Ali left the camp with a military escort, as if he were some kind of dangerous criminal. Tadla warned him: "Not a word about the camp. Otherwise…" He didn't need to finish his sentence. We knew what he was capable of. He had spies everywhere, and he was often called to Rabat to report to his commander. We presumed he was in direct communication with General Oufkir. They had known each other in Indochina. It was rumored that Oufkir admired Tadla's force in repressing the Rif Mountain riots in 1958. Tadla was said to have killed people with a saber. In the camp, his stature was maintained by his acolytes. Even the camp commander was afraid of him. He didn't show it, but the day Tadla left the camp, the commander called us together and told us we should never defy Tadla.
5
I felt very alone during Ali's absence. He was lucky to be in the hospital. The rest of us led a Sisyphean existence. Our job was to transport rocks from one end of the camp to the other, to build a wall that other detainees would immediately demolish. As soon as wed finish, wed start all over again. The corporal who filled our sacks with rocks was sadistic. He chose the heaviest rocks, and if we paused for a second, he kicked us in the ass. Camp rules forbade us from helping anyone who collapsed under the weight of the load. It was hot. We were thirsty. We were not allowed to speak to one another. The distance from one end of the camp to the other was two kilometers.
Ali came back in relatively good shape, looking almost normal, ready to rejoin the ranks of the "punished." He told me about his stay in the Rabat hospital, where he had met the son of a colonel. As soon as he had learned that Ali came from El Hajeb, he asked to switch rooms. Ali had returned with a book that a doctor had given him, Les Liaisons dan-gcrmses, by Choderlos de Laclos. The doctor said that if he needed a mental escape from the camp, there was nothing better than this twisted love story. It would let Ali travel through time and space.
Once a month, we were given a pack of cheap Troupe cigarettes and a good meal. Since Ali hated tobacco, he reluctantly gave me his pack. Smoking was the only pleasure the camp allowed at certain times. Ali preferred to think of a woman he said he was in love with. He confided in me. Not knowing when we would be released from the camp, we made no plans for the future. Ali liked talking about this woman whom I didn't know. What with her absence and the sufferings we were enduring, this woman took on legendary proportions. Ali compared her to his idol, Ava Gardner. Sometimes he hallucinated. I did nothing to bring him back to reality. Like all of us, he needed to dream, to escape from reality when he could.
I was not in love, and I had not left a girlfriend behind. As time passed, I imagined a magnificent creature named Nina. Ali suspected she did not really exist. He listened to me, and suggested we arrange for the two women to meet, so they could talk about us. He said we would have to wait for a full moon, and that we would conjure them by thinking about them with all our might. Unfortunately, on that night we were being punished collectively; one of the detainees had tried to scale the wall to see a prostitute. Tadla ordered us into the courtyard, and we had to stand at attention until sunrise. Half the detainees fell over from the strain. Ali and I managed to stay the course, precisely because we were able to escape mentally. Despite our best efforts, we did not succeed in staging a meeting between the two women. We needed an isolated place, where we could summon tremendous concentration. As the night was ending, I thought I saw the two women walking hand in hand through the ranks of detainees. They gave water to some men, brought others back to their feet. They were perfumed and scantily dressed. They vanished as soon as Tadla showed up.
6
Six months after our arrival, General Oufkir decided to send us to the officers' school in Ahermemou, a mountain village north of Taza on the way to Oujda, near the Algerian frontier. Tadla said nothing about our destination in his good-bye speech. "You guys are no longer a bunch of weak women; you're men-strong and patriotic. Now you understand we will not tolerate Communism in our country. You're going somewhere else, I don't know where, in the secret army. You'll be with men who will continue to work on you the way I have, so no messing around-don't screw up. We bury troublemakers in holes with only their heads left above ground. They can breathe, but they fry in the sun, and they're only good for the hospital. The Chinese taught us this method. Very clever, the Chinese."
We had seen soldiers buried with only their heads above the sand, left in the heat of the day. Tadla had made a point of showing them to us. We already knew how cruel he was. We didn't need further proof.
The officers' school of Ahermemou was quite different from El Hajeb, the camp we had left. We sensed that the worst of the torture was over, and that our reeducation would now take place under more humane conditions. We slept six to a room. I asked the officer in charge if I could be in the same room as Ali. No problem, he said. We arrived on New Year's Day. It was snowing. The commander gathered us together and spoke to us in good French. He had been educated at the military academy in St. Cyr, in France. He was refined and hard, without being vulgar. This officer knew why we were there, and what he was supposed to do.
"I know who you are. I've studied each of your dossiers. I know that your political activity is incompatible with the monarchy and the prerogatives of the king. Here, there are no politics. I was chosen to complete your reeducation, and I'll tolerate no discussion or rebellion. I'm in charge here. I don't know any of you, and I'll follow orders without compunction. The slightest infraction by a single individual will lead to collective punishment. Here, you wash every day, you're on time, and you obey orders. A word to the wise should suffice. Fall out!"
The commander was a more sophisticated version of Tadla. Young officers took charge of our instruction. We were given pens and notebooks. We underwent military training, deprived of any civil liberties. We could write to our families, but our letters went through a censorship office. Ali wrote to his "fiancee," who did not respond. The day he suggested I write to Nina, I realized he was beginning to lose his mind. I wasted no time bringing him back to reality. He knew that he sometimes became delirious, and admitted that he had no more sensation in his penis. Same for me. We tried to calm ourselves by putting bromide into our disgusting morning "coffee," made partly from chickpea paste. I told him that this kind of punishment regimen was designed to make us regret, for the rest of our lives, whatever we had been arrested for. It had been refined by penal experts, so that we would end up eating sand, losing all confidence in ourselves. The idea was to brainwash us by the time we left, so that we'd be ready to obey, without ever doubting or contesting anything again. This was the method used by Mao and Stalin. We were perfect victims. So what difference did it make whether we had erections or not? Where could we go with our excited cocks? I'd forgotten what a woman's body looked like, I'd forgotten what sexual desire and pleasure felt like. We didn't know when-or if-we would get out of there. It was torture, psychological torture. But Ali had to hang on, just as I did. Otherwise, we would be giving them the satisfaction of seeing us beaten down, defeated.
There was one Jew among us. He had probably been arrested in error. The police and the army did not like to admit their mistakes. He was there, said nothing, spoke good Arabic, but found himself alone. His name was Marcel. Ali and I tried to talk to him, but he preferred to remain apart from the group. On the first day of Ramadan, the month of Muslim fasting, he finally spoke up, asking to talk to the officer in charge. He had no reason to fast during the day, like the Muslims. His case was heard in Rabat, where it was decided that hed be allowed to eat during the day. When the officer in charge told him he had won this privilege, Marcel thanked him, but said he had decided not to exercise it. "I'm like the others," he said. "Even if I'm not Muslim, I will observe Ramadan." For him, it was a matter of principle. After this, he felt more at ease, better integrated into the group. But the commander did not appreciate this show of solidarity. He ordered Marcel to eat a piece of stale bread in front of the rest of us. Sure, Marcel was a Moroccan, the commander barked out, but not a Muslim. "You're a Jew, so act like one!" Marcel lowered his eyes, and bit into the hard, stale bread. After the second mouthful, he vomited. The commander put him in solitary confinement for three days.