Assia Djebar's book is a kind of a mutt. It's part novel, part autobiography, and part history. In this section, the narrator's describing the first battles in the French conquest of Algeria in the 1800s.

"There are now two chroniclers of these preliminary clashes. Amable Matterer, first officer of the Ville de Marseille, stands on the deck of his vessel, watching the fighting gradually penetrate further and further inland…He writes time and time again, 'I am writing with my sword at my side'… A second eye-witness will plunge us into the heart of the battle: Baron Barchou de Penhoën, ADC to General Berthezène who is in command of the first regiments to go into action. He leaves a month after the capture of the City; in the quarantine state in Marseille, still fresh from the scene, he sets down his impressions as a combatant, as an observer and even, with unexpected insight, as one who has fallen in love with a land of which he has glimpsed the fiery fringes." (Part One, Chapter 2)

The narrator's descriptions in this part of the book are based on actual historical accounts. But she doesn't just tell us this stuff: she also tells us where she gets her information. She doesn't get it from Algerians, because no written accounts of these first battles were left by Algerians. She gets her information from two French colonial officials. Why is this important? Well, Djebar is pointing out that a lot of colonial history comes down to us not through the colonized, but through the colonizers, those who actually wrote the records.

The narrator could have just described these first battles without mentioning where she found her information. But by telling us who her sources are—and highlighting the fact that they were colonizers—she's showing us that colonial discourse exists even when we don't see it or expect it. She's reminding us that, in some ways, we can't escape colonial discourse.