Education
He returned to the United States in 1990 to pursue graduate studies and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering.
He returned to the United States in 1990 to pursue graduate studies and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering.
After graduating with an engineering degree in the United States of America in 1982, he went back to his native Algeria and worked as a maintenance engineer in the Sahara for Sonatrach, the Algerian National Oil and Gas Company. In his first book Still Moments: A Story about Faded Dreams and Forbidden Pictures, he writes of his experience of ethnic profiling in the aftermath of 9/11. Zighen stopped along Route 66 to photograph the railroad tracks one day in October 2002.
An Illinois State Police officer stopped and questioned him, asking for identification and what he was doing.
What followed several months later was a Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogation. The reader experiences Zighen’s reflections on his life in Algeria, his move to the United States, his reaction to being suspected of terrorist activities in the innocence of a photography hobby, the ethnic profiling he experienced and the traumatic Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogation.
Aym’s book provides a context to the Algerian conflict rarely discussed by Muslimphobic pundits and supporters of political Islamist groups such as the Algerian FIS.