Pierre Chabert will present his book “Mémoires d’entre-deux terres” on Saturday January 17, 2026, at the Oustau de Prouvènço.
From an album of photographs taken on site by his grandfather and stories passed down by his son, Pierre Chabert has produced a short autobiographical novel in which he takes the place of his ancestor.
We find there more particularly a first Egyptian period from 1908 to 1914 when Jean Marius Chabert was employed at the Compagnie Universelle du canal de Suez, followed by a second, the war of 14-18 including the “pacification of Morocco” from 1916 to 1918, where he served in Indigenous Affairs.
We meet my grandfather after the war, in Egypt until 1933. Engaged in the early days of the Resistance with his children, heir to a humanism steeped in Human Rights and left-wing ideas, a convinced orientalist, he was driven by an insatiable curiosity.
This work includes an iconography, but also a testimony from a man in the field. In this, it is also a tribute to these soldiers, Moroccan and Senegalese in this case, who then made up the French army during two wars.
Marseille, Philippeville, Port-Saïd, Verdun, the Dardanelles, Serbia, Nice, Tangier, Alexandretta, Ismaïlia mark the journeys between two lands which for a century weave a particular memory through a history of lives.
Free entry – Meet at 3 p.m. at Oustau de Prouvènço (Jourdan Park)
