She misses her parents and family desperately, but she has no choice. At approximately the age of 5, the girl is taken from her parents and grows up in the inner circle of the royal court, where she eventually lives until she is 17. This practice is actually commonplace in Africa, and it would have been inappropriate for Malika’s parents to deny the King his wish. The kings sees the girls get along as playmates, and to secure Malika as a permanent friend, playmate and ‘sister’ for his daughter, the King adopts Malika. Oufkir’s oldest daughter, Malika, is about the same age as the young daughter of the King, Lalla Mina. King Muhammad V was the ruler that brought Oufkir to power in the 1950ies. By having direct access to the king, his family is at the very top of the social pyramid in a class system with feudal roots and almost infinite social complexity and variation. Eventually he is the Interior Minister, and the army and police report to him. General Oufkir, through hard work and clever political maneuvering, becomes the second most powerful man in Morocco in the 1960ies. Malika, the author of the book, was born in 1954 as the eldest daughter of General Oufkir and his wife Fatima. It is the true story of the Oufkir family. Stolen Lives tells a story that took place in modern Morocco, starting in 1954, and ending in 1998.

This was true during the times of the Egyptian Pharaohs, in ancient Rome, in Medieval times in Europe, during all the various Dynasties in China, throughout history in Japan, pre-Columbian South America – and in today’s Africa. There is something about modern humans that makes us choose a king, give him absolute, God-sanctioned power, allow that power to be passed on by inheritance, and motivate us to pay taxes so the king can enforce his will over us, live lavishly, and ask us to give our lives, should wars be necessary. Kings generally have almost absolute power.

It is like a pair of glasses has been removed, glasses that filter all light in a certain hue, and now I see contrasts differently. After reading Stolen Lives, I will never think the same way about my own life, as well as institutions like Amnesty International, concepts like human rights, monarchies, police states, the abuse of power by absolute leaders – monarchs – and dictators, the value of human life, the meaning of time, justice, strength, hope, spirit and determination. Some stories are so powerful, so gripping, that once told, lives change.

Stolen lives 20 years in a desert jail