Look and Move On

by Mohammed Mrabet, Paul Bowles (Translator)

Taped and tr. from the Moghrebi by Paul Bowles. Recounts incidents from Mrabet's youth on the streets of Tangier. Starting with the author's adventures as a poor Moroccan boy later taken to the USA by a besotted couple, this culminates in an account of Mrabet's life in the household of Jane and Paul Bowles. With Paul, who is himself one of America's most important contemporary writers, he meets such writers as Tennessee Williams and Christopher Isherwood. As well as being a talented artist, Mrabet has written a number of books with Bowles, which have been published in the U.K., the U.S., and elsewhere.

Genres: Morocco

128 pages, Hardcover

Published December 31, 1989

About the author

Mohammed Mrabet (real name Mohammed ben Chaib el Hajjem; born March 8, 1936) is a Moroccan author artist and storyteller of the Ait Ouriaghel tribe in the Rif region. Mrabet is mostly known in the West through his association with Paul Bowles, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams. Mrabet is an artist of intricate, yet colorful, felt tip and ink drawings in the style of Paul Masson or a more depressive, horror-show Jean Miro, which have been shown at various galleries in Europe[1] and America.[2] Mrabet's art work is his own: very loud and intricate, yet comparable with that of his contemporary, Jillali Gharbaoui (1930–1971.) Mrabet is increasingly being recognized as an important member of a small group of Moroccan Master Painters who emerged in the immediate post Colonial period[3] and his works have become highly sought after, mostly by European collectors.[4]

Reviews

[Sean McLachlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mohammed Mrabet is a Moroccan writer and artist who has lived most of his life in Tangier. This is his memoir of the days when it was an international haven for writers, artists, thieves, con men, homosexuals, pederasts, and the idle rich. Like For Bread Alone by Mohamed Choukri, it shows the flip side of this foreigner's paradise, the life of poor Moroccans struggling to survive and often having to serve the newcomers in various unpleasant ways.
Mrabet didn't escape this. At the age of sixteen, he got taken up by an American couple who vied with each other for his sexual favors. They take him to the U.S., where he has more fun with the local Puerto Ricans and blacks than he does with the staid middle class whites. There are some hilarious scenes of culture clashes in these passages. Later he meets Paul and Jane Bowles, who launch his career as a writer. They, too, take him to the States with similarly numerous results. We also get to follow Mrabet's adventures with European swingers, falling into matrimony, and his rather Zen philosophy of life.
While I found this slim volume fascinating because I've spent a lot of time in Tangier and read a great deal about its history, someone who isn't a fan of the place will miss a lot of the references. For example, Marguerite McBey is mentioned but nothing is said about her important place in Tangier society. I hope this work is republished with a long introduction to explain the context to those readers who have not learned about it from other sources.

[Iky Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember that the first year i came to Tangier,i felt lonely,it was hard to be far from home , then i decided to go get a book,and found this book i read the last page it was about a story in Tangier , i took it without hesitating,and i'm glad i did,the book is so nice and interesting,it was the perfect moment to read it for me,because it describes how people live in Tangier when it was international city,the difference between moroccans and spanish people,poverty
..

[Molaan Mosell · Rating 3 out of 5]

⁸I picked this up because the author, Mohammed Mrabet, is referenced in a book by Patti Smith called M Train. It is an incredibly fast read, 125 pp, and written at about the 7th grade reading skill level.

I found the book a worthwhile read. If you are interested in other countries, people of other nationalities, and reading about lives different from your own then you might like this.

The book is translated because the author does not speak English so you have to take that into account. He speaks Arabic and Spanish. He was raised in Morrocco and is a Moslem.

The story is written in the first person and is about his life. He is a drifter spending most of his time drinking, smoking weed, and finding women to sleep with. He leads his hedonistic aimless life with no guilt although he experiences times when he thinks he should have a more purposeful life.

But in general he is a perfect example of a totally free and honest individual, he reacts genuinely in every situation with minimal consideration for later outcomes or another's feelings. He is hedonistic, narcissistic, and calls himself and others like him "hippies." If somebody offends him or mistreats him he beats them up and/or destroys their property. He beats up a policeman's son and has to go live in a cave for several months to escape the family's death threats.

He gives his impressions of America and Americans based on brief visits to New York, California, and Iowa. He is used by Americans for sex and as a poster boy in magazine articles about his country.

The book is a quick interesting peek into one mans life and country. I'm not sure I will read any of his other books but I did enjoy this one.

[jerry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Vulgar. Vile. It is barely 100 pages but I couldn’t finish it.

[Zack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mohammed Mrabet was originally a young street hustler in Tangier, Morocco, whose stories were translated and introduced to Western readers by Paul Bowles, author of The Sheltering Sky. Some books by him are better than others. This is my favorite, a partial autobiography including all his interaction with Nazarenes (Christians or Anglos) like Paul Bowles and Burroughs and Tennessee Williams, some of them clearly deranged by comparison. Mrabet goes to America twice and can never fit in, keeps getting in trouble with the locals by shooting the birds he sees flying around in their backyards (like robins and pigeons) and cooking delicious meals with their meat. That happens at least twice. He's sensibly obstinate, like Huck Finn--for instance at one point, a Nazarene tells him worms for fishing are a dollar a can and he digs some up for free instead, but without making any big point about it--just being smart. I wonder what he's doing now. OK, I did a search for him on wikipedia--since the mid-'90s, he has concentrated mostly on visual art, and has gained some repute as a painter.