About the Author

Moha Layid (1945–95) was a novelist, military officer, and legal scholar. Born in the Gardmit qsar near Tinejdad in southeastern Morocco, Layid left home at seventeen and became a schoolteacher in Tetouan and later a decorated military officer in the Moroccan Royal Guard and Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie. He received advanced degrees in military law from the Université Mohammed V de Rabat and the Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas and was named a chevalier of the Order of the Throne by King Hassan II in 1989.