A Life Full of Holes: A Novel

by Paul Bowles

One of the most unusual literary innovations ever produced, A Life Full of Holes is the result of a singular collaboration between two remarkable Driss ben Hamed Charhadi, an illiterate North African servant and street vendor, and legendary American novelist and essayist Paul Bowles. The powerful story of a shepherd and petty trafficker struggling to maintain hope as he wrestles with the grim realities of daily life, it is the first novel ever written in the Arabic dialect Moghrebi, faithfully recorded and translated into English by Bowles. Straightforward yet rich in complex emotions, it is a fascinating inside look at an unfamiliar culture—harsh and startling, yet interwoven with a poignant, poetic beauty.

Genres: Fiction, Morocco, Africa, Middle East, Classics, Novels, Literature

318 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Paul Frederic Bowles grew up in New York, and attended college at the University of Virginia before traveling to Paris, where became a part of Gertrude Stein's literary and artistic circle. Following her advice, he took his first trip to Tangiers in 1931 with his friend, composer Aaron Copeland.

In 1938 he married author and playwright Jane Auer (see: Jane Bowles). He moved to Tangiers permanently in 1947, with Auer following him there in 1948. There they became fixtures of the American and European expatriate scene, their visitors including Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. Bowles continued to live in Tangiers after the death of his wife in 1973.

Bowles died of heart failure in Tangier on November 18, 1999. His ashes were interred near the graves of his parents and grandparents in Lakemont, New York.

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

a misrepresented classic

Every book and every review reflects its times. I suppose that's why, back in 1964, when Grove Press published A LIFE FULL OF HOLES, the `sound bites' from the reviews that were put on the cover emphasized sex, corruption, drugs, and homosexuality to the exclusion of everything else. And if you don't remember, Grove Press was the publisher that put out all the stuff too hot for anyone else. I recently re-read the book, which was dictated by an illiterate Moroccan to Paul Bowles' tape recorder. Bowles, in case you don't remember either, was an early beatnik, who left the USA to live in Tangier, Morocco, which he found more welcoming to his lifestyle. Driss ben Hamed Charhadi (or Larbi Layachi) may or may not have lived the life found in the pages of his stories, but certainly he was familiar with such an existence. Looked at today, in a much more tolerant, open society, in which the sexual and substance revolution took place several decades ago, A LIFE FULL OF HOLES is above all about poverty and injustice, the struggle to survive for a fatherless boy whose mother marries again to an unwelcoming man. Drugs and sex appear in any society in one form or another. It's just that we find situations in other societies exotic. Charhadi's character, Ahmed, sleeps in bars, in restaurants, or as a guard in a beach house. He eats anywhere he can. He does any work. He encounters frequent police brutality and injustice, but gets into crime himself and winds up serving time. He is a youth with no future. He tries to marry several girls, but they all desert him for better prospects. There is no happy ending. Ever fatalistic, Ahmed just plods on through life, accepting his fate with equanimity, never dreaming of escape except through luck. It is all right to talk of 'rags to riches' a la Horatio Alger, but when you eat only because of a lousy job, you keep the job unless something better comes along. This is the story of millions of men in so many parts of the world, from the streets of L.A. to São Paulo, from Paris to Papeete. It's not very often that any of them break into print. This is a simply written story with an almost hypnotic style. If you wonder at the discontent in the Arab world, you might read Charhadi's stories. They may be fiction, but they hit close to the bone.

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought: People say it's better to have no life at all than a life full of holes. But then they say: Better an empty sack than no sack. I don't know.

