Four in the morning. We’re ready. It’s raining buckets. Both platoons are lined up, MAS-36 rifles at parade rest, knapsacks on our backs, weighing about twenty-five pounds. Stale bread is distributed, to be eaten on the spot with some cheese. “Chicafé,” made from coffee beans and chickpea flour, is served in metal cups. Revolting. I won’t risk a tongue-lashing and blows from the corporal just because the coffee is undrinkable. I drink it anyway and say nothing. My face a blank. Not even a tiny twitch. I dip the bread in the blackish liquid and swallow. A lieutenant arrives and inspects us. We remove our helmets and he runs a baton over our scalps to make sure they’ve been properly shaved. If they haven’t, he strikes the soldier’s head sharply and demands his serial number for punishment, adding, “No one puts anything over on Lieutenant Marzouk!” And I wonder, Whatever would I want to try? Fooling him? Treating him like an idiot? I would never dream of playing around with men like this, who are so insecure about their virility. Okay, you’re the biggest, the best, the one with real balls. And so? So what!
We’re lined up neatly under the pounding rain. Wet through. We are completely soaked. The water is running down right between shirt and skin. It’s cold. We mustn’t show that we’re miserable, mustn’t shiver, feel faint. No, we stand in the rain and we do not flinch. Now that is a soldier in the process of hominization. We are not pushovers, milksops, coddled brats, gobblers of “gazelle horn” pastries, flabby bodies wrapped in fat and smothered with affection; we are no longer fakes, see-through men.
Our humanity is rudely tested. I keep mine at the bottom of my soul. I promise myself not to give in, to resist this savagery imposed as a virtue. I think, This is ridiculous, it’s all rubbish, like a really bad movie. My ideas are growing confused. A sign of deep fatigue.
I think again about our humanity. The day before, I’d spent some time reading the scribblings on the latrine walls. These soldiers suffer in silence. I noticed a few expressions more interesting than those about “the biggest dick in El Hajeb”: “this isn’t a life”; “I dream about living”; “I’m cutting off a finger to get out of here”; “may God curse the army”; “Akka is Satan”; “Akka fucks the commandant”; “no future”; “hell is here”; “to die . . .”; “jump on a bomb”; “long live liberty”; “better to croak than give up your ass”; “strawberries and sugar”; “fuck it!”; “God is great”; “God has forgotten us”; “Ababou is a shrimp” . . .
Another lieutenant shows up. “Balkoum!” He explains to us that we’ll be participating in some maneuvers. Our side is the green group. We have to beat the red group. The fight will be tough. “Get ready for some real battles. This time there are no blanks, there were none in the armory, so watch out! This isn’t a game. This is serious. This is how you become a man.” They certainly know a whole lot about what is and isn’t a man.
Before leaving, he adds these last chilling remarks: “The law permits a fatality rate of 2 percent. In your case, it can rise to 5 percent. You’ve been warned. Repeat the Shahada: ‘There is no God . . . but God . . . and Muhammad is his Prophet.’” We repeat this profession of faith that all Muslims must make at the approach of death. This dramatic scene has been well crafted. The possibility of death at the end of this long day has us all petrified.
Silence in the ranks. I’m scared. The rain keeps falling harder. Every stitch of me is wet. I feel the water run down my back, over my buttocks, come back out over my feet. I’m quaking. To die in the rain for nothing. Wanting a warm drink, even hot water, that would do it.
At five o’clock we set out. The sky is black, the rain our constant companion. We walk for two hours. We’re far from the camp. We reach the mountains. They tell us that the enemy is on the other side and can attack at a moment’s notice. Our lieutenant decides that we will attack first. He sets an example, throwing a grenade that explodes. Shots ring out. It’s war. I’m more and more certain that these maneuvers are a trap so that the army can get rid of us. We look at one another; some comrades agree with me, while others—the “political” prisoners—assure us that they’d never be able to get away with that. No time to think, speak, we have to run and hide, to shoot in any direction whatever. It’s still raining. I think of a song by that master chansonnier Jacques Brel in which he talks about death in the winter. Dying, for whom, for what? That thought puts me in a frenzy: I set off running at top speed, I fall and get up, keep running, and stash myself behind a tree. A pal joins me. He says it’s a game, that the bullets are blanks. I’m not sure. Why warn us about the possibility of 5 percent of us dying? They’ve got the law on their side. Our families know nothing of what we’re going through; they think we’re doing the usual military service of civilized countries. They have no idea of the masquerade the king’s army has found to eliminate us. A few more shots are fired. Our other companions join us. We’re told someone has been wounded. I look at my friend: “A real bullet, pal!”
