A beggar holds out his hand; I give him my fritters. He devours them, another beggar arrives, I give him my glass of tea; he tells me he’d prefer a cup of coffee. Bees and flies whirl around our heads. Meknès is waking up. A mint seller passes by shouting, “Good and fresh!” It’s the mint of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, the patron saint of Volubilis, near Meknès.3 After that long and horrible night, I’m ready to brave anything.
We look for a taxi to go to El Hajeb, a half hour’s drive away. People are waiting, beggars roam around, a barefoot boy picks up a cigarette stub from the ground and gets chased by a bigger boy. Some lost tourists are being pestered by a swarm of fake guides, whom a policeman chases away with reproaches: “Shame on you! You’re making our country look bad!” Someone points out to him that the country’s image is fairly lousy any way you look at it, from the inside or out, then runs away. “I know you!” the flic yells threateningly, “I know where you live, I’ll get you—you insult the country and its king, you’ll see, you’ll pay dearly for that!” He begins shouting our patriotic slogan: “Allah, Al Watan, Al Malik!” God, the Nation, the King.
The crowd is laughing; the policeman now seems a little crestfallen.
A taxi arrives. People rush over. The flic calls for order, then tells my brother, “Get in, you’re not from around here, right?”
So we’re now scrunched together on the front seat. The plastic is torn, revealing foam of an indeterminate color. The driver smells of rancid butter; he’s just finished breakfast. He lights a truly foul-smelling dark-leaf cigarette. Four people are in the back: an old man in a maroon djellaba, a peasant woman wrapped in a white haik,4 her son, and a soldier on leave. The driver says, “Pay up.” Everyone does. As we drive along, the discussion centers on the local soccer team. My brother, born in Fez, dares to defend his team, Le Mas. That casts a chill over the taxi. The passengers must be wondering if he might be crazy, vaunting the archenemy of the Meknès team. The driver changes the subject by discussing the price of tomatoes. That calms everyone down. The soldier tells him to pick up the pace a bit: “I’m going to get in trouble with Akka.” Akka seems to be someone important. “You poor fellow!” the driver tells him. The old man sitting behind him chimes in: “Akka is very tough; he frightens everyone—even those who have never met him.” The driver nods in agreement.
El Hajeb was originally a military base.5 My brother looked up its history: Sultan Moulay Hassan, he tells me, had constructed a kasbah in this village to repel the rebel forces of a Berber tribe, the Beni M’tir. The army took over the base and made it into one of the main garrisons of the realm. It was a difficult period, the so-called Siba, which means at the same time revolt, panic, disorder, and chaos. My brother remarks to me in French: “You see how rich Arabic is! The word Siba leads you to so much history.” The driver points out to him that he would do better to speak in Arabic. My brother excuses himself and says nothing more.
The driver drops us off a few yards from some military trucks. I think I see pity in the look he gives me. “May God protect you!” are his parting words. The soldier from the taxi begins to run; we see him salute an officer and disappear.
Before we proceed to the entrance gate, my brother hugs me and I can tell he is crying. He whispers, “My brother, I’m going to leave you in the hands of barbarians without even the right to know why or for how long these people will keep you here. Be brave and if you can, send us news. Write ordinary things, we’ll read between the lines.”
He suggests a few codes for me: “Everything’s fine” means things are going badly; “Everything’s perfectly fine” for “Everything’s going really badly.” “The food is as good as Mama’s cooking” means things in that department aren’t great either. Lastly, for trouble, I must write, “Spring has paid us a visit.” I reassure him, then thank him for coming with me all the way to the camp gate.
