Mohamed Choukri (Arabic: 賲丨賲丿 卮賰乇賷), born on July 15, 1935 and died on November 15, 2003, was a Moroccan author and novelist who is best known for his internationally acclaimed autobiography For Bread Alone (al-Khubz al-Hafi), which was described by the American playwright Tennessee Williams as 'A true document of human desperation, shattering in its impact'.
Choukri was born in 1935, in Ayt Chiker (Ayt Ciker, hence his adopted family name: Choukri / Cikri), a small village in the Rif mountains, in the Nador province. He was raised in a very poor family. He ran away from his tyrannical father and became a homeless child living in the poor neighborhoods of Tangier, surrounded by misery, prostitution, violence and drug abuse. At the age of 20, he decided to learn how to read and write and became later a schoolteacher. His family name "Choukri" is connected to the name Ayt Chiker which is the Berber tribe cluster he belonged to before fleeing hunger to Tangiers. It is most likely that he adopted this name later in Tangiers, because in the rural Rif family names were rarely registered.
In the 1960s, in the cosmopolitan Tangier, he met Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams. His first writing was published in 1966 (in Al-adab, monthly review of Beirut, a novel entitled Al-Unf ala al-shati (Violence on the Beach). International success came with the English translation of Al-khoubz Al-Hafi (For Bread Alone, Telegram Books) by Paul Bowles in 1973. The book was be translated to French by Tahar Ben Jelloun in 1980 (茅ditions Masp茅ro), published in Arabic in 1982 and censored in Morocco from 1983 to 2000. The book would later be translated into 30 other languages.
His main works are his autobiographic trilogy, beginning with For Bread Alone, followed by Zaman Al-Akhta芒 aw Al-Shouttar (Time of Mistakes or Streetwise, Telegram Books) and finally Faces. He also wrote collections of short stories in the 1960s/1970s (Majnoun Al-Ward, Madman of the roses, 1980; Al-Khaima, The Tent, 1985). Likewise, he is known for his accounts of his encounters with the writers Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams (Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams in Tangier, 1992, Jean Genet in Tangier, 1993, Jean Genet, suite and end, 1996, Paul Bowles: Le Reclus de Tanger, 1997). See also 'In Tangier', Telegram Books 2008 for all three in one volume.
Mohamed Choukri died on November 15, 2003 from cancer at the military hospital of Rabat and was buried at the Marshan cemetery in Tangier on November 17, with the audience of the Minister of Culture, numerous government officials, personalities and the spokesman of the King of Morocco. Before he died, Choukri created a foundation, Mohamed Choukri (president, Mohamed Acha芒ri), owning his copyrights, his manuscripts and personal writings.
Gelezen voor de Schwob-leesclub, dus met potlood in de aanslag. Op het omslag staat 'Roman' maar mijns inziens is dit eerder een verhalenbundel - al vertonen de verhalen weinig lijn dus zou ik het eerder als schetsen-van-personen-bundel kwalificeren. Choukri vertelt over zijn stad Tanger en dan met name over de mensen die er nog bivakkeren nadat de glorie van de stad (in de tijd van Tanger als internationale zone en in de tijd dat de stad en haar caf茅s werden bezocht door Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, Burroughs/Ginsberg/Kerouac) vergaan is.
Het boek bevat mooie schetsen van Tanger en de miserabele, nachtbrakende personen die er nog rondlopen nadat de stad haar glans is verloren. De vertaalde gedichten, die veel verhalen voorafgaan, lezen houterig nu ze vertaald zijn naar het Nederlands en de schetsen zelf vertonen niet een lijn van ontwikkeling die mij aanspreekt.
Desalniettemin ben ik benieuwd naar Choukri's veelgeprezen Hongerjaren (dat het eerste deel is van de Tanger-trilogie waarvan Gezichten het derde deel is), dat later in 2016 opnieuw wordt uitgegeven, en wil ik eigenlijk als de wiedeweerga naar Tanger.
Vluchtige indrukken van belangrijke personen uit Choukri's leven en het leven in Tanger. De gedichten aan het begin van de verhalen/ hoofdstukken (is het een verhalenbundel of roman??) vind ik slecht, maar dat komt mogelijk doordat ze uit het Arabisch vertaald zijn.