Gates to Tangier (6 page)

"You know what," he said, "You look - you ca
­
n't imagine how much you look like an uncle of mine who died five years ago. He died in Israel five years ago, in a terrorist attack, in Jerusalem in 1996. Did you hear about it? He was named David Zohar, that was his name, he died in a terrorist attack on two bus
­
es, that's why I was looking at you like that...”

What is this? A book? A story? What is this? Are we in some Auster novel? Will this never end? Should I tell him he looks like my dead brother or leave it for later?

Isn't it enoug
­
h that I look like his uncle?

"Well, sure, Jews tend to look like each other." and although I tried not to say it, "You also look a lot like..."

"Who?"

"No, never mind, I'd rather not talk about it."

"Fine, as you wish, I have to catch a flight for Málaga."

"Ah!" I was relieved. "Our flight leaves at five, we're waiting for my brother coming from New York, so we can fly together."

"Maybe we met in Tétouan, in a synagog
­
ue or at a cemetery....surely you went up to the ce
­
metery to
zorear
at the graves of our ancestors.”

"Maybe the synagogue. I don't go to cemeteries. My brothers might have gone."

"Well,
shalom
." I went to look for my siblings, who weren't far away.

"Did you see him?" I asked, but none of them knew what I was talking about. No one had seen Yosef Israel. It wasn't until I realized that they had
­
n't seen him, and that we had all been together, that I started to wonder if it had really happened. Maybe my literary thoughts had started invading my reality? My two brothers looked at me as if I we
­
re a little crazy, or as if maybe the travelling had start
­
ed to affect my head.

Y
ou ask me, my princess, what happened in Barajas, it was like a deck of cards, maybe Tarot cards. When you get thirteen, that means death, the angel of death
­
. But this death isn't a physical death, it is the des
­t
ruction of something so that you can build something new. I believe that we all changed, all of us sibli
­
ngs and half-siblings, family. Above all, the world changed.

Alberto was behaving very oddly, but that's only because he spoke out loud and said what had happened. I didn't say anything to anybody. I'm not even sure now if all of this really happened, I wouldn't even be sure if sometime had got
­
ten it on video as it happe
­
ned.

We were all waiting for Isaque to arrive from New York, when I saw a woman with very short hair who looked like - not just looked like, it wasn't just that - was iden
­
tical to Israel, as if he had come back from the dead a woman, maybe a little older, maybe time got it wrong. I went up to her and she answered in French. She had short hair, and was somewhat masculine, like a teenager. If she had taken off her make
­
up she would have looked exactly like him. I never thought that Isra
­
el had a feminine side, but he wasn't very masculine either, and this woman was also feminine but not exaggeratedly so.

"Excuse me, who are you?" I asked. What c
­
ould I ask her? What could I say?

"What does that mean, who am I? What's it
­
to you?" she responded, a little annoyed.

We con
­
tinued in French.

"I'm sorry," I said, "you looked familiar, maybe it would have been better to say it like that. Do you live in Paris?"

"Yes, well, outside of Paris. I study in Paris. What is your name?"

"Silvia."

"Silvia? Silvia who?"

"Nahon."

"Well, no. That name doesn't mean anything to me. I don't think we know each other."

"No, we probably don't know each other. But you look so much like someone I know."

"Aha - now I look like someone you know. Do you have other stories to tell? Are you feeling ok?"

"No," I said. "No, I don't feel well. You look like my brother, my brother who die
­
d ten years ago." I started to cry.

"Sorry, I'm really sorry, I'm sorry," she said. "I'm reall
­
y sorry. I didn't know. I look like your brother. Well, these things happen, Sometimes people look like each other. Do you want something to drink? Where did you live?"

"In Israel, and he died in the Lebanese War."

"I'm from Morocco, and you think I should care about an Israeli soldier who died in the Lebanese war, you think I should cry for him? Airports are like loony bins. Here I am giving a tissue to a Jew whose brother died killi
­
ng Arabs and Palestinians, and you want my pity?”

It was the time, perhaps, to ha
­
ve apologized for angering her with my story, she was from Morocco, and people from the same country tend to look like each other, maybe she was from the same region, that doesn't mean it is okay to impos
­
e upon others. What should I have done? Do you have an answer, my princess?

Maybe I should have told her to hell with the Lebanese, what does that have to do with a Moroccan, my brother died there for no reason, like an idi
­
ot, like all the idiots that die in wars...no, my younger brother was no idiot. But you know what happened with that girl, when she left, her sheer pink scarf fell off. Look, I still have it, I have it here, as if it might be useful for something someday. I don't know when or why, but it seems very important.

You know, I looked at my brothers, and they didn't see anything, they didn't even realize that I had spoken with her, nothing,
walu,
as if nothing had happened. I looked at Alberto and the
­
n he told me about this Israeli he met, but whe
­
n had it happened? No time had gone by. Time must have gone wrong in Barajas. What happened in that second? Maybe hours, years, lifetimes. We were all confused. Had we been drea
­
ming?

I
was terribly afraid for a few seconds. Everything was so strange. I arrived and I saw them in front of me, I ran to kiss them, and as I go towards them they suddenly disappear, I couldn’t see them anymore. I was sure I had seen them, that they had been right in front of me, but suddenly - nothing. As if they had never been there. I looked to my right, to my left, in front, behind, but nothing. No one. A Muslim woman with a headsc
­
arf and pants, apparently a Moroccan, was yelli
­
ng at her two children, Yusuf and Zohra, and I remembered that the name of this unknown disappea
­
red brother was Yosef, and I saw that the two, the two children looked so much like Israel when he was young, and the girl looked like Ruth, the younger darling child, the Ruth that now has a factory of children.

