In earlier posts, I set out hard evidence of betrayal, theft, appropriation, and crime. Here, I add something different: context. The world in which my mother lived, the discussions she had with her sister, my aunt Colette, and me before she was killed, and the questions that remain.
The theft inside the house, just months before her death, cannot be separated from those concerns. In the winter of 2017–2018, during what would turn out to be my mother’s final winter, a chilling event unfolded inside my parents’ home in Casablanca.
Upon my mother’s return from France, where she had gone to visit her sister, she discovered that our family’s safe, which had been inside the house, had been stolen.
That safe was very heavy. It was bolted to a wall and hidden behind a private door in the upstairs closet of my mother’s bedroom. Only she and my father used it.
Yet the safe itself had been extracted from the cement wall and taken out of the house. It was gone. In its place was a giant hole in the wall.
Mom was in her eighties then, and Dad had passed away. There was a lifetime of souvenirs and valuables in that safe, none of which could be replaced. Beyond values, these were pieces of memory, moments past, identity, and love.
Within it were some of my parents’ most treasured possessions, both in meaning and value. Gifts from my dad to my mom, gold jewelry, diamond earrings, my father’s own wedding ring, my grandfather’s watch, family paperwork, legal documents, saved money, and much more.
All heartlessly stolen.
My mother was devastated.
Nothing else was stolen from the house. Nothing else was out of place. No lock was broken.
Did the thief know what he was looking for? Did the thief know precisely where to look? Did the thief have access?
It happened while she was away. Did the thief know that, too?
And dislodging that safe from the wall was not a task for the weak. How strong did one have to be to remove it and to carry it?
And how could someone remove that heavy and large safe from the house without being noticed? Is it possible someone actually drove their car inside the gates to put the safe in it before driving away with it? But who could have done that without standing out?
It did not seem possible without the unthinkable. Someone who would not stand out. My mother was worried. And troubled. And afraid.
Soufiane Elkabous didn’t have so many questions. Without any evidence, he promptly blamed my mother’s long-time maid, Rashida.
Never mind; she was away with her family while Mom was traveling. Never mind that she could not physically remove the safe from the wall or carry it to a car. Never mind that she didn’t know how to drive or have a driver’s license. Never mind that she would have stood up if she had gone into the house in the middle of the night. For Elkabous, all those facts were irrelevant. It was her.
Rashida had started working for my parents part-time when my father was still alive, before switching to full-time employment four years before this event. She had been deeply supportive of my mother as she was reeling from the loss of my father, and she was always present, always attentive. This woman was a single mother with children, including one with challenges. Her oldest son would watch the other kids while she was at work, and she would go home every night, about an hour away, commuting by bus.
She loved both my parents and treated them as her own family. Nothing had ever disappeared from our home. My mother entrusted her with items of value all the time, and she could have easily monetized them without the hard labor required for this operation.
Rashida was the last person my mother suspected and would ever suspect of the theft. The last person I suspected, too.
Despite her growing concerns about Elkabous’ behavior, temper changes, and actions since my father’s death, and his intimidating behavior towards her, my mother rejected his unjustified accusation against Rashida, refused to fire the maid as he demanded, and, in fact, asked her to stay. Despite the humiliation and fear, Rashida remained by her side.
Although it did seem that the betrayal came from within the very walls of her home, she knew it was not Rashida. And, as she did, the picture became darker.
Privately, my mother confided her concerns to my aunt, her sister Colette, and to me. She openly stated that she did not believe the theft had occurred as Elkabous claimed. This crime was executed with precision and insider knowledge. She had her own strong suspicions, grounded in logic and circumstance, which she expressed to my aunt and to me. And they were far more plausible than Elkabous the fraudster’s story. And they were scary. Could it be? Mom believed so.
At the time, Mom didn’t think it could get worse. Sadly, she was wrong. The theft of the safe didn’t turn out to be an isolated incident. It proved to be part of a sequence of events that would lead to her death, and, beyond her death, to property theft, identity theft, bank theft, and more.
At my mother’s funeral, Rashida came to my parents’ house to pay her respects. The thief promptly forced her out in front of neighbors and friends, creating a scene that left those present dismayed but impressed enough to recall it to this day, and too intimidated to intervene.
Rashida still came to the cemetery. I saw her hiding by a tree, just a few steps from my aunt and me. She was crying and praying. I thanked her. We hugged. We kissed. She paid her respects, in private. Rashida was not the one responsible for the theft.