Gates to Tangier

by Mois Benarroch

  No one really knows what they are doing here. The Jews, the Jews should explain this to everyone else, what this all means. I think that the Jews have tried to explain it to everyone, but they're tired of exp­laining now. They are tired of being killed, of being killed and then being guilty for being killed. Again we think it is over, that if we have a country it will all end, that they will stop killing us. But it wasn't enough. After­ we thought, we'll win the war. Some will die, but it won't end there. We thought that if we h­ad an atomic bomb they'd stop killing us, but not even that could save us. Well, now, let's make peace, we think, any way we can. If we make peace they won't kill us. But ever since we have made peace, they've killed thousands. What is this? A war of peace? And then after we make peace there will be another reason to kill us, maybe because winn­ers acted like losers. They kill us bec­ause we seem strong, or because we seem weak, or for another reason, they keep killing us, until the e­nd of time, and they don't need an­y reason. We are the sacrificial lamb, the blood of God, the oil on the altar where God makes his sacri­fices, because it looks like God likes his sa­crifices, and above all he likes them human, we beg God, not so much, not generation after generation, just one generation without deaths, without a Holocaust, without explo­ding buses, without children that come back without legs and hands, God, we are begging for a generation where no o­ne is killed for being Jewish. Fine, let them be killed for no reason, or because they wanted to ste­al something, but not for being Jewish, God, can we ask for that? Or is it too much to ask? After all the persecution, thirty years, forty years, and then you can come with all your demands, how about that, then ask us to respect your laws, from the easiest to the hardest, even the hardest to understand, because your laws are from another world, they're strange, they aren't human, it is true. And this trip, I don't believe anything that has happened. How can it be that he died and Papá didn't know? It is impossible. I think he never existed.

  “You know, Silvia, he had us going the whole time, it isn't his son. If it were his son, he would have known that he died, he might have tried calling by telephone, or coming here and asking, he was here a few times in Ceuta on business, he could have investi­gated. You don't think...”

  “What? That he sent us here for nothing?”

  “Not entirely. He wanted us to understand something, it was a journey in order to learn something. Maybe he wanted us to learn about all the Jews that converted to Islam, here, the ones that no one talks about, thousands, hundreds of thousands that converted because they were forced to, or, for a stupider reason, or maybe more normal, in order to avoid paying Dhimi taxes, special Jewish taxes, because they didn't have money. Does that make sense? I want us to understand. I studied the Kabbalah, he wanted us to save the nitsosot, the sparks, of all the converts that are screaming from the earth.”

  “What are the nitsosot? I don't know anything about that.”

  “They're part of the Neshama, the soul, and are stuck to it, but only the Jews are connected to the Neshama, you know, and that's why when they convert their souls scream, it is a very intense suffering, and the whole world can hear those screams, that's the ringing in your ear that many people hear. 20 percent of people hear those sounds. Whistles, humming, sirens, horns...you know that in the year 1600 they made all the Jews in Fez convert, and even today you know who the descendants of those converts are, they're named Hamo, Hamu, Benhamu, Bentato, Elbaz, Sabag, they're all Jewish and Muslim last names, and everyone knows where they come from. But in this country no one talks about it. Everything goes unsaid. In Moroc­co these things don't get out, but I met ex-Jews in New York, where they are able to talk.

  Or even in Paris, it is the new world, and New York has the aura of a new world, a world where you can say anything, anything can be said. The ce­nter of the United States is New York, freedom starts in New York before it reaches the rest of the country, so they te­ll you. My grandmother or my mother lit candles on Fri­days, a Muslim from Morocco will tell you this, and when they say it a Tikkun happens in the world. And the nitsosot are free and can breathe, after years of repress­ion, and there, very far from the country where we were born, we are brothers, Muslims, Jews, Arabs, Christians, but here we are enemies, we were always enemies, and it doesn't much matter what they say in the universities, bec­ause now it is very fashionable to say that the Jews and Mus­lims live in total harmony.”

  "Many people say that in Paris, too. They didn't live like we did, obviously."

  "Yes, but there they are far away from this place. When we are far from the Middle Ea­st we can see what we have in common, but here or in Israel we only see what separates us and distances us. Maybe that was what our father wanted us to understand, he wanted us to see the Arabs in another way. Didn't we talk about that? Our Yosef is Arab, isn't he?”

