Mohammed Salim – the Sheriff of Gudaym Izik (Gdeim Izik), by Nick Jubber

 One of the activists who had taken part was sitting on the carpet at Abdelhadi’s, the house I went back to after the demonstration on Avenue Smara. He was called Mohammed Salim. I sat down next to him and asked him to tell me about his experience.

  ‘I loved it there,’ he said.

  He was sitting with his legs stretched out on the woollen rug. Our host was preparing tea, the wash of hot water against the glasses mingling with the crackle of the coals on the stove as we talked.

  ‘I was unemployed,’ Mohammed Salim explained. ‘I was unhappy because it’s so hard for us to find work, so I joined the camp. I found freedom there, I was enjoying the desert more than seeing the Moroccan faces around us in the city. I was in the security attachment, I was like a sheriff.

Saharawis at Gdeim Izik protest camp.
Photo from Territorios Ocupados Minuto a Minuto

  ‘On the 28^th day, I was woken by the sound of the attack – guns and helicopters, people shouting. I saw the gendarmerie coming in with helmets and plastic shields. There were vehicles all around us – tanks, trucks, everything. It was confusing. You could hear gunshots, you could smell gas. I saw two gendarmerie picking up an old woman and beating her with batons, dragging her by the hair. I saw them grab a woman with an infant and throw her into a truck. They were shouting at us: ‘you dirty Saharawis.’ They called the women bitches. They used shameful words, they didn’t care, they kicked the women with their boots.’

  Mohammed Salim managed to jump into a Land Rover and get himself back to Laayoune. But he was so angry about the way the camp had been destroyed that he joined a group of demonstrators protesting outside the central police station.

  ‘They didn’t care about our protest,’ he said. ‘They shot six of us, including me. They got me in the shoulder. But they wouldn’t treat me in the hospital so I had to use traditional medicine – hameiria and sheep’s grease – to ease the pain. Can you imagine how much it hurt? I could hardly move my arm. I didn’t get any proper treatment until a year later, when I went on the UN programme to the camps in Algeria and they treated me in the hospital.’

Salaam's Story, by Nick Jubber

  Back at the house of one of Ahmed’s friends, I was shown photos of other demonstrations – an old man with blood on his lips; a woman’s bare red back, rashed by a police baton; a youth with a red gash on his forehead from a stone thrown by a policeman. The range of ways in which people had been attacked was telling, as was the volume of the material. 

Nick making Saharawi tea

  But it was the stories they told that struck me more forcefully than the pictures, and none more so than Salaam’s.

 She had been taking part in demonstrations since she was fifteen, when her mother had to go and pick her up at the police station after she was kept in overnight.

  ‘Of course we take part in demonstrations,’ she told me, ‘we must! It is our land as much as the men’s. And a lot of the men can’t take part because they will lose their job if they are seen at the demonstrations, or maybe they are already in prison. You must understand, we are different from women in Morocco. Our status is different. We have respect in society. If you are a woman in Morocco, your husband will beat you all the time and you cannot complain, but it isn’t like that here. In Saharawi culture, if a man beats his wife it is very shameful. We will go to our family and the man must do a lot to get us back.

  ‘Once I stood in front of fifty policemen, we were demanding freedom, work, our resources, the opportunity to bury our martyrs. They shouted back at us. They said, ‘you’re mercenaries’, and the deputy police chief hit me with his baton, they knocked me over and pulled off my milfha. You know, in our society, this is a great shame. They surrounded me, dragged me away from the others and pulled me by the hair and threatened me with rape.’

  ‘Are you ever nervous before the demonstrations?’ I asked.

  ‘Never! I feel hatred against them. When fifty policemen are facing you and I am only a single woman. I don’t feel scared, I feel hatred for them. Women are more involved than ever now,’ she said, ‘that is since Gdeim Izik. It was a breakthrough, it changed the mentality for women, now a lot of women who used to sit around gossiping, they talk about the political situation.’

Saharawi girls, by Nick Jubber

First Steps in Laayoune, by Nick Jubber

    It’s hard in Laayoune to ignore the military presence. Every corner produces another military kiosk, and every time you cross the road you have to watch out for another artillery-loaded truck roaring round the corner. Wandering under schoolyard murals of the Moroccan army or portraits of King Mohammed, you can feel the weight of a city living under the heavy cloak of oppression. But in many ways, it’s the most innocuous details that are most telling: the empty teahouses, the lack of young men loitering about, the uncracked roads, the huge public squares with their squat palm trees and bougainvillea, gaudily sprayed about like an uninvited guest’s faltering attempt at charm. And occasionally, more specific signs of the political situation seep through – from the heavily gated compounds of the rich Moroccans who’ve made their fortunes off Western Sahara’s resources to the pink Lux minivans, their back windows taped with signs for the UNHCR “Saharawi Family Visits Programme” – underlining the population displacement caused by the Moroccan invasion of 1975.

A house in Laayoune, Nick Jubber

  On a hot street of orangey-pink hardware stores and tailors’ workshops, where the bench outside the local eatery was full of men in workmen’s overalls and the air pulsed to the beat of jackhammering, I met a group of Saharawi activists.


   ‘You chose the right day,’ said one of them, called Ahmed. ‘There’s a demonstration this afternoon.’ He looked at his friends, before adding with a dark grin: ‘but it would be the same if we met you tomorrow. Most days, there’s a demonstration.’

School murals in Laayoune showing the Green March
and the Moroccan invasion, Nick Jubber

   This one took place on Avenue Smara, one of the longest roads in the city. Wearing a white djellaba, Ahmed sat beside me in the back of a car. Beside him was Salaam, a young woman in a midnight blue milfha, who carefully folded a pair of gloves over her hands and tightened her head covering so she wouldn’t be easy to identify.

   ‘Wrap your turban tighter,’ she told me – I’d been given a black one to hide my face and told to keep my giveaway white hands under the window.

A schoolyard in Laayoune with the Moroccan flag, Nick Jubber

  A dozen dark blue police trucks lined the road. Helmeted officers stood outside them, holding plastic shields and gripping their batons in their fists. The white vans of the auxiliary forces were parked in the side alleys. As we drove down the road, you could see the crowd gathering – jaws were stiffening, lips were being bitten, brows were being creased. Secret policemen swarmed between them - ‘You see the men on the motorbikes,’ said Ahmed, ‘that’s them – watch out. If they find out about you they’re gonna give you hell.’

Stories from the Occupied Territories

We're starting a new series of short stories (in English) by people from occupied Western Sahara or who have travelled there and want to share their experience. Do you want to participate? Just write an email to us with your story and we'll publish it on our blog. Don't forget to include some pictures!

Map of occupied Western Sahara and surrounded
territories painted on a wall in the camp February 27.
Photo by Danielle Smith