Keys to Tetouan is the first of The Tetouan Trilogy written by Mois Benarroch. The themes of exile, discrimination, rootlessness, disillusionment, oppression and homeland are palpable in this historical document which details the account of a fictitious Jewish family, the influential Moises Benzimra and his descendants who migrated to Spain. After the Spanish expulsion of the Jews in the Sixteenth Century, this small Jewish community settles in Tetouan which is located at the northern part of Morocco, about 100 miles to Spain. From this location, the Benzimras begin further migrations to Africa, Europe and America in the hope of eventually returning to Spain or going back to their homeland. Thus, the author brings to the fore the Jewish Diaspora question and attempts to document this through the lives of the Benzimra family of Tetouan.
From the first page of chapter one which is entitled The Allies 1996, the reader gets a sense urgency or hurry, if you will, from the tone/diction of the narrator, Fernando Benzimra. This sense of urgency is mostly discernible in his confused hurried and repettitive manner of speech. For instance, when he tracks his cousin, Moshe Benzimra, in what appears to be in most part, a rambling monologue, he says to him, “Hold it, Hold it, slowly, slowly, or quickly, quickly, because I'm leaving tomorrow, and you know where I'm going to, to Tetouan” (7). There is intense nostalgia, a psychological baggage of what I refer to as “homeland hunger”, which pervades the entire narrative. As a result, the characters seem to live in an everlasting exile, notwithstanding their individual accomplishments in professional areas such as medicine and engineering. The sense of exile never leaves them completely, even when they return to their own land, Israel, their anguish of rootlessness still continues.
The storyline of Keys to Tetouan, like the Jewish migration, follows confusing pathways. This writing style may well be a stylistic device utilized by Mois Benarroch to represent the psychologically disoriented state of his migrant characters as they continue their quest for a homeland. The complexities around this quest, that odd sense of being “neither here nor there” and the ambivalence of being of Jewish ancestry in a world which remains unwelcoming, seem to drive the Benzimras’ perpetual voyage. Like many Jews scattered across different continents of the world in search of home, peace, relevance and better life, the Tetouanese dream of Jerusalem and are compelled by the disillusionments occasioned by discrimination to look towards their homeland for acceptance. The yearning for homeland is so much that some of them return at old age so that they will be buried in their land when they die.
The concepts of home and keys are widespread in the narrative. What does home symbolize? The keys under reference in this narrative to have a very long history. Where are the keys located? Will the Benzimras find the keys which they search for in Tetouan, Israel or somewhere else in the world? What, really, are the keys to Tetouan? Well, the key to all these questions and other Jewish revelations are embedded in the history of the Benzimras.
In its original language, obviously Spanish, this novel may have made a better reading. Anyone who is willing to surmount the roadblocks of what I have decided are mostly translational and editing errors, will enjoy this otherwise beautiful historical material which has been, evidently, put together with a good dose of humour. However, based on the final product before me, I am constrained to rate Keys to Tetouan 3 out of 4 stars because of the plethora of grammatical errors such as “I could have went to the synagogue” (84), “gave him the opportunity of live of writing” (128), and “did Zionism failed with me” (177). One of the things I dislike about this book is the difficulty presented by the author’s style of rendering point of views which, for the reader, becomes an exercise in learning to be patient. Also, there are what appear to be paragraphing, punctuations, diction and formatting issues in the book. At the end of the reading I am left wondering, are all these literary contraptions or did the translator(s) and publisher do a disservice to this piece? Nevertheless, because of the wealth of historical information contained in this document (which is why I resisted a 2 Stars rating), I recommend it to lovers of Jewish history, like me, who are ready to wade through all these concerns and get to the heart of Mois Benarroch’s thoughts on the Jewish Diaspora question.
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Keys to Tetouan
Links to Keys to Tetouan in
English getbook.at/keys2tetouan
Castellano getbook.at/llavesdetetuan
Hebrew עברית http://www.lulu.com/shop/paperback/product-22974017.html
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