Malika Oufkir (Arabic: 賲賱賷賰丞 兀賵賮賯賷乇) (born April 2, 1953) is a Moroccan writer and former "disappeared". She is the daughter of General Mohamed Oufkir and a cousin of fellow Moroccan writer and actress Leila Shenna.
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail, Malika Oufkir
Malika Oufkir is the eldest daughter of Mohamed Oufkir and she is a Moroccan. General Oufkir was arrested and then executed. Malika Oufkir and her family were initially confined to house arrest in the south of Morocco from 1973 to 1977.
Then General Oufkir's entire family was sent to a secret prison in the Sahara desert where they suffered harsh conditions for a total of 15 years.
After escaping, they were released into house arrest in 1987. In 1991 they were among nine political prisoners to be released. On July 16, 1996, at the age of 43, Malika Oufkir emigrated to Paris accompanied by her brother Raouf and her sister Soukaina.
I expected to love this book because memoirs of people who have faced life's biggest challenges and survived are generally my favorite stories, but this one left me cold. While I was sympathetic to this family's plight, I disliked the writer and would have preferred a less unbiased account. Milika sounds, even at 40, like a spoiled child. She takes credit for everything -- her family's escape, the children's education, the family's entertainment, maintaining their sanity... is there anything Milika can't do? By the book's end I was literally laughing every time she started in one her "I saved them all" song because it was so over the top. Perhaps it's due to her years of imprisonment, but at times the book comes across as a tribute to herself. Perhaps no one told her that you don't say these sorts of things about one's self, you wait for others to say them about you.
I suspect that some of the clunky writing is due to the translation, but sheesh, this book is so filled with inconsistencies that I found myself doubting the author's truthfulness. She often contracts herself on the same page and occasionally even in the same paragraph. One minute they were all bald, the next she's combing her waist-long hair. One paragraph states they haven't seen each other in years, the next page mentions the sisters cuddling in bed together and the mother spending her days caring for the youngest child. They were all starving, literally wasting away, but one sister is "getting fat" and had to be put on a diet. Then there's her descriptions of their terrible physical condition after the escape... except the photographs taking just after their recapture show healthy young people. Milika in particular is striking with her rounded cheeks, bright eyes and well-groomed hair. By the book's end I didn't know what to think. It's terrible that this family was locked up for their father's crime, but I'm not convinced that their experiences in jail were exactly as the writer describes.
The ending is abrupt and I was left with the feeling that something was missing. I expected some sort of great realization by the writer... perhaps acknowledging that the deprivations her family experienced in jail were much like what the poor people of her country experienced every single day without any hope of escape. But no. She seems perfectly okay with the fact that some people are princesses, some people are slaves who serve said princesses, and that's just how things are. Milika's outrage is very narrow, reserved entirely for the suffering of herself and her family, and it has the effect of diminishing the entire tale.
I'd like to read more about this story from an impartial, skilled writer, someone who takes time to explain the cultural conditions in Morocco and explains her father's crimes and interviews the entire family to present a more nuanced, complete version of a remarkable situation.
Compelling true-life events are told in a haphazard manner with no 鈥渟tory telling鈥� ability. Although I was intellectually horrified at what this family was subjected to and amazed at their determination to survive, the story was told with such detachment that I consequently felt emotionally detached. I know it鈥檚 nonfiction but I expected to FEEL something and the cold, disjointed litany of facts left me wanting. Her descriptions of everything (from people, to events, to material aspects of her world) were often disconcertingly contradictory, sometimes within the same paragraph, so it was difficult to form a clear picture of reality (e.g., she loved living in the palace, she hated living in the palace; she loved the feeling of freedom while riding horses, she did anything she could to get out of riding horses, etc.). Maybe this duality is a consequence of coping with an entire life experience, one way or another, of imprisonment and oppression?
An amazing memoir of a family in prison for 20 years ! A story of courage and strength and the love that held them through the darkest times of their lives. Emerging from a life in a palace for Malika Oukfir, to living in the squalor of the Moroccan gaols. Tremendous dignity upheld by all throughout. Unbelievable disturbing account of political injustice. 4 stars.
My book club refers to it as Paris Hilton goes to Marrakesh.... the ghost writer APOLOGIZES in the preface (to save her career?). It's not badly written. Its just so full of holes. Oufkir grows up with SLAVES- yes- slaves- in the 21st century.. people that are owned by her family. Guess who doesn鈥檛 service her Every whim in 鈥淛ail鈥�. So be prepared for some outlandishly entitled perspectives defining "life stolen" or "jail." Worse, she lies through her teeth.
