Sepharad. A city of expelled Muslims and Jews. With the end of the Jewish community, Sepharad was over.
But shortly before came what the Sephardim called "The last visit of health", which was the strange Spanish colonialism in northern Morocco. It was as if they had returned to greet the people they had expelled, without apologizing, but that wasn't all, they also made up a good plan where Franco would conquer Spain from the city of those expelled. Because Spanish colonialism was a strange and inexplicable event in modern history. They arrived at a place where the language of the new conqueror was still spoken, primarily by Jews, but for the Moors it wasn't such a distant language either, they kept using it until the early nineteenth century, and there the reverse last days of Sepharad were re-created.
At first it was my name that separated me from the others, as a sign, a curse, a mark on the forehead, and before seeing me my compatriots believed that I was something I was not. They believed that I was violent, sometimes they said it with a glance and sometimes more clearly.
“But you're very pleasant.”
“And why wouldn't I be?”
“I don't know. You write very violent things.”
I never understood what those violent things were.
But later on, discrimination became personal, I had finally caught up to it and I said it, I said the reason was the discrimination against Moroccan and Sephardic Jews, and since then I have become an enemy of the people. Today, you can find online discussions in Hebrew about my alleged racism. By claiming that I was a victim of racism, I became in the eyes of others a racist, the pure logic of the illogical. The pure reasoning of the Jew who never becomes a citizen of a democratic country.
The Israeli society tries to create an advanced society erasing the entire Sephardic culture, to save it from its savagery. But when you yourself say that it's something savage, you become the savage one. This is how a new colonial Occidentalism was built on a Middle Eastern land, where most Jews are from the Middle East, and there is also an Arab minority of about twenty percent that is either indigenous or that comes from that same Middle East. The Europeans have taken it upon themselves to convert everyone into Europeans yet those same Europeans were victims of European racist thinking. This situation didn't lack humor.
Then who was I on that boat from Ceuta to Algeciras on that August day in 1972 and what did I become a few years later, a few months later. I had arrived at a full-fledged country in which it was normal that I was abnormal, it was normal and that the average Moroccan was poor and the new generation almost couldn't read, Moroccans did manual labor, so it was normal to be told "But you don't look Moroccan," which at first seemed very strange, and then I adapted it as well as I could to my daily life. I still remember one of my first few weeks in Israel, in that uneducated and primitive town called Pardes Hanna, when an Israeli tried to convince me that I was not from Morocco.
“You are from Marseilles.”
“I'm from Tettauen, Morocco.”
“It can't be, you have a southern French accent.”
When I thought that was finally over, in the nineties, in 96 or something like that, in a friend's record store, a Russian who had just arrived argued with me about the fact that I couldn't possibly be Moroccan. This time, I took out my ID which stated that I was born in Morocco and he said he didn't believe me. He was already drunk at 11 a.m. But I was the one who still had no right to be born in the forbidden country.
It is forbidden to be born in Morocco.
That's what signs should say at the airport in Lod. On grounds stolen from some Arabs who didn't know where to be born or what religion to choose. Those fools. You've got to be an idiot. I was an idiot, my mother said that I was born in Spain, and I without understanding much I don't know why I insisted on saying that I was born in
But shortly before came what the Sephardim called "The last visit of health", which was the strange Spanish colonialism in northern Morocco. It was as if they had returned to greet the people they had expelled, without apologizing, but that wasn't all, they also made up a good plan where Franco would conquer Spain from the city of those expelled. Because Spanish colonialism was a strange and inexplicable event in modern history. They arrived at a place where the language of the new conqueror was still spoken, primarily by Jews, but for the Moors it wasn't such a distant language either, they kept using it until the early nineteenth century, and there the reverse last days of Sepharad were re-created.
At first it was my name that separated me from the others, as a sign, a curse, a mark on the forehead, and before seeing me my compatriots believed that I was something I was not. They believed that I was violent, sometimes they said it with a glance and sometimes more clearly.
“But you're very pleasant.”
“And why wouldn't I be?”
“I don't know. You write very violent things.”
I never understood what those violent things were.
But later on, discrimination became personal, I had finally caught up to it and I said it, I said the reason was the discrimination against Moroccan and Sephardic Jews, and since then I have become an enemy of the people. Today, you can find online discussions in Hebrew about my alleged racism. By claiming that I was a victim of racism, I became in the eyes of others a racist, the pure logic of the illogical. The pure reasoning of the Jew who never becomes a citizen of a democratic country.
The Israeli society tries to create an advanced society erasing the entire Sephardic culture, to save it from its savagery. But when you yourself say that it's something savage, you become the savage one. This is how a new colonial Occidentalism was built on a Middle Eastern land, where most Jews are from the Middle East, and there is also an Arab minority of about twenty percent that is either indigenous or that comes from that same Middle East. The Europeans have taken it upon themselves to convert everyone into Europeans yet those same Europeans were victims of European racist thinking. This situation didn't lack humor.
Then who was I on that boat from Ceuta to Algeciras on that August day in 1972 and what did I become a few years later, a few months later. I had arrived at a full-fledged country in which it was normal that I was abnormal, it was normal and that the average Moroccan was poor and the new generation almost couldn't read, Moroccans did manual labor, so it was normal to be told "But you don't look Moroccan," which at first seemed very strange, and then I adapted it as well as I could to my daily life. I still remember one of my first few weeks in Israel, in that uneducated and primitive town called Pardes Hanna, when an Israeli tried to convince me that I was not from Morocco.
“You are from Marseilles.”
“I'm from Tettauen, Morocco.”
“It can't be, you have a southern French accent.”
When I thought that was finally over, in the nineties, in 96 or something like that, in a friend's record store, a Russian who had just arrived argued with me about the fact that I couldn't possibly be Moroccan. This time, I took out my ID which stated that I was born in Morocco and he said he didn't believe me. He was already drunk at 11 a.m. But I was the one who still had no right to be born in the forbidden country.
It is forbidden to be born in Morocco.
That's what signs should say at the airport in Lod. On grounds stolen from some Arabs who didn't know where to be born or what religion to choose. Those fools. You've got to be an idiot. I was an idiot, my mother said that I was born in Spain, and I without understanding much I don't know why I insisted on saying that I was born in
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