Stolen Lives : Twenty Years in a Desert Jail (Oprah's Book Club (Paperback)) - Softcover

Oufkir, Malika

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786886307 ISBN 13: 9780786886302

Publisher: Miramax, 2002

Synopsis

Malika Oufkir has spent virtually her whole life as a prisoner. Born in 1953, the eldest daughter of General Oufkir, the King of Morocco's closest aide, Malika was adopted by the King at the age of five, and was brought up as the companion to his little daughter. Spending most of her childhood and adolescence in the seclusion of the court harem, Malika was one of the most eligible heiresses in the kingdom, surrounded by luxury and extraordinary privilege.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt

the great escape

It was around four o'clock on August 16, 1972, and I was at my family's housein Casablanca with some friends, talking and laughing in the living room.Prompted by an intuition I can't explain, I switched on the television. Anewscaster was announcing that there had been a coup d'état and that theking's plane had been fired on. It was unclear who was responsible.

I rushed over to the radio, frantic for more news yet dreading what I mighthear: that it was my father who was behind the coup. He was a powerful generalin the Moroccan army and had been at increasing odds with the king, Hassan II.But information on the radio was hazy too. No one seemed to know anything forcertain. There was only speculation that my father, General Oufkir, wasinvolved and that the coup had succeeded. Order had not yet been restored inthe capital.

One of my friends, though, was convinced my father was involved. She got up andpointed at me, hysterically babbling that the army would surround us, that Iwould be killed and so would they. She urged everyone to leave at once. I sat,terrified, not knowing what to do. I tried calling my mother and brothers andsisters at our house in Rabat; the lines were busy or there was no answer.

Around seven o'clock the phone rang. It was my father. He spoke with the voiceof a man who has decided to commit suicide and is recording his last message.It was as if a ghost was talking to me. He told me he loved me and that he wasproud of me. Then he added, "I ask you to remain calm, whatever happens. Don'tleave the house until the escort comes to get you."

I began to scream. He kept saying things I didn't want to hear. I wanted him toreassure me, to tell me it hadn't been him. But from the start of ourconversation I understood it was. And that he had failed.

I couldn't sleep and couldn't stop thinking about my father's last words?hiswarning not to leave. Something terrible had happened. Around 5 a.m. the nextday the phone rang again. It was my mother. Without hesitating she confirmedwhat I was most afraid to hear: "Your father is dead. Pack your things and comeback to Rabat."

Four months later, once the official mourning period for my father had ended,the head of police arrived at our house and told my mother to get the familypacked. We left on Christmas Eve?my mother, her six children, and Achoura andHalima, two loyal members of the household staff. Mother had just turned 36. Iwas 19, my sister Mimi was 17, my brother Raouf 14, and the girls, Maria andSoukaina, were just 10 and nine. My baby brother Abdellatif was three and ahalf.

We were told we would be going away for two weeks. We would never reallyreturn.

Our first jail was a filthy mud house of flaking plaster walls and sandfloors?part of an army barracks in Assa, a town near the Algerian border. Ifound everything there repulsive, from the coarse military blankets to the thinfoam mattresses to the lack of proper toilets. All nine of us shared the smallhouse together and were under constant surveillance. But by and large theguards showed us sympathy. We could listen to the radio and were given plentyof bread, goat meat, and honey to eat. We were also allowed to go into thenearby town with a police escort for two hours every day. I refused to go?Idid not want to be dependent on our captors' goodwill?but the visits were veryimportant for the children. The escorts always treated them very well, and thevillagers would send them back with cakes and treats.

Fundamentally this was not much of a change from our past life. As far back asI could remember, I had never lived without several armed police responsiblefor my safety. The only difference here was that instead of protecting me theywere keeping watch. My life was a fairy tale in reverse. I had been brought upas a princess and was now turning into Cinderella. Gradually I was shedding myold habits. We had brought around 20 designer suitcases with us?Vuitton,Hermès, and Gucci?filled with Paris couture and children's clothes fromGeneva, but the idea of wearing any of it soon became ludicrous. After a fewmonths we always wore the same old clothes.

