The Kingdom of Post-beggars

The Kingdom of Post-Beggars: Till When Shall the Sovereign Spare the Stick?

Brave Moroccan Journalist should take courses in boxing. Already before the lopsided competition starts, Brave Moroccan Journalist, trained or not, knows his adversaries are not actually there, yet have a battalion, a militia, and a crowd of laws to their protection. Everywhere. When he receives an unexpected blow from outside the ring, Brave Moroccan Journalist tries to protect his pen because someone ordered its ballpoint broken, ink emptied. Fighting for his pen, which is everything he owns, Brave Moroccan Journalist makes an extra effort to drive forth with a straight, but he receives an uppercut. He falls, before a huge audience. They snipe photographs of him falling, and make sure the world knows about it all. Immediately. The secret armies of the opponent take Brave Moroccan Journalist to prison, but not any prison goes. He has heard of this prison in dark jokes, and in the articles he has read in daytime. Lots of pessimist rumours about it fill the space. Once inside this prison, he discovers a new something about it. It has pulled together many street fighters: thieves, murderers, bandits, rapists, aggressors. Brave Moroccan Journalist is never thrown among the literate lest they be taken on board his "disobedient stance". Oh yes! With such an extra army, there is no way he wins by points. Well, you'll tell me there is winning and winning, just as there is boxing and boxing.

At any rate, the upshots of honest journalism are predictable, as predictable as Mexican sitcoms. Here, of course, the young

handsome chap gets married to the gorgeous lady, unsurprisingly to the knowledge of everyone from the time when the publicity campaigns start on TV. In the case of Brave Moroccan Journalist there is, however, a perpetual pinch of throbbing tragic ending. He finishes up brawling with the extra army in prison, trying to protect his belt. These are not at all satisfied with the air of so much education about him.

"Dammit! Why do we have to see you writing all the time?" Why don't you keep the writing aside, and tell me what your name is? The criminal with the broken nose comes all the way from the remote corner to inquire in feigned affection. "He must be the prisoner in charge here." Brave Journalist says privately to himself.

Long experience has given him this advantage. He is no longer a prisoner by accident, or by action. Parenthetically, he won't escape if they (deliberately) forget the gates open. He will ask them to close them tight lest he catches a cold. He might even ask them to bring new locks, because he is of late growing allergic to rust. Because of his rich record, he now has Prisoner as a job in his identity card. He makes everyone certain, inside and outside jail, that he can't be anything else. He's moved eternally to cell 16. He likes it because it has two windows, and gets some sun from 8 to 10 in the morning.

"What's your name?" Mr. Prisoner asks in hyperbolic affection, and looks "tenderly" at the new captive, who is in the same way new to the etiquettes of jailing.

The young guy scratches a nervous question mark on the page, raises his chin, and looks at the man.

"Moh…Moh…ammed Erraji." He clears his throat. He hasn't spoken to anyone ever since his coming.

"Hmm! Mohamed Erraji! You are the sharp-tongued blogger. you dared to say the king abuses his rights, granting lagrimat for a few words of fraudulent praise. You think getting into the hammam is the same as getting out. They'll cut your tongue…you'll see."

Erraji doesn't know how to react. After all, he has never been to a (box)ing club.

Mr. Prisoner gets to his feet, and walks to the eastern corner. He farts and bends a little down to smell it.

"When you fart it big like you have done, you have to suffer the stench!" he remarks. "When you laugh, they will think you are scornful." Do as I do. Mr. Prisoner now is performing a silent laughter before Erraji. It is amazing how can be laughing hysterically, without producing a sound. "You shouldn't make a sound in this country. You can laugh in the water closet, where they don't have eyes over you."

Mohamed Erraji has been imprisoned for three days now. He doesn't like the food. The smell is horrible. He looks at the pen in his hand, and wonders in silence.

"How can your pen take your life?"

Twenty-nine year old Erraji Mohammed was detained few days ago when he couldn't resist the vast attraction to disapprove, in a style deemed to be exceptionally unconventional, of the guiding principles of king Mohamed VI. The blogger was detained on Friday, September 5th, 2008 for posting a critique on the state of affairs between the King and his people. His article, entitled "The King Encourages a State of Public Dependency", passes "stern" judgments on a culture of begging spawned and sustained by the royal rulers of Morocco.

