magazine Marot at his house. Because he took care of his grandmother, his family paid the rent of the house and sometimes offered to pay a financial assistance for his literature studies that he never finished. All three of us went through the department of literature at the University of Jerusalem, but none of us graduated with honors. Creativity always put us on the opposite side of our professors who taught literature but could not write it, or how it was written and what hell you had to go through to get to a poem. At that time, literature was still a mad people's devotion and visionaries and just a lifestyle, not another economic project. Many publishers still believed in the written word. One of them was the late Yaron Golan, and the agency that bore his name, and I always said that he was crazier than the writers that he published. Which was not a simple thing to be.
Then the three of us would sit and discuss the future of Hebrew literature. They were both supporters of Pinhas Sadé and at that time I was in favor of David Avidan. I hated Erez Bitton, who later on became my favorite poet, because he was Moroccan like me and he spoke of Morocco and I didn't. To be Israeli it was important, it was instilled in me, to stop talking about Morocco.
“You are not like those Moroccans right?” My friends from college said to me, to help me.
“You don't like Brera Hativit, do you?” (A band that played music influenced by Andalusian music.)
And that idiot Erez Bitton, does he really think he's a poet and he writes poems about mint?
“No, of course not, I hate them, anyway I don't remember Morocco.”
As a good immigrant, I had even accepted to lose my memory and I didn't remember anything I had experienced in the first thirteen years of my life. I had really forgotten, it wasn't a lie. I do not understand the reason for this amnesia that lasted until I was thirty. I couldn't remember and that was a great cover in the new society. But I soon realized that it wasn't enough to forget, I had to ease down the growing fear of the other Israelis, fear of remembering or that I would suddenly start acting like other Moroccans and forget normal behavior. That meant that I would suddenly start screaming or hitting people or injecting myself with drugs or speaking Arabic.
Because, in their minds, the Moroccans were not different from the Arabs and they represented the enemy within.
D-S and B-S often went to see Pinhas Sadé, who at that time was a kind of guru, and authors went on pilgrimages to his modest home in the poor Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv. And there Sadé praised himself and said he was the best writer and poet in the world, and he criticized the poems of the newcomers, saying that he had already done better and that's not how one should write. I never went to see him. Although years later I saw Sadé, a sort of Napoleon shorter than five foot three, when we crossed paths at the post office branch where we each had a PO box, close to where I worked for twelve years as an accountant. Sometimes in the same day in King George street, I crossed paths with Sadé and Amijai, who did not exceed five foot three either. They both seemed like human concentrated matter in such a small space, they always seemed to be out of the racket and within their flesh. But I didn't greet them, although Amijai was my neighbor for a while and I met him once or twice and we talked about poetry. He was a good neighbor.
I like the word asshole, it reminds me of my childhood friends, before I knew it was a word that wasn't supposed to be pronounced in public, I don't like the word desasosiego [1] , probably because of ciego [2] , I don't like the word alféizar [3] , although it reminds me of, or because it reminds me of, the word albaisal [4] , a soup that I've always liked a lot. In 1996, I traveled with my brother to Tétouan and we ate fish in a restaurant by the sea. The smell of bean soup came to us, the albaisal, that the waiters
Then the three of us would sit and discuss the future of Hebrew literature. They were both supporters of Pinhas Sadé and at that time I was in favor of David Avidan. I hated Erez Bitton, who later on became my favorite poet, because he was Moroccan like me and he spoke of Morocco and I didn't. To be Israeli it was important, it was instilled in me, to stop talking about Morocco.
“You are not like those Moroccans right?” My friends from college said to me, to help me.
“You don't like Brera Hativit, do you?” (A band that played music influenced by Andalusian music.)
And that idiot Erez Bitton, does he really think he's a poet and he writes poems about mint?
“No, of course not, I hate them, anyway I don't remember Morocco.”
As a good immigrant, I had even accepted to lose my memory and I didn't remember anything I had experienced in the first thirteen years of my life. I had really forgotten, it wasn't a lie. I do not understand the reason for this amnesia that lasted until I was thirty. I couldn't remember and that was a great cover in the new society. But I soon realized that it wasn't enough to forget, I had to ease down the growing fear of the other Israelis, fear of remembering or that I would suddenly start acting like other Moroccans and forget normal behavior. That meant that I would suddenly start screaming or hitting people or injecting myself with drugs or speaking Arabic.
Because, in their minds, the Moroccans were not different from the Arabs and they represented the enemy within.
D-S and B-S often went to see Pinhas Sadé, who at that time was a kind of guru, and authors went on pilgrimages to his modest home in the poor Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv. And there Sadé praised himself and said he was the best writer and poet in the world, and he criticized the poems of the newcomers, saying that he had already done better and that's not how one should write. I never went to see him. Although years later I saw Sadé, a sort of Napoleon shorter than five foot three, when we crossed paths at the post office branch where we each had a PO box, close to where I worked for twelve years as an accountant. Sometimes in the same day in King George street, I crossed paths with Sadé and Amijai, who did not exceed five foot three either. They both seemed like human concentrated matter in such a small space, they always seemed to be out of the racket and within their flesh. But I didn't greet them, although Amijai was my neighbor for a while and I met him once or twice and we talked about poetry. He was a good neighbor.
I like the word asshole, it reminds me of my childhood friends, before I knew it was a word that wasn't supposed to be pronounced in public, I don't like the word desasosiego [1] , probably because of ciego [2] , I don't like the word alféizar [3] , although it reminds me of, or because it reminds me of, the word albaisal [4] , a soup that I've always liked a lot. In 1996, I traveled with my brother to Tétouan and we ate fish in a restaurant by the sea. The smell of bean soup came to us, the albaisal, that the waiters
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