“Grandmother Victoria has a moment of lucidity before dying. She sighs, drawing in air as if about to start an engine. I take her hand and whisper in her ear: ‘Grandmother, will you forgive me?’ She turns her face and says: ‘No. For a black creature like you, no Pedro.’” Halfway between a novel, poetry, and memoir, this extraordinary book takes us into the secret territory of the word and its salvific power. Thanks to it, Myriam Moscona, a Sephardic Jew, relives the shadows and voices of her past. Ladino, the ancient Spanish still spoken today by Sephardim, becomes an effective companion on a journey to Sofia, Plovdiv, Istanbul, Izmir, or Thessaloniki, where family ghosts reside. The ethereal takes shape in a beautiful text sweetened by humor that is both homage and atonement, where the voice and its warm breath take on a redeeming role.