Here is a review of the book Tazmamart by Aziz Binebine, a memoir of his experience in the now infamous Moroccan secret prison with that name.
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Incarceration in a purpose-built dungeon in Morocco has produced a memoir that is a tribute to human fortitude and imagination
...Tazmamart was a purpose-built dungeon situated in the Atlas mountains, searing in the summer, freezing in the winter, cramped and hellish all year round. The rations were meagre, the clothes spartan, the sewers open. Exercise consisted of “the diagonal of life” – “four steps one way and four the other, a half-turn to the left and right alternately, so as not to get dizzy”. The prisoners were repeatedly reminded that their sole exit was death. Only following international pressure did Morocco admit to the prison’s existence and close it down. Of the 58 men sent there after the coup attempts, more than half had died.
Tazmamart was a pit of despair – but also a well of stories. Several memoirs and documentaries have emanated from its horrors, along with a novel, This Blinding Absence of Light (2001) by Tahar Ben Jelloun, probably Morocco’s most famous living author. He had based it on a three-hour interview with BineBine, whom he renamed Salim...
