How I Came to Write "The Moroccan"

This is how I officially became a writer.  Before this I guess I was just messing around with words.

We were living in Israel and I had a “job” at Tel Aviv University in the economics department.  I put “job” in quotes because the work was minimal.  But it was perfect for me as it was from 8 to 1, the exact time my children would be in gan/school. (Israel has a lot of 8 to 1 jobs for women who work.  Yes, the work is usually low paid, but you do get a bonus.  Ours was a book about Ben Gurion that was misprinted so that half the pages were upside down.)

Working at the university was pleasant.  I had time to meet my husband for lunch at the misnon/cafeteria.  And I explored the library for English books I had never read, like “Gone With The Wind.”  What a stupid woman that Scarlett was.  But my laid-back job wasn’t going to last for long because some of us know English and appreciate the language, and some of us don’t.  To be specific: an instructor who was getting his thesis in order for Stanford’s approval.

His name was Cuckerman—in English.  His real name was Zuckerman.  (As an aside, another professor’s name was Pines—in Hebrew pronounced, yes, like “penis.”  But in English he preferred to be called Pines, as in those evergreens.  I can’t understand why?)

Cuckerman’s English was atrocious.  I shivered in disgust. Still, he wanted everything reproduced exactly the way he had written it.  I explained that his English was—lacking.  So he said to me, rather dismissively, “It’s good enough for Stanford.”  I replied, “Well, it might be good enough for Stanford, but it’s not good enough for me.”

For some reason, I was fired.  I can’t understand why.  I went back to our apartment in Ramat Aviv and thought, now is the time for me to write that book on the Urabi revolt in Egypt, for which I had notes.  It was at that moment Judah Biton, the hero of “The Moroccan,” made his appearance and decided my life should take a different course.

Like a flash of lightning, the plot came to me whole.  All I had to do was write it down.  My maid—the only time in my life I’ve had a maid because I didn’t know how to do the “sponga” on Israeli floors—was so impressed because she thought I was writing letters to my mother.  Poor Mima, her rotten son stole most of her wages.  But that’s another story.

When we left Israel after my husband’s sabbatical was over, I hugged my as-yet unedited novel to my breast—and of course my two children.  I felt really positive that Judah Biton would be a bright beginning.  And—so it came to be.