One morning, I lose my temper with a big fellow who’s particularly obsequious with the officers. He comes over to needle me simply because I’m from the city of Fez. He’s from Marrakesh, and insults me up and down:
“Fezzy, whitey, tricky Jew, plus the Fezzies were old Jewish converts, pesty Fezzy, lousy Fezzy . . .”
No desire to reply. The fist shoots out, the guy falls down, gets up threatening revenge, then the incident is closed. My first and last scuffle. While physical violence doesn’t solve a thing, I am surrounded by people who know nothing else. Physical challenges to test our strength and resistance feature heavily in our reprogramming, of course, but there are also sessions of humiliation, like the days we spend supervised by illiterate noncoms who jabber like bandits, and various reminders that our lives depend on a psychopathic warrant officer and an utterly unscrupulous commandant. But the worst of the torments is that we don’t know how long we’ll be here, or even if we’ll ever be released. Even mentioning the subject is painful. One of our number is a chubby guy who plays the simpleton and raves, says he has visions and comes from a family of clairvoyants. One day he falls into a trance, chanting, “No way out, no way out . . .” He claims the camp will be our cemetery. Says he’s seen coffins dancing in the courtyard!
We are the ninety-four punished, from very different horizons, with diverse habits and traditions, ninety-four young men all arrested the same day with the order “no exceptions,” signed by General Oufkir. Fouad, however, a member of the executive committee of UNEM, was quickly freed because his father worked as an informer for the police in Rabat. He is the only one who escaped the punishment. He was, it seems, summoned by an N.C.O. at the Ministry of Defense who scolded him mightily, then pumped him for information about his comrades. Father and son snitches. Another of us saw his detention turn into hospitalization. His name was Zdidane. He was half crazy, became hysterical and uncontrollable when he heard the word asel, “honey.” Contorting his face, he would scream and lash out at anything within reach. Asel, masel (honey-like), assila (little honey), all honey words drove him mad. He often avoided us, afraid of being provoked by a sadist. One day, a sergeant fed up with his hysteria told a soldier to keep saying the accursed word to him. The poor man fainted, was sent to the infirmary and issued earplugs, but became increasingly irascible and violent. The doctor finally sent him to the military hospital in Rabat, where he finished out his months of captivity.
We reach our destination early in the afternoon. It’s very cold. I get out of the truck feeling groggy. We’re at the top of a mountain, with snow not far away. What is this place called? We line up, our packs on our backs, and wait in front of a big white building. A school or a prison? We’re waiting for someone in charge. Suddenly I see the noncoms and lieutenants bustling. Then the commandant of the premises arrives. He’s a playboy. Sunglasses, impeccable uniform. “Balkoum!” We’re all at attention, stock still.
No speech. He walks up and down the ranks. He’s wearing a pungent, spicy scent. That is the first time I smell that perfume. He takes his time, he studies our faces, pouts a bit, then disappears. This is our new commandant.
AHERMOUMOU
We are in Ahermoumou, north of Taza. The building to which we’ve been transferred is a military training academy for noncoms and officers. “The army is thinking about our future,” someone remarks. Yes, a wonderful future. We’ve left the Stone Age of the camp at El Hajeb for a slightly more modern period. But the treatment is the same. We’re supposed to suffer, as Akka has so often told us. A sergeant assigns us to rooms with four beds. The view is superb. A forest, a snowy mountain in the distance, pure air. The fact that we’re no longer herded into a single room indicates considerable progress in our story. Dinner is served in a dining hall. Decent but insufficient food. The bread is still the same: as tough as a tire. It must be the trademark of the Royal Army. At the end of the corridor are the showers and toilets. They look clean, and they’re nothing like what we went through at El Hajeb.
The next day, the commandant has us assemble in the courtyard. He reviews the ranks again, checks with his baton to see if our heads are well shaved, then slips it into one of his pockets. And suddenly orders us to return immediately to our rooms and sew our pockets shut.
“Here, there’s no question of you putting your hands in your pockets, it’s strictly forbidden; here no one strolls, saunters, walks, one does everything on the double. Anyone who walks is subject to a week in prison, and our prison is no piece of cake. Moreover, to start things off, tomorrow at five o’clock you will all try it out.
“I continue: here you have reached a superior level. Everything will be superior: the military training, the exercises, the food, and the punishments as well. Don’t count on any heat: men afraid of the cold are not men at all. It’s freezing and your gray blankets are thin. Reveille is at six; calisthenics at six-fifteen; breakfast at seven-thirty; work begins at eight. Whatever the temperature, you will always assemble in sandals, short pants, and a sweater. Anyone wearing a T-shirt under his sweater will be punished. All cheating will be dealt with severely. Here we are soldiers, not petit bourgeois mama’s boys. No weaklings in my school. My orders are to make you flinch, and you will, count on it—and on me, Commandant Hamadi.”
Tall, svelte, and even refined, Commandant Hamadi is a born actor. His gestures are studied, his poses and silences worthy of the Actors Studio. Pointedly dramatic and effective communication. Perhaps he’s really an actor sent by headquarters to frighten us, make us worry. There’s a run-up to each of his appearances. Rumors circulate: the commandant is coming; the commandant is going to make a speech . . . He doesn’t show up. Our waiting, perfectly calculated. The perfection of his French raises him above the crowd, a sign of his university education. What is he doing in this place?
The next morning at five, without any breakfast, we are indeed all locked up. In a kind of hangar even colder than our rooms. The walls sweat with moisture; no beds, no straw pallets, just icy cement. Clinging together to keep warm? Forbidden. I shiver and silently endure this new torture, going off to one side to lean my head against the wall. Hurting all over, I suddenly think of praying. I don’t know why, but reciting a sura of the Qur’an learned by heart when I was a kid helps me endure this little taste of the hell awaiting us. I continue with Rimbaud and feel better. I was a poor student in Qur’anic school, memorizing verses without understanding their meaning, and I would never have thought that one day these verses would come to my rescue in such unusual circumstances. I have a fantastic memory. It’s definitely my best friend, even though bad memories sometimes take me by surprise and bring me pain.
We’re released from the hangar at around seven that evening. Fourteen hours of arbitrary imprisonment, simply to show us what awaits our disobedience or protests. Commandant Hamadi is well known, it seems, for his exploits in Indochina. He, too, was in the French army in the fifties. He must know Akka. He is also said to be a nephew of General Oufkir. I had not known that gratuitous cruelty was hereditary.
I line up to take my first shower since leaving El Hajeb. The water is cold. We wash ourselves with Tide, a dishwashing detergent powder. I’ve hated that brand ever since, with its large T inscribed within several circles.
Our second dinner is a nice surprise: salad, meat, vegetables. A real meal. Right away, I’m suspicious: if the menu is an improvement, it’s because the next correction will be harsher.
I share the room with three other punished men: a pal from Fez, another from Kenitra,1 and a nice fellow named Salah, quiet, a country man, not a student. He possesses an object I find very interesting: a Philips transistor radio. How was he able to get one and above all, to hide it throughout our time at El Hajeb? He listens to music under the blanket. As for me, I want to hear the news. He lends me the radio in return for my help writing a letter to his family. Since we get along, I ask him why he’s among the punished.
He was a shepherd from Beni Mellal, in central Morocco
, and was arrested for selling sheep without a permit during Aïd el-Kébir.2 He is astonished that we others were detained simply for demonstrating. He himself is rather content to be here, saying that it’s a lot better than his sheepfold. Some evenings he lends me his radio. I park it against my ear and search out foreign stations for news of the world. I have known nothing for months. I come across a foreign station talking about a young French philosopher arrested in Bolivia because he was a friend of Che Guevara. I learn his name: Régis Debray.3 He has been in prison for several months. In 1961 I’d followed the ups and downs of the Cuban Revolution during the Bay of Pigs crisis. The fate of this philosopher interests me. I wonder what he was doing in Latin America, why he had felt the need to actually join a revolution so far from his homeland. I figure that Bolivian prisons are as rotten as Ahermoumou’s.
I reflect that man is born evil and persists in it because it’s the only way he has found to gain power over others. I can see Commandant Hamadi as a Bolivian colonel interrogating Régis Debray. He applies torture even before asking any questions; for him it’s a heads-up maneuver, like his imprisonment of us for an entire day. I immediately feel great sympathy for this French philosopher courageous enough to put his ideas and ideals into practice. I think of him and his family and imagine the despair of his loved ones. I hunt for more information on other stations. Before going to sleep, I turn off the radio and stash it under the covers. It’s out of the question to get caught with such a thing.
In the mornings we attend classes in military matters taught by lieutenants who also speak French correctly. Discipline. Silence in the ranks. We are terrorized for no clear reason. Again I ask myself, Will we stay here forever? For a few months? To be sent somewhere else? To go fight in Algeria? We don’t know anything. The lieutenants are as terrified as we are. Commandant Hamadi doesn’t joke around with the rules. We all live under his dictatorship, even if we don’t often see him.
Our anguish grows. We have passed from elementary brutality to something else again, something disquieting. Among ourselves we call Hamadi the Aribi, which means “the hero of the film.”
ON SOPHISTICATED BRUTALITY
Collective punishment. A windowpane in the commandant’s residence has been broken. Who could have done that? No one. With his maréchal’s baton under his arm, the commandant screams, “I don’t even want to know who the guilty person is; you are supposed to keep watch on one another; this lack of vigilance shall be punished by exposure for four hours during an entire week. This is a sample of what I can make you undergo.” Exposure of what? We glance at one another and wonder what will be exposed and where.
That evening, a sergeant gives us the following orders: tomorrow morning, four o’clock, sweaters, shorts, and sandals, all of us mustered at attention in the courtyard. Remain standing, motionless. Anyone who falls will be picked up and punished even more severely.
We talk in low voices. Warily. In every group, there is always a spy. We don’t say what we think. After all, we’re politicals. We value secrecy and resistance.
It’s February; at night the temperature drops below freezing. The cold drills itself into bodies. Pockets, sewn closed. Hands freeze. It starts with benumbed ears, the tip of the nose, the fingers. Stay on your feet, rigid, without weakening, resist. No one is used to this cold. The sergeants who watch us wear warm clothes. They smoke. They drink coffee from a thermos.
What does one think of when the body is icy cold? One doesn’t think. Ideas freeze up. No one dreams. We watch minutes and hours go by, very slowly. A first one crumples. The two sergeants pull him up, slap him awake; he straightens up, tries to stay on his feet. Another falls. Same reaction from the guards. I have an idea: what if we all collapse at once? I think better of that right away. The commandant is capable of having us crushed by trucks. After all, who cares about our fate aside from our families, who have no way of knowing what’s happening to us? I picture my father going to see one of his Melilla friends, now a general, to beg him to release me. I wasn’t imagining things; he did that. I will learn this the day I receive a letter from my father. One has the right to send a single letter and to receive the reply. One letter, no more. Perused, of course, by the commandant’s censors. My father writes to me, “I saw your uncle Hadj Muhammad from Melilla; he is tired, no longer goes in to the office.” I understand. This uncle had gone to war with Franco against the republicans. They called him the Spaniard. He was the son of a black woman his father had brought back from Senegal, where he had some commercial business. The Spaniard was black as well and had the same name as my father.
My knees hurt. The back of my neck is stiff; my fingers feel dead. I will not fall down. Must not waver, weaken, give in. I will not be slapped. I think of my ex-fiancée. Tears well up, not because of her, but from the cold searing my eyelids. She left me, deceived and betrayed me. Akka must be behind that punishment as well. It must have been part of his plan. I imagine him whispering things in my fiancée’s ear to aggravate my situation. This is insane! The stress I’m under is playing tricks on me . . .
I remain on my feet.
At eight, we hear a thunderous “Raha!” At ease. We disperse slowly, as if wounded in war, seeking a place to get warm and sleep. They serve us bread and coffee. I’m shaking because I feel my nerves giving way. Fatigue leaves me with no voice, no recourse.
That day aged us all. The smiling, happy face of my fiancée is now my constant companion.
In the days that follow, they subject us to the same treatment. As it happens, the temperature goes up a few degrees. The punishment becomes commonplace. At the end of the week, Commandant Hamadi comes to speak to us about serious events that might develop at any time. “You must be ready! The enemy gives no warning, but we—we await them resolutely! We will soon be visited by a superior officer who will talk to you about what might happen. To return to the present: those who gave in to the cold and collapsed will pull fatigue duty for one month. Dismissed!”
What’s this business about an enemy? Algeria is called a “brother country” in the press and the two heads of state exchange congratulatory telegrams on holidays, so why go inventing an enemy? Probably to keep us occupied. You need an objective in the army. Apparently, ours is to beat Algeria. Absurdity is built into the program.
The fasting month of Ramadan is here. How are we going to continue the training, the firearms instruction, the gratuitous punishments? The problem of the moment, however, is Marcel. That confounded Marcel! That funny, unobtrusive fellow who knows hundreds of dirty jokes about Arabs and Jews, who speaks an Arabic dialect with a slight accent like a lisp, that foolhardy Marcel dares to speak up to Commandant Hamadi during an inspection review.
“Commandant, Sir, me I don’t do Ramadan, the kitchen has to know about providing my three meals a day.”
“Who are you?”
“Soldier Marcel B., serial number 10 362.”
“You’re a Jew? That’s all I needed!”
“It’s not my fault, Commandant.”
“And now I get insolent backtalk.”
“I am a Moroccan citizen and a Jew. We do exist!”
“Yes, I’m aware of that. I don’t need a history lesson!”
We are all impressed by Marcel’s audacity. No one has ever dared address the commandant that way. Paradoxically, his Jewishness protects him. The commandant happens to know that the king is seriously interested in the welfare of his Jewish citizens. Lowering his voice, Hamadi says,
“You’ll eat, but not in front of those who are fasting. You’ll go to the kitchen, where you’ll have your meal off in a corner. No sense having you seen stuffing yourself . . .”
Marcel thanks him and turns toward us with a triumphant smile.
DAILY LIFE
Once again we’re ordered to sew up the pockets of the fatigues just issued to us. Distribution of needles and thread. I sew my pockets. At the last minute I slip in my poems. Good hiding place. I’m getting expert at sewing. I finish the j
ob in a flash. The others bring me their pants; Salah promises me the radio tonight. Another gives me a package of cookies bought from a shepherd who loiters around the shooting range in spite of its barbed-wire enclosure. We give him money and he brings us little things.
The commandant reviews us. Our scalps must be closely shaved. Pockets sewn up; disciplined appearance. He walks along our ranks checking the strength of the pocket closures with his baton; if it gets into the pocket, the wearer gets two brisk blows on the back of the neck. A few blows are delivered. He flips my cap off with the tip of his baton, then glides it across my skull, which was not shaved this morning because of a boil. He stops at that spot, pressing into it until it bleeds. It hurts. I don’t flinch. I’m spared the blows on the back of my neck. I stoop to retrieve my cap.
The commandant has summoned us to announce some news; this time it isn’t about war: “A superior officer will shortly inspect the school. Pay attention! You must be impeccable: shirts ironed, clean pants, pockets unsealed. Not one word. If he speaks to you, you salute and say, ‘Thank you, General.’ If anyone dares speak to him about anything at all, he will have me to deal with. Understood? Dismissed.”
The canteen menu has been improved. While the general’s visit is still pending, we know the food won’t be too bad. Officers like the troops to be well nourished. Everyone’s talking about the visit we’re expecting. Some think it’s a ruse to test us. One evening, we’re allowed to pull out the thread sealing our pockets.
The Punishment Page 6