Books: From Palace To Prison

For a prison memoir, Malika Oufkir's story opens sweetly, as if her life were a fairy tale in reverse. She is a rebellious 5-year-old in frilly dresses when she is adopted by King Mohammed V to become a favorite daughter's perpetual playmate. For the next 11 years, until well after King Hassan II succeeds to the throne, she lives the incredible life of a Moroccan princess. Beautiful palaces become her playgrounds; her every wish is a servant's command. She rides horseback with royalty, giggles through Cabinet meetings and travels on state visits. She greets so many foreign dignitaries it makes her yawn. As a spoiled teenager, she cavorts with jet setters and fancies becoming a film star.

Desperately missing her natural parents, Malika hardly considered her forced adoption a dream come true. But that confinement paled next to the one that was to last more than 20 years and that began suddenly one afternoon in August 1972. A few years earlier, she had been allowed to return to the home of General Mohammed Oufkir, her father. Oufkir, Morocco's feared police chief and Defense Minister, tried to seize power by having the King's plane shot down. The coup d'etat failed, and Oufkir was summarily executed. Exacting further vengeance for the betrayal, Hassan II had Oufkir's wife and six children banished to a series of desert prisons. In 1987, Malika and three of her siblings briefly escaped and alerted the world to their plight, forcing Hassan II eventually to free the whole family from their medieval detention.

Oufkir's Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail (Talk Miramax Books; $24.00; 293 pages) is a unique story of true life behind the palace walls. Living in Paris since 1996, Oufkir reports on the kindnesses as well as the cruelties and exposes secrets that few outsiders could learn, like the sex lives of royal concubines. Her heartbreaking confessions and the breathtaking plot have made the book a best seller in France in 1999 and now in the U.S. as well, thanks in large part to its selection by Oprah's book club. Writing her story, Oufkir explains between stops on an American book tour, allowed her to get some sweet vengeance of her own. "Living in silence for 20 years, you lose your dignity," she says. "You need to talk, you need to be a witness. I wanted Hassan II to know exactly what he did." Just as important to her is the cleansing effect the book is now having in Morocco. Though it is still banned, it has been widely read and discussed in the press as part of a debate on the country's feudal past.