But here lies the whole problem, which is that the Sepharadim understood in their experience in exile that the way to keep their beliefs is by compromising, as for the Ashkenazim compromising meant death, and that is why ever since the fifties we compromise and they see it as a weakness, we concede and they consider us fools, this thing connects to the Arab problem that is always in the background in every conversation about origins, and the Palestinians compromised until they realized that the only way is to fight, they didn’t understand they are now facing new kind of Jews, different from the ones they knew in Safed and Hebron, Tiberius and Jerusalem, up until today we didn't understand, or maybe now the idea starts to penetrate, the idea that these Jews are different from us, their experiences are different, their conclusions about reality are different.
And so I walked the streets of Tetouan, waiting for someone to call my name, waiting for someone to say Moshe, and show me the way to the burning bush, no one called, but in these streets I found a lot of pieces of the mosaic which were lost for years, I found them and felt I can live alongside the Arabs, felt that we the Jews, can get along with them, and not just talk about the lack of choice that led to deporting more than half a million Arabs in 1948, up until the killing of two hundred Arab children during the Intifada, or of one hundred Arabs in Kfar-Kana, we always talk about the no choice situation, but is this no choice deriving from our own conception of the world, from the ghetto syndrome that took over the elite of the Israeli society, here on Maharaka Anual street, the street where I witnessed the world for the first time, I walked these streets, and realized I was Arab too, I saw the grin of the Israeli thinkers who ask people to have one true defining identity, all the way to dividing Israelis and Jews, to dividing Israeli and Sepharadi, as if you can't be both, but that would be a procrustean bed, and you can't put a man like me in such a procrustean bed, I, Arab, Jew, Mediterranean, of Israeli and French Nationality, and if I could, I'd ask for a French one too, how can you fit me in such a definitive identity, when I think that multi-identity is a clear advantage, not a disadvantage, it prepares you to walk the earth as a man of the world and not as a man threatened by the world.
Here in these streets, watching the darwish that sits at the corner of the street with both palms open like a book, the exact same way that poor man sat next to school, the one I always ran to when the bell rang to give him half a Dirham, here he is, sitting at the corner of Muhammad Torres Street, reads the world in his hands, reads with his eyes shut, maybe he is blind, he doesn’t move, hard to understand whether he is asking for charity, or maybe his charity is the air passes through his hands, he stays still for hours, he sits there since the creation of the world, my god, maybe it's Elijah the prophet, here in the streets of Tetouan, that just like a lot of other cities, is called little Jerusalem, maybe he is the last Jew here, the last prophet in the world, waiting for the moment the last Jew leaves to Jerusalem, he sits with his brown djellaba, and reads about my life, reads them to me silently, reads my birth and my death, reads my sons and daughters, reads all of my books, all my writings, reads my loves and my disappointments, my heartbreak, the days I left here in these streets, days of hope and waves, waves of happiness, he reads the death of my brother, he doesn’t cry about nothing and doesn’t laugh of nothing, just as when you look from above happiness and cries look the same, same long experience, maybe he is the prophet Ali, and he is going up to the skies just like that, with his open palms, to ask merci for the sons of Abraham who reached the end of history fighting each other, he'll ask for mercy, I know all he can ask for is mercy, sentence won't help but just lead to more sentence, and more death, and maybe the only mercy that exists is sentence, and doomed is that day of sentence and the people on that day...
"Every year,” Shlomo Assayag said, “the mayor invites us to the annual banquet, and he always seats the Jews right next to him, it's a little awkward for us, if you ever get stopped by a policeman, just mention you're Jewish, you'll receive total immunity, you don’t need to show your passport or any other papers for that matter"
Later, as I was crossing the border for a day in Spain, some officer at the check post looked at my passport and when he noticed I was born in Tetouan, he said "Ah... Inta Dyana!" which I obviously understood, that means "You're one of us", he was just looking for a "tip", like he does with every 'one of us', I tipped him so I could pass the border quicker, me and my brother surrounded him so no one would see him taking it, on the way to Ceuta, the Spanish city located in Africa, the border we always went through, as if to get to Europe, because the Jews always went after Europe, whenever they could, and always ended up getting slapped, That’s Israel following Esau, which is Edom, because he is the son, Jacob who follows his elder twin, it is commonly known in astrology that twin's births are timed in such a way that one twin's astrological sign is the other's subconscious one, if it's the sun sign or the rising sign, and to this day, Jacob follows Edom, Instead of course, going to talk to Ismael, maybe he is afraid god will hear.
