For Bread Alone

Choukri's Tangier is the hungry underside of the international city: the Grand Socco and Petit Socco markets, the alleys of the medina, the working port, and the cafés and back rooms of the interzone. The map runs from the famine-struck Rif countryside near Nador, which drives the family west to the coast, through the streets where the boy survives, out to a spell in Tetouan.

Mohamed

The Rif countryside near Nador

Childhood

The book begins in the Rif, where famine and a violent father make the countryside unlivable and push the family toward the coast. The exact hamlet is not identified; the regional anchor is Nador, on Morocco's northeastern Mediterranean edge, far from the Tangier where the rest of the story unfolds.

Opening chapters

inferred The narrative places the family's origin in the drought-stricken Rif, but names no exact village, so this marks Nador, the regional town, about 350 kilometres east of Tangier and well outside the book's Tangier setting.

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