The Last Of The Riffi Brothers
“Rif, also spelled Riff, or Riffi, any of the Berber [Amazigh] peoples occupying a part of northeastern Morocco known as the Rif, an Arabic word meaning “edge of cultivated area.”-Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Brothers at Rest
Among the incessant buzzing of cicadas, high near the old mountain of Jebel El kebir, there’s the vast El Moujahidine, one of the largest cemeteries in Tangier, Morocco. It extends from the top of a high hill, and meanders down a steep valley below. Left and right, and as far as the eyes can reach, thousands of tombs are arranged haphazardly. Despite (or because) of this asymmetry, all the tombs still face East.
And if you were to look carefully among the innumerable tombs, you would find the marked grave-in Arabic and Latin letters-of my father, one Hamadi Zefzaf, long-time immigrant in Belgium, and somewhat of an erudite. Only a few steps above him, in the same cemetery, rests his older brother, my uncle Hadou, past union leader extraordinaire at the Old Port of Tangier.
It is true: The dead are dead only when they are no longer remembered. Even after they passed away many years ago, my uncle and father remain enigmas to me. Not much time goes by without my thinking about them. During their lifetimes, the brothers were opaque figures-Riffi men of their generation. Vaguely aristocratic in demeanor, they rarely talked about themselves. From the little I knew of their past, it was always cast in a pall of sadness and tragedy.
The Long Rif March and Choukri
The brothers’ stories mirrored those of the whole Rif and its people-resilient mountain men and women, affected by wars, exile, and a feeling that is common among all the aborigines of the world: The sentiment of paradise lost. But for the brothers, in their childhood, the Rif was no paradise. They had to leave it, forced by dire circumstances to embark upon a long and seemingly endless march to the city of Tangier. For the Riffis living in the middle of the 20th century, Tangier was Rome.
Hadou and Hamadi were part of the long horrific march from the Rif to Tangier in the exodus of the 1940’s. They fled the hunger and deprivations caused by severe droughts and the terrible effects of the Rif war, (1921–1926). The time when the Spanish Army unloaded chemical weapons upon the people of the Rif. This nearly forgotten war has had lasting consequences across all those years. Today, a hundred years later, the Rif region has one of the highest incidents of cancer in Morocco.
The deadly Rif march is described by another Riffi of the brothers’ generation, the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri. Unlike the brothers, he, on the contrary, told it all in his now classic and taboo-breaking book titled Al-khoubz Al-Hafi. Choukri’s book was first translated from the original Arabic by the American writer Paul Bowles under the title “For Bread Alone”. For the francophiles, a more accurate translation is the French version “ Le Pain Nue” by Tahar Benjelloun, a Tangerino himself, and another keen observer of the singular Moroccan mentality.
The brothers probably crossed paths with Mohamed Choukri having themselves frequented the famous Grand Cafe Central at the Socco Chico in the intimate Tangier of the 1950’s, when everyone knew everyone. Though relatively well-educated for their times, the brothers were labor activists and seemed to have deliberately avoided the author. Such was their native pudeur that they never read Choukri’s book. The brothers were at the margins of the shady demi-Monde prevalent when Tangier was an international city. The city was known for being a unique shelter to Bohemians, shady characters, and other lost souls looking for the eternal question about the meaning of life.
The First Separation
Sometimes, in rare moments of freedom, fueled by traditional kif, the brothers would allude to the strange death of their father when they were small children, and, who during his death, bled from his ears in a horrific scene. The story of their younger brother Chaib, literally consumed by a fire before their very own eyes. The story of being orphaned and separated in childhood after the death of their father and brother-a period in their life that has always been shrouded in deep silence and mystery.
The separation, as they called it, is one of the subjects the brothers did not want to talk about, except to say that during that period, they lived with their maternal uncles in different locations and would rarely see each other. Over a long period of time, I-a bit too curious for their taste- tried prodding in different ways about this period of their life, but there was only so much that they would say. The brothers were the type of men with strong personal boundaries and disliked those who were insistent. Sensing and understanding that it is a story that I could not hear, nor tell, I dropped the subject entirely. It was a lesson for me. In retrospect, my youthful curiosity got in the way of the story.
Mohammadi: Sole Survivor
It is a convoluted tale. Although the brothers were born in exile at the hamlet of Snada, they were actually the original descendants from the village of Izefzafen, Al Huciema, where once their ancestors were prominent landowners and leaders, but then lost their lives and positions in a deadly vendetta. With the consequence that Mohammadi Ouriaghli Khatabi Zefzaf Ibn Hajj Arafat Adalouh, the brothers’ father and my grandfather, was the only male survivor. Pursued by his tribal enemies and without a Dirham in his jellaba, Mohammadi fled Izzefzafen and managed to reach the city of Fez, where he remained hidden for several years under the last name Ouriaghli. It was only in the 1960’s that the brothers reverted to their original name Zefzaf. (see document below.)