LAST MOMENTS OF FREEDOM
Noon. A leaden sun. It’s part of the drama I’m caught up in. My brother is not reassured: he looks all around and I see the sadness in his eyes. He must be remembering the people who disappear. A few months ago, for example, our neighbor stepped outside to speak with two men who had rung his doorbell; he’d gone off with them, and we haven’t seen him since. His wife and children asked my father to help them compose some missing person notices they had then published in the newspapers. People are kidnapped by unknown men; the police investigate but never find them. That’s how the father of my best friend joined the ranks of the disappeared. People see in this the dark hand of General Oufkir; others add, “The Palace has nothing to do with it.” In reality, the king gives carte blanche to his faithful servant to bring order to the country. All those suspected of plotting or being about to plot against the king see their fate arbitrarily and definitively sealed by shadowy men, a kind of secret police who answer only to the general. They say Oufkir has the power to read the thoughts of others. He often arrests people who have done nothing. He was trained by the French during the war in Indochina. No scruples, no second thoughts, an imposing and callous manner. French experts taught him the most depraved techniques of torture. He’s proud of that, it seems. The end justifies the means. Order and discipline before all else. A deeply lined face, a penetrating and inscrutable gaze, skin like the crater of an extinct volcano. They say that Mehdi Ben Barka died under torture: his heart gave out. He refused to answer the questions of flics who specialized in that kind of interrogation. Oufkir is said to have asked to be left alone with him. No words, no questions, but a couple of blows that knocked out a tooth. Mehdi was supposedly hauled up out of his chair and shaken so forcefully, in so tight a grip, that he could not breathe, lost consciousness, and his heart stopped. Oufkir then summoned his team back, the story goes, and ordered them to “get the bathtub ready.” The corpse would have been dissolved in acid, leaving no trace of the leader of the Moroccan opposition. Mehdi Ben Barka’s body has never been found.1 The acid hypothesis seems quite plausible. At night, I would think about that man I’d never met; I felt somehow close to one of his children who must have been about my age, and wondered how he had experienced that tragedy, which had shaken the regime. All those who’d had a hand in the affair were liquidated. Only one escaped death, it seems. The Franco-Moroccan security forces had adopted the methods of the Mafia. At the time, even if General de Gaulle was horrified by what had happened, the police forces of both countries continued to collaborate. My father had not been surprised by that disappearance. I remember hearing him say quietly, after closing the window shutters, “The king could not bear being opposed by his former mathematics teacher; of course he made him disappear. Anyway, don’t ever repeat what I just said! Not a word!”
What is sometimes exasperating is that my father dares to say things while at the same time admitting that he’s afraid. My father is afraid. He isn’t the only one. He passed that fear along to me, and I’m ashamed of it. His cousin, moreover, advised him to be very careful of what he says in public and told him that the police send fake customers into stores to worm information out of shopkeepers. So my father doesn’t discuss any political topics with his clientele. Someone once came by collecting money: “You must contribute, for Palestine.” My father replied, “What proves to me that this money really goes to the Palestinians?” The guy left without another word.
Whenever the press mentioned Mehdi Ben Barka, my father would always say the same thing: “Don’t bother. We’ll never learn the truth about that disappearance. Never.”
Once more, my brother puts his arms around me. “May our parents’ blessing protect you,” he says, and holds me tight, as if we were never going to see each other again, adding, “But the most beautiful protection is that of God.” With these words, he leaves me with a huge fellow, beefy, tall, with a shaved head. The man is polite with my brother, asking after him as if they knew one another, and glancing sympathetically at me he says comfortingly, “Go in peace, your little brother is in good hands.” Then as soon as we’re alone
he hits me in the back and knocks me down. I stand up to find myself between two soldiers who pull me along and shove me into a dark round room with a small opening high in the wall. I lean against the rough wall. I look, carefully, at the ceiling and think I see iron hooks there. I’m convinced that it’s where the condemned are hanged or tortured. I don’t know what will be done with me. I’m hungry. They’ve kept my bag. It’s hot, but at least I’m out of the sun. This room made of adobe is called a tata, a kind of temporary prison cell. The door is locked from the outside. Impossible to escape. The air is stifling; my thoughts grow darker and darker. Actually, they’re not really thoughts, but a strange feeling that everything is now topsy-turvy, no longer in the right place: the living-room ceiling is studded with chairs, couches hang where the mirrors should be, night has been poured into day, and clocks have lost their hands; time has ceased to exist, kidnapped by fleeing convicts, while walls slide along on rails toward other walls stockpiled in a vast hangar where men are shrunk the way heads once were by faraway tribes, shrunk down to the size of rats, yes, human beings have become rats and find that normal. I turn in circles in this solitary confinement as if seeking a human hand, or my brother’s face, as if I were trying not to turn into a rat, animals that have always so horrified me that at the movies I shut my eyes when they appear, that’s how phobic I am about rats, moles, mice. I place my hands on the wall, reassure myself for a few seconds: I am not in a nightmare but imprisoned in a kind of cell where there are no rats and nothing is moving; the walls are solid and I’m solid too—well, almost—and in any case I must become strong and not let myself be overwhelmed by this situation.
