Gates to Tangier Read Online Free PDF

apples, its future depends on our deaths."
    â€œAnd if we disappear, what will become of our memories?”
    â€œThey will be eaten for the next lunch of those eating the next fruit from the next tree.”

Victor Hugo
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    M arcel Benzimra’s parents had an ap ­ artment at 13Victor Hugo, on the second floor.  That September Thursday, in the autumn, Marcel decided to introduce his girlfriend of the las ­ t three years, Zohra Elbaz, to his parents. Zohra was dressed simply and delicately, a long blue tunic and a white pearl necklace, which accentuated her white skin and blue eyes. Zohra was very impressed by the living room. She could feel the warm wood under her feet with every step. She loved the wood, and remembered how her mo ­ ther would take her around the houses of the wealthy families in Tan ­ gier. Did the wood remind her of her mother, or of the houses? "You won't be like me," her mother would say, and it was this certainty that pushed her daughter into the prestigious Pa ­ ris XIII University to study gynecology.
    They sat for a long time in the living room and the voices in her head w ­ ent quiet when meeting Mercedes and Maurice Benzimra, Marcel's parents. "Woo ­ d and marble, marble and wood, I love this," she said.
    At the entrance to the house there was a foyer with a piece of furniture for the telephone, of dark oak, and beside it was a bookshelf. The bookshelf surely weighed more than the many books it contained, with its crystal doors. In ­ front, there was a large and well-organized desk, with what appe ­ ared to be Rosenthal plates, like the ones she remem ­ bered from her childhood, on S-shaped legs. Beside her she could see the street through another window, made from sturdy woo ­ d.
    Between the desk and the window, there was a small table with a television showing a fireplace, as if people shou ­ ld sit around it and tell stories about Antarctica. There were leather seats, and a wooden table in the middle. Behind was the most beautiful piece of furniture in the whole roo ­ m, a liquor cabinet with Chinese paintings on the doors.
    She was thrown off when she heard Marcel's mo ­ ther ask that she take off her shoes, "just like in the mosque," she thought. They asked her to put on some slippers in order to not damage the carpet.
    "I really love the wood," she said while taking off her shoes and changing into the slippers. "It is a very beautiful room. Fabulous. Delicate. Everything in its place and everything so beautiful."
    "Yes. And your name, Zohra, is very beautiful... zohar in Hebrew. Splendor," said Mercedes.
    Maurice took them then to the armchairs.
    “Would you like to have something to drink? A small aperitif, Per ­ nod, Glenfiddich? Or there is a whiskey I like a lot, Glenmorangie, I can recommend that."
    "I'd love a Pernod, with a lot of water."
    "Me too, same as Zohra," said Marcel, alth ­ ough he would have preferred the whiskey.
    "You can have the whiskey," said Zohra, reading his thoughts. "You don't have to be so polite."
    "I don’t know why I said that...ok, Papa, I'll have a whiskey like you."
    "I see that your palate is improving. I also opened a bottle of Bourgogne from 1988, a very good year.”
    "Yes, but not like the 59."
    "No, there isn't anything like the 59. There won't ever be."
    "So then, what are you studying?" asked his m ­ other when she came with the thick, heavy glasses.
    "I've just finished my studies, I'm a gynecologist. I'll only need to intern for two more months in the hospital."
    Gynecologist. Every time she says this word, she thinks about the fact that she'll never be able to have children.
    Or maybe she'll become a researcher, and find a way to perform a uterus transplant.
    Despite her accentuated femininity, or maybe because of it, ever since she found out that she had no uterus, she felt like half a woman. She tried to convin ­ ce herself that that wasn't the case, that the femininity of a woman does not come