Review by Helen_Combe -- Keys to Tetouan by Mois Benarroch
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4 out of 4 stars
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Keys to Tetouan by Mois Benarroch is a remarkable and very individual book. It tells the story of the Benzimras, a Jewish family who settled in Tetouan in Morocco after they were expelled from Spain in the 15th century. When Israel was created in 1948, a very large proportion of the Tetouan population emigrated there, and to other parts of the world.
The story begins with Fernando Benzimra who has received a letter from his late father telling him that he (his father) was Jewish. Fernando then goes to Tetouan to seek out his family and learn his ancestry. The history is told piecemeal by other members of the family in the form of letters, conversations and memoirs. The book explores the experience of being in exile and of longing to belong while belonging nowhere, not even in Israel.
What makes this book so remarkable is how creatively it has been written. Benarroch is a poet and, as poets are wont to do, he has complete disregard for the rules of written English. Much of the book takes the form of a stream of consciousness and is difficult to follow. Often an entire paragraph will be made up of just one sentence and may stretch across several pages. There are no dialogue attributions and it can be difficult to work out who is speaking or writing.
The text is littered with grammatical errors, but as I was unsheathing my red pen, a thought struck me. Perhaps it’s meant to be like this. There is very little narrative. Most of the book is either spoken or written by the characters. One character admitted that he was 80 years old and pounding on a typewriter while his ideas flowed too fast for him to keep up with them. I then made the decision that the errors form part of the idiosyncratic nature of the book, so I put my red pen away. I was glad I did because in the prologue, which is situated towards the end, it says ‘this book has a lot of grammar mistakes because it's (sic) author is very strict with Don't Do deeds only’. I’m not entirely sure I know what that means, but I get the gist.
What I like most about this book is the way it has been written. It’s often difficult, confusing and frustrating, but despite all that, it’s beautiful. There is pleasure in watching the words as they unfold.
There is one grammatical error that I can’t just sit back and accept. In the third chapter, it says that Tetouan was rebuilt in 1942 after the Spanish expulsion. That should read as 1492.
This is not an easy book to read. I haven’t had to work this hard since I discovered John Fowles and Salman Rushdie. I would recommend it to people who like the kind of poetry that you have to wrestle with in order to extract meaning. It’s also more of a philosophical than a historical novel and will appeal to people who are interested in people.
Despite giving me a headache and making me go boss-eyed with my attempts to comprehend it, I will nevertheless award this book 4 out of 4 stars.
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Keys to Tetouan
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