Ways to Lucena

by Mois Benarroch

  If any friend should read me now, if he knows Spanish or if some day my works are translated into French, surely they will think I am insane. What do I have to do with Spanish? What has happened to me that brought me to write my family history in Spanish, the history of a Ladino family? Why don’t I write it in French? But if Partik is very French, What is up with the Spanish? They will continue repeating that I was born in Oran, that I was raised and studied in French schools and that I have lived in Paris since age six. This book will be the explanation for my friends and loved ones.

  Why, at the age of thirty eight, do I abandon a language which I know well and go back, or rather I put myself to learning from scratch the language which my grandfather and grandmother spoke? I don’t even have the ‘ñ’ on my typewriter and I mess up the accents and the ‘z’ and the ‘s.’ Someone will have to correct all this. After having spent so many years in Paris and two in Israel, after having studied in Jewish schools, now, in this tiny studio on Pereire Street, sixth floor, no elevator, each morning I go to buy a croissant. In Spanish they call it a media luna. I don’t know why I trouble my brain during the few hours I have of free time trying to write a book in Spanish as though there were not enough books in Spanish.

  I want to hear again the songs my other used to sing to me to put me to sleep. I want to hear my grandmother telling me stories about Tetuán in a mixture of Spanish, French and Haquetia.

  I want to again hear the words which calmed me, words in Haquetia not possible to translate to any other language.

  It is what I do every day after work. I come here and write all the words in Haquetia and in Spanish that I hear. All those words what make me feel connected with Oran, Tetuán and Granada. I can’t say it makes much sense, but neither does the twentieth century. Nor human history. I don’t understand why my grandfather never returned to Tetuán or as many did, to Spain. Why? So that his great grandson might continue speaking Spanish in an Arab/Muslim state governed by French and with a majority of French speaking citizens. I don’t understand Spaniards. Why, as many think, did they not grant Spanish citizenship to the Jews of Tetuán in the nineteenth century? Those Jews still saw the queen of Spain as their queen. They still saw Isabella, the last Catholic, as the seat of authority. This, even though they had been herded out of Spanish territory like cattle. There are many things I don’t understand, especially the two years I spent in Israel. My parents sent me there but they stayed in France and now, retired, spend most of their time in Spain, not in Israel. Like many argelinos who’s Zionism consists in complaining about those who leave Israel and spend their retirement by the sea in Netanya or in Tel-Aviv. I have never understood what I am doing here in Israel and much less why everything seems strange. Because I have always been a Zionist but everything was oriented toward the wrong place. I understood that when I read a booklet by Marcel Cohen in Ladino, I understood deep within, what I wanted was to go to Spain, not to Israel. In the book Cohen tells that at the start of the century some Zionist delegates had gone to Thessaloniki and in their after report said it was impossible to convince them to emigrate to Israel because what they wanted was to return to Spain.

  And today I want to return to Spanish. The language is my territory. I can carry the Spanish language anywhere.

  My Spanish can subsist without the Inquisition; it is Spanish without Christians, without Marranos and without persecutions. In my heart of hearts I can place a Spain that never existed and that maintained its language through the roads of the diaspora. That is why I have read all the writers I like best in Spanish: Borges, Huidobro, Vallejo not in translations into French, or English, a neutral language which I used to write my first poems inspired by Bob Dylan. Also I have written something in Hebrew, a language I have always known, including, perhaps, the first language I saw written in the plain synagogue in Tetuán. But only in Spanish do I feel the heartbeat of the language, its past and its future.

  SAMUEL

  Who would have believed it? But really, who wouldn’t have believed it? We went on living our daily lives forgetting completely who we would have to deal with. We believed the Sasportes were strong enough to protect us. Here we are, in the same eternal boat, in the eternal Mediterranean, in 1669, and again it’s about the Spaniards that now want to kick us out of Oran. So, now where? To Tetuán? They say we can’t go there either. The Spaniards and the pirates lie in wait in all the corners of the coast around Gibraltar. Spanish ships, as though we were the enemy, not them. Probably, unknowingly, we are the pirates. We are the theological pirates for the Christians. Wherever they go, they run into us. We who believe in our religion, in our God and who do not kneel in vain, nor pointlessly.

  They say we should go to Niza, to Italy, always in the Mediterranean, Málaga, Oran, Tetuán, Niza, Yafo, and Acre. And why never to our own land? It would be better to die there than to keep traveling around everywhere. My father used to tell me that times would change, that we would arrive there, to OUR land. He was referring to Spain. He said that if we could get along with them in Oran, we could go back to living together. He was lucky enough to die with that hope three months before that sudden expulsion. Thankfully he didn’t see us in the pirate ship, on our way again to exile, toward a new city where we could construct our lives and from which our children and grandchildren would be expelled.

