Gates to Tangier (16 page)

What does it mean, to go b
­
ack? I'm here, I'm
­
always here, but people, if you stop for a single second you could see me and all your families, we are here, very close, but you're afraid. Maybe that we'll ask for money? But we don't need money anymore. You were afraid that we'd s
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ee you here in the airports, and that we would say what you were d
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oing and thinking, thinking about how to steal more and more money, but brothers, I don't judge you, and I don't want any part of the inheritance, I don't need it. I don't have anything to do with that, I only want to talk a little bit, to say some words, to explain myself, to ask for forgiveness if I have offended you, to talk a little bit about our childhood gam
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es, about the apartment where we play
­
ed, do you remember? Who was it that found the key to that apartment that Papá wasn't renting, where we would go to play?

We ran all over the house, it was the forbidden house. Do you remember, Isaque, you held me in your arms there, because I was afraid, and in your arms, Silvia, I felt safe, one hundred percent safe, I knew that with you two nothing could happen to me, and when they threw rocks at me at school I knew that you were out there somewhere, in Gaza, even in Gaza I felt you close to me and knew that nothing could happ
­
en to me, no rock could touch me. But they did attack me, and they did kill me with that rock. I don't understand how a man of twenty years of age could still fe
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el the arms of his brothers, and that he could think that that feeling would save him. But a strong Israeli soldier, twenty years old, is still the child that he was, inside, feeling what he f
­
elt as a child. 

I am not sure if what happened was supposed to happen, but that was my life, and when I see everyone running from one side to another I know that I had a full life. Twenty years are a lot, and in reality what is time anyway? There isn't a big difference between twenty and eighty years, why do we work so hard to lengthen our lives, what for? We are afraid of death, that's why. Fear paralyzes us, we are slaves to this fear, and that is why instead of living our lives fully, instead of taking care of the poor and the sick, we spend all of our money putting off death, and it is not to save our lives, because lives must be saved when there is still life left. And not just to put off death.

"B
e careful, sister, there are rocks coming your way."

"Rocks have followed us since before we were born."

"They come to the city of lights, rocks that follow the Jews, rocks of sand, rocks of marble, sacred rocks. Salt from the cursed city.

"And that is what I have done since I arrived. I leave the city every day. Every day I'm heading out of the city.”

"You see the city in which peace is far away, like the rock of life.”

"I have been leaving for thousands of years, brother, but I can't leave the city.”

"A rock has followed me my whole life and now my body lies beneath a rock. My family comes and p
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ut small rocks on my grave, and I don't want rocks, I want a son, I want to be a father, to be father to a son.

I
t was the day I became a gynecologist. I ca
­
lled my mother to tell her, and my grandmother told me that she wasn't doing very well.

"Why didn't you call earlier?" I ask
­
ed, but I remembered that she didn't even know how to use a telephone. My mother was in a coma most of the time, that's what my grandmother explained, and I, her daughter, a doctor, could not help her. It was ten in the morning. I called Marcel. We hadn't seen each other for weeks, but we had stayed in touch by telephone. I told him that I was going to see my mother, who was sick, and he suddenly said:

"You're not coming back."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I have a feeling. You're going to stay in Mo
­
rocco, you'll stay and work as a doctor there. I know you. I have a feeling.”

"No way!" was my first reaction. “No way, I told you already I'm coming back to you, it is only a matter of time.”

“Time comes and goes, it comes and goes.”

"Fine, I have to go, I love you, I'll call you. I want to go by train, I'll see how I can do it in the fastes
­
t way possible. You already know how much planes terrify me, and with all the accidents lately, I'm even more terrified. I'll go by train.”

I said goodbye to the nurses, and one of them, a Mo
­
roccan, told me that there was a bus that goes from Paris to Algeciras.

"It goes from Gare du Nord, and I think that there is one that leaves at four.”

I called SNCF, and they told me that to get to Algeciras I would have to change trains six times if I left at two, but that there was a night train leaving for Madrid at eight that would arrive at five, and from there I could take the Talgo to Sevilla, and from there go to Algeciras. I called the bus company and they told me there was space on the bus to Algeciras, that it left at two, and would arrive in Algeciras at four the next day, depending on traffic. In the past that same bus went all the way to Tangier, but now it stops in Algeciras. I reserved a seat. I remembered how I came to Paris on a bus, because it was cheaper, now the price difference didn't matter to me as much. I ra
­
n home and packed my suitcase, packing very little, the few things I had since I was still a student. But I had just become a doctor. They had offered me a job in the hospital where I had just finished my residency.

When I arrived at the bus I saw that there were already pass
­
engers inside. The bus came from London and went all the w
­
ay to Algeciras. A three to four day journey.

When I got on the bus I could smell those already there, the smell of alcohol, but they were qui
­
et the whole journey. The English didn't live up to their reputa
­
tion of being very noisy.

The driver announced that the next stop was Bordeaux, then San Sebastian, Burgos, Madrid, Málaga, then Algeciras. The bus was very comfortable, I was lucky to be sitting alone, I had a double seat to myself. I brought a pretty thick book to read for the journey, it was by Philip Roth,
Operation Shylock
. Marcel had given it to me. I realized that almost all of the authors I liked to read were Jews. Modiano, Jabes, Bashevis Singer. But I also really like Tahar Ben Jelloun. Sometimes I won
­
dered if he weren't a Jew. There is something Jewish about his books, he always seems to be talking about Jewish food when he talks about fo
­
od, his Moroccans always seem Jewish, like the Moroccans I see in the flea markets on Sundays, eating Merguez sausage one af
­
ter another and speaking French mixed with Moroccan Arabic. Moroccans, Tunisians, and some Algerians from small towns like Tlemcen or Ain Temouchent, but never Algiers, they're already city peo
­
ple and never eat in popular restaurants, they eat in the quality French restaurants, and like all Jews in history they are more French than the French.

