Mohamed Choukri

Mohamed Choukri

ولد محمد شكري في سنة 1935 م في آيت شيكر في إقليم الناظور شمال المغرب. عاش طفولة صعبة وقاسية في قريته الواقعة في سلسلة جبال الريف، ثم في مدينة طنجة التي نزح إليها مع أسرته الفقيرة سنة1942 م. وصل شكري إلى مدينة طنجة ولم يكن يتكلم بعد العربية، عملَ كصبي مقهى وهو دون العاشرة، ثم عمِلَ حمّالاً، فبائع جرائد وماسح أحذية ثم اشتغل بعد ذلك بائعًا للسجائر المهربة.

انتقلت أسرته إلى مدينة تطوان لكن هذا الشاب الأمازيغي سرعان ما عاد لوحده إلى طنجة. لم يتعلم شكري القراءة والكتابة إلا وهو ابن العشرين. ففي سنة 1955 م قرر الرحيل بعيدًا عن العالم السفلي وواقع التسكع والتهريب والسجون الذي كان غارقًا فيه ودخل المدرسة في مدينة العرائش ثم تخرج بعد ذلك ليشتغل في سلك التعليم.

في سنة 1966م نُشِرَت قصته الأولى العنف على الشاطئ في مجلة الأداب اللبنانية. حصل شكري على التقاعد النسبي و تفرغ تمامًا للكتابة الأدبية. توالت بعد ذالك كتاباته في الظهور. اشتغل محمد شكري في المجال الإذاعي من خلال برامج ثقافية كان يعدها و يقدمها في إذاعة البحر الأبيض المتوسط الدولية (ميدي 1) في طنجة. عاش شكري في طنجة لمدة طويلة ولم يفارقها إلا لفترات زمنية قصيرة

Mohamed Choukri (Berber: Muḥemmed Cikri, Arabic: محمد شكري), 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 (éditions Maspéro), 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-Akhtaâ 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 Achaâri), owning his copyrights, his manuscripts and personal writings.