a memoir by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi

***** (5/5)

Autobiography / Biography / Memoir / Non- Fiction

Click here to buy Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi (free delivery)

Book Cover Synopsis:

Malika Oufkir has led a split life. She spent her childhood days raised as a princess, but from the age of nineteen, she was imprisoned with her mother and siblings for the next 20 years.

Maika was General Oufkir’s eldest daughter. He was the closest aide of the King of Morocco, who adopted five-year-old Malika and brought her up as his daughter’s companion. Malika grew up in privilege and luxury, in the shelter of the court harem.

But on 16^th August 1972, everything changed. General Oufkir was executed for attempting to assassinate the king. Malika, her mother, her five siblings, and two loyal friends were immediately arrested and imprisoned.

After being locked up for fifteen years, the last ten of which they were placed in solitary cells, the Oufkirs dug their way out of the prison using their bare hands, and made a courageous escape.

After 5 terrifying days of freedom, they were recaptured and eventually put under house arrest for another five years.

In 1996, at the age of 43, Malika was finally free to leave Morocco and begin her new life of freedom.

Stolen Lives is a shocking true story of resilience in the face of extreme hardship. A tremendously touching account of bravery and perseverance An example of how humor can exist even in the darkest of places. It is difficult to comprehend that it could have happened in our own times.

My Book Review:

You must read this book. As the last paragraph of the book’s synopsis says, ‘it is difficult to comprehend that it could have happened in our own times.’ Malika’s story is almost like a fairytale, except in fairytales, we often skip the horrible bits and drive through to the happy ending. It’s dispicable that King Hassan II, in our day and age could have imprisoned the innocent family of his attempted assassin,  the youngest of which was 3 years old, for what amounted to 20 years. It’s completely shocking, yet this happened. And is still happening to others now, I’m sure, in various parts of the world.

In all, Malika, her mother, Malika’s 3 sisters and 2 brothers, along with 2 women who came with the family out of loyalty (a commitment which is extraordinary and admirable to me) were locked up for an unknown indefinite amount of time. They were the ‘disappeared’. And it just got worse at every step along the way. They were truly being punished for their father’s sins. Every time they there was some semblance of  comfort in their lives, it was taken away from them. They never knew where they were being moved, were extremely malnourished, and what’s most heartbreaking is that the family was separated from each other, blocked by cell walls for 10 years.

But out of this horrifying life story comes moving human stories. Whilst locked in separate cells, they constructed an amplifier out of wire and radio parts which they pushed through small holes in the walls to communicate with each other. Through this hidden device, what sustained them was a story that Malika made up. A story that she kept going for 10 years. They also survived on humour. The Story, humour and looking out for each other and i guess sheer survival instincts kept them all alive.

None of them knew how long they would be imprisoned, when this torture would end – maybe, maybe, this is what gave them hope, that King Hassan might one day pardon them. However, I think, this lack of knowledge of a future caused what Malika calls ‘the night of the long knives’, a night of true despair, where a mass suicide could very well have taken place had they been successful.

Then comes their astonishing and terrifying escape. Failed, but magnificent because they managed to get their story out to the world and eventually secure their own freedom.

After 20 years outside time, obviously assimilating back into modern society would be hard, extremely hard. Abdellatif, who was imprisoned at only 3 years old, and 23 when he truly got to see the world, missed his childhood, teenage and early adult years. All he knew was prison. It was almost worse for the rest of the family who had lived a life of luxury in their past life, Malika herself as an adopted princess. This is what I didn’t understand when I read Malika’s follow-up autobiography Freedom. I read Stolen Lives and Freedom the wrong way round, and I had no idea what they truly had experienced. When you read ’20 years in prison’, 20 years is long, but its just a number until you go on the journey of Stolen Lives. As I said in my review of Freedom, an intellectual understanding of her circumstances is no where near an emotional understanding of what she went through.

Click here to buy Freedom by Malika Oufkir (free delivery)

Click here to read my Review of Freedom

I highly recommend this complex autobiography. It shows the ugly and vengeful side of human beings, but more so the strength and love that we are capable of. And it is because of these qualities that this story has a happy ending.