After about a year we were told that we'd be leaving. There was no explanation,but on thinking about it a little later I concluded that the villagers musthave been growing too sympathetic toward us and word of this had gotten back tothe king.

We were taken to an abandoned military fort in Tamattaght, a town even moreremote than Assa. There conditions were dramatically worse. The nine of us weregiven two rooms inside an old and crumbling fort. There was a hole that servedas a toilet, and a little dirt enclave we used as a kitchen. A small but mostlyenclosed outdoor space provided us with our only fresh air. This would be ourhome for almost four years.

As at Assa, we were generally well treated. Of the 25 policemen under orders toguard us day and night, around three-quarters had previously done security dutyat our house in Rabat. They had known my father, directly or indirectly. Theyrespected my mother and loved us children in a paternal way. When they could,they would bring us contraband food as well as occasional books and letters.But they could never let us out, which meant that while we were there, enclosedin the fort's towering walls, we almost never saw anything but the smallestpatch of sky.

And so we learned to live together. In wretched, cramped, filthy conditions?indarkness, isolation, and confinement. We tried to impose a structure on ourdays. We would al-ways eat three meals a day together, and sit down for tea. Ialso created an informal school for the children, setting up "classes" in whichto teach them French and math.

It was difficult for all of us, increasingly so. Raouf was not yet over theloss of his father, at an age when a boy probably needs his father most.Soukaina was entering a moody adolescence. Maria was extremely fragile?whensomething upset her she often would not eat, speak, or move for hours. As forMimi, she was in the most difficult straits of all. She had epilepsy, andthough the guards were able to sneak drugs to her, the stress of prison causedher fits to increase anyway. Abdellatif adapted to it most readily.

At night I'd hear my mother sobbing. Alone in her bed, she wept over the lossof her husband. As for me, especially during those early years in prison, Idreamed only of the king, Hassan II. I relived my life at the palace: mypranks, our laughter, my tête-à-têtes with him, our specialmoments. I never revisited happy family scenes, or painful ones?my father'sdeath or the mourning that followed it. There was no resentment in my dreams,no confrontation or rebellion. I had nothing but happy memories of mychildhood, even though in a sense it had been stolen from me. I would wake upovercome with shame and guilt. My feelings toward the king were complicated: Myown father had tried to kill my adoptive father and as a result he was dead.Sometimes I didn't know which father I missed most, which one to grieve for. Iwas the product of my palace upbringing; everything I was, I owed to the manwho had raised me and who was now keeping me imprisoned. At the same time Iloved my real father so much.

But if I still respected Hassan II as my adoptive father, I hated the despot hehad become the day he began to persecute us. I hated him for his hatred, Ihated him for my ruined life, for my mother's misery and the mutilatedchildhood of my brothers and sisters. I hated him for the irreparable crime hehad committed in locking up a woman and six children for such a long time andin such inhuman conditions.

We continually implored Hassan to release us. Every year on his birthday wewrote letters. We even wrote him a petition for a pardon, signed in our blood.

Then one day, after almost four years in Tamattaght, we were told to pack. Thechildren were glad. The rest of us were torn between hope and dread.

Our next journey lasted 24 hours. The nine of us were divided into threearmored trucks with blacked-out windows. We were under constant surveillanceand could not even find a discreet spot when we got out to relieve ourselves;the police came with us and watched until we had finished. It was February. Aswe drove, I noticed the air beginning to smell damp and the sound of frogscroaking so I concluded that we had left the desert and were now near thecoast. It turns out I was not mistaken. The Bir-Jdid barracks, where we werebeing taken, were 27 miles from Casablanca. This we discovered much later.

Finally the trucks slowed to a halt. We were blindfolded and led through onedoor and then through another. The blindfolds were removed, and we foundourselves in the small courtyard of what seemed to be a former farmhouse?nowconverted to a prison. The walls of the enclosure were so high that we couldn'tsee the sky. Soldiers stood at arms in each corner.

