The news of the secret jail spread throughout the city, and eventually it was no longer secret. It was the commissariat of Jemaa el-Fnaa. The arrests didn’t stop, so the number of guards in the vicinity of the commissariat doubled. The mothers began to gather in the middle of the square. They rested in the chairs belonging to the food vendors. Jemaa el-Fnaa gradually became an area for protests. Tourists and visitors to the square, Moroccan and foreign, wandered through without paying attention to the intermittent clashes between the families of those imprisoned and the security forces, the families forming into lines and moving en masse toward the building, and the police, always vigilant, driving them back among the circles of storytellers.
Suddenly, with no warning, the process of releasing the prisoners began, without a trial. Each day a few would leave, bringing with them news of who would come out next.
The number of families shrank. The remaining ones kept up their vigil near the jail. Their initial worry transformed into a real hope that the confinement might be lifted for all of the city’s young men who had disappeared.
Early one morning in January, with rain sweeping across the desolate square as it usually did on cold mornings, the families were surprised to see, through the filaments of falling water, lights shining at the door of the jail. They hurried over to find out what was going on. The lights were from a jeep that was transporting the remaining prisoners. Mama Aicha saw her son as he was being pushed roughly to climb into the vehicle. His head was shaved and a band of black cloth covered his eyes. She slapped her cheeks and cried: “Aziz! It’s my son, Aziz! Where are you going, my boy?”
Aziz heard her cry. He raised his shackled hand and clenched his fist. Cries and cheers filled the air. The names of the prisoners were repeated in every corner of Jemaa el-Fnaa that day. Mama Aicha steeled her heart. She banished the tears from her eyes. They were forbidden from betraying her devastation.
It was an agonizing moment for Mama Aicha, who was torn between fear of the cold and the dark, and fear of the wolves that were looking for scapegoats.
The cars began to move and the families trembled with worry. Rumors spread through the city, confirming that the prisoners who had been charged with conspiracy and plotting to overthrow the regime had been transferred directly to the execution wing at Kenitra Central Prison outside of Rabat. They would execute them after a quick trial. The most important work of proving them guilty had already been carried out by the police in the Jemaa el-Fnaa commissariat. Other sources, however, maintained that they were still in Marrakech. That they were being held inside a secret vault in el-Badi Palace, an old prison where the Saadi kings used to entomb their Portuguese prisoners alive. Aziz’s mother tried to discover the way to this vault but she could find no one to guide her. She continued meeting regularly with the other mothers and fathers and wives. They met up near the Jemaa el-Fnaa commissariat and then congregated in the shade of the giant trees in Arset el-Bilk just beside the square. The security officers watched them and counted their very breaths, but the families didn’t care. They supported each other and fortified themselves against despair by nurturing their dreams and pursuing hope, however false it might be.
Three years they waited, weaving together strands of hope.
Their initial hesitant search efforts transformed into a full-scale protest and then into an understanding that more action was needed to find out the fate of their imprisoned relatives. The first mission that the families undertook, with Mama Aicha among them, was to see the governor of the city.
At first, the governor was the epitome of politeness. He explained to them that they lived, thanks be to God, in a nation of laws. Even the most violent criminals were punished according to the law. If they thought that their relatives, whom they claimed had been locked up by the state, were not guilty, then they should look for them away from the centers of power, because the state did not detain people without trial, and apart from the civil prison at Boulmharez, it had no other place dedicated to this function. “Therefore I advise you,” the governor concluded sternly, “to look for your sons far away from us here. Each one of you must do so on his or her own. It’s strictly forbidden to gather like this without authorization. This country has laws, and we can’t permit you to keep spreading misinformation and disorder like this.”
The governor’s answer stripped away all remnants of fear from inside Mama Aicha, and she felt a strange power coursing through her body and in her soul. She immediately snapped back at him in a tone that was at once strident and aggressive: “That’s why we came to you, sir, because you’re the governor for His Majesty in Marrakech. You’re the representative of the king here. You’re the chief of this city and its protector. If our sons have died, in God’s name give us their bodies so we can bury them, and if they’re still alive, issue the orders to release them from prison so we can see them. It’s been more than three years now since they disappeared.”
“That’s enough! Go home or I’ll have you and everyone with you thrown in jail. I was clear with you. I won’t tolerate this kind of disrespect against the state.”
They left the governor’s building. When they paused outside the door to collect themselves, Mama Aicha addressed the group: “Worse than the jail they threaten us with is what we put up with every moment. Isn’t our running frantically through the streets like lost dogs worse than jail? Isn’t their kicking us out in this way a punishment no different than torture? Isn’t the agony of waiting a kind of death that is slowly creeping up on us? As for me, neither jail nor death frightens me. I will go look for my son, either to get him out of prison or to enter it myself.”
“Wherever you go, Aicha, we go with you,” said one of the other mothers, “to give credibility to these calls for change.”
“In that case, let’s go back to Jemaa el-Fnaa. We’ll stage a sit-in in front of the commissariat. We’ll demand that they tell us where they took our sons.”
They occupied the area and were dispersed right away. They returned the following day, the following week, the following month. They always returned. Sometimes the police weren’t enough to break up the protest. They arrested them. They arrested Mama Aicha and the other mothers more than once, and then they let them go after a day or two. Mama Aicha always came out even fiercer, more determined. She no longer cared about dying, and she was no longer afraid of being arrested.
When she returned home one evening, she noticed under the door a piece of green paper folded into the shape of an envelope. On the back was a circular seal. She opened it and saw that there was writing on it. A shudder went through her in spite of the August heat. Her feelings swung between happiness and sadness — she didn’t know how to read, yet she knew that the letter was from her son. She couldn’t wait for her husband to return. She tucked the letter into her bosom and hurried off toward his store in Souk Semmarine. She didn’t answer him when he asked, surprised, why she had come, as she had never visited him in his shop before. Out of breath, she handed the letter to him.
“It’s from Aziz.”
“How do you know? Who told you it’s from him?” he asked.
“I felt it with my heart.”
“Oh, Aicha, it is from him. They’ve transferred him and all his comrades from the secret underground cell to the Ghbila Prison in Casablanca. It’s now possible to visit him. He says that we can go on Saturday morning.”