فاس نيوز ميديا جريدة الكترونية جهوية تعنى بشؤون و أخبار جهة فاس مكناس – متجددة على مدار الساعة
Since our very first meeting in the first year of secondary school, our story began.
There, between classroom desks and notebooks filled with dreams, the memories of our beginnings slowly blossomed like a flower. We were lovers of freedom, discovering the world and re-asking its questions in our innocent yet bold way. Gradually, our awareness of issues of الوطن والانتماء — homeland and belonging — began to take shape. We followed what was happening around us and felt that we carried a share of responsibility for the dream.
With you in particular, the outlines of our dreams became clearer.
Our intellectual inclinations were shaped through your initiatives, your constant encouragement of creativity, and your love for committed art and sincere words. Truly, that is who you were.
And that is how you lived. After our separation, many told me about that same quiet passion, about a heart that remained faithful to the sincerity of the beginnings.
Your name was Hassan Benioub, and from the city of Fez our first friendship emerged. You were not a passing friend, but a brother with whom we shared the small and great details of life. We were united by community work, the restlessness of youth, and purity of intention. From an early age, you were drawn to writing and art, walking toward creativity as a thirsty soul is led to water.
I only learned after your passing that you had chosen the demanding profession of journalism. You chose the word as a path, but you did not choose the spotlight. You appeared rarely, preferring to work behind the scenes, leaving your mark without pointing to yourself. You gave more than you spoke, and worked more than what appeared to people.
I searched for you for many years. I believed our meeting was postponed, not lost. I used to say: one day we will meet again without an appointment, just as we met the first time. But the meeting came in the form of a silent obituary in an online newspaper, informing me that you had departed to the eternal abode.
I read the news again and again, as if language itself had betrayed me.
How does the name of a lifelong friend turn into a line announcing death?
How did the embrace get delayed until it became a prayer?
May God have mercy on you, Hassan.
At the moment I received the news of your passing, I could not contain myself. I felt time suddenly shatter, and I was propelled at the speed of light back to all our old details: our meetings at your family’s home, the streets, alleys, and cafés of Fez that preserved our laughter. Before I realized it, I found myself among your friends, your children, and your family offering condolences—while my own consolation was you yourself, in a loss for which there is no consolation.
That night, I returned to the photo archive, searching for you and for myself at the same time. I browsed through pictures from that period and found you exactly as in my memory: alive, smiling, as if time had not passed. I saw photos of you reading some of your writings at a cultural and artistic evening more than twenty-five years ago. The sound, the image, and the dream all returned at once, as if you had never left.
I searched for you for years, hoping for a delayed meeting, only to meet you for the first time after separation through news of your death. I read your name in a small obituary, yet within me you are greater than all words. You departed to the eternal abode, but you remain in memory as a permanent presence that never leaves.
May God have mercy on you, Hassan Benioub.
Peace be upon you, son of Fez—upon our shared beginnings, upon the dreams of youth that united us, and upon your heart that remained faithful to what it loved until the end.
You were the man who lived as he thought, and the boy who grew up without betraying his first dreams.
You remain in memory a young man who never ages, with your gentle smile, your deep calm, and that childlike passion for art, writing, and freedom.
Peace be upon you, son of Fez, where you now rest.
Peace upon our first meeting in the secondary classroom, and upon all the paths we walked together before we parted.
You left us, leaving a lump of sorrow in our hearts, with hope of meeting you there in the gardens of eternity.
Indeed, to God we belong and to Him we shall return.
Written by: a companion from that generation
Source: Fes News
