Lucena

by Mois Benarroch

“A lawyer,” repeated Isaac. “When someone has a trial, I represent them before the Tribunal.”

  “Be not like the lawyers,’ said Samuel. “It is written in the Pirké Avot. Such a thing does not exist among us. Everyone presents his issues before the rabbi, without lawyers.”

  “Whenever someone needs to sign a contract, he comes to me,” explained Isaac. “And also whenever they have a legal or social question.”

  “Now I understand,” said Samuel. “You are like a rabbi.”

  “No, nothing like that,” answered Isaac. “I studied five years to be a lawyer.”

  “Among us, a rabbi has to study fifteen years to get his license.”

  “Is that so?” commented Isaac. “Fifteen years! I wouldn’t have lasted.”

  “Not many do last,” lamented Samuel. “And don’t think they earn much either.”

  “Are you sure I can’t go to Málaga today?” persevered Isaac.

  Someone interrupted the conversation. “You can go to Córdoba, from there to Sevilla and from Sevilla to Antequera by the old road but it will take a long time, more than an hour. Maybe an hour and a half.”

  “An hour and a half is a long time?” smiled Isaac. “But that isn’t much! An hour and a half is pretty fast.”

  “How long does it take by the new highway?” said Isaac, laughing.

  “Nine minutes and twenty four seconds.”

  “How precise,” commented Isaac.

  “That’s the new highways for you,” said Samuel. “You get your car to the hydraulic zone and the car works by guiding magnets and water currents.”

  “If you say so...but an hour and a half isn’t much to me.” said Isaac.

  “The highway is fine, Mr. Isaac, but people in Lucena don’t believe its right to have someone come from a long way off and not invite them to eat. That is why we say they are changing the water. It is a saying,” explained Samuel. “You certainly don’t know the customs of Spain so that is why you don’t understand.”

  “But if you are in a hurry,” said Samuel, “come to my house.” You will recuperate with the lamb we slaughter in your honor and then we will travel with you to your place.”

  Isaac was at the point of laughing at the solemnity of the words of his host but he understood he could not do such a thing. He had no choice but to accept the invitation.

  “It will be best,” said Samuel, “if you spend the night at our home and tomorrow when you are refreshed, you can be on the road.”

  “I can’t.” replied Isaac. “My wife is waiting for me.”

  The meal was really succulent and abundant. During the agape they laughed and told jokes.

  After eating, Isaac asked his host if he would be so kind as to tell him how to return to Málaga but Samuel insisted on driving him in his car.

  Isaac got in the vehicle, hard to describe as a car, was asked to buckle his seatbelt, to put on the helmet, and to put into his pocket an apparatus which served to verify if his pulse was stable during the trip.

  During the journey they spoke very little but after six minutes Isaac found himself inside a tunnel. The cosmic vehicle had entered... but then he exited with the Opel Corsa that he had rented. He drove on a little disoriented, and then saw behind him two motorcyclists making signals for him to pull over to the shoulder.

  He stopped, exited the car and approached the police officers.

  “I do hope you are not from the Inquisition.”

  “Documentation please,” said one of the officers.

  “And that you aren’t one of those crazy Jews either,” he said as he took his documentation out of his wallet.

  “Benzimra,” said one of the officers. “Benzimra from Tetuán or Madrid?”

  “What?” said Isaac. “Oh, yes, from México.”

  “That is far away,” said the other officer.

  “Benzimra or not Benzimra,” said the officer. “You have committed a serious infraction. Our instrument indicates you were traveling at a high rate of speed.”

  Suddenly Isaac broke into tears and hugged both officers saying to them again and again: “It is so good to be back to normal. How wonderful! Speeding!”

  “Speeding at the rate of five hundred twelve kilometers per hour.”

  “Ha... Ha...” Isaac laughed uproariously, “Five hundred kilometers per hour!”

  “Five hundred twelve,” interrupted the officer precisely.

