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Bare Bread... "Mohamed Choukri": A Journey of Self-Discovery
As usual, when I finish reading a book, I stamp its first page with my personal seal to remember that I once read it, and to confirm that acquiring it for my library was the result of a reading obsession rather than simply a collecting craze. However, with Mohamed Choukri's text "Bare Bread," I felt that I had not just finished reading a novel, but that I had begun to reclaim knowledge from six decades that this novel represents as a chapter of its narrative.
Mohamed Choukri built his narrative in thirteen scenes, following a consistent chronological sequence, with a narrative skill and craft that was far from mere documentation. He managed to divert the reader's attention from the fact that he was narrating his story, immersing them instead in a highly realistic tale that intersects with the stories of a people, and perhaps multiple nations. It is a story open to millions of characters, the only difference being that Mohamed Choukri declared it as his autobiography, through which he presented a pivotal chapter of the narrative of struggle over Arab lands. Through his honest and transparent portrayal of his search for identity as a marginalized individual in a world suffocated by its own chaos, he also presented the search of Arabs for their collective identity in an international space that agreed to strip them of that identity, distort it, or reconstruct it according to a pattern deemed suitable for itself by seizing their land and scattering their resources, paving the way for their existence to be terminated on both human and geographical levels.
In "Bare Bread," Mohamed Choukri did not hesitate to mention the most painful details of his upbringing, no matter how steeped they were in poverty, suffering, deviance, humiliation, and vice to the point of demonization, using a bold language that shocks the prevailing Arab culture, rebelling against all heritage, norms, or accepted conventions.
Finally, after twenty years of turmoil, Mohamed Choukri found himself, believing that he would be different regardless of the outcomes, genuine in all conditions, and a rebel against any repercussions. This was manifested when he concluded the novel in the final scene near what he presumed was his younger brother's grave, who was killed by their father in a moment of anger that encapsulated the agonies of that generation and era. As he scattered flowers here and there in the cemetery, hoping they might reach his brother's grave, he recalled the elder’s words who buried him: "Your brother is now with the angels," concluding the novel with the lines: "My brother has become an angel. And me? I will be a devil, there is no doubt about it. When children die, they become angels, and adults become devils. I missed the chance to be an angel."
This is Mohamed Choukri, a being who emerged from the impossible into reality, from myth to truth, from illusion to certainty, and from death to life, like a fresh herb in a barren desert, and like a glimmer of light that continued to shine at the end of a dark tunnel until it burst into brilliance.
In his troubled childhood, Mohamed Choukri did not carry the seeds of awareness, life did not grant him knowledge, even if little, and fate did not provide him the opportunity to dream. He was a captive of bitter living filled with injustice and darkness, poverty and deprivation, oppression and marginalization. His only sustenance was his love for life and attachment to it, a life he did not let pass without devouring every moment like the hungry. He submitted then rebelled, withdrew then soared, was captured then liberated, was ignorant then began to find his path to knowledge.
The novel spans twenty years, during which not a single day lacked an adventure that could have cost Choukri everything—twenty years spent in an environment rife with corruption and vice, among alleys, cafes, and brothels, where he lived every detail in youthful vigor. With each event he experienced or intruded upon, he emerged with a lesson that would serve as his treasure in the days to come.
"Bare Bread" is a novel for those whose consciousness has been shaped by painful, lived experiences outside the pages of books, far from the pretentiousness of thinkers and their interpretations and their vile indoctrination. It is intertwined with reality and mingled with the dust of existence, allowing the writing about it to emerge with all this sincerity and all this pain, forming another pattern of awareness—one free of deception and confinement.
Mohamed Choukri does not hesitate to express this through the succinct words with which he opened his novel, concluding with the phrase: "The living emerges from the dead. The living emerges from the rotten and the decayed. It emerges from the overfed and the collapsed... It emerges from the bellies of the hungry and from the loins of those who thrive on bare bread."
Nizar Ghalib Flihane
