When Abd al-Rahman met Abd al-Aziz in the prison store, he was in a terrible state, as though he had just come off a battlefield. His features were unrecognisable, his posture was bent, and he could not stand up straight because some of his ribs were fractured; his legs could barely hold him up, and his breathing was laboured and shallow. There was a look of terror in his bloodshot eyes, as though he had spent time with the Devil incarnate.
Abd al-Rahman’s quiescent feelings were suddenly aroused as he welcomed his friend. His conscience pained him as he looked at the face that had once brimmed with conviction but was now transformed into a misshapen mass, barely clinging to life. Abd al-Rahman tried to gather his emotional resources, but it was as though an electric shock had shattered his nerves. Tears poured down his face, his voice choked, and he could neither offer comfort nor ask for details.
But then a voice – familiar for its confidence, though now broken and short of breath – spoke up. ‘No, no, don’t cry,’ it gasped. ‘I wanted this… and so did God.’
Abd al-Aziz’s words gave Abd al-Rahman new determination and wiped away his tears. ‘I always knew you to be steadfast and brave,’ he replied. ‘Things are still…’
Abd al-Aziz nodded as if to say, ‘You’ll find out. You’re going to find out a lot about our courage and determination.’
All was at an end. Abd al-Aziz and his companions had arrived at the prison only after the police had extracted confessions, found out all the information they needed, arrested the whole cell, and put an end to everything. The general in Fez boasted to his counterpart in Casablanca that the city of Fez had once again surrendered.
When Abd al-Aziz heard the news in prison, he wept. Abd al-Rahman wept not for the same reason but because he was seriously worried about Abd al-Aziz’s condition. He had previously had complete confidence in him and knew he would be able to lead one cell after another if he could stay in the field. But now all hope had vanished. The man who had once said, ‘Our bodies, blood, and spirits; that’s all we have. So, let’s offer those as food and drink for the tree of freedom,’ was now finished.
But Fez did not surrender. Instead, it hid its embers, the way fire can be concealed under a pile of black coal. The city’s young folk were anxious for fear the city might indeed give up. For them it was out of the question for history to be altered and a new, unprecedented page written. So they lived with the French general’s declarations as though engaged in a contest with his dreams – dreams that he aimed to achieve, while they aimed to prove them false.
The nationalist cells now emerged from their zone of silence, and their members explained the goal to the young conscripts. Groups now started confirming the inevitability of history and proving the general’s dreams to be false. Fez was reinvigorated as never before. Now that Abd al-Aziz’s group had watered the city with a rain shower of self-sacrifice, it felt a flourish of springtime. Fez only ever blossoms with the fresh green of spring, and now spring was arriving amid a winter so gloomy that everything was dark and night seemed to last forever. And people’s hearts pounded with intimations of victory to be achieved by the young men in cells and resistance groups.
It was all up to the general. Even with his huge body, red face, twisted moustache, and uniform full of medals celebrating honour and victory, he still could not achieve the victory in Fez that he dreamed about. His pride was hurt, and the glory that he had won in other theatres of war would now be destroyed by a group of young men with their secret plans unknown to the army, police, and guards.
The general inevitably had to take revenge for his injured pride and honour. An army’s glory lies on the field of battle, and the imperialist general was not about to let that glory be impaired by a small city. The ensuing struggle was brutal and harsh. Every window, every street in the city was occupied by soldiers. Guards watched over houses and buildings, as well as cobblers, weavers, and tanners; police lurked inside mosques and by the doors of shrines and tombs; squads of secret police brought over from France to look for members of the resistance took to the roofs of buildings – in Fez, the roofs had always had their own history of resistance. The general took charge of the whole operation from his headquarters.
He knew that the leaders of the resistance were young men with training, but the traces they left made it clear that they were using only the most basic methods; their primary resources consisted of sheer courage and confidence rather than good organisation and clear goals. Faced with these realities, the general found himself in a dilemma: for someone of his military rank, the field of conflict did not involve a closed city that, even when occupied and in a state of submission, nevertheless continued to resist. He was an army general who was now bringing all his basic principles and his military career to bear in order to fight a group of young Moroccans whose only strategy involved an engaged conscience, a narrowly defined nationalism, and a truly reckless bravery.
‘Conscience,’ he said to himself. ‘That has nothing to do with military life, so how is it now so clearly intervening between myself and my duty? I’ve learned military ways very well; they require me to take command of this city, which is currently rebelling against my soldiers. Indeed, the army is always prepared. But today I’m fighting a war with no battlefield. I’m supposed to be a governor, but I’m fighting as a general… and against whom? A group of youngsters with no experience or training. They can vanish behind doors and down turnoffs and narrow alleys; they can strike, then run away. So, here I am, a great general leading a campaign against a group of youths whose only weapon is the recklessness that leads them to try their luck with ancient revolvers. Is this to be the summation of my career, standing here in all my past glory, chasing groups of youths? It would be better if the police did the chasing.’
He was jolted out of these thoughts by the sound of more gunshots somewhere in the city. More victims – collaborators, authority figures. More than ever before, he now had the feeling that his military and administrative honour were being weighed in the balance. Too bad for his military honour if the government decided to relieve him of his post because he could not stop a few ancient revolvers being fired. ‘No, no,’ he told himself. ‘I have to succeed. The city has to surrender. It’s not just my honour that’s at stake, but France’s as well, and I’m one of its generals.’