The contradictions are constant and blatant. She complains all nine family member are locked in two rooms with no electricity. But there is a refrigerator (electric?) which is in the kitchen, next to the livingroom (where they put on stage productions to entertain themselves), down the hall from the two bedrooms that are really just "tiny alcoves" each large enough for nine straw mattresses to lay on the ground, and they choose to all sleep together in one. How small could these rooms be? Tiny alcoves that are big enough to sleep nine, by choice? I live in NY and my bedroom is huge to me, but you couldnt stand 9 people in it. There is another small room at the end of the hall that holds their 20-something Louis Vuitton suitcases full of Gucci suits- she makes a point of this... So is it two rooms as she complains? or the six she describes?
They are imprisoned, barely fed. The next page she talks about how they are taken to the local village for two hours EVERY DAY where the local ladies bake them delicious pies from costly ingredients to celebrate their celebrity arrival; as is her due. So, what, she only gets one gourmet meal a day where she can pick and choose from the best an entire village can create to impress her?
There is no medical care available- only aspirin. In the next breath she talks about the consitant delivery of prescription drugs for her sister's epilepsy.
This is a first person story that by the most inane, self-centered spoiled woman who has ever considered the undertaking. The first half of the book could have been wonderful with insight into culture and life inside the palace, but instead it is one egotistical vacuous tale after another re: her beauty, wit and charm. Everyone thought I was wonderful when I, and wasn't I cute and cheeky when I.... the king liked me better than his own daughter "becasue I was more beautiful"...
You get no cultural background when she is in the palace, and no political background about the coup.
She's overwhelmingly melodramatic- she talks of two suicide "attempts". One where she cuts her finger and rubs dirt in the wound so it will become infected and kill her (before the family is jailed, while she lives in a palace with its own hospital and nannies and teachers and governesses who mind her- and get this- SLAVES-yes, slaves, while she bitches about her years in jail). You figure it is a child's attempt for attention until in the next paragraph she takes the time to assert to us these were serious attempts to take her own life- despite half a dozen people who's job it is to monitor her! This book is one more childish attempt at attention getting, just like her two "serious" suicide attempts. I hate to say it, but by the time bad things start to happen to her, I almost can't wait.
I am sure it was a horrifying experience, but rather than tell what I am sure is the moving truth of this family's horrifying ordeal (quite a bit less than the slaves who served her), this books fails to mask the fact it is melodramatic hyperbole of a spoiled brat from solely her perspective where she is always the hero, the strong one, the smart one, the most beloved, the only one who can take credit for her entire family surviving because she is so beautiful and charming and clever blah blah blah. She doesn't tell you how she bolstered everyone. She just tells a tale of sorrow and ends it with "I bolstered everyone and cheered them up" There are no heartfelt conversations, no touching moment- just that she saved the day...again...and wanders off into the next story. Its gross. I refer to the book as "Paris Hilton goes to Marrakesh". I would like to find a more serious work that deals with the subject that includes some geopolitical and cultural information as well. I think that would be moving and interesting. This book is neither.
I gave up on this book on page 149. After reading Prisoner of Tehran, I was interested to read this book. Unfortunately, La Prisonniere does not convey the same emotions or character.
This is another book that makes me realize how lucky I am to be living in this country. Malika was born into a family that had great wealth, and she was privileged enough to be close, personal friends with the royal family of Morocco, to actually live in the palace and be raised next to the king's young daughter. But that all changes when Malika's father attempts a military coup. His attempts to assassinate the king fail and he in turn in killed. His family could not even grieve the loss of their father because they would be punished for his actions as well and be sent to a desert jail for years and years. It was difficult for me to know that this was not something that happened in the middle ages, Malika and her siblings are still alive and live in Europe. It was also heartbreaking to know that the king had such little regard for the close relationship he had with the Oufkirs that he throws all of them in prison, including Malika's youngest brother who was only about five years old at the time.
Malika and her family are resilient and survive years of living in horrible desert jails, with less than adequate food, living quarters infested with bugs and scorpions, then a few years of house arrest. Finally, they escape their homeland of Morocco and seek asylum in Europe.
The human spirit can endure some of the most horrible and traumatic events and still keep going. It's also difficult for me to know that events like this probably still go on today; events where humans are subject to the most inhumane living conditions and torture. I don't understand how people can be so cruel and violent to each other.
The writing style is not special in my opinion so I give this book 4 stars, but this fantastic and disturbing story is worth a 5 star rating, so another 4 陆 stars from me. Really harrowing to read. Written by a young woman who grew up in Morocco, a child of unimaginable privilege until her father鈥檚 actions got the whole family in trouble. Then an account of what happened to her and her siblings and mother 鈥� see the subtitle: 20 years in a desert jail, which does not do justice to describing the unbelievably horrific conditions these people endured. An amazing story of survival. Learned a lot about Morocco of not very long ago.
