Word: morocco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...dream come true. But that confinement paled next to the one that was to last more than 20 years and that began suddenly one afternoon in August 1972. A few years earlier, she had been allowed to return to the home of General Mohammed Oufkir, her father. Oufkir, Morocco's feared police chief and Defense Minister, tried to seize power by having the King's plane shot down. The coup d'etat failed, and Oufkir was summarily executed. Exacting further vengeance for the betrayal, Hassan II had Oufkir's wife and six children banished to a series of desert prisons...
...Living in silence for 20 years, you lose your dignity," she says. "You need to talk, you need to be a witness. I wanted Hassan II to know exactly what he did." Just as important to her is the cleansing effect the book is now having in Morocco. Though it is still banned, it has been widely read and discussed in the press as part of a debate on the country's feudal past...
Initially, the Oufkir family, which included Malika and Abdellatif, who began serving his sentence at age 3, were imprisoned in a remote area in southeastern Morocco. For years they lived in almost constant isolation from one another in cells infested with scorpions, rats, cockroaches and fleas. Their possessions, including family photos, were destroyed by sadistic guards in a bonfire. After 15 years of misery came the "Night of the Long Knives": Malika's mother Fatima and her eldest son tried to commit suicide, and Malika slit the wrists of a sister in a frenzied but failed attempt...
...deep embarrassment to Hassan II, their travail prompted a series of efforts to address Morocco's human-rights abuses. The Oufkirs were immediately transferred to a luxury villa in Marrakech, where they spent four years being fattened up under house arrest before finally being freed in 1991. Not long afterward, Hassan II released the Tazmamart prisoners--58 ex-soldiers who had allegedly taken part in another coup and had been locked in tiny cells with little food and no light 24 hours a day for 18 years. After Hassan II's death in 1999, his son, King Mohammed VI, hastened...
...Jacob Cheung's Midnight Fly, two tourists?Michelle (the ever-fabulous Anita Mui) from Hong Kong and Miki (Junna Risa) from Japan?meet in France, then go on to Morocco, with dire results. For this English-language tale of sisterhood under stress, Cheung, whose 1989 Beyond the Sunset and 1992 Cageman won best picture at the Hong Kong Film Awards, has the gloss of sumptuous photography and lovely work by the two leads. But narrative implausibilities assure that Midnight Fly ... doesn't. Really, what are the odds that one woman's husband will be the other's lover...