El aniversario del asesinato de Mahdi Amel

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Cobra vs lion

مارسيل خليفة">مارسيل خليفة

Interview with Mehdi Ben Barka’s Son Bachir

November, 1999

To begin with, and particularly for the younger generation who may not know of the Ben Barka “affair”, could you relate the circumstances of the kidnapping of your father?

On Friday 29th October 1965, at 12.30 pm, Mehdi Ben Barka, my father, had an appointment at the Brasserie Lipp, on the boulevard Saint Germain, in Paris, with a journalist, a film producer and a scriptwriter, to discuss the preparation of a film about national liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The film was to be shown at the opening of the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in January 1966. The title of the film was to be Basta!

This appointment was a trap. Before his arrival at the Brasserie, my father was stopped by two French policemen, who showed their police cards and asked him to follow them. He got into their official car. He was calm and confident. But in this car were other individuals, an agent, or “honourable corespondent” according to the conventional expression, of the SDECE, that is to say the French secret services, and a criminal, a henchman. The SDECE agent was wearing a false mustache and a wig so that my father, who knew him, would not recognize him.

MAHMUD DARWISH

PASAJEROS ENTRE PALABRAS FUGACESPasajeros entre palabras fugaces:

Traducido del árabe por:
María Luisa Prieto

Cargad con vuestros nombres y marchaos,

Quitad vuestras horas de nuestro tiempo y marchaos,

Tomad lo que queráis del azul del mar

Y de la arena del recuerdo,

Tomad todas las fotos que queráis para saber

Lo que nunca sabréis:

Fernando Pessoa

Tabaquería

” No soy nada.
Nunca seré nada.
No puedo querer ser nada.
Aparte de eso, tengo en mí todos los sueños del mundo.
(…)
Fallé en todo.
Como no tuve propósito alguno tal vez todo fue nada.
Lo que me enseñaron
Lo eché por la ventana del traspatio.
Ayer fui al campo con grandes propósitos.
Encontré sólo hierbas y árboles
y la gente que iba era igual a la otra.
(…)
Qué puedo saber de lo que seré, yo que no se lo que soy?
Ser lo que pienso? Pienso ser tantas cosas!
Y hay tantos que piensan ser esas mismas cosas
que no podemos ser tantos. “

Nass El Ghiwane