I found the book in my favorite American Thrift store. Like you I saw the name Oukfir and in my case immediately knew that I had been acquainted with the General and his unsuccessful coup while reading The Spy Wore Silk by Countess Romanones, who wrote about her espionage career. Even Malika's mother is mentioned in that book for her beauty and her boutiques. This book aggravated me to no end. Here is saga of real life suffering. I am a mother, I had the most emotional reaction to Abdellatif, a three year old angel incarcerated? But he is the one through whose eyes I would have wanted to discover this painful story. Ms. "Queen", in my opinion wrote this book, as part fantasy for effect in order to attempt to secure movie rights. She informs us that Gilles Perrault's book, "Notre ami le roi", made misrepresentations, omissions, and got dates wrong. Well what is her excuse? On page 121 she states "But over the years our different stories became entangled, changed and distorted. My (siblings) appropriated mine.
A woman writing in this 20th century and calling servants " slaves" is disturbing. The book editorializes and leads the reader with adjectives. The story is powerful enough to be told honestly and truthfully without adding a Hollywood spin in an effort to secure a movie deal.
In one instance when she talks about their pact to go on a hunger strike, it lasts 44 days, well the same hunger strike in another reference now has dwindled to 20. This bothered me greatly because we people do know of instances where many political prisoners who were sturdier than they were did in fact die.
She elaborated and uses dramatic intonations, along with the incorrect grammar and wrong word usage - such as stamped for stomped. I a foreigner am very well aware of loss in translation issues. It happens too many times in this work that could have been a true outstanding account of how people can survive, by their indomitable spirit.
The timeline suffers, far too often. In one account she watches her sister eat rat or mice dropping gingerly like a Duchess...you know what? I wanted to scream. Throughout this book I got a real sense of someone that has deep emotional issues. Egotistical and totally sold on the belief that she was some kind of royalty. Being adopted into royalty, without formal negotiations, which is what a king can do, and actually being the biological daughter of a King is two very different paradigms.
I felt her insecurity and her constantly claiming this bourgeosie status was maddening. It appears as if she believed that "high society acculturation" could trump humanity and compassion. The fact that she attempted a weak suicide while living in the luxury of the Palace indicated a troubled soul and not just because she was separated from her mother. She saw her mother, and went back home after so many "childish" pranks that were really pitiful calls for attention.
The bottom line is that this is a case of the Sins of the Father are visited upon the children as the Bible states, and not as she says "Render unto Caesar.." which has to do with the separation of church and state and taxes. This is an example of a colonized mentality. The constant references to shopping Paris and Geneva, the boarding schools, she flunked despite her presumption that she is so smart and capable, may mesmerize someone from Iowa but not those of us who understand pomp & circumstance for what it is. A setting apart of a group of people purely by wealth.
Her constant allusion to Russian literature, and claim that the ruling elite denied her reading about the Russian revolution and Trotsky..and she doesn't understand why-makes me want to say..what part of that is-communist propaganda and maybe, just maybe under your circumstances that is not a good idea? Color , Race and Class are an obsession with this individual. The book is about her, her and her. Shrouded with supporting evidence about her family with her as the central "heroine."
Who can challenge her ? After such untold suffering no one is going to demand factual details because no one is going to assume that such a painful story could be exploited. That is what irritated me as I sat down to read this book on New Year's Day 2011, which I finished the same day.
From the beginning I felt destiny has a plan for you! It's called H-u-m-i-l-i-t-y. Sure it's alright for a woman to try and maintain her graces, beauty etc. But after ten years is it really important? I see her as delusional, you appear in rags and you are still haughty? You are escaping from the compound and you don't bother to look back and you walk in a circle? Yes I DO understand you are in a desert with no new gadget GPS, and I will acknowledge that she forgot the alignment of the stars, that is all understandable, but maybe instead of talking a bunch of silly nonsense about who is going to get laid constantly, her mother could have reviewed that teaching and it is reviewed not "revised" because that is the real world information you need in the wilderness.
I marked just about all 289 pps with side commentary. One was " the only truth in this book" was the paragraph about the little boy.."We are adults, I said to him. We may have committed sins, but not you, you are so pure...if there is a God, he'll take pity on you. You will lead us to freedom." P. 198. The second time she uses God, the first was in lower case. Christmas, Virgin Mary, this woman needs therapy. Is she a Christian, Muslim? She needed it while she was a child and after the horrors of that unfair incarceration she needed it even more.
