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DIDACTIC ENTERTAINMENT: THE MOROCCAN POLICE JOURNAL AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ARABIC POLICE PROCEDURAL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2013

Jonathan Smolin
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Abstract

This article traces the ways that the Moroccan Police Journal, a state-produced periodical that first appeared in 1961, constructed and disseminated an aspirational identity for the Moroccan police, one that was radically distinct from the image of the brutal security forces of the Protectorate period. Unlike other state-produced periodicals in Morocco or the Middle East at the time, Police Journal included fictional short stories written in the form of a police procedural, a genre that places a real-world criminal detective in the center of a narrative depicting a believable police investigation into a puzzling crime. As this article shows, these stories are the first examples of police procedurals in the Arabic language. The article examines three stories from Police Journal, tracing how they projected a new professional institutional culture for the police in the era of independence and served as both didactic pieces for police readers and entertaining works of fiction for the literate public.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 695 - 714
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank the four anonymous readers who reviewed this article for IJMES as well as the editorial staff of IJMES for their valuable feedback and helpful suggestions.

1 For more on this period, see Vermeren, Pierre, Histoire du Maroc depuis l'indépendence (Paris: La Découverte, 2006), 19–30Google Scholar. See also Miller, Susan Gilson, A History of Modern Morocco (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 146ff.

2 A study that briefly discusses the colonial police and the administrative responsibilities of the postindependence police in Morocco is Hamdouchi, Miloudi, Le régime juridique de l'enquête policière: Étude critique (Rabat, Morocco: Renald, 1999)Google Scholar. It should be noted that Hamdouchi is a former police commissioner.

3 Tuhami, Muhammad ibn, Dahaya Hubb (Victims of Love) (al-Muhammadiyya: Matbaʿat al-Fadala, 1963)Google Scholar. Not only does this novel feature similar procedural elements and character development as the stories of Police Journal, but they were also both printed at the same press. Although little is known about Ibn al-Tuhami's biography, the former president of the Moroccan Writers Union, Abdelhamid Akkar, told me anecdotally that Ibn al-Tuhami was a member of the police.

4 Their first police novel was Hamdushi, Miludi and al-Hamdushi, ʿAbd al-Ilah, al-Hut al-Aʿma (Rabat, Morocco: Manshurat ʿUkadh, 1997)Google Scholar. Each author has published a number of police novels separately. I have used these authors’ own French spelling of their names in this article. For an example of the recent Moroccan Arabic police novel in English, see Hamdouchi, Abdelilah, The Final Bet, trans. Jonathan Smolin (New York and Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008)Google Scholar. The Algerian Francophone police procedural first appeared in 1986 with the publication of Houfani, Zahira, Les pirates du désert (Algiers: ENAL, 1986)Google Scholar. The first Francophone police procedural appeared in Tunisia in 1991 under a pseudonym. See Charlotte, Le meurtre de Sidi Bou Saïd (Tunis: Alyssa Éditions, 1991). The Arabic police procedural has yet to appear in either country.

5 Moreover, the French section never included police procedural stories. This difference points to the importance of the Arabic language as a defining component of Moroccan police culture during the 1960s. It also represented a means by which the state attempted to differentiate the Moroccan police of the independence period from the French protectorate authorities.

6 I was able to purchase or consult issues of the Police Journal from used book markets in Rabat, Casablanca, and Fez as well as the collections of the Bibliothèque du Royaume du Maroc (BNRM). The holdings of Police Journal in the BNRM are incomplete. The BNRM has three issues from 1961, all issues from 1962 and 1963, and four of six issues from 1964. It has no issues from 1965 to 1967 but offers complete holdings after 1968. While I was able to locate several issues not in the holdings of the BNRM from 1961 and 1967 in the used book markets, I was never able to find issues from 1965 to 1966, despite repeated searches in both the used book markets and BNRM over a six-year period. I also requested to consult issues at the main police station in Rabat on several occasions but was told each time that the police did not keep back copies of the journal.

7 The journal kept this title until its last issue in 2004, no. 226. After a break of six months, it was issued again in February 2005 as a glossy monthly magazine in separate French and Arabic versions entitled Police Magazine and Majallat al-Shurta, respectively. At the time of this writing, the journal continues in this format and frequency. For more on the recent Police Magazine, see Smolin, Jonathan, Moroccan Noir: Police, Crime, and Politics in Popular Culture (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

8 Back cover, Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 3 (1962).

9 I have been unable to reconstruct precise details on its circulation and readership outside of the information included in the journal. Moreover, there is no evidence that the journal was widely read in the country.

10 Even though taboos surrounding the police have relaxed considerably in the past twenty years, it is important to note the highly sensitive nature of an Arabic-speaking foreigner conducting any kind of research into the police in Morocco.

