“Disappeared ones (mkhtabyin)”: Violence, waiting and testimonial literature on the forced disappearances in the “Years of Lead”

Abstract

This paper explores the experience of waiting in enforced disappearance in Morocco during the “Years of Lead” (1961-1991) as a multifaceted temporality that entails both passivity and active engagement. It focuses, in particular, on the story of the disappeared activist Omar El Ouassouli and
his family’s vicissitudes against the backdrop of the tension between the silence imposed by the state and the attempts to re-appropriate a voice by the victims of the Years of Lead. The paper shows how the notion of waiting, conceived of as an inflicted temporality that reiterates traumatic
memories, makes visible some pervasive and subtle forms of violence which produce suffering and fear in the everyday life. Meanwhile, it shows how this notion enables us to grasp the complex ways in which personal and collective agency takes shape in relation with an imposed temporality.