Late that night, food is brought to me. I think I will remember all my life the suffocating odor of that heavy yellow sauce: camel fat. No meat; chunks of vegetables and some rock-hard bread. As if the flour has been mixed with chalk. I choose not to swallow anything. I drink water in a plastic glass. I curl up, try to sleep. I hear noise. I smell cheap cigarette smoke; later I’ll learn that soldiers call the cigarettes Troupes. Strangely enough, I’m no longer worried. I await what will come next, gripping my forehead to relieve a migraine. I lean against the wall; a pebble hurts my back. I don’t try to change position. This pain distracts me from the migraine. Headaches, I was born with them, that’s how it is: I don’t remember the first time I had one; it’s an infirmity. I suffer and must get used to this affliction. At times it’s a needle probing my head, at others a jackhammer digging holes.
I’m alone and no one comes to see me. Maybe they’ve forgotten me? My imagination has overtaken my thinking. I see myself in hopeless situations, like running in an infinite white space. The headache returns me to reality. I stand up and walk in sets of ten steps, I turn in circles, tell myself this is the beginning of madness, remember a black-and-white film called The Hill.2 I see myself among those lost men, famished, thirsty, surrounded by mines, moving forward, stepping lightly, I’m afraid of blowing myself up. Hunger. I take a piece of hard bread. I dip it into the yellow sauce and swallow it, holding my nose. I select half a potato and wash it down with water. I almost choke. I cough. Late at night, a soldier opens the door, rushes at me, drags me out by the arm and off to see the colossus who’d received me earlier.
AKKA
“My name is Akka,” he tells me. “Here, I’m in charge: Chief Warrant Officer Akka, don’t forget that name, it has the ring of death about it. We’re going to strip everything civilian from you. Take off those city clothes. All that’s over. A man here’s got to be a man. No fussing with hair, pomade, perfume. Get a move on. Right, fissa! Onna double!”
While I’m undressing, he grabs my hair. A black mop of which I’m very fond. It’s the era of long hair, of rock and the Twist.
“Don’t leave a single one,” he tells the soldier. “He’s got to learn, the punishment begins with the hair.”
“Sir, yes Sir!”
The soldier is trembling. And me, I wonder if I’m going to tremble as well, or faint, laugh, or fight, yell, scream, or shut up and let myself be shorn like a lamb.
Akka leaves. I put on a maroon sweater with short sleeves and pants that are too long. I’m given sandals. They’re too big. I try to walk, they flap. The soldier, shorter than I am, grabs me firmly and sits me down on a wobbly stool, saying, “We’ll see later about the size of the clothes.” He has stopped shaking, and I sense the feeling of superiority his power now gives him. He takes out a pair of scissors and begins cutting off my hair, which falls on my lap, on the floor. There’s a lot of it. I cry silently. I look at this pile of hair and wait for what will come next. The soldier sprinkles my head with water, takes out a razor, slips in a blade and begins shaving my skull. It hurts. A drop of blood slides down my cheek. I don’t say anything. The blade must have been used a few times before. He says reassuringly that I’m the tenth fellow he’s shaved that evening. He takes his time, sweeping the blade back and forth, leaving the odd cut here and there. I don’t move. I smell his strong odor of perspiration. I realize that for him that stink “makes a man.” Everything about him reeks. When he leans toward me, his bad breath envelops me, leaves me a bit dizzy. I venture to ask him if there are showers in the camp. He replies that he prefers to go once a week to the hammam.