In one account she states that the eggs were some black smelly things, that she "aired" and then cooked. Later she negates this! you know in 2011 jargon, I really want to say "what's up"? The story is a mish mash of dates and circumstances no doubt true, interwoven with her penchant for story telling. I have never had a book irritate me as much as this book. And I read about 30 books a month and usually 5 or 6 simultaneously because I have that privilege and I recognize it as such and I am extremely thankful that I can do that. Because some day I won't be able to.
I cannot shake the spiritual feeling that she exaggerated to "sell" the book. That Oprah and her penchant for sensationalism has been duped again like the author of " A Million Little Pills."
Perhaps the account in The Spy Wore Silk-which talks about the Massacre, at the King's Palace (the book was written in the 70's) the Equestrian festival in Spain that Malika mentions where she was the only one of her siblings to attend with her parents, the escape by the King as a background and the double cross by General Oukfir, makes one read this account with a critical eye since that account was written by an intelligent, woman who worked for the OSS (*Secret Service) as it was called prior as an agent, licensed to carry a weapon and not involved emotionally, appears refined and hobnobbed with the ruling elite of Europe as painting a background of how the King felt at this betrayal by a confidante he treated as if he was part of the family.
I understand that the Gen. Oukfir wanted a Constitutional Monarchy but the double dealing is treason. The King may have felt he needed to punish someone to maintain control. Most unfortunately it was the General's family. Like Americans like to say, if you do the crime, do the time.
I agree with Yasmin Somji, If you read the Spy Wore Silk along with this book at least you will have received real time information about the history of this debacle. Sure I recommend the book the story is harrowing, do I believe they burrowed out of their cells with a spoon? No. Show me am from Missouri. This is not the Shawshank Redemption. I would love to read the account from the 3 -year old's view, who is now a man over 35, but his devotion (as it should be to his sister) will not allow the real truth out ever. All in all I am glad they are free, and sad they had to leave their beloved country. As I know first hand how that can be.
This is a terrible story. But you say "hey lady, you gave this 5 stars". I say, not terribly written, it's certainly interesting and draws us into a different culture, a different time. What is terrible is how humans treat other humans. And that is what is terrible about this story. My heart was broken on multiple occasions while reading this. I think I cried from start to finish. What people suffer, that is heart breaking. What children suffer is even more heart breaking. The fact that this is a true story. That this women lived this story is the most heart breaking of all. And yes you should read it. Heart break is a good thing.
Shaken by the story. Giving more than 5 stars to the author for the courage to share it with all of us. Makes me very grateful for the life I have in a modern, a bit more democratic world. The story is written well enough to pull you in craving to find out what has happened. Extraordinary bravery of the family to fight through till the end and shedding the light on Morocco's political prisoners life. thank you
Malika Oufkir was born into privilege as the daughter of the king of Morocco's closest aide Her world changed in 1972 when her father was executed for an attempt on the King's life.
The book tells of her life in a prison for 20 years with her mother and her younger siblings; how they survived amid rats, mice, insects and with very little to eat.
When I was in my teens, an interview advertisement kept coming up about this woman called Malika Oufkir on a Lebanese channel, and my mom said I want to watch this interview. So when the interview came, she and dad watched it and were astonished. We joined them and I didn't get what the problem was until I kept on listening. Mom commented "How sad her eyes are." I still remember that. The next day my mom bought the book (Arabic translation) and devoured it in the same day and told everyone about it.
A few weeks passed and I finally got a hold of the copy and flipped in it seeing the black and white photos of her family and how they were all so young, and how rich she looked and... it scared me. I was so young and this woman went through hell, her youngest brother was three years old when they all went to prison!
I finally went in and finished the book in three days, I even read it in math class and every free class I had! It was out of this world weird and good, I loved the description of the desert and the people who inhabited those lands, and the hunted deserted mansion, and oranges, and how their shoes melted to their skin when they escaped after 20 years in desert, then how they reached the city and spent another 5 years in prison. What she wrote about being forgotten, and how it's worst than death, that made me so sad, I understood at that young age that death is not the worst thing in the world to happen to humans.
What kept nagging at me though is that I felt she didn't say everything that happened to them, even their history is blurry from before; I get it, their captors are still alive and waiting to pounce but I felt while reading that her mom was the king's lover and she is his illegitimate daughter, that's why she was treated differently and why she was raised in the palace and why her father was killed. Maybe.
In any case, while I'm in the airport a year ago, I found this copy (translated to English) and I bought it, the story still played in my head sometimes. I read there has been a French movie about their story, I wish I could watch it, I can't find it anywhere, and some of her family members including her mother wrote biographies as well.
This was a particularly good memoir after spending two years in Morocco. The memoir name slides in quite a few big families and events that are well known in Morocco. I've heard about the Oufkir family but had not imagined that the general's family was locked up for nearly 20 years. Would recommend - especially for other MENA people and PCVs.