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5.0 out of 5 stars
Best book I've read in ages!, Sep 18 2009
This is one amazing book. I don't want to give the plot away. Suffice it to say that it is a story of one incredibly brave family who faced incredible odds and managed to triumph. I cried several times while reading this book. There is a sequel called "Freedom" which is not to be missed!!!
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A remarkable, harrowing true story, Jul 30 2008
Meet the Oufkir family. This is the printed condensation of their amazing survival.
Malika Oufikir, aided by writer Michele Fitoussi, recounts the plunge from the heights of an extremely privileged, if secluded, life, mostly lived at the Royal Moroccan court, and a life which later landed herself and her family into gaol, in 1972. A drastic change for everybody -but "drastic" is almost a diminishing adjective for what they went through-, including the two family retainers who had volunteered to share their fate. This was the result of a failed military coup against King Hassan II, led by Malika's father, General Oufkir, who was shot immediately after. Wife Fatima and their six children, aged between 19 (Malika) and 3 and a half (Abdellatif) were sent to prison. Deprivations, humiliations, isolation -even among themselves, they were not allowed to see each other for many years- lack of hygiene, food, water, medicines and contending their space with various rodents, cockroaches, scorpions, in the chilling cold or the most stifling heat, inability to see the light -they were kept in almost total darkness-. Up until the day when, 15 years later, with the resilience of the totally desperate, some of them managed to escape, Malika included. The tale of their evasion is chilling from beginning to end. But it also led to the liberation of the others left behind. Nobody could believe that the Oufkir children had reemerged from nothingness, but they managed to alert the relevant authorities, international press and word went out. They were all subsequently moved to a different location where they were still imprisoned but at least with more dignity -if one may use this term in the circumstances-. This went on for another 4 years. And then... freedom finally knocked at their door. Almost twenty years had gone by.
Forget for a minute about politics, religions, different countries, traditions, beliefs. Sufferings do not bear different classifications depending on whom we are, what we do. To suffer is to suffer, anywhere on this planet, and no one is immune. But. To pay up in such dramatic way for something beyond your control is just inhuman. Malika's voice, plain yet effective, summarizes details which induce cringing sensations.
Some reviewers comment on Malika's self-centeredness, sensing a certain degree of superiority, no doubt deriving, in my opinion, from the imprint of her privileged upbringing, which might have added a somewhat unsympathetic nuance to the story. Others remark that there are inconsistencies. It is true in some instances. From a personal point of view, I myself never quite understood why Malika was adopted into the royal family. It could be Moroccan customs or traditions of which I am not aware, but it was never really explained.
But. Never mind. Let's face the facts, get to the gist. Prisoners for twenty years for something they didn't commit? Children raised into squalor and fear, without an ounce of dignity? Let us keep things into perspective and grant Malika and the others the deserved praise for enduring their adverse fate and unfathomable conditions, never letting go, organizing their great escape against all odds. Without her, who dug and bled, bled and dug for months, relentlessly, this could not have happened, and none of us would have read this book.
A single, soaring voice raising above a twenty-year-long cry in the dark, reminding us that for one who manages to survive, many other faceless, nameless beings perish silently, in many different countries, for many different reasons, their weeping unheard, obliterated by enforced silence.
Read this book and count your blessings.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
a true story of unbelievable courage against horrific odds, Mar 22 2007
Malika Oufkir's childhood was one of luxury and indulgence as the informally adopted daughter of King Muhammed V of Morocco and companion to Princess Amina. That life was gone in an instant when Malika's father, General Oufkir, was implicated in an abortive coup against the regime. The General was summarily shot; Oufkir's wife and six children -- the eldest, 19-year old Malika, and the youngest a baby only three - were rounded up, placed under house arrest and then dispatched without legal recourse to a series of remote desert prisons, each more isolated, squalid and inhospitable than the last.
Their jailers had their instructions: " Subdue the Oufkirs. King's orders".
"Stolen Lives" is Malika's story of 15 years incarceration in some of the worst hell-holes on earth, where the family endured cold, near starvation, vermin, petty jailors, disease and despair. Realizing that they would never be released; that they would die there, forgotten, the now grownup children dug a tunnel, using little more than their bare hands, and four of them escaped. Pursued by police and rebuffed by old friends, they reached Tangier and broke their story to the foreign press. Eventually the authorities were embarrassed into freeing the entire family.
This is a story of ingenuity, perseverance and unbelievable courage in the face of horrific odds. The events described are beyond shocking; it is considered inhumane to confine animals or the worst criminals in such conditions. It is unspeakable that these acts were perpetrated on children, and incredible that they survived.
What kind of regime imprisons children for the sins of their father? "That kind of thing can't happen here", you say. After all, "Liberty" and Freedom" is enshrined in our Constitution/Bill of Rights.
But it can and does, although the difference may be only one of degree.
You need look no further back than March 2007, and the case of Kevin, the 9-year-old Canadian-born son of Iranian parents. The family (with admittedly stolen documents) were held in a US detention centre, ie., cramped cells in a former medium security Texas prison, for over a month after they were taken off a Canada-bound plane which had been forced to land in Puerto Rico due to an on-board medical emergency. Kevin got the attention of the media & an appalled Canadian public (well, some of us were appalled) when he sent a desperate letter to Canada's Prime Minister, pleading for release.
Canadian Immigration may have been embarrassed by adverse press coverage into offering temporary asylum to the family; the Bush Administration, it seems, is impervious to embarrassment.
I urge you to read "Stolen Lives". This book shines a small light on the abuses that are inflicted routinely on the innocent and helpless in places that we may know only from the six o'clock news. But it might also lead you to reflect, as I did, on recent limits that our governments have placed on human rights (no doubt the King of Morocco was fearful of his safety too), and to ask whether our guarantees of freedom and liberty are worth the paper they are written on.
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