Lucena
(MOSHE BENARROCH)
Lucena is a city in southern Spain that was destroyed by the Muslims in 1150. The city was also called Elihoshana and the city of the Jews Many poets and rabbis were born, lived or passed through this important city in the 10th and 11th century.
Lucena is the main character of this novel. He is 1,000 years old, and was born after the crazy year of 999. He comes To Malaga at the end of the 20th century feeling that his days are counted and tries to tell his story to one of his descendants, Samuel. He does it in seven days in a hotel in front of the sea. Samuel is more interested in his first steps as a writer, going to play on the beach, his first year at the university and women. Anyway he feels he is forced to come to these 2 hours daily encounters and listen to this crazy man.
In the novel we encounter his family, the Benzimra, a family from Morocco that emigrates to Israel but after two years comes back to Malaga in Spain.
We also encounter strange characters from the past of the sephardim: a priest saying kaddish on his father's grave who was also a priest. People for whom the sea was their salvation and other's for whom it meant death.
A lawyer from Mexico, descendant of Anusim, travels to Spain and finds himself in place where time and place loses its meaning, in front of the inquisition. He doesn't not know of what he is accused but is asked to confess. His claim that he is Mexican citizen and that Spain is a democratic country with human rights falls on deaf ears.
Through a complex narrative where time and place are symbols of life and death, the novel LUCENA becomes travel to the suffering sepharadi soul of these days, whether they are still Jews or have become Catholics who don't remember anything of their Jewish roots. Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Greece, Turkey and Israel are the stages of this introspection into the Judaism and the Catholicism of the sephardim.
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