Ten years of anonymous calls left behind an unimaginable disaster

Calls to The Marrakech, a Moroccan restaurant in Washington, began in 1983. No one knew who, or who, the caller was, but gradually the staff began calling the person L’enfant, or The LittleOne.

Sometimes the child threatened the owners and staff of the place with painful death, sometimes he just cursed them and wished them hell, and sometimes he pinched himself in an excessively disorderly and disgusting way.

Up to 20 calls per day

The child’s voice changed regularly, but the staff knew very well that it was the same person or people.

Sometimes the child pretended to be from the Middle East, sometimes a small child, and sometimes he used language commonly used by certain races or social groups.

The child called the restaurant every day, sometimes up to 20 times a day.

And it lasted more than ten years.

The child was particularly active for a period of four years, where he telephoned more than 7,000 times.

Naturally, the calls had a detrimental effect on the local staff, who usually didn’t stay long at work.

The Wonder of Kouchacji

In particular, the calls targeted the owner of the venue, Bashir Kouchacji, who believed he was the caller’s target.

After all, particular emphasis was placed on telling him that his wife would be killed while she was with a child.

When he visited the other restaurant he owned, in Philadelphia, the calls went there.

Kouchacji’s story is fake but has been confirmed by many friends, relatives, colleagues and many others.

Bashir Kouchacji was born in Syria but grew up in Lebanon. In the early 1970s, he married an American and began writing light stories for a magazine published in French in Beirut.

The couple then moved to the United States, where Kouchacji worked as a sommelier.

In the summer of 1974, his wife received a temporary job offer as a singer in Beirut.

It was only once, singing at a private party of a Saudi princess. Kouchacji was supposed to pick him up just before midnight, but he couldn’t find his wife anywhere.

Kouchacji says he gave up waiting around 1 a.m. and decided to go home. If his car had been blocked, he was taken out of the car, bound and gagged and driven into the bush.

Fifteen minutes later, his blindfolds were removed and he found himself in a windowless basement in a Palestinian refugee camp.

five days of torture

For the next five days, he was tortured and interrogated day and night, threatened with guns and knives, and his captors seemed convinced he was a spy for either Israel or the United States.

Kouchacji vehemently denied it, but eventually he couldn’t take it anymore and attempted suicide. He was then taken to hospital and left outside. His injuries were treated there and Kouchacji was eventually reunited with his family.

Kouchacji and his wife returned home to the United States, tried to forget this terrible life experience and opened two restaurants.

His wife said there was no party waiting for him, that was a lie.

Well-Organized Persecution

Nine years later, the calls began. It took a while, but eventually the FBI believed Kouchacji’s story about the calls, and for two years the restaurant’s phone was tapped without revealing anything more than that every time a new public telephone was in use.

Given the shortness of the calls, but the length of the calls, it was clear that there were more than one and more than two people making the calls.

Kouchacji, a well-educated man who was fluent in five languages, eventually surrendered. He stopped sleeping and eating and had a severe nervous breakdown in 1987.

Her marriage was dissolved and Kouchacji also faced endless lawsuits from employees over the harassment.

Kouchacji has been fired several times, but always returns to the psychiatric ward, useless in body and mind. It remains there to this day.

The FBI surrendered in 1988, but the calls continued until 1993, even though Kouchacji had left the scene.

To this day, no one knows who was responsible for the horrific calls that cost Kouchacji his marriage, his restaurants, and his physical and mental health.