Gates to Tangier (13 page)

I'm going to write a book about this trip. Alberto isn't the only one who can write books in this family. I'm su
­
re it will start with this ridic
­
ulous conversation that we just had. I'm going to write a book. Every man should write a book once in his life.

At least one. It will be about this trip. The first part is the trip to Tétouan, the second part is what happened in Tétouan, and after that, the return, everything that happens now on the plane back to New York, how all of us feel a
­
fter all that happens. I think that this explains why Papá decided to go to Israel. I'll put everything in the name of the family writer, Alberto, who always asks why Papa emigrated to Israel, and thinks that that's what screwed up his life, he always complains that he can't find success, writers are always complaining about everything, then he accuses Israel, and his father, who brought him to Israel before he could make decisions himself.

Look, said Alberto to his father, for the three bro
­
thers who were outside of Israel things went well, one was in Madrid, another in New York, a third in Paris, but for the three brothers in Israel it went pretty badly. I'm a failed writer, my sister is a baby-making mac
­
hine, and the last, the smallest, he's was the successful one, he died in the war. Amazing. He died in the war, what a martyr. When we die in war we are finally equal to the
Ashkenazim
, war heroes, and what a hero, he died in the Intifada from a rock thrown by a boy, and the Armada, out of shame, told us that he died in Lebanon from an attack.

Those rocks started in Morocco, when we came out of school, and then they pick
­
ed them up in Israel twenty years later, you see, twenty years of rocks, the rocks are human material, and
eben
in Hebr
­
ew is father and son, it passes from father to son, the same Arabs, the same rocks.

I am sure that if we had gone to Spain I would have been a more fam
­
ous writer, I would be the most famous writer in Spain. The son says these words in the cemetery, a week af
­
ter the death of his father, before having read the will and before knowing about the secret son. The
­
n he says: "Why did you bring us to this country?" I don't understand, you had enough money to take us anywhere in the world, and you brought us to this Ashkenazi madhouse, with those half-crazy
Ashkenazim
.

The sane ones went to the United States, they se
­
nt the crazy ones to Israel, the poor, those that couldn't rec
­
over from the
Shoah
, the worthless ones, the
Nebej,
that's what we called them,
Nebej,
and how could we confr
­
ont them, since they had already decided that we were their ene
­
mies and that we are the biggest enemies of the Arabs, but we’re not enemies of the Ar
­
abs in Morocco. We were their friends.

Without a doubt the book will have a disproportionate idealization of the relationship between Jews and A
­
rabs, they've already forgotten the pogroms, the Arabs stri
­
king and yelling at their donkey “
Ah wadel lihud”
to get their donkeys to move
.
This is what the Israeli Moroccans do, they complain about the Arabs, they idealize their relationships with them in the past, and they keep complaining about the
Ashkenazim,
the
Ashkenazim
are responsible for everything, the wars, their poverty, turning my sister religious so that she's having one child a year, a baby indu
­
stry. Afterwards she comes to Paris and envies how well her sister has it. And why don't you go? And you really ask yourself why you don't go, you're always complaining, you already write in Hebrew and can't change the language, you can't start writing in French, in Spanish, or in English anymore, that's how it is. We've turned into Moroc
­
can Israelis, they're guilty without having to do a single thing.

It will be great, my book.

“I'm going to write a book about our trip," I say to Silvia.

"You too? It isn't enough to have one brother who won't stop writing idiotic things about our family? He writes that we are Arab Jews. Me? Arab? Do I look Arab to you? Do I have an Arab face? He is
mizraji
, he doesn't really look Sephardic. They say that a Sephardi is a
mizraji
that hasn't fully evolved yet. He wants to assimilate into the Arab word, have you noticed? He wants to be a stran
­
ger in the Damascus kasba.”

“You just don’t understand, that's what all the Moroccans in Isr
­
ael do, they accuse the whole world and accuse themselves, as if everything was easy in France. So how can it be that in France so many Jews are successful and so few are in Israel? They learn there from the
Ashkenazim
to accuse the whole world, it can drive you crazy, that country, a week there drives you crazy. Everyone tells you that the country is almost ruined, that it will dis
­
appear in a few years, it is an Israeli pastime, telling the whole world about their apocalyptic fears, understand? It's like a kind of striptease. Instead of getting naked in front of you, they show you their fears. In France the people are also afraid, but when they meet up they tr
­
y to have a good time with the people around them, it is sadomasochism at the highest level, you kn
­
ow? I'm not telling you you're not right, but yes, it is more difficult to be Moroccan in Israel than in France or New York or any other country. Your husband took you to Paris, in Israel they aren't doing anything, and in France they're making a lot of money. Do you think you could mak
­
e money in Israel?”

"No idea, but what I do know is that in Morocco things aren't so easy. Remember when they arrested Papá for past ta
­
x issues, around '66, and he was in jail for three days, because what they wanted was money, because he h
­
ad money bought a new American car every year? He had a driver so they had to get m
­
oney out of him, all the poor people in the city came to him to ask for money, so they put him in jail alongside Arab thieves, humiliated, he yelled at a minister, who yelled at a may
­
or, who yelled at the chief of police, who received his mon
­
ey and let him go.”

And you know what Alberto wrote? That it was his fault, because he was rich, and because he was repressing the Arab
­
s with his money, because they worked hard and he paid them too little. Did you know that? He was also guilty for being rich, this is what all the
goyim
do, they fo
­
rce us to be rich in order to survive, to be able to pay bribes, to pay ransoms for kidnappings, that's why the money is so important, and later they accuse us of exploiting the
goyim
with our money. This is what we were born into, Silvia, this is the Jewish fate, generation after generation, it always comes from where it is least expected, Hitler, who was Hitler? The director of some insignificant organization. How did he get to the point where he was exterminating us? It is true what is written, there is an inevitable destiny, we are a p
­
eople of coups.

