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Brown Scarf Blues

Page 7

by Mois Benarroch


  But he also wasn’t much interested in artists and didn’t have many friends who were writers, he knew a lot of them but he preferred to go to the souk to eat in cheap restaurants, and he preferred to travel by bus. “That’s where you’ll find life and people,” he used to tell me. “That’s where you’ll find stories, future novels. You can’t learn much from people who think they’re important, who think they’re rich, who think they have something. We have nothing.”

  Dialogue between us was impossible, of course. He came from a moneyed, middle-class family, and was willing to lose what he had, or what he used to have, in order to write. I come from poverty and being a writer is a way of being middle class. Or that’s what he used to tell me though I didn’t agree. But today I realize he was right in a way, though things are never that simple. But we fought over that, because he told me he always risked everything with his words and that I wasn’t willing to take any risks at all. That was a massive lie. Fuck off, you lying bastard.

  1988

  I met him in Paris, and until today I didn’t know he had published all those books. When I knew him he never mentioned he was a writer or had been published. We studied natural medicine together at the IHMN - Institut d’Hygiène et de Médecine Naturelle, which was in Melun. He seemed very introspective and didn’t interact much with the other students. It was as though all he ever did was talk to himself about something very important. Sometimes he even did it out loud. During breaks between classes he would go for walks in the woods that surrounded the institute. Finally, thanks to the language, we started to talk a little, but he always counted his words. Then one day on the train back to Paris, he loosened up and from then on he would constantly speak his mind. We became good friends and I even made a trip to Israel once and stayed at his home. There I met his charming wife, who was French, and we later met in Paris. Once, I think he even suggested we make love. I said no. I’m not sure why, since I was definitely attracted to him. He talked a lot about vaccines, and that’s what he eventually wrote his thesis on. He was very much against them, more than anyone else, but he seemed angry and disillusioned at everybody because of those vaccines. It got to where he thought all his problems were a result of the ones he’d been given as a child, and even that vaccines had killed his little brother. In those days he was deeply in love with a French girl named Marlene, I remember that. And one day he showed up on her doorstep and told her. It seems she’d had no idea and said she was sorry but she didn’t share those feelings, that she felt nothing for him in fact. After that he shut down even more and went entire days without saying a word. He would listen to his classes, he would record them and then relisten to them on his Walkman on the train or while walking in the woods. I haven’t heard from him in years and if not for what happened to him I might have forgotten him by now. But despite everything, his friendship helped me very much. I think even his silence had a special aura that gave you the sense of not being alone in the world. At the time, I felt very lonely in Paris and he lessened that loneliness whenever he came to the seminars. Now I do want to read his books. It’s the next thing I’m going to do.

  1966

  I thought he was a special child, of course they were all special but the special thing in him was different, it was something that seemed to tell you he was right, as if his face was saying, “Yes, I know these things.” He cried easily, which is why I did not go to say goodbye to him, I thought he would take it very badly. I said goodbye to his mother, and to his elder sister who was at home, and I could have waited a few minutes for him to come back but I preferred to leave. I went to Belgium. I returned once and went to their house, and the wife, his mother, invited me to have some tea and I felt like a lady, it was something that had never happened before, now that I was back from Belgium it was like I was someone else, I acted differently and dressed better, I was no longer the nana, no longer the servant, no longer the fátima, that’s what they called us, and though he kept calling me Fátima, I was not the fátima anymore. That day he was, indeed, there and he had changed very much, he was three years older and I wasn’t sure whether he recognized me, his mother said to him, “Don’t you remember Fátima?” And he did not answer, he ate one of the cookies that were on the table, some very good sugar cookies, like the ones I had learned to make in the señora’s house and that now I made for my husband and my two children. For a moment, I felt he was about to stand up and come to give me a kiss, but he sat back down and then he left. I still loved him a lot, more than I loved the rest of the family since he was the only one who returned my affection, he would always hug me when I felt sad, he did that all the time before he turned two, like he could sense it, and he could also be happy with me when I was happy. Then I took out the gift I had brought them from Belgium, which today might seem silly, but in those days it was quite a gift, it was a box of chocolates, maybe Leonidas, maybe a more artisanal brand, I don’t recall, and he threw himself on them as if that was his way of thanking me for all the years past. He didn’t write, I don’t remember him as one of those children who write stories at age five, I never saw him write, and he never said anything about liking stories more than the other children did. What I do recall is that when he was one of the top students in his class they would give him a couple of books as a prize, they were in French and were color-illustrated adventures, very pretty, and then he was very happy with those books, they were his trophy, his way of being appreciated in the world. Maybe that’s why he became a writer. Ever since then—since 1970, I think—I have not seen him. I would like very much to see him again, but I doubt he remembers me or my last name. I don’t think they even knew our last names, to them we were all fátimas.

