Gates to Tangier

by Mois Benarroch

  We meet at weddings and funerals, circum­cisions, vacations that last a few days, and we all try to be happy, we try not to t­alk about our problems, our separate lives, the distance, the distances that seem longer every time we see each other, because then, then, we see how we have all taken a different path, we have all ended up with different languages, cultures...Alberto started to talk to me about the problems with ashkenazim, surely he's right, but what do I know about that! You talk to me about your sick dog, Isaque about homeopathy, and Ruth, what can I talk about with her? Her next child? Thirty years, six children, what does she do with her time? Children, children, nothing other than children. Her husband studies in a Shas yeshiva and makes babies. They get some money from the family, social assistance, and make more and more babies, what can I talk about with her, about the skirts my wife buys that each cost what I spend in a month, a world inside-out, a strange world. I saw her before the funeral, five years ago, and now she cannot come with us, of course, she is in her eighth month, cannot get on an airplane, she needs money more than we do and with more urgency, and Israel, who died, died without anything, without h­aving children. He died, and was gone.

  I can talk to him, I don’t even have to use words. Not even thoughts. To die for your country, it is a meaningful death, a death that makes sense.

  The meal was over, the trays returned, I noticed the people who were afraid of flying. They used to sit in the smoking section and smoke the whole flight. Now they can only move around, go from one side to the other, sweat...

  The flight attendant gives us a forced smile, practically Iberia's log­o. I have never been able to understand how the people who best know how to laugh have given the world flight attendants that have­ to force themselves to laugh. Every flight surprises me all over again. The worst are the ones on the domestic flights. It would be interes­ting to know who picks them.

  ISAQUE

  When I go back I'm going to say, I will finally say, it is over, Sandy, this is over, we can't go on like this. We cannot be together anymore, no matter what.

  I'm not threatening you, I don't even want to be mad, I'm not angry, it is just over. I can't g­o on living with you, maybe I can be your friend, your lover, but we cannot be husband and wife, we cannot prolong this, I can't do anything, I'm not hoping that you'll change, you can't stop yelling about our son Sam, I don't expect you to be quiet.

  I don't have any solution, any remedy for this, not in 8CH nor in 200M, and dilution won't change anything, And I can't treat you, I'm your husband, you ne­ed another doctor, if you do have a problem, and I'm not sure that you do - you might not ha­ve anything at all...but this is just over.

  Lachesis. You remember that remedy for those that won't stop talking? We tried it once, remember? I laugh when I think about it, and it all comes back like a wave from the Mediterranean, after that the silence returns, the sun, the small waves that are more of a caress than a pain, and then I miss you, but this cannot go on, there is a voice in my head that says it cannot, I divorce you every day and then I come back, when the memories come back, but the present...where is the present? Where is our present?

  I remember those lines by Jackson Browne that says that the best times were when we didn't force it. Eff­ort makes a mess of everything, we can’t communic­ate. There is a lack of communication between men and wo­men, between men, everything goes around and around and I cannot decide, what can I take, maybe S­ilica, maybe Natrum, Natrum Muriaticum, Natrum Sulfuricum, Natrum, salt, salt works well for me, table salt, seasalt, salt everywhere, salt and more salt, that guy is so salado, I feel more comfortable with salt. I can't swim in pools since they don't have salt, I can only swim in the sea, sea, more sea, touch the sea, see the sea, feel the sea and I'm already someone else, and this is why I haven't left this island in ten years.

  Manhattan. When things get h­ard the best thing to do is go to the sea, to see the salty water, fee­l like the sea goes to a faraway place, another place with another life, other people, and the waters unite us until the end of days, lost islands, people that never talk to me are linked to me by the salt of the sea, by the memory of seawater, the memory of salt, of water, minerals, all the history of the world is in it, in its waters, the pirates and my a­ncestors that came from Sefarad, from Israel, that left in search of a new world here. But the fir­st Jews that came were Sephardic Jews, starting Judaism in the United States, in New York and in America, and we can't forget the converts that lear­ned to live in crypto-judaic communities throughout this continent. Here we are. I get depressed and sta­rt to talk about the sea, the sea over which I'm flying ri­ght this moment. If we crashed no one would find even a trace of us, we would turn into the sea, pieces of bodies in the water or within the fish that would be eat­en by bigger fish or smaller fish or that would e­nd up on a plate. We would be fish, we would be sea. We would be sea.

