Gates to Tangier (7 page)

And now we'll see, we will see how time stopped in our city. Time is waiting for us there, I know, we'll go back and understand everything, we'll go back and everything will make s
­
ense, we can put the puzzle together. Now we see, we see as the plane takes off and lands again, the world will be what it was, Mamá will tell us everything is all right and later will say that "someti
­
mes you have to give life a push," and Papá will expl
­
ain the news again and say, "Don't believe anything politicians say, there is always something else they are hiding." Well, this is what is hiding behind that sentence. Another son. An illegitimate son.

"F
lying doesn't make you a bird, and airplanes aren't free."

"There are days when everything seems clear and obvious, but then the waves and their foam erase everything, even memory.”

"The sea swallows us little by little, its patience is infinite.”

"And in any case, we are islands among sto
­
rmy water, and every day the waters surround us.

"But the sea is also our life, our es
­
cape, the road to return, the possibility of drowning.”

"If I were an ocean, I would have swallowed everything.

It eats us little by little, the earth is eager to see us below her.”

"Everyone has a mission in life, but men most of all.”

"We were created us to be prisoners on earth, animals and men.”

"A prisoner of everything, of ourselves, the summit of all creation and our mission is to be eaten, our mission is to end our lives, the day of our death we fulfill our mission, the inhabitants of the earth will gorge themselves on our meat and the earth will be able to make gas from what they eat, and others will ride their cars.”

"Like the rain that fills the sea and later makes the cloud that gives us rain."

"So we come and go and all the qu
­
estions come and go with us, everywhere."

––––––––

G
üisqui
again - that's how the Span
­
iards say it, not whisky.
Mi güisqui
. Sometimes I'd like to wear a helmet that records all of my thoughts so I could save myself the work of writing these words, I'm flying to Málaga, an hour and fifteen minutes on the plane, two hours delay, they're not ser
­
ving us drinks. The flight attendants are doing everything they can to avoid the passengers so that we can't as
­
k for Coca Cola. My neighbor in back of me managed to get a drink, and his wife too, they got two, but a second later the attendant had an att
­
ack of deafness, she couldn't hear the quiet little birds calling, and disappeared towards the cabin. Well, what can you do, always discriminating against the Moroccans, but I st
­
ill have some
guisqui
and I drink it, I only wanted a little bit of soda.

I remember the journalist that interviewed me and asked if I was racist because I didn't vote for the partie
­
s with more than 90%
ashkenazim
, he asked if I were racist and I hadn't expected the question, I wasn't ready to answer, I could have said that I actually prefer the Russian whores, and I also could have s
­
aid that's a positive racism, after s
­
o many years screwing Moroccan whores, now we want Moldovans, Ukrainians, Russians, Russians of other c
­
olors, blue, Russian and Ukrainian, whores from Uzbekistan, Tajikstan, Whoreistan, we like them all, me above all, but I don't like blondes, esp
­
ecially the natural-looking ones.

The whiskey won't help you, your computer will, though, a computer is like a good woman, a computer fulfills your desires, everything you want. Or that other journalist that asked me what I thought of the polit
­
ical situation and I said I'm in favor of a two-st
­
ate solution, and so she responded, "so that there are less
ashkenazim
?" and I laughed but immediately asked her not to write that, I said that she said that and not me.

That's how you know they are afraid, when they talk about the Jewish majority and the
ashkenazim
maj
­
ority, they are afraid that the
Sephardim
and the Arabs will unite, for them they are too sim
­
ilar. B
­
ut we see ourselves as so very different, although more similar to the Arabs than to the
Ashkenazim
, so that's what they are afraid of. They are also afraid that they have been left with nothing, but I'm not afraid of not having anything, my Judaism is very strong and no secularism or ultraorthodoxy can take it away from me, at least in the next hundred years my Judaism will still exist, if we don't all become
Ashkenazim
. Baruj Kimerling wro
­
te a book about this, but I didn't read it because I couldn't buy it, it was too expensive, and I didn't even have a dime. If we don't receive this inheritance I don't know how we will live, how can I keep writing like I promised myself, only to write, against all odds, against everything, despite them, despite everyone, to continue wr
­
iting more and more books until they come out my nose? How much time can I keep going without worrying about this, ten books, twenty, thirty...

For how many books can you ignore a wri
­
ter that is worth something?

I want to know. I have an idea for a new novel, but I need money for this, a lot of money. Six months in Paris, six in New York, six in Caracas, the book will be called "The Autobiography of Menahem Benaim" and will have five chapters about a forty-year old man who tells his life story. Every chapter will be a different autobio
­
graphy, with the common thread being that the author was born in Morocco and is a writer, he m
­
ight have emigrated to Israel, or to Madrid, or to New
­
York, or to Caracas, or to Paris, in each chapter his life is different.

I have another idea, a fifty-year old man who falls in love with a twenty-eight year old woman, he is married, she is single. Their age difference scares them, so they dec
­
ide to meet once a year for five years, for one day, and they are together for 24 hours that day. If they can keep their promise for five years they will marry, they will know that their love is true. They keep their promise for four years but the fifth year he or she, or both of them, don't come, and I al
­
so want to write a book about a family looking for a lost brother.

The
guisqui
and the whiskey are going to my head. To survive I have to do what the Japanese writers do, publish a book every six months, a year, maximum, because a book in Israel has about eight months in the bookstores, above all in the larger chain, Lubowsky, which ow
­
ns eighty percent of the bookstores in Israel. Almost a monopoly. And eight months is the limit, careful, it is a minefield, it is your life, it is our life, the life of Israeli writers.