  1976

  I arrived in Jerusalem on a one-year program for Jewish students. To learn Hebrew and maybe study in Israel. Everyone saw it as a year off from their family and a time to reflect, but for me it was a way to get past the accident I’d had five years earlier. I saw him on the bus almost every day and he would look at me, I couldn’t quite understand what he saw in my broken, shattered body, but I was sure he was looking. I used to ride the 28 bus that ran between the two Hebrew University campuses, the one at Givat Ram and the one on Mount Scopus, almost always with a friend. I was afraid to walk alone, though I was used to my crutches and almost never fell. At one point, instead of playing coy I started looking back at him, and there were even times when I would sit directly behind or in front of him. I think that made him nervous. But he kept looking at me. Then one day I learned that his name was Charly, someone said “Hello, Charly” at the station. He just said “Hello” and did not chat with the other student at all. To me, he looked like someone in a post-traumatic state after a severe shock. Maybe an accident, I couldn’t hide my trauma, it showed, but his seemed much deeper and sadder. There was never a sadder teenager. Maybe I used to come off that way, but by then I had started laughing again, and though I found it hard to accept my broken, shattered body, I now tolerated it. And I had no shortage of lovers or suitors, because I laughed and, of course, I was young. I’m not clear what happened next but I think at some point we began talking, what makes me nuts is I’m not sure if it was him or another guy who looked like him, we began talking and suddenly he opened up, started telling me about his childhood in Morocco, we started talking on the bus around 2 p.m. and we stayed together until the middle of the night, usually he got out at Ramat Eshkol, a good neighborhood back then, about five stops from the dorm, but he didn’t get out that time and we wound up in my room, we both did that naturally, he asked if I found it hard to walk with the crutches, and if I needed help, a question I hated but coming from his mouth it seemed very sweet, and then we reached the room and, being young and without giving it much thought, we made love, and then I called him Charly and told him my name, he asked how I knew his name and then I kissed him on the mouth, his saliva tasted very sweet to me, to the point where it crossed my mind he might have diabetes and maybe that was a symptom, I don’t know why or
if that had something to do with it, but I’ve never tasted such sweet saliva again in my life, he kissed badly, like someone with a cold, because I think he had a breathing problem, we made love, he didn’t say anything about my leg though he did stroke my stump very delicately, it was the first time I liked that, and afterwards it was something I asked for from all the men I made love with, they won’t all do it, most get scared. The first time was short and quick, or that’s how I remember it, then in the evening we made love again, in between he talked to me about his childhood, about the shock of arriving in Israel when he was fifteen, and especially he spoke about poetry, he said he wanted to be a writer and write novels but he spoke only of poetry. He told me about an American poet I’d never heard of called Mark Strand, I later read his poetry and liked it, I think I must have been one of his first readers, or one of his first readers outside the U.S. anyway, because he had only published a couple of books. I don’t read much poetry but I think he’s now a famous, well-regarded poet. Around four o’clock I fell asleep and I heard him open the door and leave. I said nothing. We never saw each other again. That’s how it had to end, we didn’t exchange addresses or phone numbers or anything. It took him so long to connect with me and I left less than a week after that encounter, and maybe the encounter even happened because I was leaving and sometimes two hearts must find each other in this world to exchange something, later I saw he had become a famous poet and I remembered him when I saw his photo, or was it someone else? Honestly, I’m not sure it was him. I think it’s awful not to be sure about something like that.