By circuitous means and in secret, Mohammadi eventually made his way back to the Rif, not far from his native village of Izefzzafen. For numerous reasons, he finally settled at B’ni Yeteft, village of Snada, under the friendship and protection of the late Chérif El-Ouazzani, himself a resident and notable of the county. Using the village of Snada as his base, he had planned to reclaim his name and the land of his ancestors at the village of Izefzafen. But this was never to happen. He died young, his dream gone with him.
Soulful Khadija and Eternal Love
Shortly after settling at Snada, Mohammadi, a tall dashing figure by all accounts, got married, and luckily for him, to the noble Khadija El Azzouzi Bents Sidi Issa, my grandmother and one of the wisest and kindest women I have ever known. She was not married very long with Mohammadi. Still a youthful widow, her mysterious soul brought her numerous marriage proposals and entreaties. But she declined over and over again, a free feminist in her times, Khadija chose to remain a widow for the rest of her life.
Some Buddhists say that it takes five hundred years to find your true mate. Khadija and Mohammadi had found themselves in an arranged marriage sometime in the Rif of the early 20th century. And throughout her life, Khadija never let go of Mohammadi. Long after he was dead, he remained forever in her mysterious heart. From time to time, she pointed to the clouds and would say, “ I know he is waiting for me and I shall meet him again, somewhere beyond the skies, beyond what we can understand ‘’. Such was Khadija, a philosopher of sorts and a great teacher. She believed that she was a spirit, passing through this life, but only as a brief passenger, and then on to the beyond and a certain return with her beloved Mohammadi.
The Final Separation
The final separation between the brothers occurred in 1964, when Hamadi immigrated from Tangier to Brussels, Belgium, where he settled in the community of Molenbeek. Although the brothers saw each other nearly every summer, it was not the same. Distance and time have a way of changing relationships, but thier bond remained until they both passed away on separate continents.
Like his ancestors, upon his retirement from a long career at the now defunct Belgian airlines SABENA, Hamadi, who had a keen memory and spoke several languages, took on the study and memorization of the Koran. He used the old traditional method, which consist of writing verses on a wooden tablet. Oftentimes, he could be heard reading passages from the Koran in his house at the Rue Jules Delhaize. On occasions, when I visited Molenbeek and stayed with my parents, I had the “pleasure” of hearing him reading the Koran late at night. With much love for Hamadi, he was no melodious Mohamed Al Jabri El Hayani. But as in all things he did in life, somehow his sincerity always saved him.
Toward the end of his life Hamadi had a major stroke. Despite great pain, he remained stoic to the end. After a long illness, he died at the hôpital St. Pierre in Brussels. As he wished to be buried in his country of origin, his body was flown to Tangier, Morocco, to the El Moujahidine cemetery, his final resting place, inseparable and forever neighbor to his older brother Hadou. He was eighty-three years old, and had lived exactly fifty years as an immigrant in Belgium.
Hadou
My uncle Hadou was a charismatic man. From the time he arrived in Tangier from the Rif as a teenager, he was engaged in social justice. A handsome man with an imposing stature and a booming voice, he commanded attention. As a union leader of the nascent Union Marocain Du Travail, he led many strikes for the betterment of his fellow workers. He contributed greatly to the improvement of their rights at a time when they had practically none at Tangier’s harbor.
Hadou was also a generous man. Throughout his life he helped countless people get jobs. His home was always open as he took in many family members who had fallen into hard times. He was not a man of many words, but his deeds spoke volume. In life, he was a benevolent figure, loved and respected in his community. Just like his father, he died suddenly while praying in his local Mosque in Tangier during a major Muslim Holiday. He was seventy-three years old.
Epilogue
Like so many before them, Hamadi and Hadou were ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives. Emblematic of a whole generation, they remained eclectic, if not contradictory: Modern men of this world, not averse to the finer things in life, but also spiritual keepers and guardians of a stoic and vanishing world.
The most amazing part of the Brothers’ story is that despite all the emotional and material hardships endured in childhood, they had productive and useful lives. Both enjoyed long-loving marriages and careers. They were beloved by their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It is perhaps with people like the Riffi brothers in mind that the Sufi poet Jallal din Rumi wrote, “The sweetness and delights of the resting-place are in proportion to the pain endured on the Journey. Only when you suffer the pangs and tribulations of exile will you truly enjoy your homecoming.”
In my modest and most unlikely perch in Mashpee, Massachusetts, Land of the Wampanoag, I sometimes wonder, as a humble witness, if, like James Fenimore Cooper’s old Mohican, I too have lived to know the last of the true Riffi brothers-the last of a vanishing world.
Au revoir brothers, if your mother Khadija is right, I shall see you again.
