To my grandfather’s soul

My grandfather died this is some six years, but his image still comes to me from time to other and I still clearly remember his face. He was an old man in his nineties. An illiterate man who passed all his life in the mountains with a nomadic life style, and if he visited a city in his lifetime it would be for few times just for some administrative matters and his visit wouldn’t last more than few hours. When he calmly left us, he was in good health but as death don’t make any difference between healthy or not, he was taken suddenly. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend his funeral because I was not home when he deceased.

He was a 20th century man from Atlas Mountains. He lived time before the colonization in the “lawless era”, a time of division, instability and insecurity in Morocco. A time when thieves and bandits was roaming all around. He also witnessed the hard times of colonization, when people’s dignity was taken and they were obliged, under force, to do all menial and hard work. A time when a human could be tortured and easily killed with less mercy. He lived times of malnutrition and starvations, and everything was against them including nature that was mean and harsh and was punishing them with less fertility and more disasters.

Before he died, when conditions allow it, I was asking him to tell me some stories about his youth. And even he usually refuses, I sometimes succeed to spur his memory and take him back to the past. He was going back to recollect some parts of his bitter experiences with profound moans and deep sigh. His stories was attractive and when he went on telling, my curiosity was preventing me from listening quietly and I was trying to make some comments or asking some questions for more details. He was, like other people who lived such harsh life and left this world in silence, an example of patience and big pride.

As we were living in one house, I grew up seeing him everyday, and his tenderness could not give me more than a strong love. My grandfather, I love you, peace upon your soul!