She has six children already, more than the rest of the siblings together, a factory of grandchildren, and the grandparents are critical of her religion but they are very happy to have the grandchildren at home. The grandfather had died, and the grandmother kept helping, pa
­y
ing, watching the children, and all the rest, with that smile on her face and a critical face for me because I only have one child, and the others have two or three per family, like everyday Europ
­
eans, a child and a dog, and a Mercedes, that's the dream.

Well, not mine. I wanted more children, five more, but for that I need to find a more maternal wo
­
man, and those are either very religious or re
­
semble my mother. I'm attracted to the sexiest, the thin
­
nest and the not very maternal, those that move from bed to bed, a new kind of woman that didn't exist one hundred years ago, those are the ones that attract me, especially if they are man
­
ipulative, if they say half-truths but don't lie, if they pla
­
y with their femininity as if it were a bank account with lots of stocks and lots of daily sales and acquisitions.

So while I wander through Barajas, looking for my siblings who disap
­
peared so suddenly, as if they had never be
­
en there, the Muslim woman disappears, and suddenly my siblings are in front of me, and they all look confused. I look confused as well, and I think of the death of my father and his odd will,
shalom
, kisses, why didn't Ruth come, oh yes! Let me guess, she's pregnant, no, and I almost ask, why didn't Israel come, and continue this joke that I just hea
­
rd recently, that he is still as dead as before, but I can't say these things, make jokes about a brother, these odd ideas always come at the wrong times.

“Have you been waiting long?”

"No, no," said Fortu, "but the 3:00 plane has already left and we'll have to wait for the 5:00 one. That was the plan, though, anyway. If you ha
­
d landed an hour earlier we could have ca
­
ught it, the 3:00. We can go have a dr
­
ink and sit down somewhere."

"But not eat, I just ate, it is the fourth time that I've eaten in twelve hours, with the time difference. Dinner before leaving, and then another dinner on the plane, then breakfast, then lunch, and I didn't sleep the whole time, just meal after meal, what I need is a l
­
ot of coffee.”

I
'll always live on in this airport, the one we passed through in 1974 on the way to Marseille. Sometimes I'm a boy, sometimes a woman, a man, I'm everything I was and could have been, but I'm always here. Why here? Why not anywhere else? Because I'm looking for the meaning of my death. As if death had meaning.

I remember that Arab soldier that was in front of us, in a building. We asked him to surrender, and every time we asked he would cry and say verses from the Quran and shoot at us. He was alone, surrounded by twenty soldiers, and couldn't escape. We had ki
­
lled his partner, and he was alone. We asked him over and over in Arabic to surrender, but he kept shooting and praying. He went on that way for a couple hours, until one of the solders through a grenade and killed him, then it was silent. Absolute silence. Deathly silent. The silence of death. We had almost gotten use to his chants, his Quran, and the
­
n came the meaningless shot.

When we went to open up the house we saw that he had been locked in
­
and couldn't come out to surrender. I saw his body in pieces, and saw that he was the same height as me, had the same hair, and even a similar face. That's whe
­
n I realized that I too would die, when I realized it was a senseless war. I don't know how many of us felt the same way, but before my dea
­
th another three soldiers in my unit died, and while we never said it out loud, we all thought that this death had brought us bad luck. It heralded our deaths.

Then came the Tyr attack and I died alongside most of the soldiers from my base. Because that day I suddenly felt that that soldier shut up in that house, that soldier crying for his life and for his death...I felt that I was that soldier. I realized that we couldn't be enemies, and that the only reason that we were killing each other is because of bosses that had manipulated us. But at that moment, the soldier that we had killed, that soldier, he was my brother, he was my brother, he was Abel and we were Cain, we were brothers, humans, members of the same town, humanity, and later I turned into Abel, and this is something that I could never express when I was alive, and that's why I go back to this airport.

Sometimes I'm a father, sometimes a mother, sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, I'm all my brothers and sisters, and I wonder what would have happened. What would have happened if my par
­
ents had stayed here, if we had stayed in Madrid? Would I have gone to war in Leb
­
anon? Maybe yes, maybe it was inevitable, I had always liked Israel more than the others, from day on
­
e, since before we arrived, maybe it was because I already kn
­
ew that I would be buried there, young and unmarried, no children, a virgin.

W
e were here in 1974. The airport was sm
­
aller, and my father called me Fortu, even though my mother called me Messod. She like it better or maybe thought it more affectionate, my grandfather always called me Messod. That's how things were then. What are we doing here now? The four of us without Israel, Israel who I feel so strongly right no
­
w, during these long and unbearable hours.

Now the four of us are here, as if nothing had h
­
appened, as if he hadn't died, as if we hadn't been separated, as if I hadn't lived a few mete
­
rs from here in Madrid. I don't even call my wi
­
fe, we are like the photo we have from this meeting, here, where we separated.

I stayed, Isaque went to stud
­
y in Paris, and then went to New York, and the rest went to Jerusalem. And it turns into an infinite loop. Israel died in Lebanon, Silvia married a Frenchman and went to live in Paris, and only Papa's death brought us back together again, in the search of a brother we don't want to meet, in search of some money we need, almost thirty years later, almost thirty years in which questions and more questions hu
­
ng in the air, with senseless an
­
swers. Time stopped there.