Early Years
Mohamed Choukri was born in the Rif more precisely Had, Bni Chiker during a famine, in a poor family with many children and a violent father. His mother tongue was the Riffian (a Berber dialect). Because of poverty, his family migrated to Tétouan and then to Tangier. As a child Choukri survived thanks to a variety of jobs, serving in a French family in the Algerian Rif, or guiding sailors who arrived in Tangier, where he learned Spanish. His life was surrounded by prostitutes, thieves, smugglers and especially a tyrannic and violent father. Choukri accused him of murdering his young brother, Kader, as well as his wife. After a family dispute, he left his family at the age of 11 to live in Tangier. There, he was a homeless child, a petty burglar, an occasional smuggler and a prostitute. At the age of 20, he met someone who changed his life.
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Famous quotes related to early years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)