  1997

  It was like a dream, my first book was translated into Hebrew, that was 1997, and it’s still my only translated title. I’ve sold hundreds of thousands of books in my country, but I’m not translated, I’m a local success. As part of that dream I arrived in Tel Aviv for my book launch and found that my publisher was completely insane, I was already used to half-insane publishers. But this one, as Charly later told me, was the one publisher who was crazier than the writers he published. The book launch is where I met Charly, a poet who didn’t fit in there, or anywhere, practically a different species from the human species. He had a way of seeing the world that always surprised me, when I would talk to him about the conflict he would always bring up unexpected points, from one side or the other, he seemed like someone unable to agree with himself. Just when he was talking like a right-winger he would say something that put him way over on the most anti-Zionist left. And vice-versa, of course. I think he liked to make everyone nervous. Which he often achieved.

  I, with my Jewish son and my book The Jewish Bride, first came to Israel with my second wife, on our first of many trips to a country that seems to hide a genetic secret about the future of the world. A very western country, because the west is actually a Jewish project, but, as Charly tells me time and again, most of its Jews are not from Europe or the West, most are from Arab countries, plus many who have now been born in the Middle East, in Asia, for two generations. And despite everything maybe Israel is, in fact, a European project, and a European country. But I’m not so sure anymore.

  On my trips we always go to good restaurants, Charly loves seafood but no matter how often I invite him to Portugal for a few days, he won’t come. He’s always severely short of cash, always broke. The only thing he truly knows how to do is write, though he’s done many other things and, for a time, like Kafka, he earned his living as a bookkeeper, in a dark, ground-floor office he once showed me in downtown Jerusalem.

  If the point is to explain why he did what he did, well, I don’t understand it, but I, for one, will miss him if I go to Jerusalem or to Israel, maybe I won’t go back, because the city cannot be the same without him. People never really know why they do what they do, not deep down, and naturally the others, their friends, know even less. In any case, I think he felt so alien to everything and practically lived on an island in the middle of the world, in spite of the world he was an island. Islands are also part of the world. But I realize this explains nothing. Life is a mystery.

  1982

  I met him through the redheaded poet who won the mystical poetry prize, Fernando Rielo, who was a friend of mine, I had asked Fernando if he wanted to translate the Bible into Spanish under my supervision using the system I’d used in my highly successful French translation. Fernando said I would need another translator and suggested him.

  Right from the start I didn’t particularly like him, and I didn’t think he knew much Spanish, or much Hebrew for that matter, or Biblical Hebrew, and I felt he lacked the qualities to delve into that world. It was also a bit weird that a Moroccan, from a people who always speak bad French, should know Spanish. But the redhead said Charly knew more French and more Hebrew than him, and that he could not do the translation on his own. I suggested we look for one or more other contributors. But we tried. The two of them translated two chapters of Genesis, and I kept in touch with the Spanish publisher. I think it was called Plaza Janes, or else Plaza y Janes, and I sent them what the guys had done. As the matter was being discussed, Opus Dei objected to publication of the translation, as did the Spanish Church and I think even the Vatican. I don’t know what would have happened today, but the dictatorship was not yet a memory in that year and the publisher canceled the project. I think we even had signed something and they paid me an advance or compensation, but I’m not sure. My memory isn’t what it was. Not anymore.

  What happened next was weirder still, he offered to translate my only book of poems into Hebrew and to look for a publisher after doing the translation, and we agreed I would pay him a thousand dollars, it was in dollars because there was massive inflation back then, and though it was a 280-page book, it was well-paid work. He came to my home often and I even started to enjoy his company, and later he and his wife became friends with my daughter and her husband, so I saw him at some family gatherings, too. He would come over once a week and we would discuss the translation, in my minimal Modern Hebrew. As agreed, I paid him five hundred dollars during the work and I said I would pay the other five hundred on publication of the book, The Blue Angel. But the book never came out, no publisher was willing to publish the book, some for economic reasons, others because they didn’t like the translation or the poems.

