Gates to Tangier (2 page)

There was sti
­
ll some whiskey, but the food was tasteless, not like the lunches on Air France to New York, and now we're going to New York. Isaque, our homeopathic doctor brother, would surely start to argue with me again about how I'm poisoning my pati
­
ents, but the truth is that I'm giving less antibio
­
tics to my patients, and less medicine in general. I find that 90% of them really would rather share their problems with me, than be cured of their illnesses, they don't much like medicine either and more than half of th
­
e drugs end up in the trash.

Being a family doctor is pretty nice, there is more time to talk with the patient, and sometimes you can get to know the problems of a whole family, which most of the time is very interesting. He is the only one who traveled to Tétouan since we left, and said that money wasn't an issue for him, but he wanted to come with us and see us again in t
­
his city.

And he's right, all these years since we esc
­
aped from the city...we all escaped as if we w
­
ere Lot's wife and if we dared to look back we would turn into pillars of salt. What were we so afraid of? It is only a couple of hours from Madrid or Paris by plane, it could be over a weekend. This is what my wife kept asking me. In those days, when she loved me, she asked many times for us to travel over a weekend, and my answer always was, what do I need from Morocco now? We could go to Paris, to New York, to Mad
­
eira, Sri Lanka, India, Madras, Tehran, anywhere, anywhere that isn't Morocco. And it wasn't just me that responded like that, it was my father's answer, my mother's, and all of the brothers' as well. What did we lose there?

Everything, I say, we lost everything there.

"Are you excited to go back to Tétouan?

"These aren't the best circumstances. I don't know, all my life I have avoided this moment, but I know that one day I will have to return. Close the circle, end this chapter. I didn't think it would happen this way, that I would return to look for a half-brother I didn't know anything about.

I don't know if this is the right tim
­
e, but apparently it is since we are all going.

Tel Aviv-Madrid-Málaga, Tel Aviv Madrid Málaga...

It´s the opposite direction from back in 1974. I was in Madrid back then, but I read a thousand times in Alberto's books about the morning when he woke up in Restinga and traveled to Ceuta. As if I were there. What do you remember?"

"I was happy. Don't forget that after Oufkir's coup failed there were many attempts to assassinate the king, and we were afr
­
aid that this would happen because it would have been very bad for us. It was a relief. I remember that I woke up Israel and took him in my arms, half asle
­
ep. Mom carried Ruth, and Dad tal
­
ked to the driver, just as the sun was coming up over the ocean. It was incredible. At the border we w
­
ere a little scared that something would happen. Papa bri
­
bed the police, we all said we were going on vacat
­
ion to Palma de Mallorca.

We did finally get to Palma de Mallorca two years ago. Papá, Mamá, my husband and I, and Ruth also came with her husband, it was great. It was a shame you didn't come, it was a wo
­
nderful time."

She suddenly stopped talking, just when I thought she would give me more details, more sentences, memories of that fa
­
miliar trip. She went quiet. In her head things were very clea
­
r, the house, the husband, the three kids, typical French stability. Everything is security, the creams are security, Par
­
is,
securité sociale
, the house
,
the two cars, the husband and his life insurance, the children that would study in a good
école
, all was arranged, and I - what I am is an enormous mess.

My marriage is a mess. No one knows anything about this, no one knows what is happening to me, and maybe they think that I'm living some grand romance, an endless love. Maybe they think that I don't need an inheritance, that my wife's money is enough, or the money from my work as a doctor.

Enough for what? To pay the mortgage on my house on Pedro Texe
­
ira, the big car, my daughter's computer, who knows what is enough? It isn't enough for happiness, it isn't enough to recreate the fe
­
eling of warmth on holidays, when we come back from the synagogue and smell the Easte
­
r dishes, the clean house, the women dressed in their fine
­
ry. Maybe that's what gives life me
­
aning, maybe just that moment, but what do I know about what my parents think, what they dream about, maybe they didn't know where to get the money at the end of the m
­
onth either, or they thought that they wouldn't get out of the city in time and the king would be assassinated and everything would collap
­
se.

For me, at ten years old, it seemed the most secure thing in the world, the clearest. I never heard my mother worry about money like my wife does, and we h
­
ave more than they had at that time. We ha
­
ve health insurance and private doctors, and all the insurance in the world, and it isn't enough, we aren't happy, she has to go to the most expensive hairdresser, to the most expensive stores, I don't know where, I only see that every month we pay more and more on our credit cards and I can't say anything. It is her money too.

The house is not a safe place, it isn't safe like it seemed before, it was the very symbol of safety, the symbol of freedom, the place I could always go when the skies filled with thunderclaps. More mo
­
ney is less security, more opportunities, more obvious services, it exacerbates the fear of missing out on having the best. I hug myself. I want my sister to hu
­
g me, why don't I hug her? Why not? Just to put my arms around her, sur
­
ely she would smile, would be happy, but I can't. I can't hug her, I can't give love.

I smile at my sister. Where is the love we had when we were children, the hugs we hugged, the fi
­
ghts we fought, the walks we walked, where are we now, why so far, Jerusalem, Paris, Madrid, New York, scattered across half the globe? For five hundr
­
ed years our family lived in the same place, within two square kilometers, we went from house to house. But it was the same place for five hundred years, and now we are five thousand kilometers away from each other. Perhaps the world has gotten smaller. It is possible to go visit, but it is still far. I want to come to you to cry and talk about my wife, tell you how hard it is, but I can't get on a plane for that. Als
­
o, when everyone was close you couldn't talk about pain, and everything was forgotten. People didn't talk then, they forgot, and it was over.

We meet at weddings and funerals, circum
­
cisions, vacations that last a few days, and we all try to be happy, we try not to t
­
alk 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 h
­
aving 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 log
­
o. 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 interes
­
ting to know who picks them.

W
hen 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 g
­
o 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 ne
­
ed another doctor, if you do have a problem, and I'm not sure that you do - you might not ha
­
ve 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. Eff
­
ort makes a mess of everything, we can’t communic
­
ate. There is a lack of communication between men and wo
­
men, between men, everything goes around and around and I cannot decide, what can I take, maybe S
­i
lica, 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 h
­
ard the best thing to do is go to the sea, to see the salty water, fee
­
l 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 a
­
ncestors that came from
Sefarad
, from Israel, that left in search of a new world here. But the fir
­
st 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 lear
­
ned to live in crypto-judaic communities throughout this continent. Here we are. I get depressed and sta
­
rt to talk about the sea, the sea over which I'm flying ri
­
ght 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 eat
­
en by bigger fish or smaller fish or that would e
­
nd 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 sin
­
gle act? Children are born either way, they're not really deman
­
ding. 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 hil
­
ls, 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 cram
­
ps, and he was there at home with another woman, the ch
­
ildren 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...