I say these things to my Algerian wife and she replies: "You go to your Morocco, go to your Arabs, the things you say really make me angry, you're idealizing the Arabs now, etc." this is where it starts, the whole Zionist rhetoric which justifies every wrong we've done with the words "we had no choice" and every horror they inflicted with a collective blame on the whole of the Arab World. I think they're doing the same. And if we keep this up our future doesn’t look too bright.
It needs to be said that after Spain, Poland and Germany, and all our history with the rest of Europe, we need to finally understand we have no reason avoiding closer connection to the Arab nations, and that considering our history with them too, which I wouldn't define as ideal, but was probably reasonable in a territory shared by two nationalities, and maybe even more, watch them and emphasize, yes, just like that, emphasize the Arab aspects of our culture.
No I'm not very optimistic about that, I'm a lone voice calling in the desert, a shouting voice on the mountain, a lost voice in the dominate cacophony, but still, these things must be said, said at least, even without being heard.
8
- Why is it so dirty here, are those our Jews dad?
- We're going to a hotel.
- Great, we're going to a hotel, so much fun!
- I've talked to the manager of this transitional hotel, and he is doing nothing. He doesn’t even care that all the toilets are blocked and full of manure, we're going to a hotel.
- On Saturday?
- On Saturday.
- We'll take a taxi and go
- We'll take a taxi on Saturday on our way to Israel
- What? Didn't we drive on Sabbath in Tetouan?
- We did, to the sea, not to Israel
- Come son, let's get out of here, before catch something from this sewage, and get to Israel sick.
- I love hotels.
David Sananes 1996
I really appreciate all the questions you're asking me, but I'm not sure about how should I address them, I don’t know if it's an incredible opportunity to deal with the thirty seven years of my life, or is it a trap so you can write about me. This question will probably stay unanswered because I'm about to answer your questions. All I ask is that if you use this for your literary works, make it subtle, and in a way I won't be recognized. You know, I'm starting to become an important figure in Madrid now and that would get in my way.
We'll start from my childhood, the things I remember, the things I don't, since we were born on the same year and left Tetouan at the same age, you might expect we share the same memories. But according our conversations in Jerusalem a month ago, and a year ago, it seems that there's not much in common between our recollections from Tetouan. As I told you back then, and you were surprised to hear, and I was surprised of the things you wrote in your books and poems as well, I always thought Tetouan was a place where children grow up alone, without parents and adults. After talking to you about it I realized it was a thing only m
y parents made me feel. And by saying parents I mean my mother more than my father, who was preoccupied, or escaped into his work that way or the other and was almost never seen at home. My mom who used to paint when she was young found out there's nothing to fear from a total anarchy at home, and it was just the short cross eyed Spanish maid, Pepita, which you must remember, who showed us some sort of order and boundaries. That's what my mom emphatically resisted, and the fights, as odd as it may sound today, started when my mom asked for fewer boundaries. She always told us about her father's strictness, especially about how she was not allowed to move next to the table. Everyone with his own experiences, you keep saying you had a tough childhood, but maybe the answer is in how each of us related to the same situation, and maybe eight blocks away from each other offered very different situations. I remember I used to come over to your house every Wednesday and your mom would wash us many times, and cut our fingernails, I remember that because one time she mistakenly pulled out one of my nails and it hurt for weeks later, although that doesn't sound like a traumatic situation now.