Eight year old Ahmed wandering orphaned himself. His mother married again to a soldier who may not yet have spoken of my roof takes a hundred percent interest on your blood, sweat and years. But he probably did. I have always gone far away look into the thoughtless infancy when thinking about strings. I'd start a countdown of when there could be no fun. The little girls who are un(threateningly) asexual. Maybe when they can't open their eyes all the way they could smile and grasp the finger. Maybe sometime something was natural. I could think of a lot of them. This is when Ahmed doesn't have to think about it. He gets up and walks to nowhere. He cries and his luck can't remember to go home. The orphanage is the best chance he ever had. If his mother hadn't half assed wanted the child from her first marriage back (and she has to have a right father Ahmed already in the womb). He could have been literate, clothed and fed. No, don't take me back. I want to stay here. Do what you want, we can't force you. Go ask your father. Child invader's backs say it's not up to me, what does your mother say. Still he must go home. If there is some kind of destiny at work here in real life it's passive aggressive as hell on its way up. The one of "holes" doesn't know because it didn't get any farther than that orphanage before it maintained eye shut walking. My favorite misfortune to befall Ahmed is probably when the prostitute (they say she was broken in by a dog) he hands over all his earnings to poisons him when the purse is empty. Ahmed, as a rule, doesn't say no and this one time he did. What can you do? Stupid whores, why me.

You look at me like I'm a thief. You ask why the place isn't clean. The housekeeper he suggests to the Nazarenes lays about flirting with the kept boyfriend. Ahmed shakes his head as his life slides back down. They don't pay him and he comes back to work the day and after.
You there, where are you going. That's right, prison. The brush off is interesting to me. He doesn't pull himself up by his bootstraps as much as sinks into fate. His step father takes all of his earnings. Work a little while and maybe it goes all right. He will not get enough for the coveted (real) shoes. (It made me happy when something I had read in Bowles' A Spider's House was true here. They would buy shoes and then sell them at a loss in the market. The French charged them entrance because the haggling was their favorite past-time.) Another boy lets the sheep run off and no one will believe it wasn't Ahmed's fault. When he is in prison he makes friends with a Jewish inmate. It has to happen that someone takes what they can and the two men are punished. Something about how he thinks about missing his friend without wondering where it all went wrong interests me. There's an under boiling of hands with nothing to do when another lets it go this way.

His Nazarene boss gives it all up for caresses of his live-in boy lover, Omar. Every day gets worse. Where does all of they money go. From the business, from family abroad. Where does it go when Omar has it. No one has anything to say about it. I could smell the disgust when he already knows the Nazarene is going to excuse what will happen is what will happen. Ahmed's life is pretty much one fuck up after the other. He doesn't come off as a sob story but, well, yeah the passive aggressive to the fates. I was intrigued in Layachi's story pull. Once upon a time he believes he's going to be married. The family of the intended bride treat him like a junior high school girl who doesn't know everyone is cutting her up whenever she has to use the toilet. The night of her wedding to another man he doesn't quite believe it until he can tell himself about it. Another family wants too much money (according to an included interview with Paul Bowles he uses the proceeds from this to buy a wife). No one trusts anything. Ahmed must have looked to everyone else as to be taken in or a thief. Maybe the guy he misses from prison meant company until it is time to return to his wife and child. I wonder I didn't feel worse. Something about how he talks about them as interludes before the next bad thing, taking away only the same general mistrust everyone seemed to have. I had an idea of how he must have looked to everyone else. Was there anyone in Ahmed's life who didn't view him as disposable underfoot? (At the same time I scratch my head that I've repeatedly encountered a seeming conviction that women so kept down are victimizing THEM. As if they had a choice who they married or not. He must have known that they didn't!) I'm guessing it wasn't tongue in cheek that a donkey's tongue gave the kept boy Omar the power over his Nazarene. The two men believed in it and Ahmed knew it was true before he knew. He sees the future when the usurper boy will give him what Omar no longer will, his owed fading without payments. It's no comfort, really, but muttering about what kind of people the rest must of been something to Ahmed. He's looking at the ground and from his apathetic misery I caught a lot from the edges. I loved all of it, depressing as it probably should have been. I loved reading about how fucked over they were. Freely growing kif illegal so the authorities could tax their tears on tobacco (that no one wanted, apparently). They were interesting little stories, if what somewhat of a confusing moral (to me) that what would happen happens. It shouldn't be since I don't get out of the way of crap that much, either.