  THE GRANDFATHER

  I don’t understand why you have had to tell me this now minutes before being moved out. Or, perhaps I do understand but that doesn’t justify it. You wanted to avenge yourself for mama and I would again be the victim. Couldn’t I have lived forever without this chilling knowledge? How can I now look at my mother? Is it her fault? No, it’s not her fault at all, but her father’s. How could she be responsible for the actions of her father? Why must I be tormented with this now? Is it impossible to erase this knowledge? Throw it in the recycle bin and send it to hell? No. It’s impossible. From no one I know I am a descendent of ...I can’t even think the word, I’m not capable of thinking those words. Maybe I should have understood that something was not right when, at age four, I showed a lot of interest in what the Germans had done and then mama gave me strange answers. But I couldn’t think that my grandfather...I had been told that it was unknown who my grandfather was. Now, yes, it was known. Sometimes mama would be happy for me to read so much about the Nazis. Sometimes she told me I shouldn’t do it. “It’s a morbid subject. Better to forget it.” Sometimes she said the opposite, “must not be forgotten, we can’t forget it. We must always keep it in mind.” And at others: “Are you reading those Nazi Holocaust books again?”

  Evidentially, I didn’t pay much attention to that. But today, a posteriori, I can relate it all. “How could I talk to mama today? What is different? I had decided not to bring up the subject with her but that is the first thing I did when I saw her.

  “Papa told me about grandfather.”

  She remained silent for quite a while.

  “Perhaps it’s better that way. Now you know, and I have a weight off my chest. Now I don’t have to be afraid of the day when you find out, the way I did when one day, walking down the Street with my father through the streets of Sao Paulo, somebody shouted ‘Nazi!’ You’re a Nazi! You killed my brother. I remember you, Dr. Steiner!”

  “Steiner?”

  “Helmut Steiner. That was his name. I was ten and I already knew what the word Nazi meant. My father was a Nazi.”

  “What happened then?”

  “My father didn’t want to run the risk so right away we moved to another, smaller, city and he was a doctor there until he died.”

  She was silent again.

  “From that moment on, my life changed and when I learned to read, at twelve, I was only interested in reading books about the Holocaust and Judaism.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Our grandfather? He was a tall, distinguished man, a good father. I don’t remember him ever shouting at me nor even telling me ever that I had done something wrong. But
I quickly understood that that wasn’t worth anything because it was about the assassination of thousands of persons.”

  “My grandfather a Nazi!!! I couldn’t believe it. And a distinguished Nazi...I couldn’t even pronounce it. And now what? Am I the grandson of a Nazi or an Israeli Jew? What am I now?”

  “Is that like discovering that our mother was a whore?”

  “What are you saying? What does that have to do with it?”

  “Were you a whore too?”

  “No, don’t worry. I wasn’t. I don’t know why I said that. I’m really sorry. I went too far.”

  “What did he do there?”

  “He was a doctor. I don’t know everything because he didn’t talk to me about it. The only thing he said over and over was “Things aren’t that simple.” And he always said that if he had to go through it again he didn’t know if he would be able to do something different. He didn’t have any money to flee. He was a young doctor who came from a family that was not rich so the easiest thing to do was to be a military doctor,”

  “Didn’t he save any Jews?”

  “No, he wasn’t a hero. He did what he was told. He sent the sick to their death and the well to work. He was a small screw in the mechanism.”

  “A screw maybe, but small? There were no small screws there. That was a mechanism with big screws.”

  “And then, at age sixteen I understood that I had to be a Jew. I went to see the rabbi in Sao Paulo to tell him that I had to be a Jew. I had to be. I had read the story of the grandchildren of Aman who were converted to Judaism when their grandfather tried to annihilate the Jewish people. And then I understood. I understood that there was only one path: to be a Jew. I told my father. He didn’t say anything. From that moment he shut up. I think he agreed with me. I remember I told him I’m converting to Judaism because the Jewish people are right. These are the people who are the most right on earth. I agree, that was an eccentric response, but it was the one I understood. From that moment he didn’t speak to me again. He hardly talked to anyone. Three years later, the same week as I had my conversion ceremony, he died of a heart attack. One year later I emigrated to Israel.”

  “Mama, can you stop talking to me about those things? The more you tell me the more shocking everything seems.”

  THE FIFTH DAY

  Come. Today you will put on the phylacteries. Rashi himself wrote those phylacteries. Since then they have been mine. Not a letter has deteriorated or faded. A great miracle. Look: They are tiny. Not large like those of today. They are authentic phylacteries. Take them like this: the leather cord in the left hand. I see that you at least know how to put them on correctly, not like your cousin who studied in a secular school in Israel and I had to teach him how to wear them. And they call it the land of the Jews. In the Diaspora there was not a single Jew who did not know how to wear the phylacteries, not even the intellectually challenged. Perhaps there were some among the Ashkenazi, but not one of us. Not in Sefarad. Not in the Atlas mountain range. Even the deaf knew how to do it. Here is the book of prayers, the Sidur, Read the Shemá.