  “Five hundred twelve?” said Isaac laughing again. “This car won’t go over one hundred twenty. Look at it. Do you think it can get up to five hundred twelve kilometers per? You can take me to trial. What judge is going to believe that?”

  The officers looked at each other and figured out they had nabbed someone who was a bit insane, perhaps drunk, whatever, but this car under no circumstances could reach a velocity of five hundred twelve kilometers per hour.

  “OK. Here are your documents, but next time drive slower.”

  “Besides,” said the second officer, my family is also from Tetuán, my name is Benarroch.”

  “Oh, yes, great. Tell me one thing. What time is it?”

  “It is three, three-ten.”

  “In the morning.”

  “Yes, yes, in the morning.”

  “What is the date today?”

  “The date?”

  “The date.”

  “The eighteenth of December, 1999.”

  “So then I can still arrive on time.”

  “No doubt about that,” said the officer, as Isaac got into the car.

  WHEN THEY COME FOR US WE’LL LEAVE

  -We’ll leave by sea

  -The sea is friend and enemy

  -We feel affection for the salt water

  -We shall leave by sea. The Mediterranean is our mother

  -Others speak of mother earth, while we are nurtured by the sea.

  -The sea is the uterus.

  -Water we cannot drink, water without which we cannot live.

  -The sea is the uterus, not commiseration.

  FIRST DAY

  Here, by the sea I will tell you things you have never heard, about a world you thought forgotten - a world that will be yours for life.

  Here, by the sea, at this hotel, from this sea which gives you life, and takes lives, from this sea which was populated by pirates, from this sea which saved our people, and drowned it, which saved our women and in which our children were drowned. The Mediterranean, my homeland and my residence. The Mediterranean, my life, and my death.

  Surely this all seems strange to you. What does this old man want from me? What does he want to tell me? What is a youngster like you doing here in the summer of Málaga, talking to me instead of being in the sea or playing?

  You will come to me for seven days; each day between nine and noon. And on the seventh day you shall have the answer to all your questions and the answers will open the door to questions that you will ask all your life.

  This sea is now a place for tourists, but not so long ago, six hundred years ago; my relatives left it for Maghreb. They, the majority of them, died on the way; of illness or at the hands of man. Those who were supposed to save them, instead, robbed them of their money, and threw them into the sea. In 1961 Al Huseima will make the sea the “walnut.” And on the road to the land of Israel, all those who did not see their dream disappear, were drowned. Because you must know, my son, that we do not receive tranquility from this sea nor from this land and not even the Land of Israel has brought us peace, the tranquility we were seeking, only other kinds of persecutions, more and different from those we knew in our exile in Morocco in Maghreb and in Portugal.

  No, Spain was not exile. And for having made our home in Spain we were punished for life but by now we don’t remember or we don’t know why. It is like the sin of the calf, like the donkeys of Lucena, the first to be destroyed, the first swallow, of a destruction which will be prolonged for four hundred years, of the Reconquista and of the elimination of the Jews with their conversion to Christianity or renounc
ing being one in the name of heaven.

  There were days when I could breathe this air as though my lungs had formed part of the landscape which was contemplated from this terrace. This was my house. These were my mountains, tall mountains worthy of my love and my excursions, mountains I walked through to be closer to God because then I believed, then I believed this was my land and that here I would live and die. What I learned is that history doesn’t have continuity. And that the most important things that occur are not predictable. Some will say that this is proof of the hand of God while others say to the contrary that it is precisely this which demonstrates that everything is accidental. Things weren’t predictable in 1226 and of course neither were they with the expulsion of the Jews. And I say that the expulsion of the Jews was not predictable even one week before it happened. The Second World War was not predictable, nor was the first, nor the establishment of the State of Israel, nor the earthquakes of Agadir, the greatest occurrences are unpredictable.

  Then the historians come and a posteriori explain the logic of a certain action, but if there were, then how is it that nobody can predict those important occurrences?

