Ouzar

Ouled Teima, Morocco

In the course of his search for the future, Ouzar has encountered, since his infancy, many obstacles to which he hardly found solution. Since his first years in high school, he tried as hard as he could to construct a vision for his future. Ouzar was a great thinker and an intelligent person. But his friends and people surrounding him did not let him believe in himself and achieve his aims. Every step he made was faced with refusal--first from his parents and then from other members of his family. It was his 17th year in age when he left for France. The idea of traveling abroad did not come suddenly to his mind. It was a result of a series of repressions practiced on him by both his close family and his society. It was also an action against the antique-looking countryside in which he was born.

All his village members’ aim in life was to see their farms cultivated and their crops grown for most of them had never been to school. Therefore, they had no hope for another life rather than that of crops and pasture for grazing. But the aims of Ouzar in life went beyond that limit. He wanted to establish his own way of achieving all his aims in the society in which he was born. Even though his travel to France did not come easily, he tried to forget the sorrows and hardships of the past and start a new life.

During the period that preceded his travel to France, he was in complete dilemma and hesitation. As an adolescent he did not allow his parents to convince him to stay in the countryside. All his wishes were to find his way to success and put an end to his multifaceted crisis. Fuelled with great enthusiasm and strong ambition to know about the other world, Ouzar did not hesitate to take the first chance offered to him.

Ouzar was a very clever and modest merchant. On holidays, he used to spend his spare time as a shop assistant in a clothes shop. Against his will, this shop was occupied by an old man whom he discovered later to be a mere dreg of the French colonialism. This latter mistreated him as if he had been a gypsy found somewhere in one of the city marginal ghettoes. His material conditions enforced in him the desire to improve his income no matter how scarce it could be. However, this generally called holiday days did not tarnish in his mind the spirit of initiative and ambition to achieve for himself and, after a while, for his family.  

The first time he took the initiative to cross the borders, Ouzar was unaware of the potential changes that may affect his personality. This started an immense change within him. His facial appearances started to have a different form as he adopted the habits and conducts of the OTHER. His gait was no longer fluctuating but rather steady. Even his speech was fed with some imported words ranging from sophisticated to the very informal ones according to the requirements of each context.

On his first working day in a nearby village in the south of France, Ouzar woke up early as usual. His day was not like all children’s. After prayer, the practice he had never forgotten, relying on his phone Salaat application, he took his humble breakfast that included a small slice of bread with some jam and butter and a cup of hot tea which he quickly prepared.

His first task was not as easy as he dreamt. He was assigned to take care of a stable full of pets.  The animals were so kind to him that they made his work a daily enjoyable habit rather than a duty to fulfil.  A cow stood with a calf beside it. A donkey stood up as Ouzar was approaching. It was staring at him as if there were an urgent message to be delivered. A quick shift of its tail was enough to understand that that was the formal language tailed animals tend to use as a welcoming sign. In a three-meter-square fenced area, there were some hens led by a reddish rooster which seemed courageous enough to defend its fellow chicken family.  Some ducks were spread hither and thither. A cute cat was twisting its tail all around searching for some petting from Ouzar’s soft hands. Her meows, along with the brown hairy dog’s barks, made a rhythmic melody worth listening to in the animal kingdom. All these animals’ bellies were waiting for Ouzar to feed them.

Due to his long experience since the age of five, Ouzar found that part-time work enjoyable. He appeared to be a very fragile little kid but very mature in depth. He could hardly believe in the existence of troubles. His entire wish was to take care of his illiterate parents. His father could hardly find a job that would cover the costs of his errands, and his mother was struggling from her long-lasting disease. One could not imagine how a person of Ouzar’s case might have managed the situation. However, nothing could stand against Ouzar’s persistence and unbeatable courage.