applicable. A poem asserts no fact and cites no source. It therefore does not fall under rule no. 19, which applies to news articles. This is written here so that no check mistakes it for a failure.

⚠️ PUBLISHED RESERVATIONS — to be published with the text.

(1) This is a poem, not an investigation. It brings no new fact and claims no verification. It expresses a position, signed by its author.

(2bis) It carries an affirmation of faith — “Only Allah is our Master”. It is that of its author, in a signed opinion text, and it is an act of sovereignty: no State has power over this land. It targets, judges and wounds no one's faith. An Algerian newspaper speaks to its people; it does not speak against anyone's faith.

(2) It targets no people, no nation, no religion. It targets States and acts — the accusations made against Algeria and those who relay them.

(3) It calls for no violence: it answers those who speak of war by saying that there is nothing to be gained from it. No threat is uttered in it.

(4) The facts cited in the published part of the newspaper — Khaled Haftar's visit to Rabat, the Morocco–Israel–Emirates convergence — are documented and sourced in article 049. The poem, for its part, does not take them up: it answers them.