Four doors opened onto the courtyard. The rooms behind them, we were told,would be our cells. The first, which Mother was to share with Abdellatif, wasat right angles to the other three. The second I would share with my sisters.Achoura and Halima would share the third, and Raouf would be alone in the cellon the end. Each of the cells included several little rooms. Ours included amain room with a toilet, one larger room, and a smaller room, where we wouldend up storing the suitcases we were still lugging around.

The appearance of these new quarters did not bode well for our future comfort.Even though we were already accustomed to discomfort, filth, and minimalamenities, these cells were squalid. Rivulets of moisture ran from the ceilingdown to the stone floor. The only light would be dim, coming from a generatorthat operated a few hours each night. The mattresses were just thin layers offoam with covers of dubious cleanliness set on rusty metal bed frames.

Right away we were told that we would be separated at night. We would beallowed to see each other during the day and to eat together, but at night eachperson would have to go back to his or her own cell. This news made us all sob.Mother cried and pleaded, saying they didn't have the right to separate herfrom her children. But we were told that these rules could not be relaxed.

Under this new regime, from eight in the morning until nightfall the doors wereunlocked and we could go in and out of one another's cells. Generally we allgathered in mine. This freedom of movement allowed us to carry on the routineswe'd grown used to?we would cook and eat together, and play with the childrenduring the day. But here our lives were much more closely monitored. And unlikeour former captors, those at Bir-Jdid showed us little sympathy. The commander,a man named Borro, was utterly devoid of compassion and seemed to take hisorders directly from Rabat. Four other guards worked under his command?theywould be rotated every month or so, apparently to prevent them from developingany sympathy for us. Outside our small prison, we were informed, even moreguards were stationed. They would stop anyone from coming to help us.

Inside the prison walls Mother, Raouf, and I seemed to be the guards' mainconcern. Mother because she was the wife of the hated general, me because theywere aware of my influence over the rest of the family, and Raouf because hewas his father's son and it was natural that he would want to avenge him. Of usall it was Raouf who suffered the most physically, who took the most knocks. Ilived with a permanent fear in the pit of my stomach: fear of being killed,beaten, or raped; fear of constant humiliation. But we were never seriouslybeaten?only Raouf.

The first search took place at the beginning of April, two months after ourarrival. The aim was to intimidate us. Borro's men locked us up in Raouf's celluntil nightfall. Inside we could hear dull thuds, the sound of hammering. Whenwe were finally allowed out, the damage was impressive. They had gathered ourmost valued belongings?our trinkets and books, Abdellatif's toys, much of ourclothing, Mother's jewelry, and my photo album?and had lit a huge bonfire witheverything that was combustible. (We took the fact that they did not burn ourluggage as a small sign of hope: Someday we would be leaving.) The childrenwere all the more traumatized when Borro forcibly searched Soukaina, who wasonly 13. Afterward she ran a high temperature for 10 days.

Then, on January 30, Raouf's 20th birthday, we were informed that he would belocked up for all but two hours a day. A few days later my sisters and I metthe same fate. Next it was Mother and Abdellatif. During this phase we wereallowed to go out into the courtyard for a breath of air, but only in shifts.Mother and Abdellatif went out in the morning until 10; then it was my turn,with my sisters. We would stand under Raouf's window, he'd cling to the bars,and we'd chat. He was so desperate to express himself that he would monopolizethe conversation. He would talk about our father and his longing to avenge him.And about sex. He suffered far more than we did from our forced abstinence andwould tell the girls stories of his early trips to prostitutes?acceptedpractice for bourgeois boys in Morocco?that would have them howling withlaughter.

After a few months, however, even these brief hours outside were forbidden. Wewere all locked up 24 hours a day.

