The time period involved is that of the French so-called ‘protectorate’ in Morocco, one of a series of colonial manoeuvres whereby France (and, in the case of Northern Morocco, Spain) added the territories of Morocco to their Maghribi dominions. Neighbouring Algeria had been annexed to France itself from 1830 onwards, until the bloodiest and longest of wars of liberation – the so-called War of a Million Martyrs – between 1954 and 1962, by which Algeria gained its independence, an event notably captured in Gillo Pontecorvo’s famous film, The Battle of Algiers (1966). Morocco may never have become a province of France as Algeria did, but the colonial administration of the country set out to Gallicise as many aspects of the country as possible. It is here that Ghallab’s own experiences come to the fore, in that this novel provides its readers with detailed insights into the total domination by the French of the government, the legal system (seen at its most stark in chapter 43, with the imposition of the death sentence on young freedom fighters – where French authorities’ invocation of the term ‘terrorists’ to describe the same group of young Moroccans may recall for readers of this novel so many contemporary uses of the same terminology to describe those who would dare oppose the prevailing system), the prisons and internment camps, and, of paramount significance, the education system. The contrast between the traditional kuttab (a Qur’an school where the sacred text is learned by rote) and the madrasa (which I translate here as ‘secular academy’), the modes of instruction and chastisement, and the subjects taught and learned – all of them the focus of chapters 14 and 15 in the novel – are reflected in the fierce arguments between the male members of Hajj Muhammad’s family.
While the protectorate period (1912–56) is the general historical background against which the events of this novel take place, the more specific time frame is the decades immediately prior to the return of the exiled Sultan (King) Muhammad V and the achievement of independence in 1956. As the nationalist movement gathered momentum and spread from cities to the countryside and mountains, the confrontation between the indigenous population and the non-indigenous colonial authorities became more tense and violent.* As Ghallab’s novel moves towards its conclusion – with ever-increasing levels of civil unrest and a growing number of explosions and co-ordinated attacks on members of the government and their collaborators – characters almost inevitably refer back to conflicts and incidents in the past that have marked the protectorate period as one of continuous political, social, and cultural confrontation. One such conflict is the uprising between 1921 and 1926 in the Rif Mountains in the northern part of the country, then under Spanish control – the so-called Rif War (mentioned in chapter 46) in which the Rifis, led by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim (who became an important nationalist icon, better known as simply Abd el-Krim) initially routed the Spanish army and then turned south to confront French forces, but were eventually defeated. The Second World War was also to have a significant impact in that, following the fall of France in Europe, Moroccans – like other inhabitants of the North African littoral – began to ask themselves, with good reason, about the impact of events in Europe on France’s role in Morocco, not to mention German intentions. One young man in chapter 29 (which opens with the repetition of the word ‘war’) even envisages Adolf Hitler soon strutting his way through the streets of Fez. As the nationalist movement gained in strength through the country, the increasingly vicious and desperate policies of the French colonial regime, duly reflected in We Have Buried the Past, reached a kind of climax in 1953 with the deposition and exile of Sultan Muhammad V and his replacement by Mawlay Ben Arafa, the ‘puppet’ alluded to in chapters 40 and 41. And, as negotiations toward independence between the two opposing parties were under way in 1955, the battle at Ouad Zem in August of that year – in which Amazigh mountain dwellers attacked and killed a large number of French nationals – caused many people to fear that the savagery of the attack had, in the words of one of the characters in the novel, ‘destroyed the bridge’ connecting the two sides. As it turned out, however, agreement was finally reached, and Morocco became an independent state on 11 February 1956.
