From "Jews, Tunisians, and Frenchmen"

I have already told how, upon arriving in Paris a long time ago, I went to see an old writer, French-Jewish as people said back then. I told him about my perplexity in the face of my triple identity: Jew, Tunisian, and Frenchman. After listening to me he replied: "Well, keep it all; be everything at once."
        My listener, I must mention, was above all a man of duty, more than of protest (he had lost a son, voluntarily enlisted in the French Forces; this was something he bore with dignity).
        I do not think that I have ever failed this triple agenda. This was not always easy to live with, nor to explain.
        My fellow Jews haven't always understood my loyalty to Arab culture or my understanding and support of Arab nationalistic claims, even when the Arabs didn't respond in kind.
        My fellow Tunisians, Arab-Muslim, have often been suspicious of me because of my admiration for and use of the French language. Long after I had decided to live in Paris and to become a French scholar, the Tunisian ambassador, Mohammed Masmoudi, who happened to be a former student of mine (I'm not misrepresenting him; it was he who did me the honor of introducing himself as such) refused to receive me for some time.
        My Arab brothers often lost patience with me during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, wishing I had a more clear-cut position on the matter. The French, my countrymen of choice and adoption, have not always forgiven me my positions in favor of the colonized. And when I submitted my application for naturalization, I was told at first that it would never be accepted. It took the intervention of prominent friends like Edgar Pisani and Leo Hamon for me to become a French citizen.
        So we are Jewish, Tunisian, and French. . . .

Translated from the French
by Debbie Barnard