[short excerpt]

Bangalore, 2012
A Blissful Feeling

A hotel employee waits for me with a bath towel on the roof of the luxurious, 16-story, five-star Sheraton hotel in Bangalore, India. “What would you like to drink, sir?” I pause for a moment, unsure of what to say. Below me lies a city of millions. In the distance, I can hear the hustle and bustle. I am here for work, to train IT professionals. The height makes me dizzy, but bliss prevails. I never dared to dream that I would experience this moment. There are no other guests on the roof. I have the pool all to myself. I think back on how my life has unfolded, remembering the long and difficult road I have traveled.

Perseverance is rewarded. 

Ouled Berhil, 1962 

Delicious Walls

Lots of stones. That’s what I remember about the mountain village of Ouled Berhil, where I was born. Over the past twenty years, it has grown into a town of more than twenty thousand people, but when I was born there in 1962, on the edge of the Atlas Mountains, it was still very small. There were a few sheep, but no electricity or running water. My family consisted of five people: my father, my mother, my older sister Sara, my younger brother Said, and me. And all kinds of relatives lived in the small houses made of cow dung and clay. These tiny structures had a substance on them that looked like sand or salt—I still don’t know what it was but I discovered that it tasted good. I was about four years old. My sweet grandmother, who could also be very strict at times, saw what I was doing and warned me, saying, “Leave that alone. It’s not good for you.” “Okay,” I thought, and when I assumed she wasn’t looking, I continued eating the grains. She saw me and intervened. I got hit so many times; it was incredibly intense. From that moment on, I never even thought about tasting those walls again. My memories of that time are fragments of images: my grandfather coming home with beautiful horses. My sister and I playing while other boys threw stones at us. Sara then picked me up, carried me on her back, and one of those stones hit her on the head. It bled profusely, and my grandmother cleaned and treated the wound for a bit.

Another thing that made an impression on me was the death of a fellow villager. He was eating grapes when he was stung on the tongue by a bee or wasp, which caused him to choke. I still vividly remember seeing a white shroud being carried past. That’s how much it affected me. My father, born in 1934, had already left for Europe by then. At that time, men came to the village looking for healthy young men to work in the mines and factories in the West. Many young men were interested in this because living conditions were poor. If you didn’t have animals, you had a problem. Life was hard. People were content, but they didn’t have much. This was true not only in Morocco, but also in countries such as Algeria, Greece, and Turkey. That’s why my father was eager to go and work in ‘rich’ Europe and that’s how he ended up in the mines of Belgium. His younger half-brother, Mhend, wanted to go too, but my father wouldn’t let him. After all, someone had to look after the family and the livestock. My uncle Mhend would blame my father for this for a long time. He would have liked to earn his money elsewhere, too. People who returned from Europe gave away a lot of money and possessions, so making a trip there seemed like a visit to paradise. Once my father had settled in, he brought my mother and us over. I was five at the time, my sister was eight, and my little brother was two. He came to get us. The journey was impressive. I stepped into a huge colossus that I later realized must have been an airplane. I had never seen an airplane before. When we landed, we had to board a bus. That was new to me, too. Everything was remarkable, but the light stuck with me the most. There was light everywhere. In the mountain village, it was always dark. When the moon didn’t shine at night, you couldn’t see anything. But here in Belgium, there were lights everywhere. It hurt my eyes, and it wasn’t the only thing I had to get used to.