Maanino guides readers to the publication of “Basamat”

As a continuation of the memoirs of former prominent journalist and media official Mohamed Al-Siddiq Maanino, he issues a new book, from Bouregreg Printing and Publishing House, entitled “Fingerprints,” a book he did not designate for sale, but rather as a gift to those who had previously acquired parts of “Old Days.”

The former director of national television, and the former secretary general of the Ministry of Communication, stated that the idea of ​​the new book came to him while he was preparing, classifying, and organizing his documents to submit to the “Morocco Archives.” He discovered that he possessed “more than two thousand photographs, chronicling a large number of events,” adding: “I was one of those present or close to those responsible for it… so I took advantage of the occasion to exploit some of them in this book out of a desire to share them as I shared my diaries.”

My friend Maanino wrote in advance of his new publication: “In your hands (reader) is what can be considered the seventh part of the ‘Once Upon a Time’ series, which is a summary of my work in the field of media over a period of forty years… This idea crystallized quickly, as this part can be considered a documentation.” An iconography of the facts and events that I have previously recorded.”

Maanino continued: “The period of Hassan II’s rule remains unique and rich, linked to the king’s personality, his ideas, his projects, his communication power, and Morocco’s foreign relations, and mainly to his organization of the Green March… Despite the passage of half a century since that popular epic, its memory, chants, and battles remain immortal in the national memory…”

Then the writer pointed out that understanding the images included in the book “Fingerprints” requires returning to the six parts of “Old Days.” “As the best way to know its historical dimensions, the circumstances of its capture, and the details of its story.”

But these pictures do not only complete Maanino’s memoirs, but also alerted his memory to facts that he had forgotten and did not write down, including “the most dangerous statement” that was not made public by King Hassan II, his orders to cut off the transmission of a session of the Jerusalem Committee meeting in complete secrecy, and the story of oil paintings that the king bought in Cairo and was filled with joy. It contains the Royal Palace in 1964, and incidents such as the explosion of two military planes during a live television broadcast, and King Hassan II, President Yasser Arafat, and the Secretary-General of the Arab League in a meeting at the Royal Palace in Marrakesh.

Such events, which prompted her memory of images, may prompt, according to what Muhammad Al-Siddiq Maanino confided to his readers in the introduction to his new publication, the addition of a new part to the memoirs of “The Old Days.”