I was 24 years old, and for the next nine years the only faces I saw were thoseof my sisters and the guards. My mother, Abdellatif, Raouf, and Halima andAchoura were mere voices through a wall. For more than five years we hadmanaged to preserve a family life, a cocoon in which we protected each other.At Bir-Jdid, family life was out of the question. Everything was out of thequestion.

Once we were confined to our cells, our lives became completely regulated bythe guards. They stopped by three times a day to bring us meal trays, and atmidday to give us bread. For the first few months my sisters and I clung to asemblance of a timetable. In the morning we would exercise?I concocted a "bumsand tums" workout, and we tossed a bag of rags around as a makeshiftvolleyball. In the afternoon we told stories. Later we gave up physicalactivity. Our bodies no longer responded; we just sat around.

Our biggest enemy was time. It was tangible, monstrous, threatening, and almostimpossible to master. In the summer, dusk brought back memories of thesweetness of the old days, the end of a day at the beach, time for an aperitif,the laughter of friends, the smell of the sea, the tang of salt on my bronzedskin. I relived the little I had experienced. We didn't do anything. We'dfollow the progress of a cockroach from one hole in the wall to another. Doze.Empty our minds. The sky would change color and the day draw to a close. A weekfelt like a day, the months like weeks; a year meant nothing. And I was wastingaway. I learned to die inwardly. I often had the feeling I was living in ablack hole.

Despite everything, my sisters and I got along well. The lack of privacy wastorture, especially for two young women and two teenage girls. Washing, goingto the toilet, and moaning in pain were all public acts?but we quickly gotused to it. Unable to divest myself of my palace upbringing, I wouldn't allowthe slightest breach of manners. We behaved properly at the table, we cheweddelicately, we said please and thank you and excuse me. We washed ourselvesscrupulously every day, especially when we had our periods, despite thefreezing salt water we were given in the middle of winter that turned our skinbright red and made us shriek.

And we were always hungry. Rotting vegetables, two bowlfuls of flour, a bowl ofchick peas, a bowl of lentils, 12 bad eggs, a piece of spoiled meat, a fewlumps of sugar, a liter of oil, and some detergent for washing?this was whatwas divided between the nine of us for two weeks. Achoura and Halima wouldprepare what they could with the meager supplies, and then the guards woulddistribute it.

We became experts in the art of salvage, scavenging for crumbs on the floor,even eating bread soaked in the urine and feces of the mice. I can stillpicture Mimi, sitting up in bed, picking off the little black droppingssprinkled all over the bread with the delicacy of a duchess, before raising themorsels to her lips. All our rations were fouled by rodents. Both mice and ratsoverran our cell.

We all could have died 20 times over, but every time we emerged unscathed. Someof our illnesses were serious: fevers, infections, diarrhea. Others were lessso: sore throats and bronchitis, headaches or toothaches, hemorrhoids,rheumatism. Maria became severely undernourished. She suffered fevers andviolent sweats that were so bad that she stayed in bed all the time. I had towash and dry her four or five times a day. Mimi was the sickest of us all. Theguards at Bir-Jdid had confiscated her epilepsy pills, and her constant fitsleft her exhausted, bedridden, and severely depressed. She stayed in bed almostwithout moving for eight years. I had to force her to wash.

But more than anything else, the worst thing about those years was beingseparated from our mother, only a few feet away. We spoke to her constantlythrough the wall, and she was an example to all of us. She never expressed theslightest complaint, yet she must have suffered even more than we did.

Since the day I was born, my relationship with Mother had never been less thanpassionate and heartbreaking. We were incredibly close in age?she was 17 whenI was born?and shared a striking physical resemblance. We had also each seenour chance to be fulfilled as women savagely destroyed. The thought that Imight not ever have children distressed her.

In prison, however, there was a growing ambiguity in our roles. Unwittingly,and against my will, I had usurped her role. I had become the mother of herother daughters. I can still picture Maria and Soukaina snuggling up to me inmy bed, questioning me about the meaning of life. They told me all the secretsthey would never have told Mother, first of all because at that age you don'tconfide in your mother, and secondly because they were separated from her by asolid wall.