I hope that this is changing, don't you? Do you think that it could happen again in Europe?”

“It wouldn't surprise me. Did anyone think that it could happen in Germany? Who could imagine such a thing? Maybe some Romanian workers, who knows, the ones that put together an atomic bomb, or an epidemic, whatever you least expect. Or the Ara
­
bs, or that town that no one knows about, like it says in the Bible, a new town that no one knows will rise up to destroy you, or the French, or the United States, I don't trust anyone. I can't let myself trust anyone. Do you understand? The more I read about Jewish hist
­
ory the less I want to know, I want to be like a child discovering the world, without knowing that there was history before I was born, without knowing that it brings responsibility to a people, or anything else.”

“I realize that you are writing your book, but you're getti
­
ng too philosophical, I don't like books that are too philosophical. Let the chara
­
cters talk...”

“Yes, you're right, I'm just thinking out loud. I don't really know how to direct this journey, it is too much for me, the journey was enough, I shouldn't have come again with you all.”

“I already know what we have to do, I'm going to look for Fátima's daughter, in Paris. I will look until I find her. I want to know whatever she can tell me about my brother. Maybe he really did die, who knows, or maybe he was adopted by a Jewish family. No, that would never happen. And when those two women, Fátima and her mother, say that he is dead, what do they mean? They didn't tell us where his grave is, if it even exists, what they say is that he disappeared from their lives. Maybe they don't mean that he died.

"I don't think we are obligated to look more, if the mother said he died, right?”

“I'm not talking about the inheritance, that's not all that interests me, I just want to know more. Fátima is the woman who raised us, for years, she is important to me, and her daughter is also important.”

“Not for me, it is Fátima's daughter, Fátima in her last days...I've already forgotten her, the
Fátimas
were like shadows, they existed but didn't exist, they played a role, they weren't real people.”

“For me she was very important, I loved her a lot. It really hurt to see her so sick.

“I think that you are over-dramatizing the situ
­
ation.”

“You can't understand that I loved her! Why? Because she's Arab? Is that why it couldn't be true that I loved her? You're heartless.”

"They're calling us, it is time to board the plane.
Ciao,
Morocco.”

B
efore leaving I want to cry for the dead, for my dead, cry for my brother Israel who loved Isra
­
el more than anyone.

"Israel is my name, and we are one and the same," you told me whe
­
n we were discussing the Lebanon war, Arik Sharon, Sabra, and Shatila. You were the victim of a new Jewish journey. A last journey? I want to cr
­
y for the brother that I never met, for Yosef, because I don't know where he is buried, and because none of us a
­
sked, as if we weren't allowed to know more.

“Why are you crying?”

“I'm crying for the dead.”

“You should take Ignatia.”

“Yes, you, you solve everything with your little pills, but I don't want to stop crying, I want to suffer, suffer for the death of my father, my brother Israel, my brother I never m
­
et, I want to cry my own tears,”

"Then that means that Ignatia is what you nee
­
d. I have it here in my bag, in the first a
­
id kit. Ignatia 7CH, take this, don't argue with me so much. It won't take away your tears, but it will help you to confront them. If you took 200 D it would be much better, but this will also help.”

“I can't argue with you or your older brother. He would surely give me Valium or Prozac, or some new drug, as if crying were an illness, to cry and feel compassion, even compassion for yourself. The one who has it right is our little sister who says that what saves the world is compassion. Sometimes I think she is the smartest of us all. Even if we make fun of her for being constantly pregnant.”

"Of course sadness is not a disease, and you don't have to take Ignatia. If you don't want to don't take it, I did take it though. It was hard news to take, the news of the lost brother. None of us know how to di
­
gest this.”

"Why do you say ‘digest’? Lacan could give you a good lecture on digesting. Eating a situation that you can't digest.”

"Don't start with that too now, it's just a manner of speaking."

"There are no manners of speaking. You know in Fre
­
nch, to "take a look" you say
jeter un coup d´oueil,
literally throw an eye. It takes strength, power. Is that a coinci
­
dence? You know that there is a town in Spain called Matajudios, "Kill the Jews"? And you know what it means to "kill a Jew?" To drink a glass of sangria. But what does that say about the Spaniards? And why are beans called "
judíos
" too, how are they Jews exactly?

"I would have prohibited the use of these w
­
ords, like in French to call a miser a Jew, take a look at Larousse and you'll see how many strange things the word "Jew" can mean, and they are all negative. This is all disappearing, the French are aware of their language and the meaning of their words.”

"The plane! The flight to Paris is leaving soon."

W
hen I got to Ceuta I suddenly had a terrible craving for calamari. I had seven plates in less than two hours, another one please, waiter, and I thought about how I could turn this trip into a sto
­
ry, although maybe it would be better to talk more about trees and landscapes and less about wills and boys that die when they are only 1 year old.

From a literary perspective, it is impossible for a boy to die at the age of one. It is impossible. You would have to invent something else, that he was adopted, that he never existed, that he wasn't the son, that the father thought it was his son but it was someone else's, that he thought they were in love, but she had another lover. I ask myself if it only happened once, or if he had been with Fatima for many years, months.

That doesn't make a book. There's no st
­
ory there. There has to be some story there. I could make it more M
­
oroccan, talk about memory, of longing, of pain, but the only thing I felt in Tétouan was the desire to leave, to get out as soon as possible, along with Fortu, who esca
­
ped as soon as he could. We stayed another three days, but every day was harder than the last.