Mohamed Choukri: For Bread Alone

I left the brick factory and went to work at a pottery kiln. It was the same sort of work, pushing a wheelbarrow, and the work day was just as long, although this time it was I who collected my wages. I gave half to my father in return for my food, lodging and laundry. But I was tired of wheelbarrows. I’m not a donkey, I told my mother when my father could not hear us. Anybody who goes on all his life hauling loads up and down must be a donkey.

And what are you going to do?

I know what I’m going to do, I said.

At lunchtime my father told me: Food costs money in this house. Unless you work, you’ve got no food or bed here. You understand?

I bowed my head and said: Yes. But inside I said: And you? What do you do? Isn’t it my mother who does the work?

I left the kiln and bought the things I needed in order to be a bootblack. I frequented cafés and bars, stood outside doorways, and gathered cigarette butts. I drank the dregs from the wine glasses and ate the tapas that were left over on the little plates. The men complained that I gave them a bad shoeshine. It was clear that I had not mastered the craft. Usually the brush fell to the pavement when I changed hands. And the hostility of the other bootblacks bothered me. I became friendly with a newsboy who was about my age. Then I stopped shining shoes and, like him, began to hawk the daily paper El Diario de Africa .

We moved to the quarter called Trancats, and I began to help my mother sell her vegetables and fruit. My work consisted of shouting in a strident voice at the passers-by:

¡Vamos a tirar la casa por la ventana!

¡Quien llega tarde no come carne!

¡De balde! ¡De balde vendo hoy!

Each afternoon I managed secretly to put aside some money with which to buy majoun and kif . Occasionally I had enough to go to the cinema. One day my friend Tafersiti and I decided to visit a brothel. We drank half a bottle of mahia sitting on a wall by the barracks above the Medina.

Lalla Harouda, considered by the boys to be the best whore from whom to learn about sex, came up to us. You’ve had a lot to drink, haven’t you? she said. Tafersiti looked at me. I explained that we were only a little happy. She examined us, an amused expression on her face, and we both were afraid she was not going to let us in.

Well, who’s going to go first? she said. I looked at Tafersiti. You go in, he told me.

She wanted the money in advance. I gave it to her without hesitation; it seemed natural that she should have asked for it.

She is selling and I am buying.

She began to take off her clothes, a cigarette hanging from her fleshy lips. The smoke curled upward and made her squint. She turned to me. Open your mouth, she said. She smiled and thrust the cigarette between my lips. Then she turned her back on me, and I unbuttoned her brassiere, my eyes on the sparse hairs in the furrow between her buttocks. She faced me, still smiling, the brassiere dangling from her hand, and took the cigarette from my mouth. I smiled back at her, thinking: She used my lips as an ashtray.

Smoke, she told me. Don’t you smoke? Nervously I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Take off your clothes, she said.

My trousers stood out in front. With agitation I unbuttoned my fly. My heart was pounding. Still no one had a body as beautiful as Asiya or Fatima, but with them it had been only a superficial and slippery contact. This one will let me go into her the way a knife goes into living flesh. I am going to stab what is between her thighs.

She lay back on the bed like a pair of scissors and opened her blades. It was shaved. I remembered Mounat as she crouched and piddled. The legs spread wider now. She seized my sex in her hand.

And suppose it has teeth in it, I thought. I approached her openness with misgivings, then felt the scissors squeezing my legs. She hugged me to her.

You don’t even know yet how to get into a woman.

She wet her fingers on her tongue and moved her hand down to the other mouth. Put it in now.

I hesitated.

What’s the matter? Go on.

I thought: And if it should have teeth?

Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to eat you.

Cautiously I entered her, sinking into her slippery mouth. Sometimes I lost it and could not find it again.

Ay, ay, ay! Not that way!

I remembered my mother telling my father: Not like that! Like this!

So this is the first time you’ve been with a woman!

I get into her once more. I want her lips and she offers me her cheek. I manage to get hold of her breasts. She objects, and pulls my hand away.

Ah! Ah! Not like that! That’s my flesh you’re squeezing. You’re too young to try that sort of thing. This is your first time.

Fatima is prettier than Lalla Harouda, who won’t even let me touch her breasts. She let me have her lips and her breasts too.

The slippery massage by Lalla Harouda did not last very long. Come on, she said. You’re through. She pushed me away from her. My sex was still dripping.

Oh, not like that! she cried. You’re messing up my bed. Wait. Let me show you.

She spread a handkerchief over her wound. I was thinking of her buttocks. It’s true, I said to myself. She’s a real professor.

There you are. You’ve slept with your first woman. Isn’t that true? I’m the first, no?

I nodded my head.

You’ll always remember me, she told me.

I smiled at her, feeling that she liked me. My snake was still standing. I wanted it to leave its venom inside once again.

Well, what are you waiting for? Wash and put your clothes on. Hurry. Your friend’s waiting for his turn.

I put my trousers on. They pushed against my sex. It lay down and then stood up again.

How was it? said Tafersiti.

Wonderful! No teeth!

What? She hasn’t any teeth?

I’m not talking about her mouth. Her hole doesn’t bite. You’ll see. It’s warm and soft.

You there! she shouted from the room. Come on inside.

I was thinking: It’s not good to look at it, but it feels good. It warms your whole body, and makes you calm and clear-headed. But it’s better to do it without looking.

Tafersiti and I would go to the brothel three or four times a week to look for a new woman. Then we would both have her. They all acted more or less the same way in bed: Come on! Hurry up! We went back to the ones who would allow us to fondle their breasts and kiss them, and who would let us take our time.

If they won’t let you do that, I told Tafersiti, you’re only getting half a piece.

They only let the older ones, he said.

And are we so young?

The women think we are, anyway.

Why don’t we go and look at the Spanish women this afternoon?

Good. We’ll see what it’s like with them.

The first girl we met there would not take us. Uno solamente , she insisted. Nada de dos .

Only one of us can go, I explained to Tafersiti.

Go in with her, if you want, he told me.

No. We’ll both go, or neither one of us.

She can go take a shit, he said.

She’s young and pretty.

She can still go and take a shit. In her clothes. There are plenty of others, better than that. You’ll see.

I know.

We spoke to another woman, a little older and calmer than the one who had refused us. She wasn’t ugly, but the first had been better to look at. What good is beauty, though, if it has pride with it? I thought.

How does she look to you? I asked Tafersiti.

What’s the difference? She’ll do. The main thing is that she’ll take us both.

She’s a little fat, I said.

It doesn’t matter. We can use her. Afterwards we’ll look for something better.