I first picked up Stolen Lives on impulse. I was at the library counter, checking out books when I saw it sitting displayed on the shelf. Certainly the title was eye catching Stolen Lives: twenty years in a desert jail. Intrigued, I flipped open the cover and read the inside flap. A entire family imprisoned in Morocco . . . held in solitary cells . . . escaped by digging a tunnel with their bare hands. It sounded fascinating. One of my first thoughts was wondering if Teman already knew of the author–Malika Oufkir–and her experience. Teman reads an amazing amount of material and is almost like a walking encyclopedia, especially about history events. If he did, I thought he might be interested in reading her own account of what happened. And if he didn’t already know about th event I thought he would be interested in finding out. I figured that even if I didn’t find the time to read the book someone would. So I took the book and added it to my stack.
As it turned out I did find time to read Stolen Lives. I opened it up that very evening and read the book through in one sitting, staying up far too late in the process. Stolen Lives is an engaging story, maybe more riveting by its almost surreal quality. Author Malika Oufkir was adopted as a young child by the king of Morocco so that Malika would be a playmate for his daughter. She was “adopted” but Malika had living parents and was very closely attached to her mother. It was against Malika’s own will, and for the purpose of political expediency that she was torn away from her mother and brought into the king’s court. The story of her early years away from her mother is heart-breaking for anyone who loves their mother and can remember when they were little and their mother meant all of the world to them. To be suddenly torn away from your mother and told that you can’t see her except on occasion is cruel beyond comprehending. Yet, it happened.
For the rest of her childhood Malika Oufkir was raised in the opulence of the palace life in Morocco. The old king died and his son took the throne and Malika’s true father rose to a very high position. Once Oufkir was of age she chose to return to her own family. But her freedom from the court, and her extravagant living, quickly came to an end. When she was eighteen her father took part in a coup against the king which ended in failure and the death of her father. This event occasioned another abrupt change in her life. Her great luxury and wealth came to an abrupt end. For the crime of Malika Oufkir’s father she, along with all her siblings and mother, were imprisoned.
Stolen Lives follows the experience of the Oufkir family from when they were first held in a remote jail to when they were held for years in small cells, and then their escape. For covering some twenty years the book is relatively short–about 280 pages. Rather than a cohesive plodding story of the entire length of their imprisonment Malika Oufkir moves from one vignette to another, using the particular to embody the whole past years of experience. The account of Stolen Lives dwells more on the emotion of their existence than the historical detail.
The quality of memoir brings the vividness to Stolen Lives but it is also the root of problems in the book. Malika Oufkir authored Stolen Lives with Michele Fitoussi, and it reads like a story told by one person to another. Certain moments are told with bright clarity, but there is also a certain disjointed quality. Events are related by their subjective importance and often one thing will be dwelt on at length while something else that might seem important to the reader is only briefly passed over. In a historical account background is even, setting is explained, and motives examined. Stolen Lives lacked this depth and well rounded quality but is at least partly excused because it is the personal, raw, story of someone who has lived through the very experience being retold.
Two things struck me in particular when reading Stolen Lives. First, I realized that I knew nothing about Morocco. This book was my introduction to the country, its political system, and society. Second, the story of Stolen Lives reminded me how much we are all so unthankful for the lives we have. It is so easy to complain about what we have, to wish things were better or different. We forget and fail to recognize how great a gift it is to simply have health and the ability to walk outside and see the sun. Imagine, or try to, the impoverishment of being filthy, starving, alone, and unable to see anything but the four walls of your cell for year after year. Malika Oufkir was imprisoned at the age of eighteen for a crime she didn’t even commit and did not see civilization again until she was in her late thirties. The entire prime of her life was wiped out, lost. In my own daily struggles that is something to remember, and keep things in perspective.
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
Hardcover: 293 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.05 x 9.56 x 6.32
Publisher: Talk Miramax Books; (May 16, 2001)
ISBN: 0786868619
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