You remember what I told you a long time ago? You can fly high in the air for a while. But afterward you come down. This is what happens when Allah gives a loaf of bread to a man who doesn't know how to eat it.
Don't worry about me, Omar said.
You'll see everything in a little while, I told him.

Oh yeah, my copy is "a novel by Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi" the pen name of Larbi Layachi. Chances are A Life Full of Holes can be found as Layachi (my copies of his other books are Layachi).

P.s. I'm a little bummed that the writersnoonereads Layachi page only says "You must read this book" about "holes". I wanted to read others talking about how much they liked it so I would feel like I was still reading about his shitty life!

[Stacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at a very different life and place.

I got used to the narrator's style fairly quickly as he recounted his youth and young adulthood, scratching out an existence day-to-day. He's very down to earth and matter of fact, whether recounting going hungry, trekking for days, looking for any work he can find, serving time in prison for theft, or sharing kif (pot) and tea with friends.

It's an unusual and intriguing book. Recommended.

If you like this book, I would also recommend The Wandering Falcon.

[Oceana2602 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a ridiculous amount of books in preparation for my recent trip to Morocco, and "Life full of holes" was one of them. It was also one that I really onle understood after my trip. I appreciated it before, but I understood it only later.

See, Charhadi, was a Moroccon servant and worker, who, himself unable to write, told his story to Paul Bowles (he of The Sheltering Sky, that's right). It is the story of a "simple" man, but it isn't simple. The narrator lives in poverty and holds (and loses) variety of jobs in his life: from a goat shepherd as a kid, to a baker to a vendor - he takes what the next day brings him. There is some love inbetween, some tragedy, drugs and sex and prison. It's a life. Full of holes.

The story in itself is impressive, the story behind the story makes it even more so. But it was going to Morocco, going to the remote areas of the Atlas mountains where the kids still herd the goats in the morning instead of going to school, of crossing villages full of markets and people and farmers bringing in their harvest on the backs of their mules, of seeing Marakesh, so full of live and change and yet seemingly unchanged since centuries, that made me SEE the story in this book.

Would absolutely recommend this to everyone who plans to travel to Morocco (something that I can also highly recommend).

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Life Full of Holes doesn’t read like a novel; it reads like the truth. Bedrock narrative, laid flush against language, without recourse to devices that create and sustain the illusions of literary perspective—chronological manipulation, character development, mise-en-scène, description, geography, research, introspection—seems to be what we have in our hands. The flatness of the storytelling is extreme, but though the narration has a straightforward orality that earlier Western generations would have called primitive, there are paradoxes which suggest that the author is anything but naïve. As Bowles says, Charhadi is a master storyteller who effortlessly “keeps the thread of his narrative almost equally taut at all points.” He possesses, according to Bowles, solid editorial intelligence. He brings his stories out whole, without hesitation; he either has long rehearsed them or, maybe as likely given the dreamlike quality of the transitions and the lack of emphasis and epiphany in the action, has entered into something resembling a visionary trance. And he is blasé, rather than merely oblivious, about internal inconsistencies. The narrator seems to have had at least two childhoods, time frames piggyback on one another, certain recurring characters—the mother, for example, and the egregious stepfather—are so conveniently static that it is easy to suspect that Charhadi has grown indifferent, because of the pleasure he takes in his storytelling and in the sound of his own voice, to the exigencies of documentary fidelity.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Bowles recorded and translated this tale by an illiterate North African, Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi. I'm not sure why it's considered a novel, as it appears to be an autobiographical account of Charhadi's early life in Morocco, in which he goes from neglected child to criminal, hustling to keep a roof over his head, food in his belly, and shoes on his feet. Despite his grinding poverty and continual bad luck, he maintains a hopeful attitude, perhaps because of his faith in Allah. There's no plot, rather it's a day to day chronicle of hand to mouth existence that eventually builds to a hypnotic rhythm of small victories and greater failures. A timeless and universal account of life on the bottom rung.

[Alison Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extraordinary North African novel - I've never read anything like it. Set in the 1930s, dictated by an illiterate Arab to the writer Paul Bowles, who recorded & translated the book. For full review please go to https://thebooksmithblog.wordpress.com .