I already understood that we, the Jews, we will always be the victims of others, yet knowing the truth doesn't help me much, and if I criticize my fellow citiz
­
ens I am always afraid that some crazy will use my review to kill me or my descendants; I can't be innocent like the prophets Isaias and Ezequi
­
el, they still quote the criticisms of Jesus, and maybe if I had children they would also be murdered by Chr
­
istians, so there is a limit to what one can criticize, I don't want to put my children in danger, the Oslo Accords are long gone, the All Powerful, I ask that you see the g
­
ood and not the bad, and that you see more go
­
od than bad. I promise you one thing, dear read
­
ers, I write what I think, and I don't change anything, if you want to know what I think, well this here is what I think, in the pages you read I don't hide anything. The
Ashkenazim
brought their Polish lives to Israel, nothing has chang
­
ed, one friend brings another, the judge names his wif
­
e and judges his sister and there is no law in Israel. The legal sy
­
stem is corrupt, and without justice the town will revolt, and as always, this land wants justic
­
e, demands justice, and won't take any more, won't tolerate injustic
­
e, our enemies will live with our injustice, and nothing, nothing will stop our journey to Tétouan, I don't want to go to Tétouan, what if I lose myself there? I never thought I would go back, but for one hundred and fift
­
y thousand dollars, although maybe someone already stole part, bank accounts in Switzerland, who knows? I thought there was more, someone moved the money into their account, surely, but there is something left, and what does my half
­
-brother matter? Why does he matter at all? Maybe he has four wiv
­
es and forty children, we'll see, may an
efendi
.

They always say that every rich Arab desc
­
ends from the Jews, and how could they not? They all married Jews in Morocco, and didn't even have to conv
­
ert to Islam, the few Jews that kept on being Jewish are genetically somewhat crazy, the ones that didn't convert to Christianity or Islam, because most did change their religion, and changed it pretty easily. The stories they tell us of those that sacrificed themselves instead of converting are in a very small minority. The others converted so that they wouldn't have to pay the
Dhimi
taxes, each generation of converts to Islam and Christianity left stronger Jews, each generation, those that remained were strong
­
er and harder, and more psychotic, gener
­
ation after generation until the Zio
­
nists came along and decided to be sick like all the rest, fuck over everyone against them, they finally learned from the French, the Spanish, the Polish, the Russians, and the Arabs, in order to exist you have to fuck everyone over as much as possible, your enemies but also your fellow citizens, this is the core of every country, and it is a modern country, there is no compassion in the modern country, only cruelty and war, but I still hope that all this is for a reason, a reason beyon
­
d time and space, reason in the deepest sense of the word, for humanity, a mystic reason, a Mess
­
ianic reason, the reason is always Messianic, I hope that all this suffering in Israel is for a reason, for the
Ashkenazim
during the Shoah, for the Arabs who have been deported, for the
Seph
­
ardim
whose culture has been erased, that there is a reason for all this and that the sun will still come up.

And here, they're announcing that the plane is lan
­
ding and that computers must be turned off. We land in Málaga. From here we went to Marseilles and to Jerusal
­
em in 1974, after the Yom Kippur war, heav
­
ens on earth await us. The flight attendant asks me to turn off my computer.

“
Wa
, when are you going to find a real job, and stop working all the time without making any money?”

“A wadel
Fortu, we see each other once a year and you alw
­
ays say the same thing to me, you could try changing it up a little bit."

"Ten books and you don't do anything for yourself or for anyone else, Alberto."

"But I do do things for others, for the ones that cut the tre
­
es, the truckers who carry the trees, the paper
­
industry, the exporters and importers of paper, newspapers, journalists, business directors, civil servants in the Ministry of Culture who can decide whether or not to buy my books for the libraries or not, editors, translators, banks, you might not believe it but even the bankers care about literature in your country, Spai
­
n, once they invited me to a conference. I can keep going if literature gives work to that many people, many people live off my books, ten books are a lot.”

"Yes, everyone is living off your books except for you."

"I don't lose anything though either, there are other writers that pay to publish their books, but at least I haven't ever paid, and I think that someday I will make money from my books, or at least my children will get the mon
­
ey. It is a feeling that is stronger than myself."

"A long-term investment, but you could try to make somethings a little more short-term, and maybe do two things at once."

"Yes, that's what I always do, two things at once, b
­
ut in a way literature is always more importa
­
nt than everything else, or the other things never become more important."

"Tell me something, how can you talk to me, dri
­
nk whiskey, and type on your computer at the same time?"

"It's like breathing."

"What do you mean it is like breathing?"

"You can breathe and talk to me and drink whiskey at the same time, right? And I can write at the same time."

"Tell me something, what are we going to do when we find our long lost brother?"

"Half-brother, half. I don't know what we are going to d
­
o, but what I do know is that I will write about it."

A
re there coincidences in life? Premonitions? A week ago my second cousin Yitshak Sananes called me. A cousin I played with every day when we were little, and who always told me I was the most beautiful wo
­
man in the world. Maybe he was in love, the way children fall in love. And a week ago, aft
­
er a long time, he calls me from Miami. He tells me that a year ago, one of the cousins gave him my phone number and he thought about calling me every week but didn't know what to say since it had been so long since we sa
­
w each other. But in the end he called.