It was no secret that Saba had been ripped. Growing up, we would pore over black and white photos of him in wonder and amazement. In them, he would be flexing and flaunting his well-oiled, muscle-bound body, flanked by his bodybuilding buddies. It was sometimes hard to reconcile the bodybuilder in the photos with the man who would say kiddush and hamotzie for us on Shabbat and Chagim in those hallowed Moroccan cadences. It was almost as if there were two worlds running parallel, sometimes converging for a brief revelatory moment, and then quickly diverging once again. One world contained the younger Moroccan Saba, and the other, the older American Saba.
The world of Moroccan Saba was a patchwork of scattered, shapeshifting stories, pieced together over our childhood years. On long Shabbat walks in Northeast Philly, Saba would regale us with stories from his youth. The time he played soccer barefoot and kicked a rock instead of the soccer ball. The crazy long bike rides he would endure under the sweltering Moroccan sun, with very little in the way of food and water. That one unfortunate bike ride when he got into a bad accident after veering off the road to avoid colliding with an Arab on a donkey. How he stemmed the flow of blood with the nearby dirt and only had the Arab’s leftover date harvest to fuel the rest of the arduous journey. The parakeet that flew into his window and stuck around to be his pet. The same one that died soon after Saba—forced to part ways with it—dropped it off with his relatives.
During particularly intense stories, Saba would suddenly stop in his tracks, so he could direct all of his energy and attention into the dramatic details. Sometimes, he would even playact the scene, reliving it before our eyes. Like the terrifying moment Saba caught sight of my toddler mom climbing high on the sills of the screenless windows in their Casablanca apartment. I still remember his voice, laced with fear, when he animatedly recalled how he had quietly crept up to my mom from behind so as not to scare her, snatched her away from the vertiginous heights, and collapsed backwards with her in a great sigh of relief.
And of course there’s the story of how he met Savta that we would hear again and again over the years, each time with delightful new details; the gym, the no-show date, the necklace and family name to prove his Judaism despite the damning evidence of his blond hair and pale complexion, the impromptu date at the Platters concert.
The world of Moroccan Saba was a magical, mysterious one. Full of miracles and wonders, strange coincidences, tragedy and triumph, and bravery sometimes bordering on recklessness. It was storybook stuff, except it was real. It had happened. And visiting that world with Saba was a great privilege, especially for children who had not yet ventured farther than Florida. We could hear the longing and yearning in Saba’s voice when his memories transported him back to Meknes and Casablanca. We could see the thrill in his face as he dashed across the beach in pursuit of the soccer ball, his bare feet kicking up sand. We could feel the searing pain after his pale skin baked for hours under the midday Moroccan sun. A small piece of that world will be embedded in our hearts and minds forever.
The world of American Saba was composed of our day-to-day interactions with him in Northeast Philly. This is the Saba that we spent countless Shabbats and Chagim with. He was loving, affectionate, gentle, quiet, strong-willed, kind, proud, and humble. He was a rock. He was a teddy bear. He was home.
We would always greet him with a big hug and it was abundantly clear that he took great joy from seeing us and spending time with us. He always made sure to cut our favorite fruit (and he had a knack for spotting the best ones) and to stock the freezer with the tastiest ice creams. There was only one thing that made him as upset as seeing his grandchildren fight—even if it was play fighting—and that was any kind of slight against Israel, a country he defended with a ferocity that we rarely saw and had had few clues he was capable of.
Saba shared our passion with nature and despite his advanced age, could appreciate it with the eyes of a child. Some of his favorite topics to discuss were that of the weather and wildlife. Later in life, when I would show him my wildlife photos, he would go wide-eyed and exclaim in wonder.
“Where did you see these?” he would ask. “You saw these here! No!” he would say in disbelief. I wanted so badly to take the twenty year old Saba by the hand and bring him with me on my birding expeditions. Or to have him accompany us on our summer bike rides through Pennypack Park.
Saba was also enraptured by feats of human courage and skill that verged on the supernatural. Whether he was watching the Olympics, car racing, American Ninja Warrior, or weight lifting competitions, you could tell that he was imagining himself in the TV whipping around the corner of the race track or swinging along the obstacle course. When Saba spoke with passion about these things, his eyes would light up, just as they had when he told stories about his childhood in Morocco. You could catch a glimpse of his younger self motoring through Morocco or tussling with the less friendly of the locals, and the Moroccan and American worlds would converge, however briefly. Those moments were priceless.
There is so much more I can say about Saba and how he was a role model for us growing up. How he represented our Moroccan heritage and embodied so many of the values that we hold close to our hearts. How the fissures in his thick hands were saturated in grease and grime from the many years of manual labor as a car mechanic. How those same hands would crack post-dinner nuts for my mom and her siblings long before I was around. Or hold us up as babies with the proudest of smiles. Or clang his glass cup with his metal knife to announce the start of a meal and summon us all to eat. Or lift the bundles of schach and the worn wooden walls from his red pickup truck and lay it out on the front lawn, getting ready to build the sukkah.
The list could go on infinitely. The stories will be told and retold for many years to come, handed down from generation to generation. In Israel, in America, and who knows where else. But for now, I will just say goodbye one last time. We would never leave Saba without him wrapping us up in a big bear hug and placing a kiss on the tops of our heads. So Saba, we are sending you one last big hug goodbye and we can feel your big bear hug warming our hearts. We will love and remember you always.
Jeremy Koloski 