It is into this spatial and chronological context that Ghallab places the family of Hajj Muhammad al-Tihami. Indeed, the Hajj marks the beginning and end of this novel. Introduced as an influential figure through several chapters at the novel’s outset, it is his death and burial in the final scene that coincide exactly with the announcement of the sultan’s return and the declaration of independence. In fact, there are many ways in which We Have Buried the Past may be considered a family saga, not unlike many other narratives that make use of the complex relationships within a single family as a means of illustrating social and political realities and the tensions involved in the processes of change – all described against the backdrop of outside factors of the kind that have been identified above. As the novel opens, Hajj Muhammad is portrayed as a powerful figure both inside his own household and in the larger community of Fez. Extremely conservative in his social and cultural values, he commands absolute authority within his own family. Favourably married to his wife, Khaduj, he is the father of four children: three sons and one daughter. His house and household is large, with numerous servants, and he is also the owner of a large acreage of lands, which he has been able to extend through his astute manipulation of agricultural commerce and the vulnerability of his peasant workers (traits that are the focus of discussion in chapters 11–13). Hajj Muhammad (whose designation as ‘Hajj’ connotes that he has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca) regularly attends prayers and sermons at the Qarawiyin Mosque, and all his children have names closely associated with Islam: the three sons, Abd al-Ghani, Abd al-Rahman, and Abd al-Latif, are all named as ‘servants’ (‘Abd) followed by one of the ninety-nine ‘beautiful names of God’ (al-asma’ al-husna) cited in the Qur’an. The youngest, Abd al-Latif, plays almost no role in the events of the narrative, but the ongoing antipathy between the two eldest brothers, Abd al-Ghani and Abd al-Rahman, is a major feature of the narrative, involving both their relationships with their father and their very different functions in the world outside the household. The family’s daughter, Aisha, is given the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s favourite wife. Having observed with naive innocence the elaborate procedures and preparations for her brother Abd al-Ghani’s marriage (chapters 20–22), she finds herself totally perplexed when she has to confront the wide variety of impressions and advice to which she is subjected as a young upper-class Moroccan woman facing the prospect of marriage herself – whether by her own choice or not (the existence of the very possibility of such a radically new decision for Moroccan women having been drawn to her attention by her brother Abd al-Rahman).
These, then, are the members of Hajj Muhammad’s family – or, at least, the ones resulting from his marriage to Khaduj. However, he has also fathered another child. On a visit to the slave dealer Ibn Kiran (the existence of such a role in twentieth-century Morocco being perhaps something of a surprise), Hajj Muhammad spots a beautiful young dark-skinned girl from the south of Morocco named Yasmine, who has been kidnapped and sold into slavery. Smitten by her beauty, he purchases her as a ‘servant-girl’ and brings her back to the house. Taking advantage of his wife’s absence on a visit to her relatives and also exploiting an interpretation of a phrase in the Qur’an (4:24), namely the legitimacy of using ‘what your right hand possesses’ as a concubine, he summons her to his room and rapes her. Following his wife Khaduj’s return to the household, it is not long before she discovers the new situation that faces her: the presence in her own household of her husband’s concubine, a reality about which she can effectively do nothing. When Yasmine gives birth to a son, Mahmud, Hajj Muhammad acquires an additional family member, although the boy’s darker skin colour and the fact that his mother is a servant work to his continuing disadvantage.
