In the tata I sleep on the bare floor. In any case, there’s no bed, but I could have spread out my clothes and slept on them. I’m so tired I fall asleep right away. I don’t have a single dream.
Reveille is at six. I smell something that from afar resembles coffee. Dirty water, hot and tasteless. The bread is as hard as yesterday’s. Luckily there’s a portion of Laughing Cow cheese. I swallow it and lick the paper.
I feel that I have shrunk. Without my hair, I feel stunted, crushed: a bedbug, a plaything for louts. Shorn like a sheep, like someone condemned to death. I remember the story of Samson and Delilah and the power vested in the hero’s hair. No more hair, no more strength. I admit this, I’ve become someone else and must preserve that status or else I’m screwed. What happens to me concerns a different person: I’m a straw man, a stand-in, a shadow, a phantom. I must feel nothing and above all resent nothing; I must not think but accept what happens lightly. I keep telling myself: it isn’t me, it isn’t me. I rub my hand over my scalp, finding scabs of crusted blood. Poor soul, they massacred him. That’s enough—I’m not talking about myself anymore, the other one is here: the hand that glides over the skull is not mine and neither is the skull. I’m busy distancing myself from me, pitching and rolling heavily, drifting toward other waters, I’m no longer there, I’m acting out a farce for myself, a drama in which it’s best to laugh and I run, striving to escape my skin, which hangs on . . . I’m punched in the back. It’s Hajjam, telling me, “Medecal exum rat away.”
MEDICAL EXAM
The doctor, a young Frenchman, is examining the latest recruits. He’s in a foul mood. Irritated not with us but with his military bosses. I strip bare; he examines me, notices a malformation of one of my testicles. He asks me questions. Sometimes I have pain in my left ball. “You must go to the hospital,” he says, and writes down the word epididymis. He decides I should be released. He stamps a form and signs it: exempted. Magic word. All recruits dream about it. In Arabic it’s pronounced xza and it’s enough to let you know you’re free.
“Go home. You’re not fit for service.”
Poor man! He must not know what goes on in this camp. I don’t say anything. I get dressed again. I leave smiling. I have an official document allowing me to go back home. The business with my testicle doesn’t bother me. I don’t feel a thing. Thanks to this screwed-up ball, I’ll be rescued from the camp.
On the way to the captain’s office, I meet Akka. I think, He’s everywhere, he knows everything, he controls everything. I’m afraid.
“Where’re you going?”
“To see Captain Allioua.”
“Why?”
“Because the doctor told me to.”
“He gave you a paper?”
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
He takes the paper upside down, turns it right side up, and says, “Oh, you, ‘xza’?”
I tell him I don’t know.
“Go see the captain, he’ll be happy to have a ‘xza’ this morning.”
Captain Allioua is a man from the North, from Souk-el-Arba, I think. He’s the one who says so: “We’re almost neighbors, you from Tangier and me from Souk-el-Arba.” He seems courteous, a fellow of good family, one can tell he’s been educated, well brought up, and I wonder what he’s doing in the army. He talks to me about his town and his grandmother, who is from the Fez area. I can’t think why he’s telling me all this. Then he comes over to me and speaks more sternly.
“Give me the doctor’s paper. Ah, you’re ‘xza’! It’s good, that is! You’ll be able to go back home, you’re sure lucky. ‘Xza’! And yet you’re rosy-cheeked, look like a stout fellow—but if you’re ‘xza,’ then you’re ‘xza.’ They’re rare, the ‘xza’ guys! It makes me happy to actually see a real ‘xza’ because there are malingerers, little cheats who try to pass for crazy, but I’m not fooled, I send them to a madhouse, and there they really go crazy. You, you’re honest. The Frenchy doctor, he did a good job. You’re ‘xza’! What luck! You’re pleased? Tell me how it feels to be able to escape from this little hell concocted by Chief Warrant Officer Akka, the man with the shaved head . . .”
He starts laughing uproariously, which worries me.
While he’s talking, he tears the medical certificate exempting me from service at the camp into little pieces.
“You see, you’re not ‘xza’ anymore! It’s magic. A minute ago you were ‘xza’ and now you’re not, you faggot. Go on, get out of here,” he says, getting ready to kick me, “and don’t let me see you here again.”
