9781422279991

her five siblings, and her mother were political prisoners held under unbearable conditions as punishment for her father’s crime. Malika, whose namemeans “Princess” inArabic, was born in 1953 inMorocco. Hermother lovedmovies, shopping, horseback riding, andElvisPresley; her father, MuhamedOufkir, heldmany important government positions andwas close to the king. When Malika was five years old, King Mohammed V saw her playing with his daughter. The king told Malika’s parents, “I wish to adopt your daughter”; he wanted her to be a playmate for his child. Immediately, she moved into the palace. She had the best of everything—education, toys, and royal treatment—yet she could not leave the palace. When she was 16, Malika rebelled against the limitations of living in the royal court, and the king allowed her to leave the palace. For the next few years, she lived a dream, as her parents were wealthy and famous, and she was young and beautiful. She traveled toParis and theUnitedStates, where famous politicians and movie stars paid attention to her. She dreamed of making movies in Hollywood, and she might have done so if cruel fate had not intervened. On August 16, 1972, Malika was relaxing with friends in her house in Casa- blanca when she switched on the television; in a single moment, her life changed forever. The news announcer said an unsuccessful coup had taken place against the king, Hasssan II, led by Malika’s father, who had become a senior military officer and minister of defense. Shortly after, her father called Malika, telling her that he was proud of her and loved her. The next day, Malika was staring at her father’s bullet-ridden body, and almost at once, the king took her, her siblings, and her mother into custody. On Christmas Eve of that year, a big car with blacked-out windows, escorted by armed police, drove the Oufkir family to a secret desert prison. Malika writes: “This was a country where they locked up young children for their father’s crimes. We were entering the world of insanity.” At age 19, Malika was the oldest child; her youngest brother, Abdellatif, was only 3 years old. They had become the “disappeared.” Years in Prisons From 1973 to 1977 the Moroccan government imprisoned the Oufkirs in a ruined fortress in Tamattaght. The summer heat was stifling and the winter cold biting. Huge rats crawled into the prison, where the mother and children beat them off with sticks. “I thought there were limits to human suffering,” Malika Oufkir writes, but at their next place of imprisonment, “I was to dis- cover there were none.” For 10 years, King Hassan II held the Oufkirs at Bir-Jdid Prison, near Casa- blanca, each in solitary confinement. The children had smuggled pigeons from Tamattaght to Bir-Jdid, as these pets helped them to feel less lonely. The guards at Bir-Jdid discovered the pigeons and made a cruel game of killing them in front of the children. Little Abdellatif, who had just turned eight, tried unsuccessfully to kill himself.

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the prison System