I looked after them, brought them up, and tried to keep them from despair. Iwas their big sister, their mother, father, and confidante. I loved them morethan anything else and, like Mother, I suffered a lot more for them than I didfor myself. I remember instigating dancing lessons in the cell because Mariawas crying over her shattered dream of being a ballet student at the ParisOpera. I remember nursing Mimi and telling stories to Abdellatif through thewall.

Yet throughout it all I always waited impatiently for nightfall, for the peaceit brought me. During the day I wore a mask: I was Malika the strong one, theauthoritarian, the person who breathed life into the others. At night there wasnothing to do but think. As soon as dusk fell I dropped my defenses. When mysisters fell asleep at last, I would often get up and just sit.

I often wondered why Hassan II had imposed this long-drawn-out death instead ofkilling us right away. Our disappearance would have made matters much simpler.I thought about my father, too. Each time I pictured him I imagined the momentof his execution. That terrible moment when he realized that he was going to bekilled like a dog. I swung between humiliation, pain, and rage.

And each of my birthdays was like a dagger piercing my heart. At the age of 33I became resigned. I would never experience a great love, I would never have myown family, no man would ever take me in his arms and whisper sweet nothings orwords of burning passion in my ear; I would never know the physical and mentalthrill of being in love. Instead I was condemned to wither like a wrinkledfruit. At night I dreamed I was making love, but I learned not to think aboutit. I could not burden myself with these little troubles when I had so manyothers. I tried to remain in control of my body, to suppress everything to dowith desire, hunger, cold, and thirst.

Despite her courage and dignity, Mother was still very naive. She firmlybelieved that we would be pardoned on March 3, 1986, for Throne Day, theanniversary of the king's ascension to the throne. Yet the day came and nothinghappened. The next morning, however, it seemed she might be right. At about8:30 the guards unlocked all our doors and shoved us outside.

We staggered, squinting at the light. We were thrilled to see each other, butwe looked like walking corpses?gaunt and pale, with dark rings around oureyes, bloodless lips, and bodies bloated from malnourishment. Mother didn'teven recognize her little girls. She had last seen Soukaina and Maria when theywere 14 and 15 years old. Now they were young women of 22 and just 24. Raoufwas a man, resembling my father in build. Abdellatif was a youth of 17. Motherwas as beautiful as ever, but the hardship and grief had taken a terrible toll.Achoura and Halima had gray faces and hair, the color of ash.

We were overjoyed, yet we found ourselves torn between the natural urge totouch each other and kiss and the determination not to show our tormentors howcruelly we had missed this contact. So we restrained ourselves. Astonished,Borro encouraged us to approach one another, then told us that, in celebrationof Throne Day, from then on we would be allowed to be together from 8:30 in themorning until 8 at night. We were being granted this concession after 14 yearsin prison.

At first the elation of being reunited eclipsed the grimness of our situation.Mother gazed at us for hours. She never tired of looking at us, but it musthave been torture for her to see us so emaciated, so starved. Nevertheless wehad decided to relish every joyous moment of being together again. To entertainourselves we organized circus shows. Raouf would crack a pretend whip, andMimi, the elephant, would make her entrance. She was painfully thin. When Raoufcracked his whip a second time, Mimi had to raise her legs in the air. Weshrieked with laughter. We never tired of joking, touching each other, andembracing.

These relatively happy times lasted until the early signs of winter. Then oneday, without any explanation, the guards split us up again. The next morningthey told Mother that we would be locked up 24 hours a day as before.

She immediately went on a hunger strike in protest. The others, except for me,followed suit. My body cannot tolerate fasting, so I merely ate as little aspossible. For 45 days we starved ourselves. Soukaina even tried going withoutwater but after a day became too ill. We were nothing but skin and bone and yetnothing happened. Nobody cared.