  I am sure that the extravagance of my words surprises you. I am not speaking metaphorically nor with imagery. When I say my sons, it is because they certainly were my sons five hundred years ago. I am one thousand years old. Well, a bit less. I was born a bit after the year one thousand, or, as my father liked to day: “You were born after the year of insanity.” Perhaps in 1030 or 1011. I don’t know. I was born in Lucena when Abd al-Rahman Al-Mansur was King. Not far from here in the great Jewish city of those times. A great city of the reign of Grenada and also the first to fall. It was a thousand years ago and I, my friend, won’t be long dying, because nobody can overcome the age of one thousand years. I know I am at the point of dying because my joints hurt and that is a sign. That is the reason you are here. I have to tell you everything before I die. I have to tell you things I have never told anyone and which you should not tell anyone either. You won’t tell, right? I know and you also will learn on the tenth day why I did not tell these things to anyone before you and why I won’t afterward. They tell me you want to be a writer so probably you will explain it, so it is better that way.

  I am speaking with you but I am not really here. I am in the sea. In the pure sea, the mikve of my life, the salt water enters me through my orifices, my holes, my empty spaces, water of the sea, and salt of the sea.

  I am speaking with you without being here. I exist with my sons and daughters, with my wives and my dreams. I live the past, the images of the sons who converted to Christianity and I become a priest. And his son who also became a priest. He fled from Sevilla and from his fire I see daily my wife melting in the fire. This is while as I make a Christian of myself in the church that is at the end of the Street of the Levites of Seville. Did those things really happen? I ask you, Benzimra, I ask you: Did the Benzimra exist? Look, you already know everything about me, you don’t know anything about me, nor do I, at one thousand years of age, I know nothing about me.

  It is evidently possible to ask, to ask a man when he will learn. I have lived one thousand years and I have yet to learn.

  Surely you are asking yourself what I can tell you about the future. But I know nothing of the future. Once I found myself explaining part of this story in a village and the people there wanted me to tell them about the future. I barely remember the past. The boats get mixed up with the churches, the lovely trees with persons hanging, the days with rivers of blood. The joy of enlightenment is always diluted with the memory of my wife who died in childbirth, the smile of the child with the pain of my son who died of tuberculosis at age eight. I didn’t even learn much of medicine. In spite of being a doctor and having helped thousands of persons, everything relating to sickness and death still surprises me, perhaps the map of time will be even more surprising.

  The languages I spoke have disappeared like mountains felled in earthquakes. Marvelous Latin and Aramaic of Syria, languages I spoke and which disappeared like the people, marvelous words whose sound no one will hear again. And I have here all the languages, like dead persons. Hebrew has again begun to resound in the streets of Israel, including the world. Precisely the Hebrew language, which was laughed at by those who made use of Latin as a workday language were made fun of. Hebrew is the one language which has resurfaced, while Latin has been uprooted from the earth. Languages, how many languages have I forgotten.

  One thousand years. And I am seated in front of you and you, totally perplexed. Just how can someone who looks to be forty, say that he is one thousand years old? For the first time I feel the need to tell you everything I remember. There is so much I have forgotten, without forgetting, now I could not be here speaking with you. The day I saw how my family was drowning, I several times forgot my name. I forgot it to continue living. I was Ben Iftaj and Ben Mimón, I was Suárez and I was Finkelstein, and I was Braslev, I was Ibrahim and Muhammad. And I was also Jesus. All to forget the day I was born in Lucena. The day my father saw his first wife die giving birth to me. The day I was born. I was his first son. He wept at the love of his youth and was overjoyed for his son, Abraham, he was overjoyed, and that is what they named me back then: Abraham Ben Moshé. My father was overjoyed and it was not my mother who died giving birth to me, but the love of his youth, now you understand. But life went on. There was a circumcision but my father never forgot the day of her death. And he also died, disconsolate, the day my son Moshé was born. Moshé Ben Abraham, that was before surnames existed. My father died the same day and I disappeared one year later. I fled from the family.

