The Prince of Bagram Prison

by Alex Carr

  In the years since, especially in the wake of September 11, and the deepening rift between the Western and Arab worlds, I have found myself contemplating Bernoussi's wariness of me and the reasons for it. There were times when I took his reticence for hostility, a reaction to an American foreign policy that supported leaders like King Hassan II. But I have traveled enough now to know that, as much as we may think otherwise, people from other countries are remarkably able and willing to separate the actions of a government from its citizens, and that the vast majority of the world does not hold the American people responsible for the decisions of our leaders. If anything, I believe it was my innocence of which Bernoussi was afraid—that unique combination of naïveté and privilege with which I navigated the world, living as a lark the life that hundreds of thousands of Turkish and African immigrants to Europe live out of necessity.

  Looking back, I cringe at my behavior, at the extent to which I took for granted the hospitality of my Moroccan housemates, who certainly could not afford to be as generous as they were. That I lived with them without once considering the deep-seated cultural differences between us, or the implications of my physical presence in their midst, is shameful to me now. They were not particularly pious men, but they were Muslims, and the fact that they accommodated me as they did was, in hindsight, remarkable. How terrifying my ignorance must have been to Bernoussi, my incredulous curiosity about what he had been through, the host of outrage and good intentions on my sleeve. Bernoussi was, above all, someone who understood the consequences of his actions, who had suffered deeply for his convictions and knew intimately what it meant to be powerless. I, on the other hand, understood nothing yet was, by virtue of birth and the passport in my pocket, entitled to everything.

  At the time I lived with Bernoussi and the others, the situation in Morocco had already begun to change. Hassan II was growing old and his power waning. But it would be another sixteen years—seven years after Hassan's death—before the monarchy officially recognized the human-rights abuses that had occurred during the Years of Lead. In November of 2003, Hassan's son, King Mohammed VI, in keeping with his many attempts to present a face of modernity and reform, established the Equity and Reconciliation Panel, a seventeen-member independent body that was headed by a former political prisoner, to investigate sixteen thousand cases of human-rights abuses that had occurred under Hassan II's rule. Two years later, on January 6, 2006, in the wake of calls for an official apology following the IER's finding, Mohammed publicly acknowledged for the first time nearly ten thousand instances of murder, disappearance, torture, and rape. “I announce the comforting news,” he said, “with the hope that the merciful angels will carry it to the soul of my venerated father and the hearts of all the victims, the persons who had been wronged and their families, that we have sympathy and solicitude for them.” Though far from an apology and far from complete—the king's critics claim that the number of victims was much higher than the ten thousand acknowledged, and that his policies, which call for blanket amnesty for those who committed atrocities, are ineffectual—Mohammed's statement and his initial decision to set up the panel were the first of their kind in the Arab world.

  Despite his outward efforts to reform the monarchy, Mo-hammed's reign has so far been less than perfect. Critics rightly denounce the king's lavish lifestyle in the face of the rampant unemployment and overwhelming poverty that grip most of the country. The constitutional monarchy he instituted is viewed as largely a symbolic step toward democracy. Abuses still occur, especially in regard to the ongoing conflict in the Western Sahara region. But there can be no doubt that his reign represents a step forward for human rights in the region. One consequence of the comparative openness of Mo-hammed's rule has been the publication of a number of accounts of those imprisoned during the Years of Lead, including Malika Oufkir's Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail; Ahmed Marzouki's Tazmamart Cell 10; and Tahar Ben Jelloun's stunning work of fiction, This Blinding Absence of Light, which chronicles the ten-year imprisonment of a Moroccan army officer in Tazmamart. These books, which are all available in English, offer intimate glimpses into the lives of political prisoners under King Hassan II, and I highly recommend them for anyone who wants to learn more about the human consequences of this unfortunate era in Moroccan history.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Alex Carr is the author of An Accidental American. She lives with her family in Portland, Maine.

  ALSO BY ALEX CARR

  An Accidental American