Then, sometime during the sixth week of fasting, Raouf overheard two guardstalking outside his cell. "This situation has ruined my life," one said. "I'mashamed to look my family in the eyes. I am haunted by what we are doing.Murdering children is beyond me. I can't carry on. What do they want?"

"Don't you understand?" replied the other guard. "They are going to die. All ofthem. And they will be buried here. We'll just wait as long as we have to.Those are our orders."

Raouf reported this conversation to us through the walls. Everyone was terriblyfeeble. We all longed for death. Yet the words hit us like an electric shock.At some level we had believed our release was coming, that the king could notpunish us forever. Now we knew we were simply expected to disappear. It wasthen that our will to live became overpowering. We resolved to escape.

The first task was to decide where to dig. After endless discussion we decidedto start from the cell I shared with my sisters. One of the rooms was too coldto live or sleep in, so we had ended up using it as a place to put all our oldsuitcases. The advantages to this site were that it was unused during the dayand that the floor's stone slabs were in good condition. This would make themmuch easier to maneuver. We would obviously have to work at night, preferablyduring the hours when the generator was running in order not to be heard.

On January 27,1987?directly after one of our triweekly searches?Maria,Soukaina, and I pried up the first stone slab with a spoon, a knife handle, thelid of a sardine tin, and an iron bar from one of our beds. In two hours we hadpried up eight more.

For the next two weeks we did nothing but practice removing and replacing theseslabs so that any sign they had been touched would be undetectable. Meanwhile,Mother, Abdellatif, Raouf, Halima, and Achoura worked on creating passagesbetween all the cells. This was probably the most dangerous part of the plan,but it was crucial for two reasons. First, to escape, the others would all haveto get from their cells to ours. Second, as we were soon to learn, we wouldneed their help as we dug. We found that by removing stones from the wallsunder our beds we were able to create spaces large enough to squeeze through.We were always scrupulous about closing the holes up each morning.

Finally my sisters and I started digging in earnest. Raouf had studied someengineering in grade school and explained to me the various levels of soil Iwould find. When I reached clay I was to start digging horizontally. Then, weestimated, it would take 16 feet to clear the outside edge of the cell's wall.We worked like robots. Down in the hole I'd fill an empty one-gallon oil canwith earth, which my sisters would then haul up from above. Mimi would addwater to the dirt, making it more dense, and she would hand it through the wallto my mother. Mother would sew balls of the dirt up in old, unused clothes andsend them back through the wall. We would store these bundles in our tunnel tokeep it from sounding hollow during searches.

Demolishing and digging was easy. The hard part was reconstruction, which couldtake hours. First we returned the bagged dirt to the hole. Then we spread alayer of red dirt on top and replaced the stone slabs. To finish off, we filledthe cracks with a fake plaster made of detergent and flour we had saved fromour rations. Once everything had dried I would sweep it up.

We had some terrible scares. During the searches we would stay in our bedswithout budging, pretending to be ill. The guards carried out a painstakinginspection, even in the little room where the tunnel was. They shone theirtorches into corners, looking everywhere?under the beds, at the ceiling, inthe cavities. They tapped the floor with their feet, listening for a differentsound, the faintest echo. It is a miracle, but they never set foot on the slabswe were digging under.

By April 18 I had tunneled down and out the agreed distance, and I stoppeddigging. I had no nails left, my skin was covered with eczema, and my fingerswere bleeding sores. We had all agreed that the escape should be in December,on a moonless winter night when the guards?who were sensitive to the cold,like all Moroccans?would be ensconced in the snuggest corner of theirwatchtowers, their faces muffled by warm hoods. So we sealed the tunnel onelast time. Two weeks before the escape we would finish digging up the few feetto the surface. Before that it would be too risky.

