Les Miserables is the most memorable book I have ever read. I remember reading it when I was a thirteen-year-old boy in the Atlas Mountains in Algeria. I had borrowed the book from a neighbor. Our village did not have a library. Still, books were shared by the few learned people who had attained at most the primary studies certificate. That was how I got hold of The prince and the Pauper, The Thousand and One Nights, The Warren Commission, and several detective stories by James Hadley Chase.

I was reading the book Les Miserables in the kitchen when my mother walked in to find me crying. She inquired the reason and I told about the main character who broke the window of bakery to steal a piece of bread to feed his hungry and poor nieces and nephews only to be sentence to several years in prison.

“Son, you don’t need to look for book stories to cry about, I can tell you many from our own life here in these mountains.”

This scene of my mother and me in the kitchen will remain forever in my memory.

How could slavery have existed in America for so long? Most people accepted it and very few questioned it. 

Well, the following is how Mark Twain explained it:
     In my schoolboy days, I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware there was something wrong about it. No one arraigned in my hearing. The local papers said nothing wrong against it. The local pulpit taught us that God approved it and that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter need only look in the bible if he wished to settle his mind. Then the texts were aloud to us to make the matter sure. And if the slaves had an aversion to slavery, they were wise and said nothing.

On my way to work today, I turned on the radio to WGLT 89.1FM in Normal, IL. As usual, the NPR report was so slanted against Syria that I called the station to say the following to the WGLT agent who picked up the phone. 

“I find that NPR news reports always criticize governments such as those in Syria and Iran with whom America has several teeth to grind. Last week, the Moroccan government was violently repressing the people in the Rif region, and NPR did not report anything.”

“Oh!” the voice said, and then I heard a click. He hung up on me. 

In its reports http://www.npr.org/2011/03/15/134556532/Algeria-Tensions of March 15, 2011, NPR reported on Algeria at the same time Tunisia, Libya, and  Egypt were going through their respective turmoil.  It interviewed a minister and Said Saadi, the RCD leader. In addition, the report indicated that “… But Algeria is clearly a police state. Its people are frustrated and discouraged, and corruption is endemic.”

However, NPR decides to interview the Chilla family, which grills shish kebabs and the father claims, “It's different. We have liberty,” he says. “We're a people that does what it wants. We can travel, we work how we want. The power isn't so severe.”

Why didn’t NPR go and ask any government official why it is still forbidden for parents to give Berber first names to their children?