— One day my son all this will make sense.
— And none of it will be mine.
— And the whole world will be yours
— The whole world but not my life.
— You won’t need your life my son, you will be your life.
— But why am I different from the others?
— It’s a curse my son and it will be a blessing.
— In school they still call me the Jew.
— It’s like time won’t touch us, we are in the sixteen—century again, it’s 1939 forever, we have not left Egypt.
— But you are normal, why did you marry a Jewish woman?
— Do you really thing I chose your life?
— You could have chosen my life.
— I could not my son, it was written in the stars.
4.
I have the ticket now. Magdalena will be back tomorrow. I don’t know what will she think when I tell her that I am leaving in a week. And suddenly I have a virus in my computer, It’s the w32.nimda.a. Not the E kind, it’s like disease and here I am losing three hours of my day looking for s site to fix it. Downloading the file and trying to get rid of it as quickly as possible. It sticks to your email program and sends emails to all your friend without your knowledge. And my own mononucleosis is trying to beat me again, which virus is worse I ask myself? And I know why the mono is now against me, because I hate planes, I am coughing too much and smoking too much, and I may have to postpone my trip. I call the doctor, he’ll be here in two hours, I call Magdalena, she is worried, I told her about the ticket, she said OK, if I am healthy, why not, she said why not, I say I have to.
I have won the virus in my computer, or at least it says so. My computer is clean, but not me. I have the mono in my head, and it spreads to my body each time I need it most. But I have to win this time, I have to go. I had this dream a week ago and an old woman with a cross on her heart says to me, you shall go to Jerusalem, you have to go, and when she goes away before I have time to answer I somehow know that she is Jewish. A great grand mother. I can’t get rid of this dream. Ten generations running away from being Jews and now my son is a Jew. How did this happen? And should I feel guilty or proud? Should one be proud of being born a Jew? Or maybe it’s just the opposite. My son will one day come and ask me why did I make him a Jew, as if I could do something else, as if I have an answer. I will sit in my chair, older than the world, and will be as quiet as my mother when I asked her if we were Jews. My son will think that I feel guilty or that I don’t have an answer, until one day he will know that all our history is written in these gaps of silence, in this place where a Jew does not even have a new question to answer a question. Dear mother, now, very late, later than it should be, I understand and will not ask again.
— Where is our past?
— In our heart.
— Who writes our history?
— The dusk.
— Why can’t I find our history in the history books?
— It is too painful for the readers.
— When will we see the light of day?
— When the dusk ends.
— It never ends.
— We have been promised that it will end suddenly.
— Do you believe these promises?
— I just know there was a promise, and I believe there was a promise. I don’t believe in anything else.
— And when will our memory die?
— Never, you are born with your history and you carry the burden of all your ancestors when you are born. Some of us do.
— I would like to be like the others, simple.
— There are no others who are simple, my son, they just have more secrets than we do, and they suffer even more.
— So, are they all like us?
—
Part two
— Where are you my brother where are you?
— We are not brother anymore.
— But where did they take you?
— To an island.
— What’s the name of the island?
— It has no name. We call it the island of the end of the world.
— And what have they done to you?
— A good Christian. The only thing I remember from my mother is before they took me away and she asked me to remember forever the words "Shema Yisrael". What does that mean?
— And do you dream?
— I dream I swim to Jerusalem.
1.
Dear son, tomorrow at dawn I will leave the city and head for Jerusalem. I am leaving the Tefilim to you since I cannot take them with me. I will put an Arab dress and do the trip that my brother did five years ago. I have been waiting all my life for this day. And now the moment has come. Your moment will come too. I am telling you this my grandson, because we have the same name, and because my sons would try to prevent me from traveling if I told them. For them I am too old, but for me this is the only way to end my life.
Now is the time to tell you about my life, about your ancestors.
There is no need to cry and no reason to cry, my son, we have shed more tears than the oceans can bear and our god has never heard us. This is is our fate and I know he is trying us, trying us until the end of times.
So, please, stop your tears, you should smile and laugh, just because you are still a Jew, 180 years after the Spaniards chased us from their cities and destroyed our fate and family. We are the survivors and condemned to suffer for all our lives. Because we didn’t want to hear the voice of our God, because we didn’t accept his kingdom on this earth.