At that point, we decide that we won’t let ourselves get picked off like sitting ducks. Toward ten o’clock, fifteen minutes’ rest. They give us coffee and bread. The lieutenant tells us that the other side has a few wounded and perhaps one dead. He’s using a walkie-talkie. Speaking in code. The rain has stopped. We’re floundering in mud. The backpack is even heavier from the rain.
Fear has become a strange courage. As I walk I compose a poem in my head. I promise myself to write it down if I survive. I don’t know why, but in those terrible moments I think of the girl I love and who left me. I forgive her and would like to see her one last time. To hold her, feel her close, bury my face in her lovely long hair, breathe in her perfume, kiss the eyes she would close when she gave herself, and above all, I would say nothing: no words, no reproaches. I’d like to lay her down on the grass and cover her body with kisses, knowing that it would be the last time we’d see each other. The idea haunts me. A last rendezvous, a last kiss, one last time, the way the condemned man awaits the sunrise to advance blindfolded to his fate. I feel tears welling up, but I hold them back. Who hasn’t dreamed one day of experiencing a last embrace, the final sentence in a love story that is banal—and yet so moving?
I decide to be content with memories, to spread them out before me and contemplate them sadly. Disturbing images invade my little scenario. It’s her, always her, in the arms of another, laughing gaily, running along the empty beach of Tangiers, letting down her hair before falling onto the sand, waiting for her lover to come take her. I drive all that out of my head and turn toward a different horizon.
My head is full of things from books and movies, filling me with energy and the desire not to get myself killed. I’m wiped out. All strength gone. I collapse. I’m lugged away and left sitting against a tree. A sergeant shows up, calls me a wimp; I don’t reply. Another sergeant gives me an orange tablet to chew, it must be vitamin C. I get up and follow the others.
Noon, lunch break. Sardines in oil, Laughing Cow, and a tablet of bitter chocolate. I check the expiration date on the sardine tin: well past, of course. I have the feeling I’m in for a stomachache. “Given how long we’ve been eating food too rotten even for pigs,” my neighbor tells me, “we’ve got to be immune.” He belches and polishes off my sardines. Then there’s a great disturbance; something serious seems to have happened. Maybe some soldiers really have been killed. A doctor’s jeep—we can tell from his red beret—flashes by. Real bullets. Real death.
The maneuvers end at around four. Cease firing! Back to camp! But in what condition?
Wiped out. Soaked to the bone, starving, brutalized, pushed to our last limits of resistance. We have no other clothes to change into. We strip and hang our fatigues to dry in the barracks. Everyone’s shaken, apprehensive. At rock bottom. Abdenebi calls the roll. Two soldiers are missing. He starts over. Full assembly. One of the two men was in the latrines, he arrives clutching his belly. Abdenebi lashes into him viciously, then goes to inform the lieutenant, who reports to Chief Warrant Officer Akka, who murmurs into the ear of Commandant Ababou.
A man is missing. I don’t know who it is. Perhaps he took advantage of the mayhem during the battle to run away.
That evening, full camp assembly, the punished men and the others, the volunteers and professional soldiers. As in a perfor mance, all is organized by a masterly hand. Silence in the ranks. The sky is black. The trees utterly still. The surrounding mountains are asleep. Commandant Ababou arrives, followed by his lieutenants. Akka steps off to one side to observe the scene. A leaden silence. A menacing darkness. The air is immobilized. Nothing moves. Suddenly a crow flies over the courtyard.
Attention! A speech from on high:
“The maneuvers were a success. Only five wounded and three dead. But there are no wounded” (he hammers out these words), “there are no dead. No one died, you hear me, no one died today. Dismissed! A hot dinner will be served to you.”
We never learned who those wounded and dead men were. As for the fellow hurt in our group, he disappeared. Word was that he was moved to the Mohammed V military hospital in Rabat.
From that day forward, I understand who Commandant Ababou really is and what he’s willing to do. Impulsive, bad-tempered, determined, heartless. A callous and cold-blooded soldier who aspires to become a legend.
He is a time bomb.
I ask my brother at home to send me a paperback book, the biggest one possible. Three months later, I receive a doorstop nine hundred pages long. I go off somewhere to open it by myself: Ulysses, by James Joyce. My brother has added a note saying, “There’s nothing bigger. You’ve got at least a month’s worth of reading!” It must be a novel about travel. I read the jacket copy: the story takes place during one day in Dublin, June 16, 1904. Leopold Bloom and Dedalus walk around the city . . . I wonder what it has to do with the Odyssey. That very evening I plunge into the doorstop. I feel lost, yet happy to have a friend, a new companion. I don’t understand where the novel is going, I read it slowly, as if it had been written for lovers of literature deprived of their liberty. When I think back about this book now, I remember the emotions of stolen moments, of secret reading, and the joy, the pleasure I felt. I didn’t really care about understanding what I was reading: I was reading to read. I adored devouring those pages, so well written, in those surroundings utterly devoid of any trace of culture and intelligence.
MOHAMMED V HOSPITAL
Rumors are going around. Ababou is in hot water. Akka as well. The mistreatment has gone too far. It seems that General Driss Ben Omar is not happy. And that there were more than three dead. Our food has been slightly improved. No more rotten meat in camel fat. We even had some chicken for the first time. It smelled a bit but was edible. Someone in the mess hall told us he’d never seen that before: “The army buys products no longer fit for consumption—I even think they get them free, and the proof they’re dangerous is that we get batches of drugs to add to the cooking pots.” With our grub money the commandant must be buying cases of wine, fine imported foods, crates of fresh fruits and vegetables. Then he calls in some Chikhates and throws parties on the backs of the punished men.1
We know that our health is of little importance. We are here to follow orders and to regret what we did in civilian life. But what did we do wrong? Protest, oppose, demonstrate? We didn’t break shop windows, didn’t loot or steal, we simply cried out against inequality, injustice, repression. As my father says, “We’re not in Denmark.” No, we’re in a beautiful country monopolized by a king and his henchmen. They are many and varied, these people who serve the monarchy by groveling on their bellies, forsaking all dignity, and they want all our people to grovel with them, like a doormat or at best a rug on which the monarch wipes his feet.
“I was twenty. I won’t let anyone say that it’s the best time of one’s life.” Like a neon sign flashing on and off, the opening of Paul Nizan’s Aden Arabie keeps running through my thoughts.2
Yes, I’m twenty and I don’t know if I’ll ever get out of this hell. I say that over and over, I think of my parents who have had no news of me, I think of the woman I love who must now be with someone else. And yet our meeting was a coup de foudre, a marvel, a passion. We were about the same age; she was just six months younger. We loved each other in frustration, for we had to be careful. People talk, and gossip maliciously.
One day while we were kissing under a tree in a field outside the city, some kids began throwing stones and insulting us. I protected her as we fled. A week before my arrest, her father came to see mine, and my father often told me what he said: “Your son is seeing my daughter. It’s one thing or the other: either this is serious and we draw up the contract, or it’s a passing fancy and tell your son not to come near my daughter again.” Her father was tall, rather imposing, and exceedingly solemn. I convinced my parents to offer the marriage proposal. Papers were signed. We were officially engaged. For the first time we strolled in the city holding hands, and we had orange juice on the terrace of the Café Pino. A strange absence . . . An odd thought: I miss her, yet she doesn’t belong to me.