  “Half-Jewish.”

  "Not really. In Judaism he's Mus­lim, because his mother was Muslim. According to Islam he's Jewish because his father is Jewish. If he even existed. Maybe it was just that when she was pregnant Papá wanted to help her and help his son, and he took pity on her. The Jews are merc­iful sons of merciful people, and now, after his death, he wanted to take care of them, and maybe he saw it as some way of giving thanks to the country where he was born, and to its inhabitants. I don't know, but I don't think it was his son, because if it were his son he would have known about him, he would have sent a private investigator to find out about him.”

  "Maybe what he wanted was that we visit Fáti­ma, that we remember that she raised us, that is also possible. I don't think we would have come back to Morocco if it weren't for that odd will that he left us, isn't that right?”

  “I am the only one who came back to Tétouan a few years ago, and I don't think I would have come back. There's nothing here. When you come back the only thing you see is your ab­sence. You see what has disappeared. What is a city? A city is your community, and the moment that community disappears, the city disappears. Muslims also feel it, they live in a city without Jews, a country that is no longer the same country. A Moroc­co without Jews, and at least there are still some thousand Jews in Casablanca, but in Algeria there are none left, thousands of years of Jewish life have disappeare­d, same with Iraq, Spain, and those countries fail because they are suddenly missing something that had always been there, I don't know if it was essential to their lives but it is as if all the Arabs in Israel had suddenly disappeare­d. What should we do? Does the land w­ant them back?”

  “I'm not sure. I think we would be better off without them.”

  “You see, that's the reason for this trip, that you under­stand that no, Spain after five hundred years st­ill feels the absence of its Jews and its Musli­ms, five hundred years later, all these countries thought they would be better off without Jews, but that isn't the case.”

  "What I believe is that you have some crazy ideas. Inter­esting, but they don't make sense.

  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 su­re it will start with this ridic­ulous 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 a­fter 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 bro­thers 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 mac­hine, 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 pick­ed them up in Israel twenty years later, you see, twenty years of rocks, the rocks are human material, and eben in Hebr­ew 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 fam­ous writer, I would be the most famous writer in Spain. The son says these words in the cemetery, a week af­ter the death of his father, before having read the will and before knowing about the secret son. The­n 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 se­nt the crazy ones to Israel, the poor, those that couldn't rec­over from the Shoah, the worthless ones, the Nebej, that's what we called them, Nebej, and how could we confr­ont them, since they had already decided that we were their ene­mies and that we are the biggest enemies of the Arabs, but we’re not enemies of the Ar­abs in Morocco. We were their friends.

  Without a doubt the book will have a disproportionate idealization of the relationship between Jews and A­rabs, they've already forgotten the pogroms, the Arabs stri­king 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 indu­stry. 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 Moroc­can 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 stran­ger in the Damascus kasba.”

  “You just don’t understand, that's what all the Moroccans in Isr­ael 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 dis­appear 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 tr­y to have a good time with the people around them, it is sadomasochism at the highest level, you kn­ow? 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 mak­e 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 ta­x issues, around '66, and he was in jail for three days, because what they wanted was money, because he h­ad money bought a new American car every year? He had a driver so they had to get m­oney 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 may­or, who yelled at the chief of police, who received his mon­ey 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 Arab­s 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 fo­rce 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 p­eople 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 Ara­bs, 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 hist­ory 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 getti­ng too philosophical, I don't like books that are too philosophical. Let the chara­cters 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 situ­ation.”

  “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.”

  SILVIA

  Before leaving I want to cry for the dead, for my dead, cry for my brother Israel who loved Isra­el more than anyone.

  "Israel is my name, and we are one and the same," you told me whe­n we were discussing the Lebanon war, Arik Sharon, Sabra, and Shatila. You wer
e the victim of a new Jewish journey. A last journey? I want to cr­y for the brother that I never met, for Yosef, because I don't know where he is buried, and because none of us a­sked, 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 m­et, I want to cry my own tears,”

  "Then that means that Ignatia is what you nee­d. I have it here in my bag, in the first a­id 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 di­gest this.”