In 1993 as Merzak was filming Bab el-Oued City in Algiers, the terror of the civil war was already gripping Algeria. While he was directing the film, his friend, the novelist and journalist Tahar Djaout, was murdered. Allouache was forced to make the remainder of the film on the run, and could not return to Islamist sections of Algiers such as the Casbah for second takes. Not surprisingly, he managed to transfer the sense of violence and paranoia that surrounded the making of the film to the characters of Rachid and Said. The young fundamentalists depicted in the film reveal themselves to be rife with hypocrisy and a mad fascination with power. When the Algerian government refused to hold elections, the low-level violence depicted in the film exploded into terror. Bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations, became the norm, leading to the loss of over 50,000 lives during the course of the civil war.