Muhammad Shukri: The journey of the author of “Barefoot Bread,” whose realism shocked Arabic literature

Shukri arrived in the city of Tangier and he still did not know Arabic, because his mother’s language was Amazigh (Trivit), and he had to flee from his father, who treated him and his brothers, and he remained homeless for a period of his life, looking for a place to shelter him and protect him from street life and its dangers and sins.

His father died when he was young, and he lived with his mother and two brothers in extreme poverty.

Muhammad Shukri worked as a cafe boy when he was under ten years old, then he worked as a porter, then a newspaper seller and a shoe seller, and later he works as a seller of smuggled cigarettes.

His family then moved to the city of Tetouan, but he soon returned alone to Tangier, and Shukri did not learn to read and write until he was twenty years old.

In 1955, he decided to leave the underground and the reality of loitering, smuggling, and prisons in which he entered the school in the town of Larache, and later he graduated to work in the field of education .

In 1966, his first story, “Violence on the Beach,” was published in the Lebanese magazine Al-Adab, after which his writings continued to appear.

Mohamed Shukri worked in the radio field through cultural programs that he edited and broadcast on Tangier Radio, especially in his famous program “Shukri Speaks.”

Shukri lived in Tangier for a long time and only left for a short time before he died on November 15, 2003, due to cancer.

The novel Bare Bread is Muhammad Shukri’s most famous novel, and the most controversial. It was written in Arabic in 1972 and translated into English by Paul Bowles in 1973, and translated into French by Taher Benjelloun in 1981. It was not published in Arabic until. 1982, as a result of the controversy it caused about its unusual boldness.

The novel was a success, it was translated into 39 languages, and it is considered one of the most important works of modern Moroccan literature.

This novel came about by chance.

This novel is considered the writer’s autobiography, because it tells the story of being raised in a difficult situation within a society that suffers from poverty and marginalization.

The story begins with the painful details of Shukri’s suffering at the hands of his abusive father, as the writer witnessed the killing of his younger brother at the hands of his father, as well as the ill-treatment of the family ‘ get in general.

In these circumstances, Shukri grew up on the streets of Tangier, trying to escape from hunger and homelessness by looking for any way to satisfy his basic needs.

The novel is not only a narrative of suffering, but an exploration of the depth of the human soul as a result of difficulties, and Shukri uses an honest and realistic style to describe his life, without hesitation -reveal information about his personal experiences, which include hunger, homelessness, and prejudice, as well as moments of weakness and betrayal.

The writer shows his confidence in recounting the events of his life as they are, without embellishment or swearing, and this is what made this novel controversial.

His language was simple and direct, which made the novel close to the reader and allowed the environment in which the writer lived to understand all the details of his suffering, which made the novel daring and shocking at times.

Some critics believe that Shukri’s writing style for writing the novel is closer to the autobiographical style than to traditional fictional literature, because we clearly see the personal and honest character in the narration of events .

This novel represents a model of realistic literature that was not common in Arab literature, because Shukri broke social restrictions and gave a hard and open picture of the life of the poor and marginalized.

The novel is a testimony to the condition of the declining class in Moroccan society in the pre-independence period, because it dealt with issues such as hunger, poverty, violence, and moral deviation, without hesitation.

Because it dealt with sensitive topics, the novel faced a ban in several Arab countries for a long time, but at the same time it gained international fame and was translated into several languages.

It remains a unique literary work in Arabic literature, not only because it shows the life experience of a writer who lived in difficult conditions, but because it raises deep questions about the hardships of life and the essence of the struggle for survival.

Through her honest style and daring subject matter, she made Muhammad Shukri a symbol of realistic literature that touches on the issues of marginalized groups with real truth.

Shukri was extremely proud of it, because it was the novel that won fame and fortune as well. But he soon realized that this fame was a double-edged sword. In addition to the fame and the high literary status that the book won for Shukri in the Arab world and -international, it was a cover that almost hid Shukri’s other creations.

In his writings, Muhammad Shukri relied on the realistic style, which was not very common in Arabic literature, as he was truthful in his distribution of details.

His texts are full of pictures of everyday things and their realistic details. The writer’s characters and the scope of his texts are closely related to everyday life.

Shukri considers the marginal world or the underground world in his writing, as his writings show the readers a world that is silent about it, such as the world of prostitutes, drunkenness, immorality , and poor alleys on the outskirts.

This realistic style made him similar to writers of real international literature such as Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, because he used literature as a mirror that shows how hard life is in isolated societies.

Shukri was not reconciled with the conservative society in which he lived, and he chose to express himself boldly and not to criticize Moroccan and Arab society as a whole. His writings touched on “forbidden” topics in Arabic literary writing, especially in his novel “Barefoot Bread.”

The city of Tangier also plays an important role in his writing, because he wrote about the faces he had forgotten, his darkness, and the marginal world he once belonged to.

Muhammad Shukri did not marry all his life, and one of the things he said: “To be the father of your son, I must marry, that was used in me.

In addition to Bare Bread, Muhammad Shukri wrote many other works that continued to include life experiences and social conditions, while continuing to shed light on issues of poverty and marginalization in his honest style. .

Over time, Shukri became one of the most prominent literary voices in Morocco and the Arab world, leaving behind a strong legacy of works that continue to receive much attention from readers and critics in the Arab World. , how it broke social barriers and revealed sides they didn’t know.

Despite the popularity of Shukri’s works, he was still a subject of controversy because of his frank style of expressing bitter truth. and concepts of class and poverty.

In addition to Bare Bread, his most notable writings include an autobiography (3 parts), Majnun al-Ward, The Tent, The Inner Market, The Devil, The Play of Happiness, The Meduction of the White Blackbird, The Search for Lost Time, Scattered Memory, The Holy Night, The Great House, and Roses and Ashes.