  Well, that's what it is, he’s Fátima's son. But that doesn't explain anything. Was it a long relationship or a sin­gle act? Children are born either way, they're not really deman­ding. Spermatazoids don't really care if love or any other emotion is involved, but she was already his lover before he was married, when she worked at the parents' house.

  A girl of fifteen, from the hil­ls, from Chefchaouen, and he was thirty. She had this child at thirty-some years, almost forty, maybe she thought that there were only a few days left, it was her last chance, and it didn't matter who the father was, and if she would be a servant all of her life she at least wanted a child.

  Or maybe it occurred to her once Mamá was in the hospital with cram­ps, and he was there at home with another woman, the ch­ildren at school, and she ironed, prepared dinner and served it to him, did everything without realizing that as a substitute for the real wife, the only thing left was sex. Maybe when she realized that it was already too late, she told him she was pregnant at five months and maybe, maybe not, and maybe it wasn't more than once and he was otherwise faithful, or maybe it happened other times, during the trips to Tangier, to Gibraltar, to Mogador. He wasn't home half of the time, he was often abroad, and if it was once why not twenty times, and if it was like that maybe he has children all over Morocco, maybe even in Europe, in Madrid, in Spain, who knows? We'll never know. Who can answer any of those questions? Mamá? I don't think that she believes in anything anymore. She never told anyone about this, didn't confess to anyone. Maybe she told a lover, a psychologist, we don't know. Maybe an intimate friend...

  SILVIA

  Every time I get on a plane I catch a cold, before even getting on the plane. It starts an hour before even getting to the a­irport. A dry cough, then a sneeze or two, and then it comes out endlessly. I'm not afraid of planes, I've never been afraid of planes. Maybe it is my subcon­scious, maybe the air conditioning in air­ports, I don't know. My father struck the stone and had another child, one that I knew nothing about. Papá, Papá! You didn't even tell me! Nor your favorite daughter, or even Ruth? Maybe you wanted to forget, and maybe you forgot until the day you wrote your w­ill.

  You had so many secrets in Switzerland...and a secret son in Morocco. Maybe those two things go together. I remember flying to Madrid in 1977, two years after Franco died, and to Uncle Alfonso's place, and everything was so weird, in three years we were already so different, those who went to Spain and those who went to Israel.

  On the one hand we were more sur­e of ourselves, as if the past had been erased, the humiliations, the feeling of living under the governments of others, everything was erased and everything remained.

  On the other hand, they seemed more satisfied with their lives, with their country club and po­ol, tennis matches and modern cinema, Madrid was the modern city and Jerusalem the village, but they still had that same fear of goyim, that ancient Jewish fear that cannot be erased.

  Maybe we also brought this fear and tran­sferred it to others, the ashkenazim, when we treated them like idiots and believed we could trick them. Remember, Papa, when they wanted you to inves
t your money in a Histadrut factory? At least you were sm­art enough to tell them that after buyin­g your house you had no money left. Very smart. I didn't understand why, but you said that there were fore­ign investors but that they wanted a private manufacturer, then you gave in, like so many times before, and now, where is your socialism? Israel has turned into a savage capitalist, those leading the histadrut uni­ons have turned into bank directors and crush the former oppressors, An Israeli invention: communist capitalism. Soon they'll export the idea to Russia and to other communist countries.

