Morning of the Mogul

This is the story of two successive military coups in an Arab country. The first is accomplished by a republican secularist junta, and the second by Islamists. The narrator, Bassam Bourasin, an eccentric and zealous bank clerk, writes a top-secret report to protest against his incarceration by the new regime. His purpose was to clean up himself from the heavy charges he was facing and prove that he was well devoted to the new masters of the country. As the narrative develops, he unveils many details about his life in his village, 'Ouja, and his new condition in jail. Thus, he tells the reader about his obsessions and secret ambitions, his old mother living in the past with the British settlers, his fiancee Dalila whose hugging or kissing is forbidden to him by social traditions, and his secret archives where he had managed to record for the posterity many details concerning life and people of 'Ouja. That entire world collapsed when a coup overthrew the King, and the big purge started. What happened to him and his boss, Mr Aroussi, was all the more painful that the man for whom he was working as a snitch, the mighty chief of the party's cell, Hamda La'war, was still free. The latter was considered a national hero in the country since he was awarded the Order of High Merit from the former king for cuckolding the village's shoemaker and getting an eye punctured in the brawl. To obtain the same medal, Bassam was ready to do anything, even if he had to convince the new masters of the country of a conspiracy against the security of the state being concocted by the cooks of the prison and their occult allies. That is the second purpose of his top-secret report, which he intends to submit to the authorities. But out of the blue, a second coup led by the Islamists happened; a mutiny burst out in prison, and Bassam was forced to readjust his views to be in the "right" direction of the wind. •

In Book (8), the narrator, Bassam Bourasin, is released from prison following the massacre of 300 people in his hometown, 'Ouja. His mother and his fiancee Dalila were among the victims. The narrator felt out of place and traumatised in his apartment. He barely recognised his hometown and felt he was either the real Bassam Bourasin or 'Ouja was not the real 'Ouja. The trauma had upset him since he arrived, and he was morally and physically exhausted. The survivors suffered indescribable concussions, and a thick cloud of melancholy and sorrow descended over the community. The atmosphere in 'Ouja was one of desolation and grief. The Barbarians have half-destroyed and ravaged the town, and the electric and telephone lines have not yet been restored. Even the countryside is described as a desolate area of rough, magnificent cliffs and harsh, tawny flora scorched by the sour acid sun's smouldering beams. The people of 'Ouja are grieving the loss of their loved ones, and the graveyard is crowded with mourners. The armed militia is patrolling the streets, and sadness and gloom hang over the town. Mr Houssine, Bassam's father-in-law, said the killers came at daybreak or earlier, rushed into the police station and the National Guard Headquarters, killed everyone, and then turned their rage to the stores and shops. They broke the doors with explosives, plundered, looted, and thrashed, while others broke into their homes randomly. They raped, robbed, killed whoever resisted, and rampaged relentlessly for hours. The terrorists were dressed in long robes and sandals, with long beards and masks on their faces. The big question remains: who did it? In Arab countries where there is a conflict between secularists and Islamists, the same issue has come up numerous times. From Algeria in the nineties to Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, and Sudan. In the novel, Mr Houssine believed that the massacre in 'Ouja was God's will and that people should accept it. When Bassam asked him how such a thing could happen in a country where people pray to God five times a day, Mr Houssine told him not to curse and to accept God's will. He also suggested that the criminals who committed the massacre took advantage of God's will more than those who prayed and did everything to please Allah. One assumption about the massacre's perpetrators in Ouja was that they could have been the Islamists who took over the government and badly needed foreign neutrality to crush their local rivals. Such an episode may discourage Western nations from providing help to the ousted president still fighting them in the South. Another assumption was that both parties could have perpetrated the massacre for different reasons.