Sunday

Morning: a ride to the Cathedrâle de Sacré Coeur with the Arch-Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Algiers. He comes for breakfast now and then, and offered a lift. It is truly a beautiful building on the inside - must return to take a few photos. On the outside, however, instead of the grand stairs to the main entrance there is unfortunately a gas station. One day the stairs will come. But until then it is the "Cathedrale Sonatrach." Everything is Sonatrach here - the state oil and gas company, in an oil and gas state. Even Canada imports crude oil from Algeria, though its neighbour Morocco imports from Iraq.

It is a small and very mixed congregation. On the way in there were a couple of Filipinas, for example. I meet S, a retired teacher of English who is going to Ghardaïa on Saturday. And I will join her for the same week she is there. I have just now bought myself a plane ticket, which will happily enough set me on a Dash 8 (De Havilland DHC-8 200 series), on Tassili Airlines (effectively "Air Sonatrach"). Algeria is similar to Canada in terms of cartographic reveries and itinerary realities. The trip, about a quarter of the north-south length of the country, on a bus would otherwise take 10-14 hours. I will find myself in the M'zab Valley almost exactly 86 years after Le Corbusier's visit in March 1931.

Lunch: Baked artichoke hidden by petit pois and meatballs. And a surprise visit by Mohamed Sami, a novel writer and translater.