Gates to Tangier (12 page)

“And somehow, in a short amount of time I cannot calculate now, my hand was holding hers and we were kissing.”

"I have to go to Morocco today, to see my mother." But we were already in the street, head
­
ing to the hotel.

The receptionist said, "Hello, Mr. Benzimra."

"What did he say?" asked Fátima.

"He was just greeting me."

"Ok, fine, it doesn't matter. I hope he doesn't think I'm a prostitute."

"I think you are allowed to come into my
­
room in the middle of the day, and I don't care what anyone thinks."

We went into the room and started kissing without saying another w
­
ord. We took off our clothes and f
­
ell into bed. I don't know how long the sex lasted, but it was over quickly, surely less than five minutes. We both came together and felt and deep and complete satisfaction, something that has never happened to me. It was as if we had k
­
nown each other for centuries. As if we knew every part of each other's bodies.

"That was incredible. Give me your telephone number. "

I was so tired, and after finished I almost passed out. It was more than just sleeping. I must have been in that sta
­
te fifteen or twenty minutes before opening my eyes, and saw that she had left a note. "Very romantic," I thought.

"Eli, it was so wonderful, that it is best we don't see each other again." That's what she wrote, and in Spanish.

These French women, now I would only think about her, I would look for her in all of Paris, I would go live in Paris, that's what I was thinking. How could it be? I was married ten years, more than ten years, and nothing like that had ever happened. I fell asleep and when I woke up it was six in the morning. I thought maybe she was right, better that this remain a wonderful and inexplicable memory.

I woke up very early, and at six my suitcases were ready. I paid the bill and went to look for a taxi to the port. Suddenly I headed back to the reception desk. I asked if anyone had left me a message. I thought maybe Fátima had changed her mind and lef
­
t me her telephone number. And if she had, what would I do? Could I really fall in love with her? A Jew and a Muslim? Could we ever have a relationship? Maybe it would be possible with a Christian, but not with an Arab.

I couldn't find any taxis at that hour. I decided to just walk to the port. It was a twenty-minute walk, the whole city was just a few minut
­
es walking. In the street I saw the cafés sta
­
rting to open their doors. The doors opened like tired people who could scarcely open their eyes, before the men threw themselves on their coffees and croissants, espressos and cappuccinos. I found one that was already open and got a coffee. They told me I still had 10 more minutes walking to get to the port that a fast boat would be leaving at seven.

“You'll get there before eight, and I'll still be here in Africa.”

“Maybe I'll take the slow boat. I'm not in a rush, and I want to experience the journey.”

"Ok fine, there are people that like to live on the water, others that like to walk on the water. I prefer to be on land."

When I arrived they told me there were only fa
­
st boats until ten o'clock, so I got on the seven o'clock one. The sea was very calm. I thought about traveling to Sevilla to se
­
e an old school friend, Pedro Enriquez. An arch
­
itect and a poet. I calculated that we would arrive in Sevilla before midday, that I could stay until nightfall and take the last Talgo, to get to Madrid before twelve.

I got on the bus at Alge
­
ciras port headed to Sevilla. On the seat opposite me was a French book. It was a Philip Roth book that I had read in Spanish. I opened it and read the dedication.

To Zohra.

T
wo days later we traveled to Tangier. We flew to
­
gether to Paris, then I continued on to New York. She would go home. I would go somewhere under the sun. I have lived in Madrid, Paris, Jerusalem, London, and now...I don't know where home is anymore. I don't recognize the streets around me.

For years in Jerusal
­
em they would ask me for a street next to my house and I didn't know where it was. I knew where the Yehuda, Naftali, and Dan streets were, but two streets over and I forgo
­
t all the names, the same in Madrid, Balmes, la Castellana, La Gran Via, some of the main streets. I kno
­
w how to get to my house. The other streets re
­
mained unknown names or were at least difficult for me to place. What are street names, anyway? I heard there’s an island where the streets don't have names, I sh
­
ould go live there. Paris, Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Avenue de Ternes, Pereire, I lived there a few months, Cap
­
ucines, Opera, Champs Elysées, London, Regent, Park Crescent, Hendon, Oxford, Teixera, Orense, Príncipe de Vergara, as if I had been a tourist the whole time. In New York it is easy to rem
­
ember the numbers, street numbers make more sens
­
e, Bowery, Canal. As if in all those places I had only been in a hotel on the main street, and th
­
en never gone back. Manhattan, the center of the world, I was at the center of the world. Always a tourist, everywhere, tomorrow if you put me in Casablanca it would be the same, in Sevilla or Tel Aviv, I only see people, coming and going, running, they're expelled from their countries, they con
­
quer countries, they make war, they die and get ri
­
ch, they lose their fortunes, or get even richer, or don't even have enough to buy bread, or they eat to
­
o much, but none of them know what they are doing here, with the exception of the mystic, who wants to go to another wo
­
rld, at least knows that he or she wants to go to another world.

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 exp
­
laining 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 h
­
ad 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 winn
­
ers acted like losers. They kill us bec
­
ause we seem strong, or because we seem weak, or for another reason, they keep killing us, until the e
­
nd of time, and they don't need an
­
y reason. We are the sacrificial lamb, the blood of God, the oil on the altar where God makes his sacri
­
fices, because it looks like God likes his sa
­
crifices, 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 explo
­
ding buses, without children that come back without legs and hands, God, we are begging for a generation where no o
­
ne is killed for being Jewish. Fine, let them be killed for no reason, or because they wanted to ste
­
al 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 investi
­
gated. 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 Moroc
­
co 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 ce
­
nter of the United States is New York, freedom starts in New York before it reaches the rest of the country, so they te
­
ll you. My grandmother or my mother lit candles on Fri
­
days, 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 repress
­
ion, 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, bec
­
ause now it is very fashionable to say that the Jews and Mus
­
lims 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 Ea
­
st 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 Mus
­
lim, 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 merc
­
iful 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 Fáti
­
ma, 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 ab
­
sence. 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 Moroc
­
co 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 disappeare
­
d, 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 disappeare
­
d. What should we do? Does the land w
­
ant 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 under
­
stand that no, Spain after five hundred years st
­
ill feels the absence of its Jews and its Musli
­
ms, 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. Inter
­
esting, but they don't make sense.