"Yesterday and Today" by Larbi Layachi

Larbi Layachi (1937-1986) was an illiterate watchman at a café at Merkala Beach near Tangier when American expatriates Jane and Paul Bowles met him in 1961. Paul Bowles recorded narratives about his (hard) life: his parents divorced when he was three years old, he had been on his own since the age of eight, worked as a shepherd, a baker's helper, a day laborer on the Tangier docks, a night watchman, a houseboy to a "Nazarene" gay couple, and selling kif (a substance with concentrated THC that Paul Bowles used extensively).

Bowles labeled the book of Layachi's tape-recorded (in Moghrebi) memoirs that was published in 1964 as A Life Full of Holes, and imposed a pseudonym of Driss ben Hamed Charhadi. Layachi went to the US in 1964 and spent the rest of his life in the US, publishing two more books without the assistance of Paul Bowles, showing that the straight-ahead this happened, then that happened, then that happened style was his own, along with the fatalism and resiliency of A Life Full of Holes. (The other one, relating injustices in the period between A Life Full of Holes and Yesterday and Today is The Jealous Lover.)

A lot of bad things (not just bad luck, but official corruption, betrayals, false accusations) happened in Layachi's early life. Things were going better for him in what is clearly the roman à clef of Yesterday and Today, which was published in 1985 by Black Sparrow Press in Santa Barbara, which published a number of books by Bowles including many collaborative ventures with another illiterate Moroccan, Mohammed Mrabet. Yesterday and Today is still in print, while all the volumes written by or translated by Bowles for the press have gone out of print. I noted that in the lengthy list of acknowledgments of people who had been good to him, Paul Bowles did not appear - though the Jane to whom the book is dedicated I assume to be the by-then deceased Jane Bowles.

At the start of the "novel," it is the Jane Bowles figure, called Lalla Ann Weston who seeks out Larbi to work for a visiting American named Mercer (based on Alfred Chester, I think). Over the course of the book, Larbi works as a houseboy in houses up above Tangier for Miles, an expatriate writer who has arranged publication of what is clearly A Life Full of Holes. Another American expat, Weksell (the other possible Alfred Chester character) is outraged that Miles (Bowles) is taking half the royalties, but Larbi says a deal is a deal.

Larbi is not telling any more stories to Miles and Miles is irritated that Larbi frequently sleeps in the marketplace. Larbi has bought a truckload of watermelons, that it takes five weeks to sell. He put up the money, but splits the profits with two acquaintances who take turns guarding and selling the watermelons (one of them pockets some of the proceeds, unchallenged by Larbi). In the final reckoning, Larbi has the equivalent of US$20 (1963 dollars).

He also accompanies Lalla Ann to a wedding in the interior. Women in the marketplace - who were astounded at how well she spoke Mogrehbi - invited her to a wedding. (Jane Bowles was fluent, Paul never was, and the "translations from Mogrehbi were mediated by Mrabet and presumably Layachi translating their stories into Spanish, which Paul Bowles spoke better.)

Larbi takes the fecklessness of Moroccans (including his wife who is frequently gone and has family members along when she is home), the amiability and crankiness of Nazarenes in stride. There are no flashbacks to explain what he narrates, though the book was composed years after the events recalled. I was hoping that the "today" of the title would encompass some of Layachi's experience relocating to the US, but it is entirely set in Morocco.

A Life Full of Holes is more compelling with more dramatic events and the frequent edge of hunger. Being interested in the Bowleses, I am interested in the view of them provided by their client/employee/collaborator. Others, interested in how Moroccans view the expats (and the post-Independence domination of Tangier by those from south of Tangier) may similarly be interested in the narrative, despite the lack of drama. I don't think that Layachi is a typical Moroccan male in not attempting to control or surveil his wife's movements. His fatalism (whatever happens is as Allah intended), I think, is more typical.

For more background on literary collaborations between Paul Bowles and Moroccans, see Greg Mullins's Colonial Affairs and Brian Edwards's Morocco Bound.