Back at the tata, Akka grabs me: “You’re not ‘xza’ now! It’s not good, too bad. You’re in Platoon 2. You’ll be back with your little friends, the Commies, traitors, fairies . . . We’ll have lots of fun. Remember the Chinese? Well, to me, you lot are little Chinese minus the courage.”
PUNISHED BY HIS MAJESTY
My serial number is 10 366. I remember it even today. All those whose numbers begin with the series 10 300 are men punished by the king. Which wasn’t written down or proclaimed, but the punishment, the correction, the lesson, the bringing to heel, all that is in our heads. What did we do that was so serious? Organize legally; demonstrate peacefully; call for freedom and respect; be who we were, guilty only of naïveté and idealism. It seems we’re not the only ones in that situation. In Egypt, Nasser sends his Marxist opponents into the desert and hands them over to psychopaths for maltreatment.
There are two sections of us, of forty-five and forty-nine members. All of us are students, except for an important official, an agronomic engineer who wound up here after refusing a posting assigned by the Palace, and a university professor suspected of being among the organizers and leaders of the demonstrations of March 23, 1965. The rest of us belong mostly to the various committees of UNEM, a student union known for its leftist orientation. As soon as I saw Akka, I realized how deep the gulf was between us. This was nothing new: faced with compassion and intelligence, power reacts with savagery, stupidity, and degradation. I call upon my literary memories; I don’t know whether I’m faithfully reciting what I’ve read or inventing phrases. I think of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Kafka, Victor Hugo . . .
The noncoms recruited to deal with us all speak a raggedy kind of French, unlike their charges, and they have been ordered to set us back on the correct path, the one determined by the regime. To this end, the security unit of the Ministry of National Defense has drawn up a program of abuse and humiliation. To them, we’re tough nuts. Akka and his acolytes are here to crack us. And the dull blade that shaves our skulls is a first taste of what His Majesty’s soldiers have in store for us.
Scenes from the films of Charlie Chaplin stream through my mind. Why is good ol’ Charlie visiting me in this hole full of dreadful soldiers? I’m laughing inside, pleased to be haunted by the little fellow who manages to make fun of the bullies tormenting him. This genius has avenged millions of persecuted people in this world. There you have it: that was his mission, his intention. Thank you Charlie.
HEAVY STONES OUT IN THE SUN
Camp Commandant Ababou, whom we have not yet seen, has decided to build, three miles to the north of the camp, a wall five hundred fifty yards long and about five yards high. A wall no one needs. An absolutely useless wall, absurd out in the fields, a wall to justify the lugging of big stones by men being punished. Why not be useful and build houses for the peasants whose homes collapse every winter after the rain? Why not truly help people who need assistance, relief?
Why indeed. I stop thinking. We’re in the territory of the absurd: nothing to say, nothing to propose. Ababou must be proud of his lucky find, a wall for nothing, that’s all it is: a wall built up, then torn down. A gratuitous exercise in mistreatment.
A truck delivers piles of dressed stones brought from somewhere outside the camp. We’re given pieces of cloth, about a yard square; we put the stones on them, make a loose knot with the four corners of the material, and carry on our backs a load of up to sixty-five pounds.
The trek is usually made just when the sun is at its hottest. Anyone who falls gets hit with a baton, followed by a few kicks. We have to work fast. They make us hurry along. No water to drink. No stopping. The three miles must be covered within the hour, “on the dub.”
The sergeants in our escort snipe at us: “It’s your fault that we’re getting punished too!” We arrive, we unload. My back hurts; I stretch a little to ease the pain. A sergeant sees me, rushes over and whacks the back of my neck with his baton. I almost collapse for good. He insults me, then spits in the dirt. Silence in the ranks. The guards notice even where we look. Shirts stick to skin. Someone begs for a little water. No water! No question of going back with empty cloths, unburdened: wood and sand must be carried back. We take up new loads and head for the camp. We deliver them—and get new stones to carry off. We’re allowed a small ration of water.
After one week, the wall is built, then immediately torn down. We must take the stones back to camp; trucks are waiting to return them to where they were originally piled. Once more we run, we load up and set out again, still bearing stones on our backs.
