Journey to Freedom: Moroccan Stories

By Sascha von Bornheim

In 'Journey to Freedom - Moroccan Stories' Sascha von Bornheim tells of his childhood, which came to an abrupt end when his family -including his certifiably insane stepfather- moved from his native Germany to Rabat, Morocco.
Adapting to life in the Muslim country with its unfamiliar customs and traditions was made almost unbearable by Sascha's mother and stepfather.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sascha von Bornheim
• Release date: Jan 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458133786

Sascha von Bornheim

3 Questions for Sascha von Bornheim: Q: You can take one item with you to a deserted island. What is it? SvB: A boat. Q: Why? SvB: Well, it's an island. I assume it's surrounded by water. Q: You can't get off the island. The point of the question is to find out what you'd take with you if you had to stay there permanently. SvB: A gun. Q: You would shoot yourself? SvB: Evidently. I mean, the island is deserted. Who else am I going to shoot? Rick James? Oh wait, he's already dead. Now, I didn't know him personally, but I think the cocaine might have had something to do with it. It's a hell of a drug. Q: If you could have dinner with one famous person from history, who would it be? SvB: Einstein, Hitler, Aristotle... all such obvious choices, so I must say 'no' to them. Plus, I'd want to have some fun... so I guess I'd have dinner with Jesus. Q: Jesus? How is that fun? SvB: He had a fondness for wine and his wife was a hooker. Use your imagination. Q: Why do you write so much about death? SvB: It fascinates me. We all get to experience it, no matter who we are. Death is the one constant thing in our lives, time and space mean nothing to it. It comes to us all. And yet, no one has lived to tell the rest of us about it... what's it like? I for one believe that we simply cease to exist, but the concept of not being at some point in time when I am clearly here right now is difficult to grasp, and maybe a bit scary. I guess I'll just have to live forever. ***** Sascha von Bornheim was born in Bonn, Germany in 1978 and resides in Montreal, Canada. He is a member of the International High IQ Society and The Brights.

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JOURNEY TO FREEDOM

Moroccan Stories

by

Sascha von Bornheim

Smashwords Edition

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Published on Smashwords by Sascha von Bornheim

© Sascha von Bornheim

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or redistributed in any form without prior written permission from the author, except short portions where required by literary review.

Cover Image by Hamed Saber.

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JOURNEY TO FREEDOM

Moroccan Stories

Contents

Prologue

Early Days

Monkey Business

Binau

La France

Tangiers

Rabat

Here comes the Sun

Franz Beckenbauer

Breakfast

Delicatessen

The Vacation

The Beach House

The Club

Heidrun and Detlef

La Bonne

The Dogs

The Chicken Coop

The Drug Trade

The Businessman

School

School, part two

Of Suits and Thieves

Music

Monica

The little Porra

Ghetto Improvisations

The Mugging

Robert Plant

The French Connection

The Exile

John Rambo

The Blue Box

Salvation?

No, just more of the same Shit

Driven to Failure

Men at Work

The Wood Factory

Merry Christmas, Bill Gates!

Never trust a Man with a Van

School, part three

Suicide Solution

Epilogue

The best of Chris and Sophia

Thanks

Prologue

Les années de plomb, or the years of lead, is a term used in Morocco to describe the heavy-handed government actions against dissidents in the years between the late 1960s and the early 1980s. In this period, King Hassan II cracked down on would-be revolutionaries, protesters, pro-democracy advocates, and pretty much anybody else that he didn’t like… thousands of people were murdered, or otherwise ‘disappeared.’

I consider my own childhood, and especially the time I spent in Morocco in the early 1990s, to be my very own ‘Years of Lead’ as it took me many years to free myself from the things that weighed heavily on my mind for a long time afterwards. I wrote this book partly to continue the process of lifting this weight, and partly because I feel that someone needs to tell the truth, even if in the grand scheme of things my personal history may not have any great meaning. It was a journey through hell, complete with poverty, abuse, depression, hopelessness and of course, my lunatic stepfather and mother; but it ended in freedom.

And it’s over.

I left Morocco, Chris, and Sophia behind a long time ago.

It is time for them to leave me.

