Abstract
‘I do not understand how the world can continue watching these barbaric scenes without reacting,’ says Mustapha Abdel Dayem, recalling the Moroccan authorities’ brutal attacks on Saharawi protesters in late 2010. A writer and journalist born in Morocco in 1962, he has been championing the plight of the people of Western Sahara for over two decades.
Western Sahara, located along the Atlantic coast between Morocco and Mauritania, has been the subject of a dispute between Morocco and the Polisaro Front, the Saharawi liberation movement fighting for independence. When Spain ended its colonial rule in 1975, the territory was jointly invaded by Morocco and Mauritania, provoking a 16-year war, ending in a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991. Meanwhile, Morocco had completed the building of a defensive ‘berm’ in 1987, a sand wall stretching 2,200 kilometres dividing the length of Western Sahara and enclosing four-fifths of the territory under its occupation. All initiatives since the 1991 ceasefire to bring about a peaceful solution in the region have ended in deadlock.
Most Saharawi people now live in refugee camps – the estimated number of displaced people living in camps ranges from 100,000 to 170,000 – run by the Polisario Front in south-western Algeria in one of the harshest desert environments in the world. A significant Saharawi population also live in Western Sahara under Moroccan occupation but as second-class citizens in their own homeland, with virtually no rights or freedoms. So while conditions are poor in the refugee camps, it is a space that at least affords the Saharawis some measure of freedom, dignity and representation. Healthcare, schools and the government in exile all operate from within the camps, supporting the refugee population there, though food shortages are an ongoing problem and those wanting and able to pursue education beyond primary school level must travel outside the territory. The Saharawi boast a strong civil society network within the territory – Sahara Press Service, Western Sahara TV and saharatoday.net are among the media outlets available to and serving the communities.
It is against this background that Mustapha Abdel writes, combining a raw realism with lyrical snapshots of a disenfranchised people, culture and history, drawing on the region’s literary allegorical tradition. His early writing was published in Moroccan newspapers, but following the 2005 uprising in Western Sahara, his work took on a more political edge, reporting on human rights violations perpetrated by the authorities – though it did not touch specifically on the campaign for independence. ‘A Lesson on How to Make Tea’, published below, was written in 2008, just months before Abdel Dayem was imprisoned on 27 October for allegedly desecrating the Moroccan flag, destruction of public property and inciting armed unrest. Since then, the Moroccan authorities have been wary of him, seeing his writing as controversial and a potential threat to their control in the territory. Held in Tiznit prison near Rabat in overcrowded conditions, he was denied medical treatment and told that he would not be able to engage in educational activities after his release. ‘Writing is a dangerous risk,’ he admitted in a telephone interview from his prison cell in early 2011. In July 2011, Abdel Dayem was taken from his cell along with another Saharawi writer. For several days, his family and supporters did not know of his whereabouts.
Abdel Dayem continued to write while in prison, documenting the Saharawis’ political aspirations, describing prison conditions, revealing the profound mental and physical pain of hunger strikes, extreme isolation and the pervasive silence around the ongoing plight. In early 2010, the Union of Saharawi Writers and Journalists and the Saharawi Ministry of Culture published Ureed Fajran! (I Want a Dawn!), a collection of Abdel Dayem’s writing published in Arabic. The collection was shortlisted for the Freedom to Create prize category for imprisoned artists.
Mustapha Abdel Dayem was released on 27 October 2011.
A Saharawi man stands near the goat pens at a refugee camp, el Aauin, Algeria
Credit: Andrew McConnell/Panos
He leant on his left side as he began tipping the tea into the cups with his right hand. Underneath the tabla, a round tray on small legs, was a copy of the novel The Mother by the famous Russian writer Maxim Gorky. He would go back to reading this whenever he put the kettle over the weak coal fire. The water boiled slowly and the dry tea leaves opened up, revealing whatever dirt had stuck onto them. Before lifting the kettle from the coal, he put a rial note between the pages of the novel and then closed it. He held the kettle gently and poured out the blood-red liquid. The tea leaves had gathered at the bottom. He added a little water and stirred the kettle lightly, then emptied the contents in one scoop to free them of any residue.
He opened the novel at the page where he had put the rial. It was perhaps the only piece of Moroccan currency that did not carry the face of the king, maybe because of its value, just five centimes. The hungry stomachs are searching for a bite to eat anywhere and at any price, even under the earth. The miners are going into the depths of the earth to extract the rich minerals, but they might not get out. The mother alone awaits their return. Some drops of tea slid out from the kettle and fell onto the coal. The smoke and the smell of tea made him hurriedly put the rial between the pages of the novel once again. He filled the glass with red-coloured tea. The froth rose as the liquid was poured out, quickly yet carefully, into the small glass. He put what sugar there was into the kettle, wanting the tea to be the desired trio: hot, sweet and thick.
There is a huge difference between those who own the mines and those who work in them. The mother hopes to see her sons in good health and to find what she will provide for them, the fair distribution of resources.
He offered cups of tea to the groups of people on his right, moving from them to those on his far left, pouring each of them an equal amount of the liquid. Everyone drank from their cups in quick gulps, feeling it flowing through their veins, reviving the vitality of their bodies and taking away the worries from their minds.
Everyone drank from their cups in quick gulps
‘Bi-sihhat il-qayyam.’ To the health of the tea maker. They repeated this, one after the other, praising the quality of the tea as they returned the empty cups. He wanted to arrange them on the tabla again before returning to the page where he had put the Moroccan rial to mark where he had stopped reading his novel. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his palm and looked at the teapot over the coal. He knew that this was ‘the middle cup’, the most important in the three Saharawi cycles of drinking tea. It was not important if the first cup was ‘thick’ or if the third was sweet. What mattered was that the second cup should satisfy everyone’s tastes. For the Saharawis, it was acceptable to forgo the first and last cups of tea but they always wanted to taste the middle cup.
He nodded his head as he wondered what remained of Maxim Gorky and his novel The Mother. He had predicted the revolution but not her fate. He noticed the tea was boiling in the teapot and being pushed to the top. He quickly lifted the teapot and poured the tea into the cups packed together on the tabla.
His eyes roamed over the group around him reading quietly, engrossed in Hussein Marwah, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, Dostoyevsky, Nizar Qabbani and others, and listening to the music of Mariem Mint el Hassan. He smiled to himself and turned towards the pile of books, taking the first one he came across. Its title was War and Peace. He quickly flipped through its pages and was delighted to find the ribbon fixed inside as a bookmark. He returned to his seat and began to tip the tea into the cups while thinking about how to get rid of the Moroccan rial, which he no longer needed now he had this ribbon fixed inside the novel War and Peace. □
For more information about Western Sahara and free expression, visit sandblast-arts.org