But what traumas am I talking about, before I read your poems and talked to you I didn't realize I went through a great crisis when moving from Tetouan to Madrid. I thought everything's OK but I got stuck here a few days ago and I didn’t know what to do next, you know how hard it is for me to write letters, I always postpone it to the last moment. I remember the age of fifteen when you used to write me ten letters and I replied with one, it wasn't because I wasn't interested in all the music you wrote about, but because I always postponed it.
So maybe we'll address the last year. The trip to Jerusalem first of all, to my nephew's Bar-Mitzvah, I went there as if I was forced to, and then postponed my return one day after another, and I didn't want to leave Jerusalem, I didn't want to join everybody in Eilat, that was the discovery of Jerusalem, I don’t even remember telling you at the age of eighteen, as you mention in one of your letters, that being a Jew means marring a Jewish wife so my father won't cut me off his inheritance. But that memory alone says something about my Jewish situation back then, then and today. My father passed away this year too, that was expected in a way but it's still hard, he passed away a month after the Bar-Mitzvah, which leaves me with the inheritance, even though most of it went to my mom, but my mom won't cut me off of it even if I marry a gentile. But not only did I not marry a gentile, I also broke up with my Christian girlfriend after being with her for two years. That was probably the Jerusalem experience, there at the synagogue with the phylacteries, where I said to myself, Hello! David! David Sananes, it is I, the synagogue, the synagogue I used to attend in Tetouan, they called it the painted synagogue, La Tefila Pintada, I am the grandson of the Great David Sananes, the first grandson to carry his name.
I was there at the Yochanan Benzaquai synagogue in Jerusalem, and I was that boy that went with his father to the old synagogue in the Juderia on Sabbath again, and in front of me sat all of my Jews, here is Benshimol, and that gimp Mesias, and that guy who always used to insist on saying the Haftarah, everyone used to call him Rabbi Maftir, because you were not allowed to sell seats in the painted synagogue, that was the rule in that synagogue, one of the sixteen synagogues there, as you already know we were not allowed to build any more synagogues in Tetouan, It was a Psak-Halacha ruling there will be only sixteen, because if not, we would have ended up with a synagogue for every Jew, Sabbath's Shacharit quarrels all the time, and then the he said this about that and that stories, endlessquarrels ...
So I returned to my roots with Yochanan Benzaquai, to myself, and a month later, when my father died, my life changed. I started going to the synagogue every Saturday, and almost every day, said Kaddish, read the weekly portion, registered every website talking about Judaism, in French, Spanish and even some in English. That's where I discovered the Rambam, and I searched the Torah then, I read the Torah over and over again, I looked up all the commandments, and I’ll tell you my conclusion.
I am basically repeating the things we briefly talked about in Jerusalem a month ago, I came to the conclusion that the most important thing now is to build the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, half of commandments in the Torah are related to the Holy Temple, I decided that the synagogue is not for me. I surprised you when I told you that. I was surprised to hear you reached similar conclusions. Are we crazy, or is that got to do with us growing up in the same city, being born the same year and going through similar experiences? Is it an astrology thing?
I stopped here two days ago and it could have lasted years, so I'm sending you this letter and that's it. I hope I answered some of your questions at least. I found it interesting, I'm just not sure I was clear with the things I told you. I wish you a happy new year, and I hope your children and your wife are fine.
Best regards
David
9
- What will happen to our maid now, what will happen to Fatima?
- She will manage, it's her country
- So why did she cry?
- She loved us.
- Will she find work?
- Why are you worried about everybody now, it's their country, their land, they will take care of themselves just like Arabs do
- Dad said the Arabs beat their maids
- That's not our problem anymore I don't know what will they do.
- Why didn't we bring her with us?
- To Israel... bring Fatima to Israel
- Yes, why not?
- Because she's Arab, and we are at war with the Arabs, they hate us even more ever since we won the six-day war.
- And why are we at war with the Arabs mom?
- Because they don't want us to have our own country.
