L’oiseau de Tazmamart (The Bird of Tazmamart) is, above all, a project by a generation largely cut off from its history. Based on Ilyass Koundi’s graduation project at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan and reworked in collaboration with the Alkhariqun collective and former political prisoner Ahmed Marzouki, this graphic novel broadly recounts the failed military coups against King Hassan II that led to the disappearance of a group of officers and former students of the Ahermoumou Military Academy. Told through Marzouki’s perspective, the now well-documented conditions of detention in the Tazmamart prisons are depicted here realistically, accompanied by black-and-white panels that often emphasize striking angles. High-angle and low-angle shots dramatize the experience of what historian and political scientist Walid Cherqaoui calls, in his afterword, “a political erasure ”: “ Disappearance functioned as a total suspension of the law .” Yet, in the face of this concentration-camp-like world, the novel succeeds in imparting a lesson in hope through the figure of this bird, which the prisoner refers to as “ faraj” (deliverance); the testimony transforms into a parable that restores human dignity to the heart of history.
By Olivier Rachet
L’oiseau de Tazmamart (The Bird of Tazmamart) by Ilyass Koundi and Alkhariqun, published by Alifbata and Le Fennec, 112 pages, 250 DH
This translation was generated using AI. For the original text, please see the French version of this article.