Early Days

My life began in Bonn, the then-current capital of Germany, in the spring of 1978. I grew up in a small village called Brenig, which is located in the vicinity of Bonn. My father, mother, and my sister Vanessa (who was born when I was four) lived in an apartment not far away from my father’s own parents, and I would spend a lot of time at their place, playing with the toy cars they’d buy me and eating massive quantities of candy. My grandmother always had an entire cupboard full of different sweets. We’d also watch the Saturday night movie together; this was usually an old John Wayne or Kirk Douglas film that started on one of Germany’s two state-owned TV channels after the evening news. There were no commercial breaks back then, so you could actually follow the storylines without developing ADD. My grandmother always told me that when someone got shot in a movie it wasn’t really blood that I was seeing on the screen, but merely ketchup. I always protested that it wasn’t ketchup but film blood, but she wouldn’t have any of it: it was ketchup, end of discussion. She grew up during the war, so I guess that explains why she didn’t want to see any more blood, even if it was only film bloo- excuse me, ketchup.

My life was relatively uneventful and happy; I was your typical little boy with his bruised knees and ambitions of becoming a race car driver, or better yet, a stuntman like the one Lee Majors played on TV!

But then my parents divorced when I was about 6 years old. I think they only got married because my mother Sophia had become pregnant with me. She, Vanessa and I moved out of the little apartment that my father, 25 years later, still lives in; and from then on my life became rather tumultuous. We were moving constantly from one place to the next, and I must have changed schools 5 or 6 times by the time I was 12.

We eventually ended up living in a city called Troisdorf, about half an hour’s drive from Bonn. My daily routine consisted of going to school, waiting for my sister to come home from pre-school, and preparing a meal for us while Sophia was at work. I can’t quite remember anymore where she worked or what she did there. I know she worked in a book store for a while, but that was before we moved to Troisdorf. We lived in a decent apartment there, rented to us by an old man named Scheulen. Besides owning the building we lived in, he was also a hairdresser, and, as he pointed out at every opportunity he was given –or decided to take-, a lifelong member of a church choir. I received a personal citation from Cardinal Meisner for my service! he would exclaim whenever there was someone within earshot. He was quite annoying in his fake overbearingly friendly way, and I guess he didn’t much care for Sophia –a single mother, imagine that!

Sophia was friends with a lot of people from the local church, which was located on the street that ran behind our building. It was constructed in a modern style, with red bricks and a disappointingly low roof. I firmly believed that all churches had to have a tall steeple, or else they weren’t really a church. Sophia made me attend mass every Sunday, which I found incredibly boring. She herself never went, and neither did my sister; only I had to go. I think she did it to get me out of the house. The priest, a young man with graying hair, sent me home early once, telling me that I should stay home if I wanted to sleep. I agreed with him.

German churches are boring, dreadful places. Sure, some of the older ones feature spectacular architecture, and I guess that if you were looking for a quiet place to contemplate the mysteries of the universe then you’d be hard pressed to find better. But mass is boring. It’s not like in the US where black people sing and enjoy themselves; in Germany everything is serious, nobody ever laughs in church, and I think most people only go there because their wives tell them to; or, as in my case, their mothers.

I also had to travel to Austria with the church group. It was one of those community vacations for children, and it was unbelievably lame. My mother was one of the accompanying chaperones, and so the other kids, whom I only knew in passing, had a lot of reasons not to like me very much. We spent our time in Austria on a farm, and after breakfast we usually had to take long walks through the surrounding nature. I have no idea what a bunch of kids were supposed to do there to find some fun and enjoyment, but hey- it was a church vacation, so I guess fun wasn’t really a part of the plan. The only thing I remember fondly is the little go-kart track down in the village, and I spent my whole allowance there. I had always wanted to be a racecar driver, it was my dream. I learned how to read well before attending my first class in school, because I wanted to read my father’s old ‘Rally&Racing’ magazines. I knew everything about cars, and the little go-kart track was like a bright flash of light in the boring Austrian countryside. The other kids didn’t want to race me, but I didn’t care; I drove all alone on that track and I was happy. I must have looked like a sad maniac, driving and laughing and then driving some more, all by myself.

We also had game nights, during which our chaperones came up with all sorts of lame games we should play. We sat in a large circle in the big dining hall of our dormitory, with the tables all pushed to one side to make space. One night my mother sent me outside, and told me to come back in five minutes. I had no idea what was going on, but I did as I was told. When I returned there was a chair in the middle of the circle of kids, and my mother told me that this would be my race car, the only one I’d ever have. She told me that its name was Klo-rrari or something similar –Klo being German for toilet- and she wanted me to sit on it. She then told me to make racecar noises, to the great amusement of the other kids and the adults as well. I was mortified, and after a few paralyzed moments I got up, turned around and ran out of the room, up the stairs, and hid in my bed. How can your own mother make fun of your dreams and embarrass you in front of a large crowd, purely for her own entertainment?

The whole stupid vacation only lasted two weeks, but it seemed like months to me.

Monkey Business

Life continued in the same vein, until my mother