  And then one day I got a registered letter saying he was suing me. And of course then I realized who I’d gotten mixed up with and what kind of a guy he was. A poet who wouldn’t keep his word, a liar. A translator friend of mine said his translation was terrible, but I tactfully never told him. For the first time in my life I was the defendant in a court case, and naturally he lost. I was never an attorney, but I studied law and worked in the legal field. It was his word against mine, and mine won.

  1999

  I think it was in ’99, or maybe it was 2000, in winter. He convinced me to drive him to a book signing for Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Le racisme expliqué a ma fille. It must have been before the Second Intifada. I drove him because he never found time to get a driver’s license, I don’t think he has taken a single lesson. Perhaps the steering wheel frightens him or maybe every time he intends to go for a lesson he writes a poem instead. That’s why he writes so many poems. The event was at a theater in Givatayim, a suburb of Tel Aviv, and the place was full. I’m hazy about what happened but I do recall my friend fidgeting in his seat incessantly, as if there were thorns on his chair. And I do remember the Q&A at the end, when an Israeli writer of a certain age stood up and said that colonialism wasn’t all bad, and then it was Ben Jelloun who started squirming in his seat like my friend, I think he was looking around for emergency exits, and the writer kept describing the positive sides of colonialism, especially the building of highways and infrastructure. His comments, which left the whole room astonished, lasted more than five minutes, and afterwards Ben Jelloun said something banal that was a very tactful way of saying “Why don’t you piss off?” and moved on to the next audience member, who said something about anti-Sephardic discrimination
in Israel. My friend didn’t ask any questions. After the talk he approached Ben Jelloun and said a few words I couldn’t hear, and then he told me he had translated a long poem by Ben Jelloun called “La remontée des cendres,” I remember the title because it rises and falls, a long poem about the first Gulf War.

  On the ride home he spoke at length about that writer’s colonialism and how insane it was to say something like that to a Moroccan writer who had lived under French colonialism, even if he does write in French. Then he explained why Ben Jelloun was so important to him. He said Ben Jelloun’s writings made him realize for the first time that he was a Moroccan writer, since they had many literary traits in common and agreed on many things. He said that reading them convinced him that he himself was not a Jew who happened to be born in Morocco, but that maybe he was a Moroccan who just happened to be born Jewish. When reading him he felt Moroccan, he said, and yet history, historical movements, had amputated his country from him. I think he was very disappointed that Ben Jelloun did not stay to have coffee with him and did not even give him his address or phone number in Paris, but merely said to send his publisher, Le Seuil, a copy of the magazine where the poem appeared.

  1981

  The magazine had not received many stories, as we hadn’t published the first issue yet and few people knew about us, but then we received a short story through Jules, who was on the editorial team, he was a friend of the Sabra’s, I remember the story clearly, it was called “24 Hours in the Life of a Madman,” and I recall it was hysterical and the gist was that the Nazis were right and that the narrator had to be exterminated, that’s how he narrated it, I think it already put me in mind of Bukowski before I read it, it was that sort of thing, and none of the other three editors liked it, I think it even scared them but I liked it, I remember exactly what I thought, “Damn, this guy really is crazy!”, in those exact words, and I said I’d like to meet him, and he did turn out to be truly crazy, as you’d expect from a South American writer, like all those young people who went missing in Argentina, eccentric. Eccentric in a country where it seemed to me that all the artists were normal and bourgeois. I understand South American writers, being one myself, and we became instant close friends and for a time we even lived together in the Neve Yaakov district, we even wrote a collection of stories together. In the end, we published a poem of his in the first issue but his story never made it into print. He joined the editorial team starting with issue 2 and he was always arguing with the Sabra, calling him an idiot and a lousy writer and the Sabra said the same about him, and I defended them both, separately, until they became friends.

 

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