He convened a meeting of his advisors, and they all decided that the citizens of Fez had to be humiliated.
Now everyone with an illustrious or noble name was seized, and the gates of the internment camps were opened to admit the leading citizens of Fez, as though being arrested were still regarded as humiliating. The city went into a rage, and full fury prevailed. But it was not the general’s aim to win sympathy or lift the burden of tyranny and rage. By now his only goal was to put an end to the shots being fired from antique, rusty revolvers. Even so, he endured many sleepless nights, and his nerves were on edge.
Then came good news. A soldier on guard duty came rushing into the general’s office, stamped his feet as he came to attention, extended his quivering right hand in a salute, and tilted his head to the side by way of announcing that the lieutenant-colonel was at hand requesting an urgent meeting.
‘Good news, General,’ the colonel reported. ‘We’ve captured the terrorist group.’
‘Is that true?’ the general cried, his face bursting into a smile. ‘So, Fez has finally surrendered.’
The word ‘surrender’ held a particular magic for the general, both when he mouthed it himself and even more so when he heard it from others. The surrender of Fez was directly tied to the glory earned by those marshals and generals who had preceded him in the conflict. How eager he was to inherit that same glory, even if it only involved a bunch of youths who had managed to rattle his nerves.
He rose to his feet, hand in his pocket, unlit cigarette between his lips, and began pacing around his office, as though he could not bear to sit in his seat. His pacing carried him away to a place where he imagined himself young again – a junior officer, strong and sturdy, issuing commands to soldiers and subordinates. He was bursting with excitement. When he came back from this private journey to past glory, a smile of victory played on his face.
‘Tell me again,’ he said, still staring off into the distance as though not addressing the officer standing in front of him, ‘how the surrender came about.’
The lieutenant-colonel paused for a while over the word ‘surrender’, and took his time responding – it implied something much bigger and more extensive than merely arresting a group of youths. But he was a soldier who followed orders and had no wish to argue with the general, of whose status he was well aware.
‘It was all very simple, General,’ he said, but then backtracked, worried the general might not be satisfied or might belittle the operation he had just supervised. ‘What I mean,’ he went on, ‘is that the operation was successful. We carried out your orders, General. We surrounded the city, closed off the entrances to the streets, and kept watch from the rooftops. Then we initiated a great search operation fully worthy of your great legion. My own troop launched a flanking search of the Talia Quarter.’
‘Yes,’ the general interrupted. ‘I’ve repeatedly pointed out to the security director that he needs to tighten security there. I was sure that a terrorist group was lurking in there somewhere—’
‘But, General,’ the colonel continued, ‘we didn’t find anything. The houses were perfectly normal, and the residents were quiet. It was only when the troop launched its search that people started to panic—’
The general laughed gleefully; his nostrils expanded and he turned red. His whole body shook as he laughed and coughed. ‘I know,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m sure they started yelling and screaming as though they’d been touched by demons. But we’re never going to beat them if we don’t scare with them our raids, even at night. Fine, carry on.’
‘The troop continued its searches, moving from one quarter to the next until it reached the Udwa Quarter—’
‘No, no!’ the general interrupted. ‘Udwa’s peaceful. You’ll never find anything there.’
‘Our search was meticulous; we searched from house to house. Eventually in one house we stumbled across eight young men sleeping in a single room in a remote part of the house. They were all from different families, but similar in age. They looked upset and nervous. The raid took them by surprise, and they paled in fright. The discovery that they had weapons with them was a clear victory for our troop: they were caught red handed, and there was no way they could deny anything—’
‘Deny anything?’ the general interrupted once again, blowing smoke from the cigarette he had now lit. ‘They’ve been arrested, that’s what matters,’ he continued. ‘It’s no concern of ours whether or not they deny anything.’
‘As we arrested them, the women kept yelling and screaming.’
‘Enough!’ the general cried. ‘I don’t need any more details. They’re in your hands now, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, General.’
‘So get back to your job, and take good care of them!’ he said, laughing. ‘I’ll arrange for a military tribunal.’
And so, once again Abd al-Rahman in prison welcomed a new batch of young men who looked like ghosts, their bodies battered and their spirits crushed by the torture they had suffered. As they entered, their eyes radiated fear: they were terrified of anyone and everyone. Abd al-Rahman knew them; they were members of a nationalist cell. But they appeared not to recognise him, since terror had erased their memories. They were looking for someone who was not a soldier or a policeman, but saw no one to trust. They resorted to silence, saying not a word. Abd al-Rahman did his best to restore their sense of security, but they simply stared at him in fear and said nothing; it was as though they saw hatred in the eyes of every person, and felt that every hand would land blows, every mouth utter obscenities.
When Abd al-Aziz came back from the prison clinic, where he had been treated for his wounds, he entered the prison store and felt new sets of eyes staring at him, while his own eyes registered faces marred by violence and disfigured by terrible assaults. He knew all the faces, and he wept. He now realised that the single cell he was relying on to kindle the flame of resistance had been arrested and imprisoned.
Ali, the head of the group, confirmed in a whisper that they had all confessed to creating a resistance cell.