"A crazy book," Marcel had said, about the book. I rem
­
ember reading his books in the past. They were fu
­
n but they also had parts that bored me.

I lay down in my seat and covered myself with the light blanket I brought. All my thoughts were of Marcel's words, that I wasn't going to ret
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urn. He said it as if he knew something I didn't know yet. Or maybe I did. But I wanted to be the one to announce the ne
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ws when the time came. The women need me there, here there are thousands of gynecologists, here I could be a gynecologist with a good salary, but there I could help the women of my town, women that ne
­
eded my help. The salary would be much lower but what happens is that all the doctors from Africa come to study here and then they stay instead of returning home. In the end Morocco loses the citize
­
ns it needs the most. I'm not saying it is easy, and I'm not judging anyone, But if I can't be a mother, I could at least help the women in my to
­
wn to be mothers, this is more important than salary and all the comforts Paris can offer.

And other than that, Paris was bringing me down. It was drowning me. It was no longer the city I first came to...or maybe I just see things differently now. It isn't just the beauty of its streets, buildings that seem like parts of museums. Suddenly I see people's faces more, faces that haven't seen sun, just like the city's sky. It is as if the whole city is full of depressed people that c
­
an't connect to the world, can't ev
­
en give a smile to the person in front of them.

The faces on the metro were taking me over, every day I traveled in the sun of my Tangier and my Casablanca, from Tétouan and from Chefchaouen, I remember that Farid, my high school boyfriend, had told me that he missed the sun, so I told him I liked the clouds. I like the clouds because they make people more serious. The sun turns everyone into clowns, clowns that don't go anywhere. You see, sunny countries, like Morocco, are undeveloped, but when you have cold you have to find solutions to man
­
y problems, come up with technology to survive. This forces you to advance. I remember that he told me:

"Yes, but what good is all that technology if they don't know how to be happy?"

Ten years of studies in Paris had to go b
­
y before I understood how intelligent that sentence was. He must have heard it from his grandmother, because it seemed like such o
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ld wisdom. What do you live for? What is progress for? In the end only the black Africans laugh in Paris, or the Arabs, or the Jews, not everyone, some, those that haven't yet turned French. Their children will be like Parisians, absent, expressionless, full of culture and customs, but without laughter.

And later I realized that you see so few babies in Paris with their mothers, just wom
­
en and more women, alone. Who has babies anymore? I saw births in the hospital, but what do they do with the babies later? It is like they disappear, why don't we see them? And if you see them it is only on Sundays, a mother with her child, or with two, never more than two, and if you watch them a few minutes the mother starts saying don't do this, don't do that, a smack, sometimes she hits them, only small beatings, but this is the violence of the strong against the weak, in full daylight, without anyone caring, without anyone stopping. And later the kids they hit go all over the world with Doctors without Borders, they end up on the television talking about kids in Algeria or Brazil.

I'm sure that it is worse in other countries, but I had never seen a mother hit her child in broad daylight, in fro
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nt of everyone. Maybe they're ashamed of it. I traveled for a week with Marcel to Israel, and I never saw a mother hit her child, I even saw a child hit his mother and she didn't hit him back. The truth is it seemed a bit strange to me, but they told me that in Israel they don't hit children. Maybe that's why later they tur
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n into soldiers that think that anything g
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oes, even hitting children, being conquerors, and feeling like liberators. The truth is that Israel seemed like a really Moroccan country, a close relative of Tangier or Casablanca. I felt like Morocco would look like Israel if we investe
­
d a few million dollars. But maybe it is better that it doesn't look like Tel Aviv. I saw that they were building more and more buildings, as if the whole country was suffering from a mental illness they made them build without stopping, as if their fate depended on it. The problem is that I really felt at home, between the
shuwarma
stands and the unbearable Israeli catcalling, the Israelis who talk to me in Hebrew, as if I were one of them. I understood what they were saying to me without understanding a single word. I knew that I shouldn't respond or turn around and above all I shouldn't smile, every smile would cause me hours of regret.

The night fell before I knew it. I felt Paris already behind us. I felt relieved, as if a huge weight was lifted. Why do people let themselves live that nightmare? Perhaps I really won't go back. I think I won't go back, but I'll think about it a few more days.

We stopped at a gas station. Despite the fact that there were bathrooms on the bus, most passengers ran to the station bathrooms. I guess it isn't very comfo
­
rtable to use the bathrooms on the bus. Lat
­
er I went to the cafeteria and took my coffee to a table. A boy who had passed by my seat before sat down at my side. After the stress of having to travel had passed, I felt much more relaxed.

"I read that book," he said, pointing at the Roth book.

"I haven't yet, so don't tell me. I'm going to read it on the bus, or hope so at least.”

"I'm a writer."

"Great. And Jewish too, I'm sure?"

"How did you know? I don't have a Jewish nose. He smiled.

"Simple. Everyone who talk
­
s to me is Jewish. Boyfriends, friends. That's my life.

"And you don't like Jews?”

“No, it's not that. I'm not anti-Semitic. It isn't that I like or don't like them. My boyfriend Marcel is Je
­
wish, and my best friend is Jewish, but I can't stand Israelis, I don't like what they do to the Palestinians.”

"I live in Israel."

“Just what I needed. I'm going to see my mother who is sick in Morocco, and I've found an Israeli who will tell me that it is okay to shoot kids.”

"I haven't said anything. I was also born in Morocco. I'm going to Granada now for a book reading there, to read my poems. The book is called
A Corner in Tétouan
.”

“Ah! And you are from Tétouan!
Inta Diana
, one of us.”

“Yes, from Tétouan.”