This goes on for about two weeks. Only at the end does Commandant Ababou address us all as follows:
“Balkoum! Attention! You’re here to learn to love and respect your country. You’re here to deserve life under this magnificent flag. You’re here to learn and to forget. To learn to obey, serve, learn discipline, respect honor. To forget rabble-rousing, pernicious ideas, cowardice, and idleness. Arriving here, you were weaklings; leaving—if you ever do one day—you will be men, real ones, not those overgrown spoiled children raised on yogurt and imported powdered milk. Here you do not exist, you are a serial number. I have complete rights over you, and you have none. That’s how it is, and anyone who doesn’t like it can just step forward. I’m called Commandant Ababou. I am in charge of this camp. Everything goes through me. Chief Warrant Officer Akka here present is my second-in-command. He is me when I am not here. I do not advise you to annoy him, still less to disobey him. He knows only force, blows, barbarity that would reduce anyone at all to the level of an animal. Understood? Dismissed!”
Just before he shouts “dismissed,” an unfortunate soul steps forward. The commandant beats him bloody with his baton, kicks him until he collapses, and tears into him, insulting his mother, father, and all his ancestors. The sweating commandant froths at the mouth, yelling, lost in his frenzy. Akka intervenes, managing to put an end to the suffering of the hapless fool who dared step forward in protest.
Ababou is of medium height, rather burly, a hard case with sharp, shining eyes, a firm step and unhesitating manner. He walks off as if nothing has happened. Two soldiers take the other man off to the infirmary. A couple of broken ribs and a tooth knocked out. We are frightened but not surprised. No comment necessary. Anyway, we’re probably watched, overheard, and would be denounced at the slightest thought of protest. Ababou reads our minds.
We have understood the lesson. We are there to obey and be quiet, to keep our heads down and stand at attention at the snap of an order.
I look around me. We are all dismayed and paralyzed with fear. This is a feeling radically unlike any other we have known. Here: violence, blows, blood, and perhaps death. We are surrounded by hatred and inhumanity. These soldiers must have been chosen with care; perhaps they went looking for recruits in psychiatric hospitals. How could our army be a machine to punish and brutalize? Yet Akka and his acolytes are proud of their role. I feel fear in my belly, and it will be there for a good long time. At twenty, no one wants to set his life on fire and provoke a madman capable of massacring us all. In this camp we are isolated from the world. No way to call for help, no one will hear us, nobody will come save us. Isolated camp, territory off-limits. Many families were told that we are performing our military service. But no one is fooled. Before our arrest, there was no such obligation. They invented it to disguise their attempt to reform young people a touch too lively for their taste who dared protest against unfair and immoral decisions from the National Ministry of Education. It’s the first time the regime has felt challenged. The monarchy isn’t used to that. We are here to set an example.
The rotten grub they feed us makes me sick. So I avoid eating. Nevertheless, since yesterday I’ve had painful diarrhea. The most disgusting place in the camp is the toilets, the Turkish kind. A hole. Now and then a rat pops out, terrified. I scream. I hold out as long as I can to avoid that horrible latrine.
Some heed nature’s call out in nature. If caught, however, they risk going to prison. We hear that the officers’ mess hall has clean toilets. It’s forbidden territory, surrounded by the aromas of good cooking, but we haven’t the right even to pause there, still less go inside. A fellow prisoner rubs his index finger against his thumb to suggest a bribe: if we give baksheesh to the soldier at the entrance during off-hours, he’ll let us shit decently, if we can hang on until the guard whistles an all-clear. We’re all ready to pay to shit in peace!
Corruption reigns everywhere, including in this wretched camp. But one must be incredibly careful.
There’s one fellow among us with very white skin and almost no beard. He is occasionally summoned by one of the officers, then returns an hour or two later. What does he do when he’s absent for so long? Is he a spy for the officer? He refuses to answer our questions, so we decide to give him the silent treatment. One day, we suddenly understand: he gets fucked by the lieutenant. When one of us mentions it to him he starts crying like a child caught misbehaving. He cries so much that we leave him in peace. Someone even remarks, “He might be useful to us.” We’re still mistrustful of him, but openly sympathetic. It’s nobody’s fault if he likes to sleep with the lieutenant. That’s his business. As long as he doesn’t become a snitch.
