Hello! How are you? I hope well. In this occasion I want to say thanks to Patricia Álvarez. She is a friend of mine from Madrid, a wonderful dancer and a culture enthusiast, especially from the Mediterranean basin, the Balkans and the Middle East. She introduced me to the work of Salim Halali. So, thank you, Patricia! 

In this bio of Salim (super large, and I still would have been able to follow many more threads) there are facts and tales, that you can believe or not. I will explain the sources and you can judge by yourself but… do you know? The stories are worth of it. I hope you’ll like them.

? And remember, there are previous editions of MBS about Algerian Jews: Reinette L’Oranaise, Saoud L’Oranaise and Cheik Zouzou.

.

So in 1934 he got to travel to Marseille, as a stowaway on a ship. Some time after, he went to Paris, where the International Expo would take place in 1937, with the hope to get a job at the Algerian pavilion. There, he found some compatriots, like Mahieddine Bachtarzi, who was the director of the first Andalusian music association of the Maghreb: El Moutribia.

About Souk-Akhras, in ancient time it was Thagaste, a very important Roman city, the birthland of Saint Augustine.

According to the Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World edited by Norman A. Stillman, the modern town began in the 1850s as a French military post, and by 1856 it had a permanent Jewish settlement. Some of the Jewish inhabitants were Baḥuṣim, semi-nomadic Jews from the surrounding region who adopted a sedentary lifestyle in the new town. Others were Jews of Livornese descent (from the city of Livorno, in the North coast of Italy to the Tyrrhenian sea).

.

The story is translated and a little summarized by me, from the original from that mentioned page. The story is about the forbidden love between a Jewish boy and a Muslim girl from a large family of Souk-Ahras: Salim Halali (Simon at the beginning) and Ryma (that is how he nicknamed her, and sometimes he called her Fettouma too).

Simon and Ryma were neighbors and also distant cousins ​​through the Ryma’s paternal grandmother. Indeed, the father of Ryma, a notable of Souk-Ahras was the son of a Jewish lady, converted to Islam, from the very old family of Ouled Kakou, from Souk-Ahras. These two children grew up together. They were inseparable like a brother and sister.

A few years later, having become a very beautiful and young woman, Ryma was forbidden by her father to see Simon again, who had also become a tall and charming boy. But they found a way to meet again discreetly at Ryma’s paternal great-aunt, Rimoun Kakou, who unlike her sister (the grandmother of Ryma) remained of the Jewish faith.

Made aware of this secret relationship, the father of Ryma, furious and with a great anger, hits Simon and outright forbids his daughter to go to her aunt Rimoun.

< The Great Synagogue of Marseille. The newspapers said in 2016 that it had been was sold to an Islamic cultural organization and it would become a mosque. But nowadays it is still a Synagogue and was renamed in 2018 as Breteuil-Beth Yossef, honoring the ex Great Rabbi of Marseille, Joseph Haïm Sitruk. It can be visited and it is a very recognized treasure for its historic relevance.

Far from Ryma, sad and unemployed, Simon leaved Souk-Ahras at the age of 15 (the biographies use to say at 14) and went to Marseille to look for work. Back in Souk-Ahras, two years later, and with a little money, he asks her father for Ryma’s hand, who categorically refuses to marry his daughter to a Jew. Indeed, Ryma’s father had already promised his daughter to a rich and very famous man from Souk-Ahras who ended up marrying her.

Unhappy, Simon leaved Souk-Ahras permanently at the age of 17 for Paris. And he would come back just once, in 1958.

Ryma’s husband died two years after her marriage in a traffic accident. Widowed, Ryma was forced by her father to marry a cousin of his, 25 years older than her. She moved with him to Annaba and later to Tunis. They had two daughters. Upon the death of her second husband, Ryma left Tunis and moved with these two girls to Bordeaux where they successfully completed their brilliant medical studies. In Tunis she got closer to her great-uncle Joseph Kakou, who was a soldier.

In the meantime, Simon moved to Paris, where he sang in cabarets. France was under the colaborationist Vichy government. Fleeing the pro-Nazi French police, Simon took refuge in the great Mosque of Paris for several months. At this time, his name would be changed for Salim. Learn more on the next story, below.

And still in love with Ryma, Simon only sang her name. He dedicated his first and famous song, “Mahani Ezinne” to her, but also “Rimoun Rmetni”, “Fettouma taaz alaya” and many other hits.

In 1958, Salim returned to Souk-Ahras where he gave a concert in Thagaste Square. There he was finally given news of his beloved. He followed her footsteps to Tunis where he learns from Joseph Kakou that she has gone to Bordeaux. He immediately left for Bordeaux to find her but she had left with her eldest daughter for the United States after her marriage to a wealthy American.

In 1982 Salim installed in Casablanca in Morocco. There he finally had news of his beloved Ryma by a Souk-Ahrassien (Ex Minister and ex Ambassador) married with his young daughter. Note that Salim was already 62 years old and they hadn’t meet each other since he was 17. The daughter organized a meeting between Salim and Ryma in Paris in a famous restaurant. The reunion between the two old lovebirds of Souk-Ahras was sad and very moving.

Salim had improvised while weeping a song for Ryma who was also very moved, the famous Alach Ya Ghzali. He learnt from Ryma that she knew everything about him and his singing career: she listened to him every day and she knew all his songs by heart.

Ryma died in Bordeaux in 1986 at the age of 66, where she is buried. Salim travelled from Morocco especially to attend her funeral where it seems he had read aloud the Fatiha (the first chapter, or sura, of the Quran) in her memory.

The sources mentioned by this person, who doesn’t identify his/herself are:

In 1949, Salim moved to Morocco and bought an old café in the mellah* of Casablanca, which he transformed into a prestigious cabaret: “Le Coq d’Or”. This venue was visited by the rich families of the country and celebrities. But the cabaret was destroyed in a fire and Salim then returned to France at the beginning of the 1960s. He was known for his extravagant parties, in which he even took elephants (and he had two tigers as pets) to the garden in his villa, as well as for his artistic work.

He stopped singing in 1993 (but made one occasional concert in 1994) and left for a retirement home in Vallauris. He died on June 25, 2005 in Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) and his ashes are scattered in Nice in a garden.

According to the same story as before, from The Page Thagastoise:

Salim confided in this doctor, Dr. Abdallah Khémis, that he had given all his copyrights to the disabled of Algeria and offered to the Algerian embassy in Paris a “great value” carpet, according to his own terms. This physician, who practiced at Larcher Hospital in Nice, confirmed that Salim Halali had never forgotten Souk Ahras and that he had dedicated to the city his celebratory songs El Forga Morra and Ya Ghorbati.

* The mellah is the Jewish quarter of the cities in Morocco, usually surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway.