THE EMERGENCE OF THE MOROCCAN POLICE JOURNAL

Police Journal first appeared in January 1961, one month before Muhammad V died. It was published monthly in Arabic until June 1964, when it was issued in a bimonthly French–Arabic bilingual edition. The French section, which was typically significantly shorter than the Arabic section, featured original articles on policing and forensics, not translations of the Arabic material.Footnote ⁵ The journal became a quarterly publication by 1967Footnote ⁶ and continued until late 1978, when it was renamed Majallat al-Amn al-Watani (The Journal of National Security).Footnote ⁷

During its first year of publication, the cover of the journal was printed in the colors of the police—pastel green, red, and white—and boasted the full-color shield of the police. Starting in 1962, the cover color changed with each issue but remained a pastel shade. The front and back covers typically featured a variety of photographs that emphasized the training of the police, depicting them marching or driving in formation. Other images included scenes of police daily life, such as officers directing traffic and helping people on the streets, as well as of King Muhammad V or Hassan II observing officers, giving speeches, or receiving officials. These photographs served to solidify the link between the palace and the police in the early independence period. Other covers highlighted the technological modernity of the Moroccan police, stressing its legitimacy in the new era, as officers appeared in front of various equipment with captions pointing to their vigilance, such as “The police neither sleep nor take a break, day or night.”Footnote ⁸ Issues also boasted a large number of advertisements from bakeries, hotels, and jewelers in Casablanca for products such as Olympic cigarettes and Valpierre wine.

It is possible to consult issues of Police Journal in the Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc (BNRM). Some covers of issues from the 1960s include a price of one dirham while others include information for both domestic and international annual subscriptions. By the early 1970s, the journal included contests in which readers could win annual subscriptions. While none of the issues that I consulted from the 1960s include information on how many copies of each issue were printed, issues after the mid-1970s include this detail—starting with 13,000 copies in 1975 and rising to over 33,000 in 2000.Footnote ⁹ Newsstand owners have told me that Police Journal and the later Journal of National Security have always been for sale to the public, and retired police officials have told me informally that the journal was provided to officers free of charge. I have been unable to find any of the authors who contributed to the journal during the 1960s, though brief biographical information on some of the short story writers is included in some of the issues. In all cases, authors were police inspectors, detectives, or commissioners working in various cities in the country. I asked about the journal in several police stations—including the main police station in Rabat—and was told repeatedly that back issues have not been preserved.Footnote ¹⁰

The first issue of Police Journal conveys a strong sense of optimism and enthusiasm as the journal sought to mark a fresh beginning for the country's police and demonstrate the institution's aspirations for the independence period. The colonial authorities established and organized the modern police in the country after 1912. At first, these forces, which wore uniforms and bore arms, were used to protect the financial and security interests of the colonial authorities.Footnote ¹¹ By 1917, mobile police forces were introduced to preserve public order, and by 1920 a system of hierarchies had been established to solidify the responsibilities of each rank within the police. The police underwent additional reorganization and reform between 1930 and 1946 in order to address increasing insecurity because of the nationalist movement. When the country became independent in 1956, the new police force inherited not only many Moroccan officers from the colonial forces but also the structures and organization of the colonial police.

This continuity between the Protectorate and independence police represented a significant challenge, and one of the goals of Police Journal was to mark a clear distinction between the police of the past and that of the present. In the opening article of the first issue, for example, Ambarik al-Bakkay (M'barek Bakkaï), the minister of the interior, emphasizes that the journal will “lead its instructional mission in the field of the police and the nation in its entirety.”Footnote ¹² From the outset, al-Bakkay underscores that the journal will seek to educate both its police audience and the wider public. He stresses that it will serve as a vehicle for linking the public with the police and for creating “closeness and mutual understanding” between them.Footnote ¹³ Al-Bakkay envisions that the journal will help form a new mindset in the country, based on mutual trust and cooperation between the public and the police, an element that, he claims, is essential to achieve public safety in the new era.

Muhammad Ufqir (Mohamed Oufkir), who was director of the police at the time, also wrote an editorial in the inaugural issue, in which he continues and echoes al-Bakkay's themes.Footnote ¹⁴ He writes that the goals of the journal are not simply to show the public that “the police are at the service of the people” and to “develop the mutual understanding and trust between the police and the citizen” but also to “strive to cast light on the duties of the police and their tasks on behalf of everyone.”Footnote ¹⁵ Ufqir stresses the role of the journal in presenting the activities of the police to the public in a transparent way. He ends his piece by writing: “We hope that this journal will be the best messenger to the citizens and the best medium for providing insight into the opinions of the police, their goals, and their service in this country.”Footnote ¹⁶ For Ufqir, as for al-Bakkay, open communication and transparency will create a new bond of cooperation between the police and the public in the postindependence era.

The journal's editor, al-Wakili (Ouakili) al-Tuhami, in his essay in the inaugural issue, also emphasizes that the journal will show the Moroccan public the various aspects of the police and the functions they perform in society.Footnote ¹⁷ He makes explicit, however, what al-Bakkay and Ufqir only allude to: “The Moroccan public . . . believes the policeman is that cruel and boorish person who doesn't have any mercy or compassion.”Footnote ¹⁸ This admission demonstrates clearly that the police administration believed they had a public relations problem at the time. Producing a new image for police officers and creating a sense of sympathy for them among the public was essential in order to erase the old associations that still circulated in society from the Protectorate era. According to al-Tuhami, the journal would show the public that a policeman “has a big heart” and is totally dedicated to his profession and steadfast in his duties.Footnote ¹⁹

There is clear evidence from outside of the journal that the police were struggling with a negative image in society during the early 1960s. The first problem was the image of the police that carried over from the Protectorate period into independence. Al-Tuhami comments on this in his editorial, and others from the period point to it as well. ʿAbd al-Karim Ghallab, one of the most important Moroccan fiction writers, serialized his first novel, Sabʿat Abwab (Seven Gates), between September 1961 and July 1962.Footnote ²⁰ This novel draws a clear parallel between the brutality of the French police during the final years of the Protectorate and the violence faced by Istiqlal Party members at the hands of the police after independence. The first Arabic police procedural, Dahaya Hubb, published in 1963 by Muhammad ibn al-Tuhami, opens with a shaykh—a symbol of the previous era—who is too scared to go to the independence-era authorities to report his son missing since he “still maintains the image of the police and their headquarters that we had from before independence.”Footnote ²¹ Ibn al-Tuhami, in an effort to cast the police of the new era in a positive light, details how the shaykh finally enters the police station and discovers that the police are not the brutal figures of the Protectorate but work professionally and tirelessly to ensure the country's safety.

Fiction was not the only form of writing from the early 1960s that pointed to the negative image of the police circulating in Moroccan society. Al-ʿAlam (The Banner), the Arabic newspaper of the Istiqlal, regularly printed news during these years about police misconduct and abuse, both in general and against members of the Istiqlal party in particular. One article published in May 1961, for example, calls for the police force to restore the public's faith in it after nine police officers tortured an Istiqlal councilman in the Mohammedia police station:

Here, the anonymous author points not only to police misconduct but also to the attempts of the state to change the Arabic word for the police after independence in order to eliminate associations with the Protectorate security forces.

During the Protectorate, the police were known under the French loanword al-būlīs; after 1956, the state sought to replace it with the terms rijāl al-amn and al-shurṭa. The first issue of Police Journal from January 1961 includes a piece that offers a full etymology of the word al-shurṭa and its place within Islamic history, urging readers to use that word for the police of the new era in Morocco instead of al-būlīs.Footnote ²³ Since many officers from the Protectorate period served in the postindependence police force, the state used terminology to differentiate between the police of the past and those of the present. Nonetheless, the anonymous author of the article in al-ʿAlam insists that nothing had changed with the police of the new era; their psychology and conduct had remained the same.Footnote ²⁴

Police Journal thus served as a vehicle to produce and disseminate a new image of the police in Moroccan society. In addition to the editorials, the first issue in January 1961 includes photographs and descriptions of officer training at the police academy—including rifle practice, equipment training, and physical fitness—that stress their modern formation and preparedness for the challenges of the new era. Another article that describes how the police select candidates begins with the following definition of the police:

Articles like this aimed to educate the broader public about the role of the modern police in society, their training, and their investigative techniques. Other issues from the early 1960s feature articles celebrating the new police and their technological savvy, including photographs of officers using transistor radios and telegram transmitters, fingerprint enlargers, microscopes, and equipment for detecting counterfeit money and comparing bullet casings. These articles stress that the police now investigate cases based on objective criteria such as science and forensics, avoiding the brutality and oppression of the past.

At the same time, the police were as much the intended audience of the journal as was the literate public. In the last issue of 1961, the opening editorial states that the aim of the journal was not simply public relations. In addition to informing the public about the police and encouraging cooperation between the two, the goal of the journal was “to provide the men of the police with a proper and sound education.”Footnote ²⁶ Multiple didactic pieces can be found in each issue, such as articles detailing the importance of crime scene inspection and techniques for collecting forensic evidence. Other articles provide information on aspects of the penal code, driving regulations, and police procedures, including how to conduct searches of suspects, identify murder victims, lead criminal investigations, and encourage amicable relations with the public. In this way, the Police Journal was intended to serve as reinforcement for the education that officers received during training. Articles are commonly accompanied by instructional photographs and state that they aim “to raise the level of training of the police and to increase their competency and their ability so that they are able to take control of the problems and dangers of their work.”Footnote ²⁷ Each issue also typically features a memo to officers from the director of the police on various internal matters, op-ed pieces, and exposés on particularly athletic officers.

In addition to the police, other governmental organizations published periodicals during the 1960s. Majallat al-Quwwat al-Musallaha al-Malakiyya (Journal of the Royal Armed Forces), which first appeared in 1965, was similar in content and style to Police Journal, but lacked instructional procedural elements or fictional pieces. Majallat al-Darak al-Malaki (Journal of the Royal Guard), also launched in 1965, published reports on official ceremonies for officers and on aspects of the penal code. Al-Taʿawun al-Watani (National Cooperation), which appeared in 1962, celebrated King Hassan II and the palace in a variety of ways, including elegiac poetry. Even the firemen had their own journal, entitled Allo 15, first published in 1963. Each of these journals was an attempt to present a modern image of the state to both the public and the members of the particular institution. Police Journal was the first to appear, suggesting the importance that the state assigned to crafting the institutional culture of the police in the early 1960s.

Other countries in the Middle East and North Africa published these kinds of journals during the 1960s. In Egypt, the police began issuing the quarterly al-Amn al-ʿAmm: al-Majalla al-ʿArabiyya li-ʿUlum al-Shurta (General Security: The Arab Journal of Police Sciences) in 1957. Majallat al-Shurta wa-l-Amn (Journal of Police and Security) appeared in Iraq in 1963. Like the Moroccan Police Journal, these publications featured editorials by high-level officers, articles on legal matters and policing techniques, narrative reports on violent crime, and occasional photographs of murder victims. Also similar to Police Journal, they aimed both to provide didactic pieces for an audience of police officers and to disseminate an aspirational image of the police in the era of independence for the general public.

Despite the similarities of these various police periodicals, the Moroccan Police Journal was the only one in the Arab world to include fictional short stories.Footnote ²⁸ While the French section of the bilingual editions included didactic pieces on policing and forensics, the police procedural stories only appeared in Arabic.Footnote ²⁹ These stories effectively disappeared from the journal by 1967, though a single story did appear in the June 1974 issue.Footnote ³⁰ Before examining three representative stories and their strategies for constructing and disseminating particular images of the police, the following section will define the police procedural as a genre and establish its relationship to modern Arabic literature.

THE POLICE PROCEDURAL AND ARABIC CRIME FICTION

The police procedural, as the mystery fiction subgenre is known today, is a form of writing that places the modern criminal detective in the center of a fictional narrative that depicts a credible police investigation into a real-world crime. Police procedurals focus on the role of police administration, forensic analysis of evidence, wiretaps, teamwork, and the influence of the law on the course of criminal investigations. The police procedural is distinct from other forms of detective fiction, such as the writings of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Maurice Leblanc, which highlight the individual detective's intuition, intelligence, personal observations, and clever questions to solve a crime. George Simenon's Commissaire Maigret series, which first appeared in 1931, seems at first to be an early example of the police procedural. Nonetheless, Maigret, despite working as a police official and leading a team of officers, solves cases through individual intelligence and careful interrogation, much like Sherlock Holmes. Simenon depicts modern police techniques in his Maigret novels but these have little to no role in solving crime, in direct contrast to the central importance of mundane teamwork and forensics in the police procedural.

The police procedural first emerged in the 1940s in the United States, where “writers began to examine real cops and the fascinating, tedious, traumatic, and thankless job they do and the ways in which their employment makes an impact on them.”Footnote ³¹ Within a wide variety of narrative forms, the genre demonstrates “that crime and police work have a unique impact on the way men and women work as well as the way they live.”Footnote ³² The genre focuses in particular on the lives of the cop figures at the center of the narrative, showing how their daily routine can influence not just their professional but also their family and personal life.Footnote ³³ Typically the genre presents the police detective as fully dedicated to the job but unable to balance his or her professional life with the civilian world. This inability to reconcile these two aspects casts the detective in a sympathetic light and makes him or her identifiable to readers. Another defining element of the genre is a strong dialogue with the crime press. Police procedural writers commonly base their novels on real-world crimes that appear in the press and also depict journalists and media relations as a fundamental part of police work.Footnote ³⁴

Lawrence Treat's V as in Victim, published in 1944, is considered the first example of the genre.Footnote ³⁵ The police procedural gained widespread popularity during the 1950s thanks to Dragnet—on radio and television—and the works of authors such as Ed McBain and Hillary Waugh. By the late 1950s, the genre started to spread outside of the United States. In Japan, for example, Seicho Matsumoto published his first police procedural in 1957.Footnote ³⁶ In Sweden, which is now considered at the forefront of police procedural writing, Maj Sjöwall and Per Whalöö began publishing their well-known police series in 1965.Footnote ³⁷ Today, the genre is among the most popular forms of fiction in a wide variety of national literatures, from Latin America and Europe to Africa and East Asia.

Despite the international popularity of the genre, there were almost no police procedurals in Arabic before the late 1990s.Footnote ³⁸ As Elliott Colla has shown in his article on early Arabic detective fiction, the police were a subject of scorn and mockery in Arabic literature during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Footnote ³⁹ Colla has demonstrated that detective fiction appeared during this period as either translations of European works or original compositions that imitated them. The central figure in this early kind of Arabic detective writing was the rogue hero, someone who has fallen outside the law and become a victim of a corrupt and unjust judicial system. This tradition of the rogue hero continued in the works of Najib Mahfuz, who incorporated noir elements in his fiction but never took the perspective of the police in his work.Footnote ⁴⁰ After the late 1960s, Egyptian authors such as Mahmud Salim, Nabil Faruq, and Sharif Shawqi wrote popular serials of police adventure novellas for children and adolescents, but similar serials for adults never appeared.Footnote ⁴¹

The police were so disliked in Arab society—and so lacking in credibility as literary figures—that, as I noted earlier, except for a single police procedural novel that appeared in Morocco in 1963, the genre did not emerge until 1997. As elsewhere in the Arab world, the image of the police in Morocco was highly negative, especially during the period of human rights abuses known as sanawāt al-raṣāṣ, or, the years of lead, from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s.Footnote ⁴² This dialectic between the real-world police and their fictional counterparts is another defining characteristic of the genre. As Christopher P. Wilson has argued, the audiences of the police procedurals are “not passive viewers of the investigation, but secret accomplices.”Footnote ⁴³ For Wilson, the genre humanizes the police, creating a link between them and readers such that the cop can “stand in for citizens themselves.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Wilson argues for a reversible relationship between the police and the public. “Ultimately, we need to read the procedural not merely as a mystery subgenre, but for the way it drafts a new police-citizen relationship.”Footnote ⁴⁵ This connection points to the way the police procedural can serve as a vehicle for state officials to attempt to improve the public image of the real-world police.

During the early 1960s the Moroccan Police Journal adapted the procedural genre for several interlinked reasons. These stories sought to draw a line between the police of the past and those of the independence period, using depictions of law-bound and forensics-based investigations to emphasize the professionalism of the contemporary police for both cop readers and the general public. They blurred the lines between real-world police cases and fictional narrative in order to recast the postindependence police in the sympathetic guise of the police procedural detective, urging both police officers and the reading public to adopt a new image of the police in society.Footnote ⁴⁶ Even if it is impossible today to reconstruct evidence that the literate public read these stories widely, they demonstrate a clear attempt by the police to influence public perceptions at the time and to produce a new narrative of police professionalism. In the following sections, I will discuss three representative stories, examining how they feature didactic elements coupled with an aspirational image of the police and entertainment for the general public. In the process, I will demonstrate how these stories point to new means by which fictional images of the police were produced, circulated, and consumed in the Arab world during the early 1960s.

HE WHO DIGS A PIT . . . FALLS INTO IT!

Each short story in Police Journal details an investigation into a crime, highlighting proper legal procedure and emphasizing the steps that the police take in order to crack a puzzling case. One story from 1961, “Man Hafara Biʾran . . . Waqaʿa fiha!” (“He Who Digs a Pit . . . Falls into It”!) begins as Commissioner ʿAbd al-ʿAli receives a phone call at the police station at one o'clock in the morning.Footnote ⁴⁷ A woman has been found murdered on the side of the road. With this beginning, the story stresses the professionalism of the police force, which stands ready to respond to calls at any hour. The procedural emphasis of the story is also apparent at the beginning, as the commissioner immediately warns his partners against contaminating the crime scene: “As soon as he got the news, the commissioner ordered the ambulance chief to make sure that no one went near the body or touched it so that clues that might lead to the killer wouldn't be destroyed.”Footnote ⁴⁸ The commissioner and his men rush to the scene, where they discover a young woman lying on the ground, handcuffed and shot in the head. They question several witnesses and examine the surroundings, collecting the bullet casing and analyzing red paint left on the rocks near where the body was found.

In addition to the emphasis on professionalism and procedure, the story displays the importance of science and forensics through the figure of the medical examiner. The body is rushed to the morgue, where an autopsy determines that the victim died not from the gunshot but from being choked to death. The autopsy reveals several other key details. The victim's eyelids were burned, indicating that she was shot at close range. Moreover, her body displayed defensive wounds—the fingernails on her right hand were broken and her front teeth were bent forward, suggesting that she bit her attacker. Through this information, the teamwork of the medical examiner is presented as an essential component of the investigation, which uses science so that the police will not be misled. Without the autopsy, the police would have proceeded as if the victim had died from the gunshot wound. Moreover, the defensive wounds indicate that the killer would have marks on his body, giving the police another lead in the investigation. The role of forensics in the case allows the author to show that science and teamwork—not intuition or brutality—are essential components of police work in postindependence Morocco.

The police quickly identify the victim, whose name is Rabiʿ, and locate her apartment. When they enter the premises, they find it ransacked. The story emphasizes how the police investigators follow proper procedure, as a careful search of the scene reveals LM cigarette butts on the ground as well as footprints and a wristwatch face cover. They also find a number of letters from a man named Muhammad, who lives nearby and works as a police officer. Muhammad immediately attracts the attention of the investigators since the victim was found wearing handcuffs and had been shot; in Morocco, only the police have access to handcuffs and a gun. But this presents investigators with the possibility that one of their own could have committed the murder. Nonetheless, the police do not hesitate to investigate Muhammad, showing readers that the police of their day will follow leads wherever they may go.

With what seems like a strong suspect, the police question Muhammad, who explains that he and Rabiʿ were friends. Nonetheless, Muhammad cannot find his handcuffs and the police discover that one bullet is missing from his gun. When they realize that it was his handcuffs that were found on Rabiʿ and ballistic analysis proves that his gun was the murder weapon, the police arrest Muhammad and charge him with the murder. This arrest demonstrates that no one is above the law, even the police, stressing that Morocco is now a country characterized by the rule of law. And with that, the case appears to be closed.

Commissioner ʿAbd al-ʿAli, however, is not convinced. While discussing the case with his partners, the commissioner explains that he thinks Muhammad is innocent, despite the seemingly clear evidence against him. This is not because of intuition or a hunch—as in Sherlock Holmes stories or Simenon's Maigret series—but because of material evidence. The commissioner had noticed some red ink on the murder weapon and this small piece of evidence would remain unresolved if Muhammad were the killer. The story therefore emphasizes that something as seemingly insignificant as red ink pushes the police to continue an investigation, regardless of how convincing the evidence appears to be against a suspect. In this way, the story shows how in postindependence police investigations, all material evidence must be accounted for and reconciled. With this move, the story shifts from emphasizing proper police procedure and the role of forensics in an investigation to the importance of material evidence and its interpretation.

Spurred on by the unexplained evidence, Commissioner ʿAbd al-ʿAli and his partners go to question Rabiʿ's boss, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. During this meeting, they immediately notice several elements that make them suspicious. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz smokes LM cigarettes, the same kind found on the floor of the victim's apartment, and the handkerchief that he used to wipe his mouth has red ink on it. The police ask ʿAbd al-ʿAziz to accompany them to the courtyard and notice that his footprints resemble those found at the apartment of Rabiʿ. Moreover, they notice that ʿAbd al-ʿAziz has a scratch on his face and that the watch he is wearing matches the watch cover found at the victim's apartment.

Now highly suspicious of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, the police bring him to the station for questioning. His alibi is that he was out the previous night with friends until 3:00 in the morning. The police rush to question one of the friends, Mukhtar, who says that ʿAbd al-ʿAziz borrowed his car for a quick errand around midnight. Moreover, he noticed that ʿAbd al-ʿAziz returned the car scratched, as something took the red paint off the right side, which reminds the investigators of the red paint found on the rocks near the body. This provides them with enough material evidence to take Mukhtar into custody as an accessory to murder.

After questioning the employees at the factory, the police learn that Rabiʿ had a tense relationship with ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. A guard also tells the police that a mysterious woman visited ʿAbd al-ʿAziz the day of the murder. The guard had previously seen the woman near her house and directs the police to her address. It turns out that she is Muhammad's wife. When questioned, she claims that she was a close friend of Rabiʿ and is devastated by the murder. Nonetheless, the police notice that her nail polish is the same color as the ink found on the gun and ʿAbd al-ʿAziz's handkerchief. As in the scenes with ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, this exchange emphasizes that the police must ignore appearances and let case evidence guide their investigation, no matter how unlikely the direction.

In addition to the role of material evidence, forensics, and close observation, the story emphasizes the importance of teamwork between the officers, as in any police procedural. “After collecting all this information and evidence, the police went to the station and sat around a table discussing and exchanging ideas.”Footnote ⁴⁹ In the stories of Police Journal, crime is solved not by individual cops—unlike in the work of Simenon—but by close collaboration between the various elements of the police force. The police ask ʿAbd al-ʿAziz to take off his clothes and discover a bite wound on his right breast and wounds on his back. They decide to press him for a confession, laying out the evidence against him. The narrative suggests that the police are willing to resort to torture, as the commissioner says: “All of the evidence indicates you're the killer, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz. It's better for you to confess and not make us use another method with you.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Even though the police do not use torture to extract a confession in this case, the story admits that it still exists in Morocco.

With all of the evidence now pointing against him, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz confesses. He explains that he loved Rabiʿ but that she loved Muhammad. At the same time, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz was also friends with Malika, Muhammad's wife. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz says that he and Malika came up with a plan to get rid of their spouses and get married. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz went to Malika's house when Muhammad was asleep after a long day of work, and she gave ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Muhammad's handcuffs and gun while holding a handkerchief. This new information then pushes the commissioner to turn his attention to Malika, explaining: “She will confess by force or violence if she doesn't tell the truth.”Footnote ⁵¹ Faced with the possibility of torture, Malika confesses as well, confirming ʿAbd al-ʿAziz's story and explaining that a jar of her nail polish broke and left the ink on the gun. Forensics, teamwork, and careful analysis of the crime scene evidence built the case against the two suspects, but it is the threat of torture that finally compels them to admit to their crime. While the text presents the possibility of torture and police violence—something presumably associated with the Protectorate police—it offers this move as a last resort to compel clearly guilty suspects to confess to their crimes. If torture exists in independent Morocco, the story suggests, the police of the new era do everything possible to avoid it.

The story concludes as ʿAbd al-ʿAziz admits to the police that he borrowed Mukhtar's car, went to see Rabiʿ, and told her one last time that he loved her. When she refused him again, he choked her to death, put her body in the car, and took her to the outskirts of the city. He then put the handcuffs on her, shot her in the head with the gun in an attempt to frame Muhammad, and returned the gun to Malika before driving back to Mukhtar. The case ends not only with a confession but also with ʿAbd al-ʿAziz's remorse. He tells the police: “This is the truth. I admit it, full of regret for my disgusting act, and surrender myself to justice.”Footnote ⁵² And with this legitimizing move, the police release the innocent police officer, an act that works to exonerate the police for brutality, both past and present. They then return the two criminals to their cell as they repeat to each other the words that form the title of the story: “He who digs a pit falls into it.”Footnote ⁵³

With its emphasis on credible procedure, forensics, and teamwork, the story is a striking example of an early police procedural outside of the United States. It presents the case in the form of a puzzle, inviting readers to follow along with the police as they investigate the crime. Moreover, the murder at the heart of the story features the dual elements of verisimilitude and sensationalism, much like the novels of Ed McBain.Footnote ⁵⁴ It takes place within the Moroccan context with believable characters, while the details of the murder read like a careful and intricate plot hatched between two scorned lovers in film noir.

Nonetheless, this story, like all stories in Police Journal, is missing a fundamental element of the police procedural genre; it lacks any attempt to humanize the police and connect their characters to society. The police procedural typically focuses on the clash between the central police characters’ home and work life as a way to humanize them and present them as part of the social and moral fabric that is under threat with each crime. The Arabic police procedural that developed in Morocco during the late 1990s, for example, depicts at length the lead detective as a family man who struggles to balance the demands of his job with his home life.Footnote ⁵⁵ In the stories of Police Journal, however, there is no attempt to demonstrate how police work affects the lives of the detectives or to present any personal information about them. None of the investigators in the stories of Police Journal is given physical descriptions or attributes. Moreover, the crimes that they investigate have no bearing on their families or home life.

In this, the stories of Police Journal assume a readership that is already sympathetic to the police and their investigations, not simply the literate public. While they are typically named, the characters at the center of the stories appear as faceless agents of the law. The stories are structured so that cop readers—whether young inspectors or senior detectives—can see themselves in the narrative, occupying the role of the description-less character, steadfastly refusing to accept the facts at face value, and doggedly pursuing the truth in the name of the law. The lack of specific character development is an inventive narrative strategy for encouraging cop readers to participate in the solving of the crime, reinforcing their training and reminding them of the twists and turns of a challenging case.

Nonetheless, this strategy does not preclude a civilian reader. In fact, the procedural nature of the story serves a double purpose. While the Police Journal featured instructional pieces on forensics, procedure, and the penal code, the short stories served a didactic role, appearing in an entertaining format that differed radically from the dry nonfictional pieces that surround them in each issue. The story form therefore also served as an innovative vehicle for attempting to disseminate the police message of change to the broader public. The entertaining and bizarre murder plot and puzzle format would function as a more effective vehicle for this message than any editorial by state officials. In this way, the journal's adaptation of the police procedural genre eliminated the character development of the investigators but maintained the emphasis on procedure, forensics, and puzzle format in an attempt to bridge two separate but related intended audiences: police readers and the general public.

THE KILLER'S FINGERPRINTS

While Arabic fiction of early 1960s Morocco provided a highly sanitized depiction of the country, some stories in Police Journal adopt the grimy realism common in police procedurals of writers such as Ed McBain.Footnote ⁵⁶ “Basamat al-Qatil” (The Killer's Fingerprints), for example, published in 1962, begins as Suʿad opens the door of her apartment, calling out for help and yelling the name Hassan.Footnote ⁵⁷ She immediately collapses, covered in blood, and dies. The text continues:

Instead of detailing a crime in a wealthy or middle-class neighborhood, the story depicts a murder in a dingy building full of prostitutes. This not only clashes with the typical presentation of idealized and optimistic images of Moroccan society at the time but also connects the short story to the police procedural genre in the United States, with its common focus on harsh urban settings. In turn, this gave the story more credibility by bringing readers closer to the kinds of cases that the police investigate in real life.

After the commissioner and his team arrive to process the crime scene, one of the inspectors recognizes the victim as a dancer in a local bar, suggesting that she, like the other women in the building, is a prostitute. Another inspector explains that she had just been released from prison a week earlier. The commissioner, however, cuts them off: “What's important is that she met her end at the hands of someone we haven't identified yet. The most important thing is to know the conditions and causes of death together with finding the killer, of course.”Footnote ⁵⁹ The commissioner here emphasizes that the victim's socioeconomic background has no bearing on the fact that she was murdered and that the police must work to solve the crime as they would any other. The story uses the grimy realism of the setting to stress the aspirational message that the police of postindependence Morocco investigate all cases with equal vigor and that everyone, regardless of their standing in society, deserves justice. Once again, the rule of law trumps all else.

The police search the crime scene and send the corpse to the medical examiner for autopsy. In the apartment, the commissioner notices a satchel with a photograph of a married couple as well as two plates on the kitchen table with food on them and two glasses of wine. He tells the inspector to take fingerprints from the plates. The commissioner scans the rest of the apartment, looks out the kitchen window, and sees a cloth hanging from the window with drops of blood on it. The police then question the neighbors, including a woman who is wearing “cheap makeup.” She explains that Suʿad “was alone in this world since she didn't have a husband or any relatives. That's why she was forced to go with any man who'd give her some money to live on.”Footnote ⁶⁰ The neighbor says that Suʿad loved a man named Hassan, whose name she cried out before she died. He promised to marry her but, the neighbor said, was only using her since she would spend whatever money she had on him. According to the neighbor, the two fought and Hassan threatened to kill her several times. The police take down Hassan's description, politely thank the neighbor as they would any wealthy citizen, and tell her to contact them if she can think of any additional information.

The commissioner goes back to his office and considers the various details of the case, reviewing the information for readers. The killer entered the apartment with Suʿad, ate dinner with her, and then stabbed her twice from behind. Fearing that someone would see him in the building, he then left the apartment from the window by sliding down a rope. The police have an obvious suspect in the case, Hassan. But when they question him, he denies any involvement in the murder and the police clear him of all charges since he was not in the city the night the murder took place. Moreover, his fingerprints do not match those left on the dinner plates.

As in other stories in Police Journal, an investigation into the victim's past reveals that she led a double life.Footnote ⁶¹ Once the police rule out the obvious suspect, they delve into Suʿad's background and discover that she had been married and had changed her name after she abandoned her husband six years earlier. In a great scandal, she ran off with a lover, who left her soon afterwards. Suʿad's real name was Fatima. She moved to a town far from where she was born, rented an apartment in the dingy building, and worked as a prostitute in order to earn enough money to survive. She fell in love with Hassan and would entertain him at her apartment in the hope that he would eventually marry her and save her from her daily misery.

The story ends as the commissioner enters a dark basement bar full of prostitutes and sits next to a disheveled and drunk young man. By not explaining why the commissioner is there or whom he is talking with, the narrative encourages readers to participate in the process of solving the puzzle of the crime. The story details how the commissioner starts talking with the young man, buys him a drink, and then takes him out of the bar to the police station. He is delighted when the crime lab confirms that the man's fingerprints are the same as those found on the plates at the crime scene. The text explains that the commissioner never thought Hassan was the criminal since he had no motive to commit the crime, especially since the victim was providing him with money. Nonetheless, the commissioner was convinced that the killer knew about Hassan and tried to set up the crime scene to frame him. The commissioner came to believe that the killer entered the apartment before Fatima got home and set dinner on the table to make it look like she and Hassan were spending the night together and thus to mislead the investigators. When Fatima entered the apartment, she was confused to see dinner on the table. As she approached the kitchen, the killer emerged, stabbed her from behind, and fled the crime scene from the kitchen window.

The narrative concludes by emphasizing the deductive process that helped crack the case: “The investigator asked himself more than once about the motive for the crime and about how the killer benefited from it.”Footnote ⁶² Since theft was not a motive, the commissioner immediately turned his attention to the victim's past and her scorned ex-husband. The article ends by stating that the man the commissioner took from the bar was Fatima's ex-husband. Facing the evidence against him, he “confessed to murdering his wife out of revenge and to vent his fury.”Footnote ⁶³

Like the other stories of Police Journal, “The Killer's Fingerprints” details a police investigation into a mysterious crime based on law-bound procedure, teamwork, and forensic analysis of material evidence, not obvious suspects and surface appearances. Moreover, the narrative structure of “The Killer's Fingerprints” resembles other stories in the journal, as the audience follows the case along with the commissioner in the form of a puzzle, giving readers the opportunity to crack the case for themselves with the same evidence and leads, establishing the link between the cop and the public in a way suggested by Christopher P. Wilson.Footnote ⁶⁴

Nonetheless, the story emphasizes grimy realism more than any other in the journal. During the early 1960s, Arabic literature and media presented a highly sanitized picture of Morocco, ignoring harsh realism for idealized images of the struggle for independence and the efforts of party activists to build the new country.Footnote ⁶⁵ “The Killer's Fingerprints” rejects this practice. It presents the harsh lives of the victim and her killer, not simply to adopt a stark form of realism but also to repel readers. The story uses its grimy setting and depiction of broken lives in order to underscore the need for the police in contemporary Morocco. Without the police, it would not be possible to contain the disorder depicted in the story and to prevent it from encroaching on other domains of society.Footnote ⁶⁶

A CRIME ON THE SHORES OF THE LAKE

Not all stories in Police Journal present a methodical investigation into a well-planned crime. One story, “Jarima ʿala Difaf al-Buhayra” (A Crime on the Shores of the Lake), not only narrates a heated police chase, evoking cinematic representations of police investigations, but also emphasizes the viciousness and brutality of the criminals that threaten the country in the new era.Footnote ⁶⁷ The story begins on a hot day in July as people relax beside a local lake. A wealthy businessman named Maʾmun Mizyan is getting ready to leave with his wife and servant after spending the day there. Two men, however, stand watching them from the trees. The first, named ʿAllal, displayed “a terrible cruelty, full of anxiety as if he were about to do something dangerous.”Footnote ⁶⁸ As for the second, ʿAbbas, “he was about the same size of the first but shorter and bulkier, with wide shoulders, a herculean body that exuded vitality and vigor, and eyes sparkling with evil.”Footnote ⁶⁹ The two begin plotting how they will surprise the couple with the gun and rob them. Further emphasizing the criminals’ heartless nature, ʿAbbas tells ʿAllal to shoot Mizyan in the head if he makes the slightest move. ʿAllal responds that he will kill all three if they put up any resistance.

The two surprise Mizyan and his wife with the gun. ʿAbbas searches them but when their servant begins screaming, ʿAbbas hits her over the head, killing her instantly. ʿAbbas then returns to the wife and takes her jewelry. “But that wasn't enough for him. He stood staring at her as if he wanted something else.”Footnote ⁷⁰ He then asked ʿAllal: “What do you think? Should we tell her to lie down on the ground?”Footnote ⁷¹ The two represent the brutal and cruel face of criminality that the police of postindependence Morocco must now confront—not only do they steal and kill, but they also are willing to rape a woman in front of her wealthy husband. ʿAllal, however, tells him to search Mizyan. Becoming increasingly nervous, Mizyan moves and ʿAllal shoots him “without feeling a thing,” killing someone who, as the narrative states, could have helped guide the country's economic future.Footnote ⁷² Mizyan's wife begins screaming and the two criminals beat her until she passes out. Just as they are about to leave the scene, ʿAllal aims the gun at her too and pulls the trigger, killing her instantly. After taking pleasure in killing their three victims, ʿAllal and ʿAbbas search their lifeless bodies for cash and then steal Mizyan's car, taking off at top speed.

When an eyewitness informs the police about the brutal crime, they respond immediately, and the narrative highlights their efficiency in chasing down the criminals. “The police began covering the distance in Jeeps carrying criminal investigators and inspectors. At every crossing point police forces amassed in their cars and motorcycles ready to join in and chase the criminals.”Footnote ⁷³ The story describes the chase, depicting how ʿAbbas races through the streets in the stolen car while ʿAllal holds the gun ready to fire on the police. All of a sudden, a group of police officers on motorcycles appear in front of the two criminals blocking the road ahead and forcing them to stop. More police appear behind them and call out that the pair is surrounded. ʿAbbas slowly stops the car, giving the impression that they are about to surrender, but instead of getting out, he hits the acceleration pedal and races away. The police take up the chase again and begin firing on the car from the motorcycles at top speed. One bullet hits the back tire and makes the car swerve and go off the road, plunging off a cliff, flipping over a number of times, and exploding into flames. The two criminals are unable to get out of the car and burn to death inside. With this dramatic conclusion to the chase, the police prove themselves capable of facing down the worst criminals that the country has to offer in the new era. In this, the killers demonstrate the need for a strong and vigorous police in postindependence Morocco.

As in other stories in Police Journal, “A Crime on the Shores of the Lake” ends with a reference to the press. “The next day, the morning newspapers printed on their front pages a bold headline for a long article with a picture of the burning car where the two criminals met their end as punishment for the crime they committed.”Footnote ⁷⁴ The press too stresses the brutality of criminality in the new era: “The newspapers described them as two killers who didn't hesitate to murder innocent people, even for a pack of cigarettes.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Further emphasizing the loathsome nature of the criminals, the story ends by explaining: “One of the newspapers wished the two criminals could be brought back to life so that the sentence of death by shooting could be executed on them!”Footnote ⁷⁶

The reference to the press at the end of the narrative underscores the connection between the police procedural and the media that is one of the defining characteristics of the genre. Instead of contesting the police—as al-ʿAlam did during the early 1960s—the press in “A Crime on the Shores of the Lake” and other stories in Police Journal present the public with an image of brutal killers that threaten society and an efficient police ready to respond to the new challenge. The press in the story therefore serves to rally the public against crime instead of criticizing the police, demonstrating that a vigorous, strong, and dynamic police force is necessary to protect society from the dangers of the new era.