La Alliance - Caracas 1995
This is not a will, as you are my only child, and you inherit everything, there are no funds you don’t know about, and no money I am donating to anyone else.
We didn't have the smoothest relationship you and I, but I guess that's only natural in father and only son relationships, I wasn't easy either, I kept one big secret inside, bigger than I could handle, carried it inside for years, and I couldn't tell you anything, maybe I could, maybe I should have done it when you were fifteen, but your mom was against it, maybe she was right, it's not an easy thing to do, maybe it's easier in Venezuela than in Madrid, but it isn't, what is not easy you ask? You'll soon find out, actually there was more than one secret in this thing, and your mom wasn't exactly the one you think you knew. If we had lived in a different country, less crazy than Venezuela, maybe you would have noticed your name is a bit different from other names, Benzimra, it's different from all the Lopez and the Hernandez, but you were privileged to live in a country with almost no racism at all, especially with no anti-Semitism. So there it is, I've said it already, I'm Jewish, I don't know if that will surprise you or not, maybe you already know, maybe your mom secretly told you, maybe you went to check out the synagogue and found distant relatives of mine there, found that name in the phonebook, one of those distant relatives is my twin brother, I have seen him in the synagogue this week, I saw him and he didn't recognize me, I barely recognized him too, we just stared at each other, I told him I was from Miami, I spoke English, for years I was embarrassed to go to the synagogue, embarrassed, as my story was known in Tetouan, the city's disgrace, everyone must have whispered about it there, he married a gentile in Madrid, and not any gentile, he married a prostitute, a prostitute... I'm sure your mom did not tell you about that, or maybe she did, I know you two had a very deep and special connection between you, maybe the word prostitute is not exactly accurate, there were a lot of young girls from good Spanish families that did that thing, food was scarce, they needed to feed families sometimes. Go on and ask me how I found her, well, you know that already, I met her in Madrid, right next to the University Of Madrid, it didn’t happen in an innocent café like we told you, and it wasn’t that romantic, I needed a woman, like a man needs a woman, I was alone, young and horny there in Madrid, a
way from my mom, away from all that I knew so well, I could buy a woman with the little money I hadback then, no, she wasn't the first, and won't be the last as you already know, she was one, just one, and later on, such a special one, doleful, made me feel homesick, just the thought of her gave me an erection, yes, son, as we never were too puritans with language in this house, why start now, after I'm gone, when you read these lines, you may say my attraction was primarily physical, a biological need, that's right, there was a lot of warmth there, and our conversations became more and more special.
I hope this discovery doesn't make you change your mind about your mom, you need to understand, she was a wonderful woman and she loved both you and me, up until the day she died five years ago, I know I made her suffer, with my escapes, she suffered from the lack of communication you and I shared, but she really loved us, she really loved period. She was the eighth child of a large family, from a small town, named Vinarós, not far from Valencia, maybe you will want to visit there on the way to Tetouan, because I want to tell you about this city, Tetouan, a city whose name alone fills me with hard yearnings, until I tried and managed to stop thinking about it for years, my city of birth, the yearnings don’t only express in tears, I can, when I say that name now, when I write it, I can feel Tetouan in my right knee, on its inner side, that's where I feel the pain, right there every time, when I think about my mom, Simi Benzimra, maybe you should visit her grave, when I think about her I feel the pain in my right toe, such a sharp pain, as if they're cutting my toe off with no anesthesia, of course, my son, Fernando Benzimra, who would have believed that my son will carry such a name, Fernando Benzimra, Christian, you may even say Atheist, but I know your catholic mom had passed her catholic ways to you, no doubt, it runs through the moms, you may have never attended church, and still, your son has been baptized, I know you weren’t baptized, your mother and I wanted it this way, we didn't want any religion at home, that's also why we moved to Venezuela, and left Madrid, but I know you and your mom took your son to church without telling me, she didn’t tell me anything, and neither did you, and no, I didn’t follow you, not at all, that's one of those things one just know, as much as he tries to deny it, he feels it inside,
Keys to Tetouan Page 4