After half an hour, the martyrdom is over. The smell of sweat and dirty clothes is nauseating. Wish I could vomit, yet my stomach is almost empty. I don’t dare run my hand over my scalp. I sit there, my head hanging. The soldier returns and tells me that I’ll sleep in the tata that night while awaiting my assignment. He must be my age, a peasant who had no choice but to join the army. I ask him his name.
“Private, Platoon 3.” He collects his gear, spits on the floor, and goes off.
This soldier, whom I nickname Hajjam, speaks Arabic poorly. He must be a Berber.1 He returns, spits on the floor again, and tells me that he’s lost the cigarette butt he quickly stubbed out when Akka showed up. He looks everywhere, but finds no trace of it. I’d offer him a whole pack of American cigarettes, but I don’t smoke, and anyway this isn’t the moment for cadging favors. He takes off again, cursing at city people, and slams the door. Now what do I do with my new situation? Accept it. Difficult. At twenty, one doesn’t simply accept things, one challenges them. I think back to my first political meeting. The year of my baccalaureate. I was discovering a world I knew slightly through my reading and certain films, and this world was boring, so boring. I’d felt like walking out. I didn’t have that courage. The presence of my comrades weighed heavily in the balance. To be labeled a coward or a traitor . . . No, never. A fellow named Faouzi didn’t hesitate, though: he stood up and left, saying, “Good luck, this isn’t for me.” I should add that he was ill and had to take medicine every four hours. He had an excuse, I didn’t. I could have announced, “I’m in love, I’m going off to my sweetheart,” and they would have just ripped me to shreds. That’s what I should have done. But my lack of courage plus my doubts didn’t help me there. Changing the world (on our minor scale) was vital for me, I who had read Rimbaud and a few quotations from Marx. I set aside my fears and stayed at that meeting, which lasted hours. So many words, pretty phrases, promises, and then, nothing. There was also a guy who’d come from Rabat who must have been three or four years older than us. He was in charge of setting up local headquarters in Tangier. A politician through and through. We began the meeting with a minute of silence in memory of Mehdi Ben Barka, who had been his friend. The man knew how to speak, explain, convince, but when he left I was unable to sum up what he’d said. Short, gaunt, the kind of man who devotes his life to a cause because outside of that he’d be good for nothing. I realized that much later. He will not be punished. He will not be among the ninety-four men “punished by the king.” He was practicing politics officially, he had the backing of a party and probably influential support as well. We, we were the cattle.
Akka comes by again. I see him looming, huge, like those monsters encountered in horror movies. He looks me up and down
, says, “There, you’re shedding your civilian status, tomorrow you’ll be a soldier.”
No desire to become a soldier. I say nothing. I sense that one doesn’t argue with this kind of brute.
“We’re going to make a man of you! No bolitics here” (he constantly massacres French), “you were doing bolitics that’s why you’ve come, but no pro’lem, we’ll fix you. Akka has more than one sleeve for his tricks . . . You unnerstan’ that?”
I don’t reply. I leave and look for the tata. They all look alike. Akka rejoins me and begins to chat as if we were friends. He talks about Indochina, his great exploits, the intelligence of the “Chinese”—because to him all Asians are Chinese.
“Tricky devils, they’re small as rats, they run fast, you don’t see them, and then they leap at you and cut your throat. I killed lots of Chinese. They were all over the place. At night when I went into my tata, I’d look under the bed ’case they were hiding there. I’m the one built these tatas here. That’s what I got out of Indochina. Colonel François taught me plenty. A tremendous man. He liked killing the Chinese too. One day he was recalled, sent to Algeria to kill our brothers. Ever since then, I don’t like him anymore. Me, for revenge, I helped out our Algerian brothers. All that’s bolitics.”
The Punishment Page 2