Now, you should know that I was not born a jew. I was born in Lisbon as a Christian, and was baptized, while my mother said the sacred words in her heart "Shema Yisrael adonay elohenu adonay Ehhad" ("Listen Israel, Adonay is our god Adonay is one). You may think that this is what saved me, but the same words didn’t save my two brothers, Jose and Jesus. They were taken by the inquisition when they were small children and given to the church. They were sent to an island, a very far land, and no one ever returned from this island without name to tell us about their fate. I dream of them often, I wonder how did they grow or if they died in their way. I don’t know what is better, maybe it is better if they died in the ship and never became Christians. In Lisbon we were only Christian outside our homes but we never worked on Shabbats and we circumcised the children, my grandmother died of sorrow when my brother disappeared. My mother said that in her deathbed she made a wish to God and asked that all her descendants be buried in Jerusalem. And that is why I am leaving this city today for Jerusalem, as my brother did, that is why you will always dream about Jerusalem, even if it is the biggest secret in your life, you will always dream about going to Jerusalem. I hope that one day we’ll go there to live and not only to die. Maybe this is a legend that my mother told me, I never heard my grandmother say that but she dies in Lisbon when I was ten years old, so I can’t remember what she said.
But, don’t ever forget my son those lost in the road, those who fell from our tree as if they were leaves in autumn, don’t you ever forget those who became Christians, and those who became Muslims, and there were many, too many to be counted, more than those who stayed Jews, more than us.
When I was twelve years old we left Lisbon, there were ships of a rich Jew and the ships took us To Tangier in Morocco and from there we made our way to Fez. We were only my mother and my brother, all the others stayed in Lisbon and we never heard of them. Some day you will, our family name there was Caldeira and Perez, I never heard of my cousins and the families of my mother and father anymore.
Alas, my son, our troubles didn’t end in Fez, it became much worse. There was a big famine and the jews were forced to convert into Islam, thousands of tired jews from Spain, tired of suffering and tired of being hungry and poor opted for the muslim fate, may they all be cursed, and may they be in hell, now they fill the city of Fez and oppress their own brothers, my mother died of sorrow, and my brother and me decided to leave the city, and then we
came to this small city, and since then thanks God, in this city, the muslims leave us alone and don’t try to convert us. All of them are descendants of muslims chased from Spain, so maybe they still understand our suffering. Whatever the reason is, don’t you ever trust them. For they can change in one hour and start killing us like they did all through the ages. It’s not their fault, it is our sins, my son, and our god testing us, like he did test Abraham when he asked him to sacrifice his son, but these days there is no voice to stop us from killing our sons or for letting them die. For us the quiet sea is only the sign of the next tempest. This is our life.
And I remember the shores of Malaga as If I had walked them, my grandmother taught me the smell of the Mediterranean when I lived by the shores of the ocean, my grandfather the smell of the Hebrew language, the one we spoke in Sefarad, the one now lost forever. Listen my son, we are the survivors, I saw the best hews becoming christians and then becoming muslims in Fez, in front of my eyes and when I saw their eyes I could see their light disappear, as if they fell into a deep well. My jews, my jews, how many tears can we still shed, my jews lost in the ages, lost again and again, my brothers and my cousins, my fathers and my mother, and to think that we started these two crazy religions, that our Adonai, our one god gave birth to these two monsters whose only life seems to be to convert us. We are the survivors, we are the last ones, just a few years ago, before you were born, the year before you were born, all the jews were chased again from Oran. And who did it? It was the Spaniards again, the same jews who run away from them and constructed a new life of cooperation between jews, muslims and christians and found their own monsters again in front of them, it’s like running away from the mirror and finding it in front of you. We were scared then, frightened that the Spaniards would conquer our city too, we are too close to Spain. Is it because we still love it or is it because we are afraid to be so far away from our lost brothers? They still keep coming back, less and less these days, they come back after they tried to be Christians and were not accepted, some of them were very good Christians, but that was not enough and they preferred to die as jews praying the Shma Ysrael.
Oh! How much suffering my son, how long should we still cry, I am going to die in Jerusalem, but I hope that one day we will go live in Jerusalem, there is not much sense in hoping I know, but we must hope, the only thing we have left is the need to hope.
— Where are you my brother, where are you?
— A dead man although I breathe.
— What do you breathe my brother, what do you smell?
— The smell of my burning body.
— Can’t you my water around you?
— I can only see the crying of my mother before we were separated, I can see her words coming from mouth like swords and reaching my heart.
— Do you hear your mother?
— I can only see her words.
— My waters will call your fears, and my thoughts will caress you as long as I live.
— Please forget me by brother, your caress only cause more pain. Please forget me so I can forget myself.
PART THREE
—When does the journey starts?