We must surely be thought of as dead or disappeared. If things keep on like this, I’ve planned to die. It’s the first time suicide has crossed my mind. I remember the words of Christian Pacoud, a poet who said he lived “with death slung across my chest.” An idea to keep from going around in circles: consider the right to kill oneself before humiliation becomes unbearable. I know that Islam forbids taking one’s own life. All religions condemn suicide. An act of defiance against the Creator. A challenge to God. My religious fervor is quite faint. No one here talks about Islam. There is no mosque in the camp. Of course: we’re considered miscreants. We’re not good citizens: daring to protest is like daring to be an atheist or agnostic.
On the way to training exercises one day, I saw a soldier meant to die, buried in the sand up to his neck, facing the sun. The sight terrified and revolted me. What had this wretch done to deserve that agony? He disobeyed Akka, that’s all we knew.
The heat is horrid. I’m dizzy. I stumble and get up again. Tell myself I have to carry on. That unfortunate soldier hadn’t the strength left even to cry.
I fall ill. High fever. Shivering. At the infirmary, they give me some pills. A friend from Tangiers is in desperate shape. He’s been taken to Rabat. My fever passes but leaves me with diarrhea. No appetite. I eat only bread dunked in the awful coffee. I have acquired the bad habit of eating really fast. Gulping rather than eating. I have myself put on the sick list a few days in a row to avoid work. After the fatigue duty with the stones, they came up with a painting assignment: whitewashing all the tatas. I feel weaker and weaker. With vertigo. I have trouble staying on my feet for long. I figure I’ll die without ever seeing my parents and brothers again, without speaking to my fiancée, without glimpsing the sea. I’ll die on a bed of stones . . . It’s because I’m sick that I’m dwelling on my fiancée and her betrayal. At twenty, one doesn’t count on eternal love. She was too pretty, too lively, a little too flighty to wait patiently. It’s through absence that one discovers the intensity of love or its ravages. But I mustn’t let myself sink into melancholy and despair.
My pal from Tangiers comes back, restored to health. He tells me that the hospital in Rabat is a comfy refuge. I get thinner. With intermittent fevers. I consult a doctor and end up with the French one I first saw, who doesn’t recognize me. I remind him of my visit, the business with the left testicle. Then he remembers. I tell him about the ill treatment and abuse that victimize us. He lowers his voice: “I know.” I ask if he can send me to the Mohammed V hospital. He makes a phone call, then writes me a prescription and a letter. “Tomorrow, in theory, you’re leaving.” I can remember his face but not his name anymore.
I travel from El Hajeb to Rabat in a military truck delivering some kind of merchandise. I don’t ask any questions. The driver smokes nonstop. When he isn’t smoking, he’s chatting in Berber with a friend. Me, I’m sitting on a crate having trouble staying upright. I can see the landscape through a hole in the canvas top. Cows and sheep are in t
he fields; I envy them. They’re free. My stomach hurts. I vomit all over the merchandise. The driver’s pal curses me. I say nothing.
Once at the hospital, the driver and his pal leave me in the truck, telling me not to move. An hour later they return with an orderly who signs some papers. I get out and into the hands of that man in white, who offers me coffee and some bread dipped in olive oil.
“Did you go on the recent maneuvers?” he asks me.
“Yes.”
“You’re lucky, you didn’t die!”
No, I didn’t die, and it was indeed a question of luck, a stroke of good fortune. I feel free even though I know I have no right to. In front of a desk, I see a woman in white talking on the phone and laughing. I wish I could call my mother, just hear the sound of her voice, reassure her, tell her everything’s fine . . . The orderly understands what I want.
“Mustn’t dream of that, my friend, you’re not allowed to use the telephone, and neither am I, actually.”
Ever since that day, I’ve had great respect for that apparatus: I researched the man who invented it and I dream of writing his story. The inventor of the telephone was an Italian named Antonio Meucci, not Alexander Graham Bell, as we are taught. What does it matter, it wasn’t an Arab! I remember my mother calling that thing set up close to her bed “the little black slave.” “I adore its music,” she used to tell me, “even if this tiny trickster doesn’t always bring good news.”
The Punishment Page 4