Kateb Yacine was in his third year of '' collège '' when the demonstrations of May 8 , 1945 occurred . He participated in these demonstrations that ended with the massacre of between six and eight ( according to nationalists forty-five ) thousand Algerians by the French army and police in the Sétif and Guelma massacre . Three days later he was placed under arrest and imprisoned for two months . From that point on he became a partisan for the nationalist cause . Expelled from secondary school , watching his mother 's psychological health decline , passing through a period of dejection and immersed in the writings of Lautréamont and Baudelaire , his father sent him to the high school in Bône ( Annaba ) . There he met ' Nedjma ' ( ' the star ' ) , an ' already married cousin ' with whom he lived for ' maybe eight months ' , as he later acknowledged
Sétif and Guelma massacre
Sétif and Guelma massacre
Kateb Yacine