During the days when we were digging we held countless family consultations todecide who would go, and what to do once outside. Raouf wanted to go alone?hewas so afraid for us all?but it was obvious that I would go with him. Mariahad declared outright that if we didn't take her she would kill herself. Wewould also take Abdellatif, who had seen nothing of life, who had no pastbearings?he needed to be part of this adventure. Mother wanted to come, butshe was physically unable to do so. Her body was bloated, like the rest ofours, and she couldn't even squeeze through the hole between our cell and hers.Only Abdellatif could wriggle through. We couldn't enlarge it for fear ofbreaking the tiles supporting the wall. Soukaina too agreed to stay behind?ademonstration of her courage and generosity, as we needed her to seal up thetunnel after we left. Mimi was simply too weak to do it. For the same reason itwas impossible for her to leave.

Once we got out, our goal was the French embassy, where we intended to requestpolitical asylum. We tried to anticipate every possible setback. On the morningof our escape Mother was to waylay the guards as long as possible, to stop themfrom raising the alarm immediately. In case we were captured, she planned tocause an explosion with the little butane stove Achoura and Halima had in theircell for cooking. We even started saving pepper to fend off any stray dogs.

On Sunday, April 19, 1987, the day after we closed the tunnel, I was sitting onthe floor of the cell, my head leaning against a wall. We could hear birdschirping outside the walls. Nature, like us, was awakening from a long sleep.We felt strangely well, despite the prospect of several months' wait. We hademerged from the tomb. At last we had reason to hope.

Mimi lay in bed, the other two were cuddling up to me, and we were chattinglightheartedly. Then I heard my mother calling to me. "Listen, Malika," shewhispered, "I overheard them. They have been given orders to build a lookoutpost and a watchtower on the roof of the tunnel cell. The lookout post will beexactly in line with the exit, and there'll be floodlights."

"What will we do?"

"There is no choice," she said. "They will have finished in 48 hours. You mustdig the escape shaft straightaway and leave tonight."

I had any number of objections. Dig out in a few hours? It wasn't possible. Weexpected it to take a week.

But she wouldn't listen. "It's that or nothing," she repeated. "If you don'tleave tonight, you will never get out. Tell Raouf."

Raouf agreed with my mother?we had no choice.

I started digging around midday, working furiously. The spoon wasn't enough. IfI could have ripped out the earth with my teeth I would have. I dug, I scoopedout the earth, I no longer thought, I no longer existed, I had become amachine. Digging, scooping, digging, scooping...

At one point I came across some deeply rooted ivy. I pulled with all mystrength. For hours I battled, digging upward against those roots, straining topull them out.

And suddenly my field of vision turned blue. I had broken through.

It was the late afternoon sky, swept by a warm spring breeze that gentlycaressed my cheek. I stood stock-still for a while, just clutching the ivy andlooking out with one eye. Weeping, I poked my head through. It was toobeautiful. I was afraid of what I could see. Freedom was so close that itfrightened me. I rushed back up to tell the others. We were almost there.

At nightfall it was time to say goodbye. Mother was distraught, wonderingwhether she really ought to let us go. It was the only time I saw her waver."I'm entrusting my flesh and blood to you," she said to me. "I know that youare also their mother. Promise me you'll bring them back alive." Soukainashivered. Her teeth were chattering and her eyes were shining, but she didn'tshed a tear. She carried an enormous responsibility. She had to cover all ourtracks to delay the guards' discovery of our escape for as long as possible.Mimi tenderly clasped me to her and whispered in my ear, "I'm sure you'll makeit."

We dressed in silence, picked up our bundles, and one by one lowered ourselvesdown into the tunnel. Abdellatif and Maria got through the exit without anydifficulty. Raouf made the earth shudder. We held our breath, but he managed topush through and free himself without any damage. When it was my turn I managedto get my upper body through the exit hole, but my hips became wedged. Icouldn't go any further. I was stuck. My bloated, malnourished body was muchtoo wide for the narrow opening.

Raouf encouraged me, whispering gently to calm me down, but I couldn't. I wasunable to budge. I strained, I cried, I was drenched in perspiration. Then Iheard Soukaina behind me. "Malika, come back," she said. "You're making toomuch noise, they'll hear you."