  It is comical to me that after marrying Raymond, my dear Raymond, and going to live in Paris on rue Victor Hu­go, nothing more and nothing less, I was soon a Jew again. We didn't tell anyone that we were Jews, althoug­h our surname is very Jewish, but not every­one can recognize Jewish names. We told our children to behave like everyone else, not to call attention, not to say that their mother is from Israel, but it was incredible. French democracy is a delicate and sophisticated form of Christianity in which everyone wants everyone to be alike. Before they wanted everyone to be Christian, now they want everyone to be French. A citizen like everyone else. There are two religi­ons that aspire to be universal, Christianity and Islam, and now when they throw stones at the Jewish school I'm afraid to send my children there, exactly how we were afraid of the rocks that the Moroccan children threw at us when we came out of the Alliance Fran­çaise.

  Maybe in Spain it would be different, but in Paris things were getting worse every day, and what happened is that like always, we Jews looked for justifications: the Palestinians, the Moroccans that came to France, the new Intifada, but no, it will pass, and in the end we went with a suitcase and four suits, this is what happens, well, better to stop thinking about it.

  "Want some whisky?" asked Alb­erto from behind me.

  "Yes."

  "This family never says no to whiskey."

  "Maybe it will help cure this cold. Or more likely give me a headache. We'll see."

  I thought that we were coming for the month, and going back immed­iately, but here we are are, on a flight to Mad­id, as our grandmother said, journeys are when you ketbea. We are looking for Yosef Elbaz, brother, half-brother, almost thirty years old, about twenty-seven, maybe, even this isn't clear. We only know who his mother is, and now my children will have to wait a few days for me. My little girl cried on the phone, but will have to wait, this will la­st a few days, maybe a week. Maybe Mrs. Elbaz, our Fátima, will be waiting for us in the same house where we grew up. I bought it, she’ll say, from the money that your father sent. She will tell us how her son was raised and how intelligent he is, and that he went to Belgium, or no, she would tell us he got involved with drug trafficking and is now in jail, no, she would never tell us that, if he is in jail she'll say he went to the Netherlands and she doesn't know where he lives, he telephones once in a while. Yes, of course, he calls me and sends me money through Western Union. How would she pronounce that? In a Spanish mixed with Arabic, we would tell her why we came. Or keep it secret, I'm not sure.

  "Who wanted a brother anyway?" my brother asks me.

  "Yes. This is what we are all wondering, if an­y of us need another brother now. We're not really interested. We're traveling because our inheritance depends on this. Right? Maybe some curiosity, and maybe the opportunity to go to Morocco together, a special occas­ion that will never happen again, but above all it is mone­y, and Papa always said not to trust anyone when it comes to money.”

  "What does that have to do with anything?”

  "I don't know, but here's the food. Now we have something to do."

  "Yes, this is why we have food, to ­entertain us."

  But not even a plate full of airplane food is enough to stop the thoughts, not even the cold. I ask for more tissues from the flight attendant. I would rather see my little brother, the one who died in the war. Not a new one. This is the only way to become a real Israeli. A Moroccan who dies in the war becomes a real Israeli. Until that moment he is half-Israeli. It must be because the dead cannot threaten anyone. Die and become one of us. I don't want to think about that.

  My little brother would b­e thirty-three today, or thirty four, married, with one or two children, a wonderful age, he would be thirty-three, but he isn't here and no one talks about him. We all think about him but not out loud, the topic is sealed, the other three hundred soldiers that exploded alongside him, he is the one I want to see, and not Yosef, who I don't kn­ow, what good can this bring. We are going to see him but what we are looking for is money.

  ALBERTO

  Write, write, write. Everything in this world is meant to end up in­ a book, to be written on a page, som­eone dies and it is a book, it is a poem, someone kills someone, we write about it, terrorist attack, a daytime lover, they are all words, we see the thoug­hts of my brothers, a book.

  I am sitting here with my laptop in fr­ont of me, my brothers behind, and I write. I write about them, I write them, I write about me, I don't think, you don't think, I write. Logic comes later. The only logic is that everything has a word, everything that happens is one word and another. Isaque is coming to Madrid from New York, the words go on, word­s explain everything or nothing, what does it matter, what is important is to document.

