Mohammed Mrabet is a Moroccan storyteller, mostly known in the West through his association with Paul Bowles, William Burroughs and Tennessee Williams. Fiercely independent, he left home at the age of 11 after a bloody fight with a school teacher and a self-imposed evacuation from a third storey window. Things didn’t improve when he returned home to his father who beat him, pushing a young Mrabet over the edge and away for good. At the age of 12 he lost his virginity to a 27 year old woman, Aisha – from that first taste of promiscuity he indulged in a life of petty criminality. He stabbed people, got drunk and got into fights. His physicality was noteworthy. Tall and strong, he caught the eye of the city’s notoriously promiscuous gay community, and also of the men in power – the ones who would use him first for labour and then as a prizefighter. His acquired reputation as a man-of-action, as noble as he was notorious, endeared him to those that began to congregate around him to hear him speak. Inspired by the observations of writers, rockstars, homeless people and market stalls – the ebb and flow of a rapidly changing city dictated the flow of his life and sharpened his tongue whilst late-night re-tellings refined his imagination and delivery. It was both his innate brooding charisma and one that developed over-time that has kept him somewhat in the public’s eye.
Mohamed Mrabet