11 Hamdouchi, Miloudi, La sûreté nationale marocaine (Casablanca: Éditions Maghrébines, 2002), 40–45Google Scholar.

12 al-Bakkay, Ambarik, “Kalimat Wazir al-Dakhiliyya,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 1 (1961)Google Scholar. Born in 1907, al-Bakkay was the Moroccan prime minister between December 1956 and April 1958 and minister of the interior from May 1960 until his death in April 1961.

13 Ibid.

14 Oufkir is well known for the brutality with which he suppressed public dissent in general and the 23 March 1965 riots in Casablanca in particular. He died after directing the failed 1972 coup against King Hassan II. As is well documented, Oufkir's family was arrested after the coup and jailed during the 1970s and 1980s. See Oufkir, Malika and Fitoussi, Michèle, Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail (New York: Hyperion, 2002 [1999])Google Scholar.

15 Ufqir, Muhammad, “Kalimat Mudir al-Amn,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 1 (1961)Google Scholar.

16 Ibid.

17 Ouakili Tuhami was the editor in chief of Police Journal until at least 1964. His name disappears from the journal by 1967. I have not been able to find any biographical information on him.

18 al-Tuhami, Al-Wakili, “Iftitahiyyat al-ʿAdad,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 1 (1961)Google Scholar.

19 Ibid.

20 The novel was first serialized as Dhikriyat min al-Sijn under the pseudonym “Sajin Qadim” in al-ʿAlam. It was published in book form in 1965. See Ghallab, ʿAbd al-Karim, Sabʿat Abwab (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1965)Google Scholar. Ghallab is not only an author of fiction but also a political figure, journalist, and former editor-in-chief of al-ʿAlam. For his memoirs of this period, see Ghallab, ʿAbd al-Karim, ʿAbd al-Karim Ghallab fi Mudhakkirat Siyasiyya wa-Sihafiyya (Rabat, Morocco: Manshurat al-Maʿarif, 2010)Google Scholar.

21 Al-Tuhami, Dahaya Hubb, 3. While there appears to be a connection between this novel and the real-world police, as I noted earlier, Dahaya Hubb was published as a work of fiction outside the context of the Police Journal.

22 “‘Al-Bulis,’” al-ʿAlam, 21 May 1961. Numerous articles in al-ʿAlam during 1961 detail similar kinds of police violence and abuses. These articles typically claim that the police of the new era were simply reenacting the crimes of the colonial police against innocent people. An article published on 30 May 1961, for example, details how one police officer drove his motorcycle through the streets with a man handcuffed to it, forcing him to run behind it. Another article published on 9 July 1961 describes how the police assaulted a woman, causing her to have a miscarriage.

23 Binʿisa, Jurjini, “al-Shurta fi Sadr al-Islam,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 1 (1961)Google Scholar.

24 Fiction and newspaper reporting are not the only evidence of police abuses in the early independence period. Hayʾat al-Insaf wa-l-Musalaha/Instance Equité et Réconciliation (IER) presented documentation and testimonies of activists who were tortured by the police between 1956 and the early 1960s. See www.ier.ma.

25 al-ʿArabi, Idris, “al-Turuq al-Mutbaʿa fi Ikhtiyar Rajul al-Mabahith,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 1 (1961)Google Scholar.

26 al-Tuhami, Al-Wakili, “Sana min al-Kifah Taʿqubuha Sanawat,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 12 (1961)Google Scholar. At the time, there were no women in the police force.

27 “Al-Tariqa al-Sihhiyya li-Taftish al-Masakin wa-l-Qabd ʿala al-Mujrimin,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 10 (1961).

28 While I have not been able to consult complete collections of these Egyptian and Iraqi police journals, the dozens of issues that I have read from the 1950s and 1960s lacked any kind of fiction.

29 The first issue features a play written in the style of a police procedural. See al-Ghali, al-Mahi, “al-Jurh: Tamthiliyya Bulisiyya Qasira,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 1 (1961)Google Scholar. While most fictional pieces were individual stories, the journal did publish several multipart series. These include “Kukh ʿAwdat al-Ruh,” Majallat al-Shurta 2, nos. 8–11 (1962); and Ruzqi, Ahmad, “Nuqtat al-Daʿf,” Majallat al-Shurta 3, no. 12 (1963)Google Scholar through 4 (1964).

30 al-Gargari, Muhammad, “Ahlam Tatabakhkhar,” Majallat al-Shurta 14, no. 93 (1974)Google Scholar.

31 Panek, Leroy, “Post-War American Police Fiction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Crime Fiction, ed. Priestman, Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Ibid., 156.

33 I use the word “cop” in this article without any pejorative connotation.

34 A classic discussion of the genre is Dove, George N., The Police Procedural (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982)Google Scholar. On the genre in the United States, see Panek, LeRoy, The American Police Novel: A History (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003)Google Scholar.

