Review by maraman -- Keys to Tetouan by Mois Benarroch

[maraman]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Keys to Tetouan" by Mois Benarroch.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Keys to Tetouan by Mois Benarroch represents his own story of exile, as well as the stories of exile told by different people. Some stories are in a form of letters written by the members of the Benzimra family.

The author says that “Their parents want to forget their hardships” but “their descendents want to remember them.” He feels that “They are calling me from the graves, from the depths of history”, asking him to write the story he doesn’t really know.” Therefore, he explores how the descendants of his large Benzimra family feel about their origin. Being scattered all over the globe (mostly in Spain, Moroco, Venezuela, France …), they feel as expatriates longing for their land – Israel. They hope for “the real key to the house, my real home, where there are no longings.” Their plea lingers in each and every situation of their lives – “take me home, where is my home, from where was I exiled, from Jerusalem, from Seville, from Tetouan……exile is my home….you will always be an exile, exiled from exile.” Even those who converted to Christainity hope that their children will take back the religion of their ancestors.

In this quest for the truth, he is aware that they are “relative truths so tied to the winds of time, tied to the prejudices of today, the ones that will be denied by someone in a generation or two.” The statements that he gathers from the members of the Benzimra tribes help him construct a mosaic, but “the mosaic keeps getting bigger with every piece I find.”

The question that is asked throughout the book “Are we there yet, mom?”, of the impatient child seems to be the key question for all the Jews. Once they get to the promised land, they realize that “the promise wasn’t kept”. They find out things they would be better off not knowing them. They realise the Arabs, whom they wanted to run away from, are closer to them than their own people, only the other Jews, Ashkenazim. They, the Sephards learnt to compromise with the other nations, whereas the Ashkenazim wage war with the rest of the world and don’t believe tomorrow will be better. In the end you see that “You will never be pleased, feeling good comes from the inside, not from the place you live in.”

I thought the best way to communicate the atmosphere of the book is to use the key quotes from the book, since they convey the crucial sentiment of the exiled people. The form is rather interesting. Most of the book is written with no punctuation; it’s one sentence – one passage, with the passages being more than one page long. This form somehow forces your way throughout the text, making you speed up as if chasing the end of a thought. I didn’t quite get the intention of such a form, maybe it’s my loss. Apart from that, the real drawback to this book is quite a few grammar and also some spelling errors, as well as some formatting errors, so the book needs some serious editing. Even if the author is “strict with Don’t Do deeds only” (whatever it means), I don’t see the purpose in making so many errors.

I recommend the book to those who are looking to learn more about the sufferings of the exiled Jews, just like I wanted to find out. I felt as though I got a relatively good overview of the torments of the Jews. If it were not for the serious errors I already mentioned, I could give the book 3 stars. Instead, I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars.

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Keys to Tetouan
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Like maraman's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Jaime Lync]

Great review. It was really nice how you tied in the quotes from the book. I think that sometimes that's the best way to get the story across.

[Rosemary Okoko]

It is not usually easy to do a review of the books written by this author. I have not read this particular one. From your review, now i have an idea of what it is all about. Thank you for your honest review.

[ChloeHumphreys]

I very much agree with your points about the syntax and form which the author adopted, and I definitely believe the sentiment of the novel was the redeeming feature. Thanks for the review!