Mohamed Choukri: For Bread Alone

When should I go to Larache to see him? I asked Hassan.

Whenever you like. But try and go soon.

It was about noon when Hassan said goodbye to us, and went out to catch the bus to Tetuan. As he shook my hand he said: Be sure and go to Larache. I’ll look for you down there in a few days.

When he had gone, Abdelmalek said: I’ve got to go up to the graveyard at Bou Araqia.

What for? I asked him.

I promised some of my friends here in the café I’d chant some surat today. One of them is Afiouna. His mother’s buried there.

I’ll go with you, I said. Would you be able to chant a surah at my brother’s grave?

Your brother?

I have a brother buried there.

We smoked two pipes and then went out. On the way I asked him: What happened with Hassan? What trouble has he got in Tetuan?

He’s crazy. They found him drinking wine and smoking kif in the students’ dormitory at the mosque.

Tough luck!

He’s always doing stupid things like that.

As we went through the Zoco de Fuera I bought a bunch of flowers, and at the gateway to the cemetery a sprig of myrtle. Inside we found a few tolba chanting. The relatives of the dead stood listening. We wandered among the graves.

Do you know where each grave is? Each one you’re going to chant for?

No, he said. It’s the idea that’s important. I don’t have to be standing beside a grave to chant to it. Where’s your brother’s grave?

I looked towards the wall at whose base Abdelqader had been buried.

It’s impossible to find it, I told him. We never made him a gravestone before we went to Tetuan. There was no money. My father had just got out of jail, and my mother was selling vegetables in the Zoco de Fuera.

We climbed to the top of a small hill, and Abdelmalek began to chant the verses for the relatives of his friends. When he had finished, he asked me: Which part was he buried in?

Then we walked down towards the ruined wall. Over this way, near this wall, I said.

He intoned: Ya sin oual Qoran el Hakim … while I laid the flowers on several nearby graves. My brother is buried somewhere here, I said to myself. Maybe under my feet, or under Abdelmalek’s feet. And the words Abdelmalek is chanting, what are they for? My little brother never had a chance to sin. All he did was to live his illness. The old man who had helped to bury him had told me: Your brother is with the angels. Has he become an angel, perhaps? And I, what shall I become? A devil, most likely. They say the little ones are angels and the big ones are devils, and it’s too late for me to be an angel.