Aziz Binebine - Tazmamart: 18 Years in Moroccos Secret Prison

TAZMAMART

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aziz BineBine is a Moroccan author and former army officer. Inadvertently involved in the attempted coup dtat of 1971, he spent eighteen years imprisoned at Tazmamart. He now lives in Marrakech.

18 Years in Moroccos Secret Prison

AZIZ BINEBINE

Translated by Lulu Norman

This first paperback edition published in 2021

First published in 2020 by

Haus Publishing Ltd

4 Cinnamon Row

London sw11 3tw

www.hauspublishing.com

Copyright Aziz BineBine, 2009, 2021

English-language translation copyright Lulu Norman, 2019, 2021

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-913368-13-5

eISBN 978-1-912208-89-0

Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd

Printed in the UK by TJ Books

All rights reserved

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PENs PEN Translates programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly cooperation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org

To Maman, the woman who brought me into the world

and wept for the ungrateful baby I was,

To Christine, the woman who brought me into the world

the thankful old man I am,

To all those who are grieving the ghosts of Tazmamart,

To you girls, mothers, wives, sisters,

I love you.

There are those who cry their pain and those who sing it.

God hears them both, but the song is sweeter to his ears.

Tagore

Im a survivor of the years of lead,* a storyteller, a dealer in suffering. I have only my misfortunes to place in your hearts. I am no victim, brothers, save your tears.

This is the song I sing as a former convict.

To come out of prison is to lose all your bearings. When everything has changed: society, the environment, peoples mindsets, even family. Some have left, others have arrived. The exprisoner falls into this little world like an interloper. What is his role, his place in society, what are his rights and duties? Is a father still a father, faced with children he hasnt seen growing up? How does he contend with the tears of a mother whose heart hes ripped out, or a father whose hopes hes ruined? What can he ask of a wife whos been left to face adversity, deprivation and humiliation alone, often with dependent children?

And then theres that hell, to paraphrase Sartre: the way other people look at you, the tacit judgment of society, of your friends old and new those closest to you, the person you ask for work or for help with paperwork.

Like the newborn separated from the placenta, the freed prisoner must rid himself of the shackles of violence and suffering that have held him for long years. He must learn again to love, to understand, to admit, to forget and also to ignore. Starting again from scratch is never simple or easy, but to do nothing is worse.

Twenty years later, the world had changed. The king is dead, long live the king! A younger, more open, more modern king -but modern with a small m, because liberty, democracy and free speech are slow in coming. Which is normal in a society beset by its own demons of traditionalism, passivity and fear. Three decades of dictatorship cant simply be waved away, especially when the palace bastions are still haunted by the temptation to go back to the old ways.

Twenty years later, we were free. Alone, confronting ourselves and other people. Confronting life. We had no idea of values, the values of the society we lived in or the value of feelings, money, possessions all those tiny things that make up everyday life.

Twenty years later, we were awarded compensation a sum of money to forget, to forgive, to reconcile ourselves. But with whom? With what? Can you be compensated for your youth, lost in the limbo of prison? For your health, destroyed by disease, cold and vermin? For your mother, whom despair, weakness and disease have carried off?

There is nothing to compensate, nothing to forgive. You must just forget. Ban regret and bitterness from your heart. Live again.

Condemn! you say? Condemn whom? And what? To what end? To get even? Fight fire with fire? An eye for an eye? Thats not for me. I would rather be victim than executioner, wound than knife.* Instead of worrying about those who tortured me, my heart overflows with love and gratitude for those generous souls who fought for my freedom, my rights and my humanity. Those righteous souls who turned their lives into a fight for human rights and human dignity.

We had our fairy godmother; her name was Christine Daure-Serfaty. She was the wife of the kingdoms longest-serving political prisoner, Abraham Serfaty, and devoted her life to pleading his cause on the international stage and with various non-governmental agencies. She happened to discover the existence of our prison in the course of her travels, and so her little magic wand began to work its miracles: first by persuading the public that our prison existed, a fact the authorities denied, then by casting a benevolent spell on the writer Gilles Perrault, who wrote a book Notre ami le roi (Our Friend the King) in which he denounced the appalling conditions of the dungeon where we languished. The spell worked. Forces for good were set in motion to knock down the barricades of diktat and injustice. Christine, the fairy godmother, had turned darkness into light.

Finally, we emerged from our death pit. We left darkness for daylight. We felt the suns caress on our cheeks, the north wind kissing our foreheads, libertys sweet embrace. We were broken, ill, distraught, but free. Changed, but free.

But were we? On the outside, certainly; inside we were still inhabited by the spectres of our cells, by the solitude and despair that relentlessly haunted our sleep and our dreams. Never would we be as before. We were doomed to wear the ex-convicts clothes, the insignia of the survivors of hell. Some called us traitors, others called us heroes or saints; in fact we were just poor wretches hung out to dry so that time could do its worst.

Is it possible to halt your destiny for a moment? Ward off the inevitable, lay down your burden? Only for a moment.

Time leads us inexorably towards our fate, leaving in the dust of the universe a trail of blood, tears and prayers.

2019

Idreamed of being a journalist or a filmmaker; I became a soldier. The son and grandson of court officials, I became a revolutionary despite myself. I was a playboy; I became a convict. But as the saying goes, man proposes and God disposes.

My mother was the daughter of an Algerian captain in the French army. He had arrived in Morocco between 1912 and 1915 with the protectorate army that had come to pacify the country, and he was appointed liaison officer working with indigenous peoples a role that cost him his life. He was poisoned by high-ranking Moroccans afraid that this soldier French, Arab and a Muslim, just like them might take their place. He died serving France: a Chevalier de la Lgion dHonneur, he was awarded the Military Medal, the Croix de Guerre, the Medal of Merit and so on. My mother was eight years old and became a ward of the state; at eighteen, she married my father. A musicians son, he was living at the court of El Glaoui,* the famous pasha of Mar-rakech, and was his most loyal companion.