In the Sephardic Periphery of Spanish Modernity: “Oh tú que lo sabías” (Sefarad, 2001), by Antonio Muñoz Molina

Abstract

Since 1492, Sephardic communities have been excluded from Spanish culture, politics, and society. The chapter “Oh You Who Knew It,” included in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s novel Sepharad (2001), recreates the experiences of two Sephardic Holocaust survivors, Isaac Salama and his son, identified in the book as Mr. Salama. These characters take refuge from Nazi persecution in Tangiers, in the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco. Their journey to a territory temporarily occupied by Spain does not imply a triumphal return to Sepharad. On the contrary, Isaac Salama and his son experience this displacement as a new exile that keeps them at the periphery of history and excluded once again from Sepharad, their longed-for home. From a genealogical perspective, this exclusion reenacts the expulsion of 1492, which reasserts, five centuries later, their identity, experiences, and exclusion from modernity.