Mohamed Choukri - For Bread Alone

There was a boy who lived nearby, a little younger than I. One day we took a walk into the country. I told him we were going to catch birds in the traps we carried with us. The boy was handsome, and delicate as a girl. He wore shorts that came above his knees. We ate meat and hard-boiled eggs under the olive trees. Then I persuaded him to smoke a cigarette and drink a little wine. He coughed when he tried to inhale the smoke, and after he had drunk from the bottle he shuddered. This is the first time I’ve smoked or drunk wine, he said, and I told him what they had told me in Tetuan: You won’t cough or make faces the next time. That happens only the first time. It was the same way with me.

Do you feel sick? I asked him.

Just a little.

We walked into a field of wheat. To be drunk is relaxing. His cheeks are pink, his lips bright red. We sat down in the middle of the wheat, and I lay back. He did likewise. I thought of Tetuan, of a song that began: I loved a girl in Andalucia. She was young, she was tiny, she was tanned .

The wine ran through me, and I found myself trembling. My hand stroked his. He pulled away and sat up, looking at me with an expression of fear. What do you want? he demanded.

Nothing. What’s the matter? Lie down. I was joking.

I don’t like that sort of joke.

With my eyes I said: I do, with you.

He made as if to rise. I seized his hand. I was still trembling. He wrenched his hand away and got to his feet. Before he could take his first step, I wrapped my arms around his legs, so that he fell. I fell partially on top of him.

I’m going to tell my mother! he cried. And my father too!

First he bites my hand, and then he bites the earth.

That night my aunt scolded me. I was mortified, and denied everything. I swore I had done nothing to him. Later I saw her kissing the boy’s mother on the top of her head, begging her pardon. I was ashamed.

Your mother must have suffered when you lived in Tetuan, she told me. If you go on like this, your whole family will suffer, and so will you. Behave yourself.

I imagined saying to her: What should I do to behave myself, Aunt? How?

And I imagined her answering: Don’t do things you know are wrong.

Then I would have said: But I have to. I like everything that’s wrong. Those are the best things.

I don’t understand you.

I don’t understand myself.

Madame Segundi began to notice my preoccupied expression and the slowing down in the tempo of my work. You miss your family in Tetuan, she said.

I don’t know.

Listen. We’re going to give you a whole month’s vacation. A month is enough for you to go and visit your family, and get back here.

I agreed to go to Tetuan and return. I saw my grandmother and my uncle very seldom. Sometimes when they came to the farm to visit my aunt, I was not there. I felt no particular fondness for them, neither affection nor dislike.

The only time Oran looked pleasant to me was the day I left. There is a saying that goes:

Ed dakhel en Oueheran zerbanne ,

Ou el harej menha harbanne .

On the way back to Tetuan I tried to decide which was better. Oran is exile and Tetuan is imprisonment. And since I am happier in Tetuan than in Oran, that means I prefer jail in my native land to freedom in exile.

I spent two days in Melilla and one in Nador. I talked about Oran with people I did not know. One of them said: With everybody trying to get to Oran, here you are coming away from it!

Once I found myself back in Tetuan, I was sure that I should not be returning to Oran. My mother had given birth to another girl, but the baby had died almost at birth. Now her belly was very full again. My father was still happily unemployed. He spent the greater part of his day in the Feddane talking to madmen and friends who had been wounded in the Spanish Civil War. My sister Khemou went on growing, and my mother already relied upon her help at the vegetable stand. Some friends arranged a reconciliation between Comero and me. He now had a scar that ran right along his cheek. At the brothel I found that some of the girls were gone and new ones had taken their place. Because I enjoyed it, I formed the habit of sleeping in the alleys along with the other vagabonds. One morning as I lay asleep in the street a girl woke me up and asked me if I were not the son of Sida Maimouna. I said I was.

Why don’t you sleep at home, then?

My father threw me out.

The girl was lame. She went and got me a piece of buttered bread and a glass of coffee. I should have been ashamed to refuse her generosity. However, I resolved to get up earlier in the future. I was beginning to distrust people who showed goodwill towards me, whether they were men or women.

I returned to the bakery where I had so often slept in the past, where I would roll myself up like a hedgehog, my back pushed against the warm oven. Whenever I move in the night, or get up to go out and relieve myself, I find several cats asleep on top of me. Often I enjoyed the sound of their purring. It reminded me of a motor going in a distant factory. I loved muted sounds, whether they came from far or near. The songs from the cafès, heard from far away, were beautifully sad.

Another morning it was a man who woke me up. Aren’t you the son of Si Haddou?

No, I’m not.

He insisted. Aren’t you his son Mohamed?

No. I’m not his son.

Then what is your name?

Mohamed.

But your father is Si Haddou Allal Choukri. And your mother is Sida Maimouna.

I told you no.

Who is your father, then?

He’s dead. He died a long time ago.

And what was his name?

I don’t know.

You don’t know the name of your own father?

I did know it, but I’ve forgotten. I was still in my mother’s belly when he died.

He looked at me a moment, and then said: It looks to me as if there’s something the matter with your brain.

He held out two pesetas. Here. You must be hungry. Go and buy yourself some breakfast.

I don’t need anything, I said curtly. I have money.

He seemed mystified. I don’t understand. You have money, and you sleep here in the corner like a cat. You’re a little crazy.

I was angry. The cat is you, and you’re completely crazy! Suddenly I howled into his face, like a wolf. Aaaaooou! Then I walked away, leaving him standing there, saying: Bismillah rahman er rahim! Preserve me from the young ones of today!

My mother now gave birth to another girl, whom she named Zohra, after the one who had just died. A rat bit her on the hand one night, and she died, too.

My father had a habit of stealing up behind me in the street and seizing my shirt collar. Then with one hand he would twist my arm behind my back, while with the other he would beat me until the blood ran. When that happened, I knew the thick military belt was waiting at home for me. And when his arms and legs were tired from beating and kicking, he would bite my shoulders and arms, pinch my ears, and buffet my face with his fists. If he catches me in the street, someone usually intervenes and sets me free. But he has learned not to do it in the street. So now, when he grabs me I fall to the pavement and yell as loud as I can. He will sweep the pavement with me for a moment, kicking me all the while, until I manage to get out of his grip and go far enough away from him to be able to curse him.

One morning I sat in a café smoking kif with two pickpockets. We decided to work together that day in order to spend a night of debauchery at the brothel. We went to the Plaza Nueva where the crowd was densest. It was not long before I felt the furious grip of my father’s hand on the back of my neck. Before I had time to throw myself down, my two companions had gone at him with their fists and heads. I heard him shouting for help between groans. As I looked back at him, I saw that he had both hands over his face, and blood was trickling rapidly between his fingers.