Free Lucena by Mois Benarroch

and another younger one called Gregory, perhaps his friend. Every day more writers and poets arrive. As though there were no places in the United States to write. There was even a Jew called Ginsberg who spent a few weeks here. What’s a Jew doing in Morocco?
    Anyway, I must leave all this behind and go to Israel. Once the Moors take over, it’s all over. Everything will crumble and they won’t leave us anything. The Moors are more intelligent than the Spaniards or the Europeans. They have no need to throw us out or kill us. In a very educated manner they let us know there is no room for us. I have been told that close to Tel-Aviv there is a city called Ashdod where there are a lot of people from Morocco and Maghreb who speak French. I have to go. This city is filling up with Moors and crazy Americans. My cousin wants to go to Caracas but I finish my exile in Tangier. I’ll leave here only to go to Israel, not to another exile country. My cousin also talks about Canada, the Canary Islands, Madrid, France and Venezuela. He says he can’t establish himself in a backward country like Israel.
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    W HERE DO THE EAGLES SLEEP FATER?
    -In the sky.
    “How, mama?”
    Sometimes.
    “Why are the kids at school mean to me?”
    Because you are different.
    “How am I different?”
    “You are Sephardic. You have darker skin than they do.”
    “What is Sephardic?”
    Many years ago my son, we lived in a country which at that time was called Sefarad and now Spain. In that country lived Moors, Christians, and many Jews. There we spoke Arabic and Spanish and we also wrote in Hebrew. And in that country my son, we were all friends. But since then so much time has passed that now we only know it from books.
    “Why did you leave that country?”
    I never lived there. I never left there, the Jews left that country because the Christians threw them out. The Christians wanted a country with no Jews.
    “Papa, do they want to kick us out of here too?”
    “No, here we are all Jews. You are only a little different because I am from Morocco and you have a Moroccan name.”
    “And what if here they also want a country without Moroccans?”
    “That will never happen. You’re just a little different.”
    “Can’t we just go back to your country, Sefarad?”
    “The land still is there but that country, Sefarad, is no more. It is a dream.”
    “Like how we dream when we sleep?”
    It is a dream we have while awake. In that dream those who return to the land of Israel were equal to those who lived there, nobody was less than another person. All were equal, even if the color of their skin or their names were different. I had that dream many times while awake, as I walked through the streets of Tetuán. I dreamed that never would they tell me, or you, that you are different.”
    LUNCH IN MÁLAGA
    This time the girls Luisa and Muriel were there. Samuel pensively asked, “Can anybody live a thousand years?”
    The father: “What you need to do is look for work. It is worth the effort for you to learn how to make a living. Money doesn’t fall from the trees.”
    The mother: “He signed up at the university. He can rest a bit before the course starts.”
    The father: “How can he rest when I can’t? I’ve been working since I was fourteen. I studied, I worked, and I finished high school. Kids of today are wimps.”
    Luisa: “The bible talks about a guy named Methuselah who lived a thousand years. Adam too, didn‘t he? I learned that in school.”
    “The father: “All that is no more than stories. What you all need to do is to sweat a little more instead of expecting that your father will hand it to you all ready.”
    Samuel: “I’m not referring to now. If somebody existed who was a thousand years old, how would we know he’s that old?”
    The father says to the mother, “You see? Didn’t I tell you not to pamper them so much? Look how they’re spending their time. Next they’ll be talking about flying