35 Treat, Lawrence, V as in Victim (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1945)Google Scholar.

36 Matsumoto, Seicho ̄, Points and Lines (Tokyo and Palo Alto, Calif.: Kodansha International, 1970)Google Scholar.

37 Sjöwall, Maj and Wahlöö, Per, Roseanna (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967)Google Scholar.

38 For more on the genre in Arabic, see Smolin, Jonathan, “Political Malaise and the New Arabic Noir,” South Central Review 27, nos. 1–2 (2010)Google Scholar. See also Smolin, Moroccan Noir.

39 Colla, Elliott, “Anxious Advocacy: The Novel, the Law, and Extrajudicial Appeals in Egypt,” Public Culture 17, no. 3 (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 See, for example, Mahfouz, Naguib, The Thief and the Dogs, ed. Rodenbeck, John, trans. Trevor Le Gassick and M. M. Badawi (New York: Doubleday, 1989Google Scholar [1961]); Mahfouz, Naguib, The Search, ed. Wahba, Magdi, trans. Mohamed Islam (New York: Doubleday, 1991)Google Scholar.

41 Mahmud Salim began writing al-Mughamirun al-Khamsa in 1968 and completed 183 installments. Nabil Faruq's series Rajul al-Mustahil, which featured 160 installments, appeared between 1984 and 2009. Sharif Shawqi's Idarat al-ʿAmaliyyat al-Khassa: al-Maktab Raqm (19), which first appeared in the 1980s, featured 83 installments.

42 For more on this period, see Slyomovics, Susan, The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005)Google Scholar.

43 Wilson, Christopher P., Cop Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth-Century America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 58Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., 61.

45 Ibid., 62. D. A. Miller performs a Foucualdian analysis of the novel as means for internalizing discipline. See Miller, D. A., The Novel and the Police (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

46 Not only do these stories read like real-life cases, but “al-Liss” by Ahmad al-Qadmiri (Majallat al-Shurta 2, no. 6 [1962]) also features a photograph of a criminal standing above actual crime scene evidence. Another story, “al-Ibna al-ʿAshiqa” by Muhammad al-Tahir al-Tuzani (Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 1 [1961]) includes the subheading “Qissa Bulisiyya min Waqiʿ al-Hayat al-Maghribiyya” (Police Story from the Reality of Moroccan Life), further tying these stories to real-life police investigations.

47 Biba, ʿAli bin, “Man Hafara Biʾran . . . Waqaʿa fiha!,” Majallat al-Shurta 1, no. 10 (1961)Google Scholar. The author is listed in the article as “Haris al-Amn.” I have been unable to locate any biographical information or other publications by this author.

48 Ibid., 31.

49 Ibid., 32.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid., 39.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid., 39.

54 For more on McBain, see Panek, The American Police Novel, 55–62.

55 See, for example, Hamdushi and al-Hamdushi, al-Hut al-Aʿma.

56 Moroccan writers like Mohamed Choukri and Mohamed Zafzaf, who depicted the lives of marginal figures such as drug addicts, prostitutes, and street children, would begin publishing their short stories in the mid-1960s.

57 Ibrahim, Fikri bin, “Basamat al-Qatil,” Majallat al-Shurta 2, no. 4 (1962)Google Scholar. The article includes a photograph of the author and the name of his hometown, Fez. I have been unable to locate any additional biographical information or other publications by Bin Ibrahim.

58 Ibid., 34.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid., 35.

61 For more on the subject of double lives in Moroccan culture, see Smolin, Moroccan Noir.

62 Bin Ibrahim, “Basamat al-Qatil,” 38.

63 Ibid.

64 Wilson, Cop Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth-Century America.

65 Nearly all Moroccan Arabic fiction during the early 1960s appeared in party newspapers like al-ʿAlam. For a bibliography of Arabic novels and collections of short stories in book form, see Qasimi, Muhammad Yahya, al-Adab al-Maghribi al-Muʿasir (1926–2007) (Rabat, Morocco: Manshurat Wizarat al-Thaqafa, 2009)Google Scholar.

66 I thank the second anonymous IJMES reader for suggesting this point. The image of grimy city space encroaching onto middle-class urban geography also appears prominently in the work of Ed McBain. In particular, see McBain, Ed, Cop Hater (New York: Permabooks, 1956)Google Scholar.

67 al-Balghithi, Hamid, “Jarima ʿala Difaf al-Buhayra,” Majallat al-Shurta 3, no. 9 (1963)Google Scholar. Al-Balghithi also wrote “Majlis al-Mudminin,” Majallat al-Shurta 3, no. 11 (1963) and published a collection of short stories, Nidaʾ ʿAzraʾil (Rabat, Morocco: Matbaʿat Shala, 1965). I have been unable to locate any biographical information for him.

68 Ibid., 36.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., 37.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid., 38.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 For links between the state and mass media in Morocco since the early 1990s, see Smolin, Moroccan Noir.