A fascinating read - highly recommended.

[Vilis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grāmatai ir pamatā kultūrvēsturiska vērtība, bet šajā gadījumā ar to arī pietiek.

[Juno · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I might have to go back and read it again. Beautifully evolutionary and alien and wise.

[Avvai · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is like nothing I've ever read before. The book is told by an illiterate Moroccan young man about his life (he's in his mid-twenties at the time) and transcribed by the travel writer Paul Bowles.
The style of storytelling takes a few chapters to get used to. It's very much like "this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened" but it still manages to be very engaging. Emotions are rarely spoken of and he lives his life very much with the mindset of "today and tomorrow, today and tomorrow" and a deep sense of fatalism.
The narrator lives in poverty and isn't able to hold jobs for a long time, doesn't have too many skills that people need, and does a variety of things from being a shepherd, to a baker, to pickpocketing, selling weed, and stealing. He spends a lot of time in jail as well. When he does get money he spends it on food, weed, and prostitutes. I think he is also a bit of an unreliable narrator -- sometimes you don't know what's truth (or his version of truth) and what actually happened. But that also made the book even more interesting to read.
I read this while in Morocco, and I'm not so sure if life for many have changed very much since this book was released in the 60s. Especially going into the small villages and towns where there's no schools nearby and people are struggling daily, I think it's a very realistic look of life in poverty.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Life Full of Holes (1964) a novel dictated to Paul Bowles by Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi is an unusual book. There is a foreward by Vijay Seshadri and an introduction by Bowles. It is the first novel ever written in the Arabic dialect Moghrebi, recorded and translated into English by Bowles. Thus, the way the story is told reflect the culture of Morocco and the religious influence of Islam on everyday life,not to mention life and death in 1960s Morocco. It is the remarkable story of an uneducated Arab youth's struggle to survive after a number of hardships from being forced to work at a young age, being driven from his household since he is the child from a previous marriage he incurs the wrath of his step father whenever he is compeled to return to his mother's home after hardship of losing a job or on one of his many returns from jail. He suffers betrayal, abuse from police, and yet seems to remain positive and hopeful for the future.

[Russell George · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very unusual. The author is a young Moroccan whose life-story was tape-recorded and then translated. It’s a first person narrative with little or no characterisation; just a succession of events described in a functional, almost child-like style. But somehow it draws you in, and because the book covers quite a period of time, you begin to see how the author’s life evolved. After a while you begin to fill in the gaps that the author leaves out.

[Jaime · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't really like this book, but it was something to read when I needed it, and for that I give thanks.

[Vansa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a lot of books before I went to Morocco on holiday, and this was one I started before I left, but finished now! Interesting narrative voice, of a perspective we don't often get-a working class man in a country still feeling the effects of colonialism, narrated by him, and not fictionalized by a writer from a very different social class. So it's less tragedy, more narrative, because the protagonist, Ahmed, doesn't have the time really to feel sorry for himself-he's thinking of what to do next. It's unsettling to read of the casual sexual exploitation of young men, by (mostly) French settlers in Tanja. The book also illuminated a particular sort of white person who lives in Tanja, because while they may not be able to afford their lifestyle in Europe, in Tanja, their money goes a long way ( the AIrbnb I stayed at was owned by someone like that).

[Mirjam Kooiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Today and tomorrow. Today and tomorrow.”

This line repeats throughout A Life Full of Holes, and it captures both its strength and its limitation. The story does not really develop — it exists in the present tense, living day by day, without knowing or shaping what comes next. Inshallah.

I found the book genuinely fascinating as an entry point into everyday life in Morocco in the mid-twentieth century. Through Larbi Layachi’s voice, you get a direct, unpolished sense of hardship, frustration, small hopes, and endurance. The fact that he could not write his own story and relied on Paul Bowles to record and translate it adds an important layer of distance and authenticity.