If I persisted I might get us all caught. But once again I summoned all mystrength. It was like a second birth. At last I pulled myself from the tunnel.I'd scraped off all the skin on my thighs, but at the time I didn't evennotice.

We had been living in the shadows for so long that our eyes had grownaccustomed to the dark, and we gazed out at our surroundings without any senseof fear. On the contrary, we were exhilarated. There was no sign of life fromthe guards' quarters, and we began to crawl across a damp field.

Suddenly we heard the barking of stray dogs. They were racing, making straightfor us?aggressive, starving, and more ferocious than watchdogs. There musthave been about 10 of them, bounding through the dark behind the leader of thepack. They were getting closer and closer. We could feel their panting breath.Once again we huddled together for protection. Their leader came forward baringhis fangs, growled, and looked poised to attack. We froze and held our breath,waiting for a miracle. Which, improbable as it seemed, is what we were granted.The dog gave an unfathomable whine, and he and his pack slunk away.

But the reprieve did not last long. Alerted by the dogs, the guards turnedtheir torches and floodlights onto the field. We froze again, praying that wewould melt into the shadows. Certain of discovery this time, we waited thereshivering for their shots to ring out. We could hear the guards exchange a fewwords. At last the lights went off. We crouched there, unable to move for whatfelt like hours; then we set off again.

We found ourselves in a field of beans, closer to the barracks side. We neededa short rest, so we rolled over onto our backs and looked at the camp facing usfor the first time. It was a grim sight. So this was the place where we hadspent 10 years of our lives, where we had lost our best years, our hopes, ourillusions, our health, and our youth. I looked over at Abdellatif. For thefirst time in ages I realized just what a terrible state he was in. He had beenincarcerated since the age of three and a half. Now he was 18, and it was asthough he had never been outside in his life. My sister Maria weighed barely 66pounds. Her huge dark eyes devoured her tiny, gaunt face. Raouf was as thin asshe was but bloated from water retention. He was pale and toothless.

Nearly 15 years had gone by, 15 years of torture that had scarred us terribly.But when I studied the three of them closely I would catch an expression,mannerism, or smile that reminded me of the children they had once been.

Locked up inside, we had tried to forget where we were. But now, in that field,contemplating the place where we had suffered so much, the reality suddenlycame home to us. I couldn't stop myself from sobbing. I wept even more when Ithought of those we had left behind. I was so afraid for them. My heartcontracted and a shudder ran through me. I heard the others crying softly; theyall felt the same way.

After a while we got up and resumed walking. In the pitch dark, with nolandmarks and no signposts, we realized that we were going around in circles.It was as distressing as being lost at sea or in the desert. There was nothingto give us any clue where the road was, and none of us had a good sense ofdirection. Mother had taught me to read the stars, but I must have been a verybad student. Despairing, I asked Abdellatif to guide us. "We are adults," Isaid to him. "We may have committed sins, but not you. You are so pure.... Ifthere is a God, he'll take pity on you. You will lead us to freedom." Wefollowed him without a word. Our bodies were aching and our clothes were soakedthrough, but we had to keep going.

"Malika," Abdellatif called finally. "Come and see. There's something hard. Idon't know what it is."

I ran up to him. My younger brother didn't know what asphalt was. The othersjoined us, rolling and kissing the pavement. We were like astronauts, venturingtheir first steps on the moon.

The Oufkirs were captured five days later. The entire family was then reunitedand for the next three and a half years lived under house arrest outsideMarrakech. In 1991, King Hassan II pardoned the Oufkirs and five years laterissued them passports and visas. The family now lives in Paris.

According to Amnesty International hundreds of political prisoners are stillincarcerated throughout Morocco; the Moroccan government admits that 56political prisoners died in Moroccan jails between 1960 and 1980.

Continues...

Excerpted from Stolen Livesby Malika Oufkir Copyright ©2002 by Malika Oufkir. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Copyright ©2002 Malika Oufkir
All right reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Miramax
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0786886307
• ISBN 13: 9780786886302
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304