ALSO BY JOSEPH BRAUDE The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for Its People, the Middle East, and the World Copyright © 2011 by Joseph Braude All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. SPIEGEL & GRAU and Design is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Braude, Joseph. The honored dead : a story of friendship, murder, and the search for truth in the Arab world / Joseph Braude. p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-67960432-7 1. Braude, Joseph. 2. Murder—Investigation—Morocco—Case studies. 3. Morocco—History—21st century. I. Title. HV6535.M8B73 2011 364.152′3092—dc22 2010046496 www.spiegelandgrau.com Jacket dasign: Dean Nicastro Jacket photographs: Laurent Nivalle v3.1 To Ali Contents Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-one Chapter Twenty-two Chapter Twenty-three Chapter Twenty-four Chapter Twenty-five Chapter Twenty-six Chapter Twenty-seven Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities.… —RAYMOND CHANDLER PROLOGUE M uhammad Bari eased out of his bedroom and opened the creaking front door just enough to make his way outside. His wife needed her sleep; she had to get up for work in an hour. Usually Bari’s best friend would be waiting for him in the alleyway and they would walk together to a nearby mosque for the dawn prayer. This morning, the alleyway was empty. Bari didn’t worry: sometimes his friend slept in until sunrise. It was December in Casablanca, Morocco’s sprawling economic capital on the Atlantic coast of North Africa. An ocean mist chilled the lingering darkness. Bari’s teeth chattered as he took off his shoes outside the mosque and placed them in an empty cubbyhole. He performed his ritual ablutions in the washroom and proceeded barefoot into the sanctuary warm with body heat: several hundred people had already lined up on the floor in long rows facing east. The sanctuary’s warmth was welcome, but the dawn prayer lasted only ten minutes. Ordinarily, Bari and his friend would repair from the mosque to a nearby café. If one or both of them had missed the dawn prayer, they would find each other inside. They would sit and talk for hours while people with jobs hurried in and out. This morning Bari arrived alone, and drank his coffee alone, and read the newspapers alone, and watched Al Jazeera alone, and worried about where his friend could be now. The place where he sleeps does not belong to him, he thought. He has to evacuate early so that the men who control the facility do not catch him. Could he have overslept? How could he possibly risk sleeping past sunrise? Bari finally felt driven from his familiar café chair to find out what was going on with his friend, why he had left Bari alone on this morning. He knew where to go. He knew the place well. The enormous warehouse is enclosed by a spiked metal wall that someone painted red a long time ago. At one end, the wall abuts a field of gravel and dirt bisected by the same train track that slices the city in half; people gather there at night to lie around and get drunk. Nobody ventures over that wall. Nobody is supposed to go inside except the people who work there. Silence ordinarily surrounded the place. But not this morning. When Bari reached the spiked front gate, it was surrounded by state security. A dozen uniformed police minded a perimeter of yellow ribbon. Auxiliary Forces troops in green fatigues stood guard by the entrance. Plainclothes detectives paced in and out. “Who are you? What do you want?” one of them barked. “I’m looking for a, a friend of mine,” Bari replied. The detective locked in on Bari’s eyes. He grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him in past the gate to a raucous crowd of cops, who were bending down and peering over and putting down markers and taking pictures and arguing with one another. There was a rusty smell in the air. “That was a friend of yours?” the detective demanded, pointing. Bari turned his head toward the stone steps leading up to the guard’s quarters, where his friend always slept. What he saw, he did not understand at first. The steps were drenched in red. There was a large thing lying on top of them. It had a blood-soaked beard, a couple of teeth, and clothes on. There was a head, but it was mutilated into a different shape. Bari began to feel a rising heat in his head and throat. His temples started pulsating. Now the rest of his body was in on it. He couldn’t breathe. He lost his balance. The detective steadied him by the forearm, which was still clasped tight in his muscular hand. T he lieutenant who questioned Bari over the next three days wore jeans and a charcoal gray blazer. Lieutenant Jabri was genteel, more relaxed than the men at the warehouse, perhaps a little weary of his work. He rarely raised his voice, he never insulted Bari or the other detainee, and he phrased his questions thoughtfully. Rather than refer to the murder victim by name, for example, he always called him “al- Marhum,” Arabic for “he who has been granted mercy.” On the third day, he went through the same battery of questions he had asked the day before and the day before that. “You’re sure al-Marhum was never in any trouble?” the lieutenant