At the same time, the way the story is told never fully swept me along. The repetition, the lack of narrative progression, and the emotional flatness kept me at arm’s length as a reader. Yet that is also the book’s quiet beauty: this is not a story shaped for drama or meaning, but a life that simply continues, today and tomorrow, today and tomorrow. Fascinating, honest, and thematically powerful — but not immersive in the conventional sense.

[Carole Sklar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the book completely engaging.
Acceptance of whatever comes ones way seems to characterize a way of life unimaginable to those of us in the Western world.
Each time the boy said okay, I was startled.

Can it be the simple boy remembered in great detail years of individual events?
Can it be Bowles, who lived in Morocco and knew the character of the people wrote A Life Full
of Holes?

It doesn't matter. I could read this book many times. Loved it.

[Youssef Alaoui · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of magic and mayhem. You might not like the writing style. Hang with it though. You will like this kind of trouble. Good Moroccan storytelling. Thank you Paul Bowles for recording him and translating from Darija!

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 3 out of 5]

2,5

Algún momento bueno tiene, pero, con sinceridad, pocos.

https://liblit.com/driss-ben-hamed-ch...

[Jordan Gowza · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving Moroccan tale of a life of poverty and bad luck - Driss ben Hamed Charhadi is a masterful storyteller.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a most unique book. Charhadi was an uneducated North African house servant encouraged to record a series of tapes on his life by the author Paul Bowles. The tapes were transcribed and published as A Life Full of Holes. The result is a remarkable story of the precarious hand-to-mouth existence led by untold numbers of people around the world. Through forced migrations, prison terms, betrayals and more, Charhadi comes across as charming, positive and yet somehow resigned to his lot in life. He is a compelling storyteller from a long oral tradition, and his observations on Christians – or Nazarenes as he calls them – are fascinating.
Sentus Libri 100 word reviews of overlooked books.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written, translated long before I lived in Morocco, but I enjoyed Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi's stories mightily. He writes in great detail of his many jobs, and hardships, and friends and those who betrayed him, and always seems to come to the same conclusion: there is hope.

Three quotes from a book that has many of note:

-People say it's better to have to life at all than a life full of holes. But then they say: better an empty sack than no sack.-

-If you give a man a donkey's tongue and maybe its ears too, how is he going to have any head left for his work or anything else?-

-Listen. He's singing a song of Om Kaltoum's

Recommended reading if you enjoy imaginative memoirs, no matter the country of origin.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very strange, dry tale transcribed by Paul Bowles. An aimless, rootless life wherein the narrator is subjected to any and all injustices. Mostly at the hands of cops and soldiers. Much kif is smoked, tea is drunk, and young brown boys are fondled. Prison, orphanage, mats in a tea house, endless manual labor jobs, francs, whores, jilted lovers, a house by the sea, two gay French carpenters, a donkey's tongue, and two dead chickens.

[Silverblue · Rating 5 out of 5]

After I read this book, I promised myself to take whatever comes my way and not complain a word. This book made me realize there is a world out there with folks in it who I believe chose to not have a conscious. If there ever was a man who faced tragedy all his life yet bore it as much as can be to only triumph. Great story!

[jeni · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you can find this book... read it, it's charming. Hailed as the first Maghrebi novel, the author narrated his story to Paul Bowles, who recorded and translated it. Skip the slog through the Sheltering Sky and read this instead.

[Leo Kerner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took this book on my Moroccan Vacation, from which I just returned. It is a oral autobiography of a poor Moroccan boy as he grows to adulthood, and the miseries he goes thru. It was transcribed to English by American writer Paul Bowles, and to my surprise it made very engaging reading...

[Baouddi Zouhir]

wirklich ist es schön und es gefäfft mir sehr ich bin zouhir baouddi .ich studiere geo gleichzeitig habe ich deutdch gelernt ..........gut...........

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

i got an illustrated review of this book on the Paris Review blog.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/20...

[Soumya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truely amazing.

[Eamonn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book - unique in its storytelling and all true to boot.

[Liz Kloster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book number two on my list of books I think everyone should read (along with Shantaram). A remarkable story both in the writing but also the process of writing it. highly recommended!