Those who opposed King Hassan II of Morocco called the period of his rule from 1960 up until his death in 1999 the “Years of Lead , in reference to the heavy political repression that characterized his reign.
Protests were stamped out with great brutality, and a great number of opposition party members and activists were interned without trial, kidnapped and killed.
Many of those who were arrested spent years in prison – receiving regular torture and nearing starvation – without even knowing why.
In his documentary “Take Me , which was shown at the American University in Cairo this week, Egyptian filmmaker Tamer El Said documents the accounts of five such individuals as they revisit their time in a Moroccan prison, both in their memories and in the flesh.
To this day none of the men know why they were imprisoned, aside from the fact that they were known leftists.
What is obvious, however, is how much each has lost emotionally.
“I can see it in his face, says the narrator, speaking about one of the men, Rawlawy. “I can see it in his eyes when I talk to him; there is something missing.
Rawlawy spent a year and a half in solitary confinement, his only human contact being the guard who would bring him food once a day and beat him.
To cope with the isolation, he painted faces on the walls and on the ground using his daily cup of coffee, and conducted imaginary conversations with them.
And he would escape into fantasy. “I thought about my friends and family, and the landscapes outside the walls. I thought a lot about women, falling in love with them, fantasizing about them.
Others spoke of how the lives they once led had been lost.
Mawley Idriss was in love with a woman he was planning to marry. But after he had disappeared for several years, she presumed he was dead and married another man.
An educated man, he now drives a truck. “Traveling helps me to rediscover life, he tells the camera.
In the most moving part of the film, the five men return to the prison where they were detained – an old fortress out in the middle of a barren, dusty landscape.
Walking in and out of the various cells they stayed in, they relate the beatings and humiliations inflicted upon them.
“It was torture for torture’s sake, says Abdul Nasser, the film’s lead subject.
But what they saw inflicted upon others, says Rawlawy, was the worst. He describes how the guards starved a 14-year-old to death.
“He was just bones by the end of it. The scream he let out on the day he died I will never forget.
El Said laces the prison sequence with news footage from what was going in Morocco during the men’s imprisonment, at once emphasizing what they missed out on and at the same time providing a historical – tongue-in-cheek – overview of Morocco under Hassan II.
In a particularly clever choice of newsreel, El Said shows a televised interview with Hassan II denying the existence of the prison in question, and boasting of the production of rose water in the nearby town.
“There is no prison there.That is the town of rose water, he insists, his indignation underlining the absurdity of his denial.
And in spite of its subject matter, the tenor of the film is resoundingly upbeat; this is a story of survival, not defeat.
For all of their suffering, the men formed a bond during their imprisonment that has lasted to this day.
“We agreed between us that at least one of us had to survive, says Abdul Nasser, “and in that way we would win. It was a struggle between us and death.
“We did share many beautiful times in there.
“You can imprison a person’s body, but you can never imprison their soul.