  They are yours. These phylacteries are yours. They are a gift from a distant grandfather. When I see you, you and my son, I see many of my sons, all alike, the phylacteries are yours, forever. You have to take care of them as though they were gold. At one time I had some that our rabbi Tam had made but I lost them. So keep them and wear them every day and when the bad spirits try to control you or some catastrophe stalks the world, just show them and it will pass. That is what happened to me in the Amazon when I went to visit an elderly son, I found myself facing three drooling lions and then I took out the phylacteries and the lions went away. They also help with snakes. They especially helped me one time when some Indians wanted to kill me because I was white. They left me alone in a tent and there I put on the phylacteries and waited for them and when they came they began to cry and shriek and they went to see the tribal chief and then they started honoring me like a king and touching the phylacteries. That is how I saved myself many times. From thieves, pirates, Christians, Muslims, and pagans. That is how I saved myself innumerable times.

  If you’re about to ask me something, don’t. Never until today have these phylacteries been apart from me. It is the first time I have given them to anyone. I am sure you know why. I am getting ready to leave this world. Nobody can live a thousand years, one day for God, and my joints hurt. I have been through the forties, the fifties, and sixties since the last cleansing crisis, which was the hardest of all and this means I will not be renewed like before. I will not return to being young. Now I am like any person, I will live one year more, or twenty, and I will die. Sometimes it seems to me that a thousand years are too many years for one person to live. And sometimes I think it is not enough as I still have so many things to do. A man doesn’t just leave the world with only half his passion in hand. Let us suppose that after a thousand years I have three quarters of my passion in my hands. There remains the last quarter. And that part increases from year to year

  I have had a full life in spite of having had to go from one place to another, like Cain, without a mark on my forehead. They were exodus of compassion without justice in spite of everything. Whoever is not born and then dies in the same place has no consolation. Maybe I’ll go to Lucena to die there. Perhaps I’ll die here, within a week, by the sea. However it may be, you will come to me seven days before I give up my soul.

  You think that with the years, you will know more. But what you know you can’t explain it or transmit it. And what you don’t know you can talk about for hours. You need to know that the teachers who know will never talk about their knowledge. Perhaps they will allow you to understand it on your own if they are good teachers. Take this. I’m giving you the bag of phylacteries. It has the inscription of Shmuel Benzimra, my son, and one of your distant grandfathers. Everything is sewn by hand, white letters on white cloth all in pure silk. Now you have the great responsibility of saving the phylacteries and the bag for future generations. I am very tired from all that I have seen and that I have not seen. This century is what has tired me the most perhaps because I don’t have the strength to continue to put up with so many changes, endless changes. The most difficult has been the creation of the State of Israel. All the hopes were dashed. That was the worst blow to us since expulsion from Sefarad. From gentlemen we became slaves. That’s why your father returned to Málaga. But you know that already. He can’t bear the humiliation, the looks, and the shameful words. But I know you will return to Jerusalem. And you know it too. We must forgive. But how much can we pardon? We forgive the Christians, including the Germans. But I don’t know how we can forgive the humiliation of the Ashkenazi’s. It is possible that Zionism is the cause of my joints aching. That precisely, not the Holocaust, nor the expulsion, nor the sacrifice of Lucena. Precisely among everything Zionism has become the sharpest pain. But I don’t want to talk to you about this because surely you have hard it many times from the mouths of your uncles and your father. Even our mother who always sees things through rose colored glasses. This is not what I want to talk to you about.

  Distance yourself from rage like from the fire. Distance yourself from the Ashkenazi’s if you want your soul to remain pure and always distance yourself from lies. Those will only cause you more pain and more blows. If you see these before you, flee. Don’t try to overcome them. War only feeds them. The struggle against pain is what causes pain. The struggle against lies causes more lies and the struggle against Ashkenazi’s causes more humiliation. When you see them on the street, cross to the other side of the street. Greet them politely and continue on your way.

  When you want to marry, go seek a bride among the girls of Tetuán. And only if you can’t find one, go North to look and don’t give up your search until you find the woman who will accompany you. You will find her. Desperation brings a cloud. Don’t let it grow. Because in the end, the cloud will cover you up.

  There were times when I would see death eve
ry day. In times of pestilence, At times four friends would die in one single day. My wives died in my arms. My children in my embrace. And I was among them unable to die. In those days death was a consolation. In those days death was a shield from the suffering, from seeing others die. I know that many didn’t die from disease, but so as not to see the dead. I patiently picked them up, especially the little ones. I took them to the cemetery and there I dug a tomb for them. I didn’t know their names, but I made it. In less than a month I buried four of my sons and my wife. But Samuel, always know that a few survive calamities and continue to multiply. And in this family they are always called Shmuel or Samuel. For some reason they are the strongest and you are made of the strongest. Probably not always because an uncle of yours named Samuel died young. This also happened but I see that you, Samuel Benzimra, you are among the strong ones. You are made from sturdy stuff and nobody can beat you.

  And there were radiant, beautiful days, when I was a carpenter for kings and nobles in Sevilla there I could earn five gold coins every day for the tables and chairs I created for them. Some are now in museums and palaces. This money is what saved your family in Portugal. I always hid it well under an olive tree. Because the olive tree will not steal. To the contrary, it generously gives us olives and oil in abundance.

  Well, that is, up to not so long ago. The olive was the strongest tree but nowadays, because of industry, even the olive trees sicken. They have sicknesses from the modern world. Fewer than the others, because it is stronger, but it, as well, is ill.