  My father is dead, fine, we hav­e a book, I will write a book ab­out my father, about my dead brother, about divorce, the second wife, who exists or doesn't exist, it doesn't matter, I can wr­ite about what exists as if it doesn't exist, about what has been and what will never be, pa­per can handle it all, the reader can handle very little, they don't read most of the books, they throw them in the trash, but the page, the page is a paradise for writers like me, we bombard the page, the ashkenazim piss me off, whatever the problem, I can write it, I can respond, my aliyá was a failure, again, it doesn't matter, like Bukowski said, the best thing in writing is that you can find your wife fucking your best friend, and instead of killing him you go and write this grand p­oem, and that same night you can sit together all three of you and dri­nk a beer, or at least you can wr­ite it, you write more, and here is Silvia, who turns around to ask:

  "What are you writing about in such a hurry?"

  "About everything, whiskey, the flight attendant, the passport inspection..."

  "Hey - don't write too much about us. We can't say anything to you, it will all end up in your books."

  "Don't worry, I don't have many readers."

  "Then what are you writing about us for, wri­te stories about the moon, they'll sell better."

  Yes, that. They all have ideas about what I should writ­e about. I really need that one hundred thousand doll­ars of inheritance. My worker's compensation for ten years of part-time work at the Sojnut have ended, that’s over. It was boring work, but at least I was able to write in peace for two years. That is what is important, to write.

  I tell myself that but I don't believe it, it is what it is, an illness, an obsession, only wr­iting. I ruined my life to write, I ruined my family, my son perhaps, or maybe it is better that he grew up with his mother, if he had been with me I could have destroyed him more.

  I ne­ed money, this is why I'm looking for this strange brother, my secret brother, my brother who may not even be alive, I don't know. On this page I can go and live in Paris, or Madrid, but my life is already in Jerusalem. For a while now, my life has been in Jerusalem and Jerusalem has melted into my life, a Jerusalemite poet, Jerusale­m writer. But not the kind that write like Agnon, not me, I don't write like Agnon, I'm above this, and behind everything, I write like Alberto Benzimra, only Alberto Benzimra writes like Alberto Benzimra, and no one understan­ds what he writes.

  What can I do? I ask Isaque to give me a homeopathic re­medy, because if I asked Fortu for something like that he would laugh at me, but in homeopathy you can treat everything, treat the pain from my father's death.

  He gave it to me over the phone. "Take Ignatia...Ignatia 7 CH". Not bad, right? You can even treat the pain
from the dea­th of someone who died fifteen years ago. I don't ca­re if it helps or cures anything, the pills for throat pai­n don't help eighty percent of the time, and if we want to talk about cancer, all those demented treat­ments don't help anything, but at least the theories behind homeopathy are much more literary than the theories behind allopathy, which only wants to destroy disease. According to homeopathy there is a harmony between people and plants on the earth, there are persons that are Natr­um, with an affinity for salt. How wonderful, a person who is the personification of salt. Others have snake venom, Lachesis. Others bee venom, Apis. Every person develops certain characteristics accord­ing to these parallels and can change throughout their lives to become one plant or another.

  And my father kept his secret until death, until thirty days after his death, but he didn't take it to the grave. What was he afraid of? That his young­est daughter would marry his secret Moroccan son? Could that happen? It is very improbable, impossible. It must be that he felt guilty for leaving his son there with his mother and disappearing, maybe he thought he could take care of his family and his illegitimate son. How is he illegitimate exactly? A son, with Fátima, Fatima Elbaz. Who could believe it? But maybe it wasn't such an uncommon thing, and happened many times, what do we know, maybe this happened to many parents, but only my father didn't want to forget his son, he thought about him, he missed the son he never met, or who he met when he was one year old. How do you keep a secret? Technically it see­ms easy, but inside, how do you live with that?