"Culture of begging?" asks Mr. Prisoner.

Erraji realizes he was thinking aloud, now sitting down on his pullover after spending the whole night up checking that his belt was fastened. Now he has to go into the ordeal of answering the snooping questions of Mr. Prisoner.

Erraji has been into much mental tension. The query of Mr. Prisoner provokes his breakdown. It is the last straw. He's not used to being quiet. He stands up, his eyes red from a sleepless night, and much smoking of hashish in the space. He thinks he'll get mad if he doesn't speak. The thought of such a possibility makes him very angry. He turns to Mr. Prisoner, prepared for a clash. He has few muscles, but he has nothing to lose. He has to fight for his sanity.

"What do you want from me?" He shouts, saliva spraying into the polluted air.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT? He shouts even louder, and cries. Yes, he cries. He cries like he has never cried before.

"Don't cry a'ssahbi, you are a man!" advises Mr. Prisoner.

"If you love this country," Cries Erraji "you must cry till you see no more. Aren't we becoming a bunch of qualified beggars? You think you're a man? Look at you! Aren't you ready to spend all your life in this cemetery because you think you are already dead? In this place, you have created a character for yourself, but outside you think you don't exist. You prefer to eat the shit they give you here. You are seriously addicted to free meals and lodgings. You prefer to stay here because you don't have the guts to live the truth outside. WAKE UP!"

A sudden wave of silence invades the cell and the cells next-door.

"Do we get born with sealed lips? Erraji cries.

"Failure to uphold the respect due to the king" is the "sin" Erraji perpetrated. Curtly past the publication of his article, the Court of Agadir damns Erraji to a two-year prison sentence, together with a fine of 600 dollars. Little did those who arrested him know that the public is at the brim of detonation. Perhaps by mistake, they thrust Morocco to the black register, that which contains the top infringers of freedom of speech in the world. Morocco is supposedly a free country, and Erraji and others express their opinion within the mental frame of this freedom. Far from harassing the sacrosanct self of the king, Erraji believes he has the God- granted right, as a Moroccan citizen, to foreground a suggestion, an advice, so to speak, through the craft he masters best: writing. Since very few understand by insinuation, he has chosen to write within the scopes of literary realism, by mentioning the name of man-number-one in the country. Far from deploying realism's sleights of verisimilitude - deploying the appearance of truth to account for something fictional- Erraji points out to the culture of charity that governs the king's relationship with his " already lucky" subjects, and recommends the better policy of giving chance to the people to have their decency by creating job opportunities for them to give up begging. "When you make your people hungry, they have time to think only of eating." Says someone from outside.

Heartbroken, Erraji follows the voice and his eyes fall on the guard who is looking back at him from behind the bars. "Perhaps he has a third generation Nokia mobile with a voice recorder, and is provoking me to say more." Erraji murmurs.

Mr. Prisoner heard Erraji murmuring.

"If you want to get a quick promotion," Shouts Mr. Prisoner, "come to him with a good recorder when he is sleeping. Journalists speak day and night. Bring the media! Call the police to throw him in jail…" says Mr. Prisoner to the guard.

"Ha-ha! Ha- ha…"

Everybody laughs out loud, except Mr. Prisoner who prefers not to make a sound.

A smile lingers on Erraji's lips. He feels he has a skinny smile. Only now does Erraji realize that he is number fifty two in the chamber. Now he can see them because they were all laughing, their eyes sunken, and their teeth messed up by passionate smoking and drinking. They looked all the same, and Erraji feels he doesn't give the impression of being different. Prison imposes its own character and looks on its citizens. It maps its own geography on the scattered bodies, which are its items of dramatic decoration. Prison feeds on them so much so that they grow to resemble the cracked walls, rusty bars, grimy blocks. They grow very thin, like the pen Erraji is still holding. Erraji looks at his pen, with the hope it proffers protection, peace, or compromise.

"No!" he throws the pen, scared. "You either bring me honour, or stay away…away." He shouts.

