were eating two tables away from where we were sitting. We asked the waiter who served us what that smell was and he said "That no, that's food for pirsons" with that he meant it was not tourist food, but we asked if he could bring one for each and he came back with two bowls of soup. We ate it like starving children after having played soccer and we asked if they had more, but that was all they had left for the pirsons.
I reached the Israeli prose as a tourist and not as a pirson. I always viewed things from another perspective. First I started to write about the Moroccan bourgeoisie in the world. A Moroccan writer should always write about the Ashkenazi bourgeoisie, like A-B Yehoshua does, a Moroccan's sole purpose is to give snacks to the bourgeoisie, it's simply a kind of shadow that makes him perceive himself as the light, the Ashkenazi calls a person that comes from the Maghreb an Easterner in order to feel like a Westerner, and he will always inquire why his writings are a mere reaction to the Ashkenazi, especially if they are not. The Moroccan is different, he's an Arab when he criticizes, he's a Jew when he bows, but he's a Jew that bows. I came with another language, with a Hebrew that no one expected or knew, a Hebrew I had learned in Morocco, my Hebrew, a Hebrew that didn't need Zionist symbols. Moreover, my literature always includes Europe either France or Spain, and it's more European than any other Israeli literature. But it is not Eurocentric and it creates a geographical space that goes from Morocco and Africa through Spain to Tel Aviv in Asia. So they criticize me for being too European, or for writing solely about Morocco, when the Israeli is nothing more than a mentally colonized subject who thinks he's European and who believes that if he repeats it from morning till night like Amos Oz does, then Europe will cease to see him as an Easterner from the Middle East who could never be a true European. But I am and I don't want to be European, or at least I don't want to be only European, I also want to be Moroccan and African, I want to be Asian and Jewish, and I want to be Sephardic Jew and not Ashkenazi, and I am all those things, they are the opposite of what the Israeli society wants to be and it is not. For that reason, and I can tell you that right here, every Israeli, writer or cultural attaché in an embassy, will do everything in his power to discredit me, and that's what I get when I move in the world. There is a lot to say about this dichotomy, this paradox, I, who writes in a European language which has been my first language for a thousand years, who speaks three European languages, am considered an Easterner in Israel by those who only speak a Semitic language.
I like that, contradictions, paradoxes, a world in which logic doesn't explain anything, the moment when the one who believes he is logical loses track and is confronted with something that cannot be logical. That's why I have stopped writing prose in Hebrew for the time being, I still write poetry, an internal and external process that was complemented, on the one hand my Hebrew confined me and the audience didn't come to see my books, and, on the other hand, I felt that I had to go back to my mother tongue, without thereby losing other languages. I feel very innocent again to think that if I have success outside of Israel, publishers who have disappeared and stopped talking to me five years ago will come back. It's innocent because the publishers want to showcase other voices to turn mine off. And above all other Eastern Jewish voices to drown out Moroccans’ voices, because for an Ashkenazi Iraq is the same as Morocco, they are both as nonexistent as the other, and it is all lost in the same mass, what comes from Europe and what it is not Ashkenazi.
The Uruguayan redhead D-S approached me and made friends with me through the Spanish language, and because he was still unaware of the segregation of the Israeli society, like many
I reached the Israeli prose as a tourist and not as a pirson. I always viewed things from another perspective. First I started to write about the Moroccan bourgeoisie in the world. A Moroccan writer should always write about the Ashkenazi bourgeoisie, like A-B Yehoshua does, a Moroccan's sole purpose is to give snacks to the bourgeoisie, it's simply a kind of shadow that makes him perceive himself as the light, the Ashkenazi calls a person that comes from the Maghreb an Easterner in order to feel like a Westerner, and he will always inquire why his writings are a mere reaction to the Ashkenazi, especially if they are not. The Moroccan is different, he's an Arab when he criticizes, he's a Jew when he bows, but he's a Jew that bows. I came with another language, with a Hebrew that no one expected or knew, a Hebrew I had learned in Morocco, my Hebrew, a Hebrew that didn't need Zionist symbols. Moreover, my literature always includes Europe either France or Spain, and it's more European than any other Israeli literature. But it is not Eurocentric and it creates a geographical space that goes from Morocco and Africa through Spain to Tel Aviv in Asia. So they criticize me for being too European, or for writing solely about Morocco, when the Israeli is nothing more than a mentally colonized subject who thinks he's European and who believes that if he repeats it from morning till night like Amos Oz does, then Europe will cease to see him as an Easterner from the Middle East who could never be a true European. But I am and I don't want to be European, or at least I don't want to be only European, I also want to be Moroccan and African, I want to be Asian and Jewish, and I want to be Sephardic Jew and not Ashkenazi, and I am all those things, they are the opposite of what the Israeli society wants to be and it is not. For that reason, and I can tell you that right here, every Israeli, writer or cultural attaché in an embassy, will do everything in his power to discredit me, and that's what I get when I move in the world. There is a lot to say about this dichotomy, this paradox, I, who writes in a European language which has been my first language for a thousand years, who speaks three European languages, am considered an Easterner in Israel by those who only speak a Semitic language.
I like that, contradictions, paradoxes, a world in which logic doesn't explain anything, the moment when the one who believes he is logical loses track and is confronted with something that cannot be logical. That's why I have stopped writing prose in Hebrew for the time being, I still write poetry, an internal and external process that was complemented, on the one hand my Hebrew confined me and the audience didn't come to see my books, and, on the other hand, I felt that I had to go back to my mother tongue, without thereby losing other languages. I feel very innocent again to think that if I have success outside of Israel, publishers who have disappeared and stopped talking to me five years ago will come back. It's innocent because the publishers want to showcase other voices to turn mine off. And above all other Eastern Jewish voices to drown out Moroccans’ voices, because for an Ashkenazi Iraq is the same as Morocco, they are both as nonexistent as the other, and it is all lost in the same mass, what comes from Europe and what it is not Ashkenazi.
The Uruguayan redhead D-S approached me and made friends with me through the Spanish language, and because he was still unaware of the segregation of the Israeli society, like many
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