MANEUVERS IN THE RAIN
Sembly at four o’clock. Rivail awakens us at three. Paktage pri means backpack ready, sakado compli—full kit—at three-thirty. Always the same orders, shouted by an illiterate corporal sent here to humiliate students, intellectuals. Today it’s Hajjam, the one who shaved my scalp when I arrived. Having a head like a cue ball is part of the program. As is addressing us in ridiculous and sloppy French.
Our barracks of a hundred “soldiers” is commanded by each of us in turn. Abdenebi, a thin and intelligent fellow, takes over. He’s doubtless a militant, a Communist. In any case he takes his role quite seriously, clearly displaying the discipline acquired in a Party cell. Nothing wishy-washy. He has put on a military uniform and behaves exactly like the soldiers whose mission is to make us eat dirt. He warns us, “Lights out at twenty-one hours. I want everyone standing at the foot of his bed at three. As for the rest, Corporal Hmidouch has already informed you just now.” This guy knows the name of the noncommissioned officer I call Hajjam! I wonder about his surprising ability to take on the persona of a leader. Maybe Abdenebi is the kind of person who likes to give orders, to command, lead, be obeyed, brook no dissent . . .
I don’t see myself leading this troop. I’m allergic to being in charge. What pleasure is there in giving orders and seeing oneself obeyed? That doesn’t interest me, and at the same time I detest being ordered around. I’ve always loved not only freedom, but fantasy and caprice, whereas order scares me. Disorder as well. I need to feel free enough to dream, imagine, dance around in my head, break ranks, shun all labels, be unpredictable, elusive. Rimbaud’s poetry opened my mind and gave me the courage to dream, but I’ve no talent for playing a soldier or an officer giving orders.
Short night. Uneasy night. Sleepless, dreamless night. I breathe slowly to relax. I imagine huge butterflies crossing a wheat field. I see a mermaid gliding delicately across the surface of the sea, a sea so calm, so blue, so beautiful. I see myself in summertime beneath an olive tree, composing poems. I reach out to touch the grass. I look up at the sky, and stars streak swiftly away. I summon the image of my fiancée and I caress her. I feel nothing. My libido is at dead zero. Then the smell of the sleepers around me br
ings me back to reality. Designed for about forty beds, the barracks contains well over twice that number. All these men in such a small space foul the air with thick odors. People do seem to get used to anything, so I have to put up with the suffocating stench of sweat. There’s no point in complaining, anyway: this isn’t a hotel or a cemetery, it’s a boot camp where we are to endure both physical and psychological punishment. And because we are spoiled children, we must be ruthlessly disciplined. Even though I and many of my comrades come from poor backgrounds, the soldiers glare at us with hatred, jealous of the simple fact that we have had some higher education.
Where are they taking us? Why all these preparations? We have no right to ask questions. It’s forbidden to make inquiries, forbidden to speak up—this isn’t a camp meeting. Gathering together is forbidden. No right to form little groups. Forbidden to sigh, to make a remark, forbidden to look annoyed, forbidden to burst out laughing. They think we’re making fun of them. Our demeanor must be neutral, an attitude of submission. No discussion. Abdenebi is on the other side: he walks and talks like the career soldiers, he’s acquiring a taste for this role, reviewing our ranks with an air of contempt like a real captain; he’s playing, it amuses him, he is happy. He still thinks he can profit from the situation. Later I’ll learn that this young man will join the army and die in the Sahara in an attack by mercenaries fighting for Algeria.
I ask my parents silently for their blessing, I pray to God and his Prophet, I pray to the heavens and the stars, I pray to the forests and the sea, to flowerbeds and kitchen gardens, and I count the minutes. I look neither to the right nor to the left. I am what Akka wishes me to be: a submissive soldier on the way to becoming a man! I was unaware that our parents had turned us into half-men. Akka is there to finish the job. We ought to thank him, perhaps kiss his hand, raise a statue to him in the center of the camp, but the commandant would not approve. I imagine Akka as a granite statue, set upside down on the ground, feet pointing toward the sky. I imagine his boss Ababou ordering that the sculptor be arrested and the artwork shattered into a thousand pieces. Here, we don’t joke around. Here, we don’t create. We don’t invent. All imagination is forbidden. Here, we obey, that’s it, that’s all.
The Punishment Page 3