—It starts when you arrive.
—And why should I go?
—Because you are on your way.
—And, father, why won’t you come with me.
—You plant a tree and you grandson will eat its fruit.
—When will I know that I have arrived?
—When the sun is smaller than an orange and when the cloud is stronger than the sea.
—How far is the city?
—It’s not far and not near, the city lives within your steps when you decide to start walking.
—Will I remember you?
—You will and your child not yet born will also remember me even if he has not seem me.
—And what will be his name?
—He will tell you his name, you will see it in his front.
Now is the time to go there, dear son. I have never seen the place but my father told me that you will go there. He made these maps for you and now that you are twenty years old you should start the journey. It will be long but it is the only thing you have to do in your life. We both know it.
In the beginning God created Chaos and chaos was all that God ever needed, and chaos was all that chaos ever needed, and chaos was made of Tohu and Bohu, Tohu was the outside chaos and bohu the inside chaos, man and woman was chaos, the earth and the sky only lived from the force of this chaos, but chaos as you will learn in your life always ends by creating a new world, all creations comes from chaos and all the world come from chaos, and from chaos our world was created, but since then instead of admitting chaos man has been afraid of chaos. Tohu was broken from Bohu.
And this is my son what my father told me.
He died ten years ago, when you were ten years old. He told me that he was a poet and he was born in this very same city, Tete—A—When, and his parents took him to the city of Jesusalem when he was thirteen years old. He told me that we are Jews and we don’t believe in many Gods but in one God. He explained to me that the God Nasa never existed but people always believed in Gods that could travel to the stars. In his time there were many people in this city, more than we can count, we are five hundred and seventy five people here today, but then there were many thousands and trithousands, there were many cities and people could have more than one child. He told me that people could have sex, the act by which you were created, more than once in their life, even twelve times and they could have twelve children. But all this changed when he took a plane to the holy city of MelVilla, he said that this city is not very far from here and it is on the map. In those times people could travel from city to city in big birds they called planes, you have seen a bird, yes, once, do you remember, it was two years ago when we ate the "wholly bread", you do remember, it was a black bird, people could then fly through this earth and go from time to time. Your grandfather was a poet, he could put words together in a magic way and compose poems and poems at that time could light a fire, many people loved poems and gave prices to the best writers of poems, and when he got a price in the city of Melvilla, he took the plane and when the plane was in the air the travellers heard a very big bombing, they thought that the plane had been destroyed but it was not the plane but the earth. My father said that this happened because men wanted to destroy everything they had done, they needed chaos, and the whole world was afraid of chaos, people tried to make sense of everything and make agreements between them until everything blew up. The big priest said that it happened because men were bad, and God decided to rebuild the earth with the best people, the people on the air were the best people, he said.
I was born a year after they landed not far from here in the plane site where we go to pray every month when the moon is full. Every woman got pregnant in the same year and everybody was born in that same month, your mother too. Then there were no more new children until you were born, many others were born since, my father said that he had a big family in Jesusalem, he had seven sons and daughters, but he does not know if they survived, no one knows if anyone survived, we have never met any person not coming from the plane. Maybe we are the only survivors and maybe there are many others. He told me that Jesusalem is the city of God and therefore cannot be destroyed, so if any other place in this world, if any other city still exists, if only one, that one must be Jesusalem. That’s why you have to take a woman today and start your journey, he told me that you should follow the sea, this sea, was called the Medirrenean sea, and now the only sea we know about, he said that there other seas, but that’s not important, anyway you should follow the sea, until you reach a canal, this may take you many many years, he put down the approximate place of the biggest cities in your way, Mellvilla, Oran, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, you see them here, and then Cairo, Alexandria, and then Ashdod, and Tel Aviv, maybe they don’t exist, maybe all this does not exist, but you will know that you are near Jesusalem when you
can see the sun set, and not rise like here, when you see the sun set, he said, watch the colors of the sun setting, if the it is like an orange in fire and there are clouds around it then you are close. I have no idea what this color means, but he told me that when you see such sunset you can start looking for the mountain in which you may find Jesusalem.
Now, finally, I have to tell you why you and not me. My father told me that only you could do it and your son will live there. He told me that I am too ill and weak to do it, he also said that all these spots on the skin that I have and he had are not normal, they were caused by the explosion. As he predicted your skin will be clearer, as it is, and your son’s skin will be completely bright. He will be stronger than you and his son will be stronger. Always tell your son to believe in only one God and find him in the city of Jesusalem.
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