It is among the male children of the family that the broader tensions of this era are exposed and illustrated within the narrative, initially between Abd al-Ghani
and Abd al-Rahman but at a later stage also between Abd al-Rahman and Mahmud. The eldest son, Abd al-Ghani, models his behaviour entirely on that of his father, endeavouring to exert his authority as the eldest son on all the other children of the household. His father, however, seems well aware of his son’s limitations and sets him up with a clothing shop in a nearby market, where he can both learn the trade and acquire the necessary commercial and negotiating skills of a business owner. Abd al-Rahman, the second son, is another matter entirely. Intelligent and defiant, he resists his elder brother’s attempts at dominating his life, provoking furious rows that require their father’s equally furious intervention. Both boys have initially attended the local Qur’an school, but, while that has proved to be sufficient education for Abd al-Ghani, his younger brother has different and higher aspirations. Much to his father’s initial annoyance, Abd al-Rahman asks to be transferred to the madrasa, the secular academy based on French models of education. When Abd al-Rahman attends the academy and learns how to think, to interpret, and to challenge received opinion – and, probably worst of all, brings his schoolbooks home to study – he immediately arouses the ire of his elder brother, the gum-chewing and thoroughly bored Abd al-Ghani. This is a classic non-meeting of minds and attitudes, a scenario that is only amplified by the intervention of their father, who is equally challenged and outraged by Abd al-Rahman’s seemingly acquired negative posture towards everything that his father (and elder brother) represent. It is, of course, not a little ironic that the French system of education from which Abd al-Rahman acquires these modes of thought is precisely the motivating force that leads to his radical questioning of those conservative values and his increasing involvement in nationalist activities. Abd al-Rahman’s younger half-brother, Mahmud, Yasmine’s son, becomes a youthful admirer of these new opportunities in education, and Abd al-Rahman persuades the family to allow Mahmud also to attend the academy. However, whereas Abd al-Rahman is increasingly drawn into oppositional movements against the French occupation, leading to a pair of two-year prison terms, Mahmud comes to the conclusion that his social status as the dark-skinned child of a servant-concubine will always be different. Leaving the academy, he joins the civil service and eventually rises to the position of judge in the court system. In a telling chapter (45) Ghallab portrays Mahmud, now a Moroccan court judge, being instructed by his French supervisor as to what sentences he is to impose on a group of young men from Fez who have been arrested for planning attacks on French forces. Hoping in vain to escape the consequences of the judgement that he has announced in court, Mahmud leaves the city and drives towards Meknes. In an episode that is clearly intended to be maximally symbolic, the mirage floating in front of his car as he drives along the road turns into a nightmarish vision filled with the yelling faces of young Moroccan victims of rampant injustice. Unable to erase the images that loom in front of him, he raises his hands to his eyes, and his car crashes into a tree, killing him instantly.
The servants of Hajj Muhammad’s household are a tangential presence in the narrative – apart, that is, from Yasmine, who is both servant and concubine. And yet, in one exceptional chapter (7) Ghallab provides his readers with a lengthy glimpse into a unique aspect of Moroccan popular culture, a Gnawa night in a neighbouring residence, in the rituals of which the women-servants of the household joyfully participate. The drumbeats and clashing cymbals of the Gnawa performers (which can still be heard in Fez’s restaurants and at the city’s annual festival of popular culture) rouse the women attendees into a frenzy of dancing and merriment, allowing them to forget, if only for a few night-time hours, the drudgeries of their daily existence. At dawn on the following day they creep back to the house, where a disapproving Hajj Muhammad has preferred to look the other way rather than prevent his servant-women from attending this thoroughly traditional occasion for joy and relief.
Within the long-recognised structure of a family saga novel, Ghallab makes use of this pioneering contribution to Moroccan Arabic fiction to provide his readers with a lovingly accurate portrait of his native city as it lives through the challenging processes involved in the long march towards independence. As a European nation, France, colonises an African one, Morocco, beliefs and values collide, misunderstandings abound, tensions mount, and each side resorts to violence as a means of asserting its own agenda. Into such a fraught situation and period Ghallab skilfully inserts a Moroccan family from Fez. The lives of Hajj Muhammad’s family, its personal crises, its relationships with itself and others, are all placed into a realistic context which reflects the author’s own experiences and aspirations. With the eventual, hard-won achievement of independence, Morocco will face a future with new realities and challenges – the topics to be taken up by other writers, all of whom have been inspired by the example set by Ghallab, one of the Moroccan novel genre’s foundational figures.
Roger Allen
Philadelphia, August 2017
*For interested readers, an excellent survey of this period can be found in C. R. Pennell, Morocco from Empire to Independence, Oxford: Oneworld, 2003, esp. Ch. 8.
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