Mr. Prisoner picks up the pen from the ground and gives it back to Erraji.

"Never pitch it like this." He murmurs softly in his ear, tears amassing down his parched moustache. "I'm not satisfied with the law either, that's why I'm here. Each one has his reasons for going against the law. I know that brave pens are good at burning fingers, but if you are hasty enough to hurl the pen, you lose more than your healthy fingers. You lose us, the powerless, who so much need you. You lose yourself, your confidence, your self-respect."

Erraji feels confused. He can't now recognize the criminal in Mr. Prisoner. He shouldn't quickly sit in judgment before poor things and people. "They might not be what they seem to be." He says to himself, "These people aren't what they think they are, nor are they what we think they are because they haven't fully chosen to become what they are now. Nobody cares to give them back the pride that was taken away from them. Everyone is born with the same amount of pride, but those who snatch it from the chest of the poor, and award it to themselves, snatch it for the reason that they are never happy to share the same amount of everything with everyone. So they assassinate pride and its synonymous comrades in us before we even get circumcised.

Mohamed Erraji finds condolence in the fact that he isn't the first to suffer the repercussions of speech in the tricky absence (presence?) of freedom. Erraji's trouble is essentially brought up by his ignorance of the fact that freedom is not a fixed entity. It's governed by the ebbs and flows of something that he still ignores.

He looks at the laughing mouths, before he gets riveted by the cyclones of his thoughts.

"On top of this, Mr. and Mrs. Lucky Moroccan" he imagines "are wearing a unified traditional caftan- decorously embroidered with authenticity and modernity- standing at a visible remove from the ground so that everyone notices the remarkable work, the spectacular change they have done to please global merchants, those who buy and sell us to the phantasmal fantasies of the west. At times, the international spectator notices that the standard form of appearance Mr. and Mrs. Lucky Moroccan construct before the cameras is suddenly lacking symmetry. So they order their slaves to beat up, with the flog and the stick, Unlucky Moroccan who is standing just beneath the exhibitors' shipshape shoes."

Erraji wonders if he himself can identify with his imaginings. But in this depressing ambience, he likes better the textures of his own mind.

"We are fishing for international praise as a country that is unlearning the tyrannies of a rigid past, despite the fact that people in their homes, before they bring up words like politics, King, corruption, change, political oppression, French revolution, they do still check if the walls have ears. But before we do the checking, we order the kids out, because our kids should tell apart adult talks from kid talks. When I prevent children from listening, they later prevent themselves from speaking. Kids are sources of terror for their parents, because they don't know what it means to get into trouble. People are convinced that criticism of the palace, the people of the palace, the servants of the palace, the grass of the palace, the pets of the palace and anything that has to do with the palace is deadly. I did no harm by saying that the canonical policy of the previous rulers is ahistorical, nor in saying that culture of fear among the masses is a heritage everybody is keen on preserving."

Erraji still finds condolence in the fact that he isn't the first one, but he wishes to be the last one. At the same time as everyone was deliberating the strange circumstances of Erraji's prompt trial, which lasted no more than seven minutes, the news of his provisional liberation comes to shuffle the circumstantial cards premeditated by the fans of this case. The intelligent followers of such a case will never easily believe that Erraji is sent free after getting arrested for being unsuccessful in maintaining the holiness due to the king. After all, how could Erraji be released in the context of ambivalence that shoots through his detention, trial and release? Many of his Erraji's detractors raise doubts about his heroism. They think it's another theatrical performance enacted by Erraji, a whole crowd of puppet judges, and police system to delineate quick-but-tough lessons on the hazardous perils of brave writing. Many ironically advised Erraji on the public forum of the Moroccan e-zine Hespress.com to try and air important discussions and questions on less treacherous issues, such as agricultural politics, the politics of the weather, and the war against grasshoppers in the South.

Erraji is eventually pleased because he has taken a hot shower, and has joined his family on the ftour table of Ramadan. But he remains perturbed, knowing not what calamities the coming days have to offer. Sardonically, it might be possible that Erraji prays secretly, before munching his first fast-breaking dates.

"May Sidna bestow a royal forgiveness upon me on Eid El-fitr."