My admiration goes out to the 9 individuals who suffered through those 20 years, they truly deserve peace and happiness.

x Julie

Book Reviews -Reading Like Rabbits

]]> http://readinglikerabbits.com/stolen-lives-twenty-years-in-a-desert-jail/feed 1 http://readinglikerabbits.com/freedom http://readinglikerabbits.com/freedom#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:21:23 +0000 juliewee http://readinglikerabbits.com/?p=113 Freedom – The Story of My Second Life

a memoir by Malika Oufkir

****½ (4.5/5)

Autobiography

Freedom is the sequel to Oufkir’s Autobiography Stolen Lives

Click to buy Freedom by Malika Oufkir (free delivery)

Book Cover Synopsis:

Stolen Lives, Malika Oufkir’s intensely moving account of her twenty years imprisoned in a desert jail in Morocco, was a surprise international bestseller.

In her highly anticipated follow-up, Malika reflects on the life she lived before and during incarceration and how dramatically the world had changed when she emerged. Malika was born into extreme privilege as the daughter of the king of Morocco’s closest aide, and she grew up in the palace as companion to the Moroccan princess. But in 1972, her life of luxury came to a crashing halt. Her family was locked away for two decades. After a remarkable escape, Malika and her family returned to the world they’d left behind, only to find it transformed.

Living for the first time as an adult, Malika writes candidly about adjusting to the world – from negotiating ATMs to the excesses of shopping malls, to falling in love and learning to be intimate. When she is finally free, motherhood becomes crucial to Malika’s ability to fully live her life: she becomes legal guardian to her niece, then she and her husband adopt a baby boy from Morocco. Full of insights and piercing observations, as well as humour, Freedom is as masterful and thought provoking as Oufkir’s astonishing debut.

Malika Oufkir was born in 1953 and divides her time between Miami and Marakesh.

Review Update: 1 June 2010

I read these 2 memoirs the wrong way round. I read Freedom before Stolen Lives. After reading Stolen Lives, I now understand emotionally what I understood only intellectually whilst reading Freedom. I have a renewed empathy for Malika and her family. Read these books in the right order. Especially read Stolen Lives.

Click here to read my review of Stolen Lives

My Book Review:

I should have read Stolen Lives before reading Freedom. But I didn’t. Stolen Lives chronicles Malika’s 20 years in prison, while Freedom is about her experience of life after prison. I should have read it in the right order, and understandably, it took me a little while to catch up. So, although I understood intellectually that being imprisoned for 20 years from the age of 19 with the rest of your innocent family (her youngest brother was 3 years old), is a terrible thing and would undoubtedly have potentially irreversible consequences, it took me a lot of time to understand emotionally how Malika came to be a frightened woman, unable to touch the abundant produce on the shelves of French supermarkets. I naïvely expected that after years of depravation, one would naturally gorge on the rainbow of delights available at your fingertips.

In the first couple of chapters, I began to feel guilty for not understanding the reactions and details of this woman. Guilty, because this is a true account, and you cant just close the book and place it back on your shelf like you would fiction that you ‘couldn’t get into’. I kept reading, and I quickly immersed myself into the mindset of Malika who really was discovering freedom and the modern world for the first time as an adult.

Her insights are striking. The busy, cluttered, automated and free world that we are so used to was both amazing and terrifying for Malika. Things we take for granted, like censor taps, paying using a credit card and the ability to walk past a policeman without fear, are baffling and difficult for Malika to comprehend. You see a woman who has been through more hardship than we can imagine as a mouse or a wide eyed deer ready to bolt at any sigh of danger.

As the reader I felt a sense of triumph on behalf of Malika every time she managed to conquer her demons and take truly brave steps forward in her new life.

Reading about Malika’s experience redefined my notion of bravery and courage. I would have Hollywood-ly assumed a woman released would embrace her freedom with vigour. But in truth, and in accordance with human nature, baby steps are required to step into this frightening vast new world that does not posses the controlled limits of a cell.

I haven’t read Stolen Lives yet (I have just placed a reservation for it at the library), but I know through Freedom that Malika is a brave woman whose fragility, guts and truthful personal revelations will inspire and humble any reader.

x Julie

Book Reviews

- Reading Like Rabbits