  It was very hard for me to understand why I had disappeared. What was so bad about me in this whole story? I loved my wife very much and back then life in Lucena was very easy. There were fruits in abundance, work for Jews and Muslims back then there were no Christians in Lucena everything was abundant.

  An inexplicable force took me again and again to the mountains and to the sea, to solitary places where one could be alone for a long time. Then I fell ill with a bad fever, I didn’t eat at all for a week, weakened, only someone, he or she, moistened my lips with a bit of water, persons I could not see and who I never saw again. And one morning I awoke again feeling like a twenty year old. At first the same thing happened every twenty years, later the periods were thirty and forty years. But for the last sixty it hasn’t happened again. That is why I look older than I have ever looked, which means it is the end. I know, nobody can live more than a thousand years because a thousand years is a day for God. This is something I have learned on my own so I must tell you my story.

  Look at me, Shmuel, look at me. These are the hands of a millennium. This is his head and his skin. That is what a millennium looks like. Look at me, don’t look at the sea. The waves deceive. They come and go as if man did not know about suffering and death. The sea is the great deceiver. You think it is nature and beauty but we are nature, man, because we choose, the sea doesn’t. The sea is like a corpse because it can’t choose the stormy days but we, like a dove, can provoke storms, earthquakes, wars and epidemics. And with the passage of time we can damage more and repair more. Look at me Shmuel, my descendent, look at me. It is I, the grandfather of your grandfather. The one your father talked about so much you got tired of listening. I am Abraham Benzimra who in 1866 left Tetuán and went to Brazil, leaving his wife with three sons and two daughters, he who never wrote a letter and who never returned. It was the time to disappear from the family and to return like had been done so very many times. What would have been said about this old man who looked thirty when he was already one hundred, who had married three times and had dozens of children? Surely they would have thought me a witch and they would have burned me alive. Now they would not burn me alive. Shmuel, my descendent, now they would lock me into a secret laboratory to study me like they did with a friend of mine not long ago because he was weakened by love of a woman and told her the story. He was only three h
undred forty years old, and for that reason I haven’t told anyone until today, perhaps in part, but never the whole story, as I will tell you during the next seven days. Or, at least what I remember.

  I know that death is approaching because now for months my hands have hurt me even though nothing has happened to them. My joints hurt. If you want, you can write it all. You can do whatever you please.

  The sea! Oh the sea! This little sea, seven wars and pirates. Once I signed up with a pirate ship and with them we robbed the English, the French, Portuguese and the rest. The Strait of Gibraltar was the easiest place for those robberies. I loved the sea but it never returned my love. I lost my family in the sea, in the waves and in the people’s fanaticism.

  Yes, I left Sevilla with my only son who had not converted to Christianity, Moshé, in 1391 from Sevilla to Málaga and from Málaga to Morocco, to Tetuán which at that time was a city of pirates. We claimed we were Muslims to avoid the misfortunes from the world around us. Very soon he became the most famous pirate of the region, and the favorite of King Abd-Allah. That was until the king died and the new king, Muhammad found out that he was a Jew and sank our ship. Afterward, this same king lost a large amount of money because the new pirates didn’t know how to capture people that were important enough to demand large ransoms. So thus I tell my son Moshé died in this sea in which you have swam so many times, in which you have played and where you have begun to fool with girls. The same sea that saved me and killed my family. The same water the same waves. A thousand years from Lucena to Jerusalem, I thought I would never return to Spain but when I saw your photograph I knew it was you that I had always been searching for to tell you the story. To you and no one else. I saw in your face the look of my father after the death of my birthing mother. I saw the smile of my first son. I saw all the looks in my story from Lucena to Jerusalem; even your silence is enchanting.

  Now my son you may go. Come back tomorrow at nine. Today I have already told you a lot. Go ask your grandfather about Abraham Benzimra but without asking too many questions. They must not know anything about me. I will be in your life for these seven days but afterward you will also not know anything about me. My joints are hurting again and time is running out.