Kavo Oksidente

קאבֿו אוקסידינטי

KAVO OKSIDENTE

(Kavo Oksidente / West End City)

Kavo Oksidente, the third-largest metropolitan area in Mueva Sefarad — after Santa Ester and Santo Yona — is located at the south-west corner of the Island. Also known by its nickname Puerto delos Vaskos after the Basque whalers who frequented the area in the early 1500's, Kavo Oksidente was named "End of the West" or "West End" in a traditionally literalist-style Ladino translation of the phrase sof ma‘arav that appears in the famous Hebrew poem Libi Bamizrahh "My Heart is in the East" by the medieval Sefaradic poet and philosopher, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi:

My heart is in the East, and I in the uttermost West —
How can I taste that which I eat, and how could it be pleasing?
How might I fulfill my vows and oaths, while
Zion is in Edomite territory, and I am in Arabian chains?
Leaving all the good of Iberia would be easy in my eyes, just as
it would be precious in my eyes to see the dust of the destroyed Temple.

If Iberia seemed like the opposite end of the world from the Jewish homeland in Judea, North America was all the more so the "uttermost West" to the Sefaradic exiles and refugees, and so Libi Bamizrahh became an unofficial national anthem or hymn in early Muevasefaradí history. Although it has since been replaced by an official and more 'inclusive' provincial anthem, Halevi's ode to Zion retains much power in the historical consciousness of most of Mueva Sefarad.

The City of Kavo Oksidente itself, on the other hand, can feel more like the center of the world than its uttermost end. It is the ports of Kavo Oksidente that keep Mueva Sefarad connected to the mainland North American League — this is where trade freighters are loaded and unloaded, ferries dock and set sail, and Post Road #1, the automobile artery of the East Coast, makes its legal-fictional 'great leap' over the water from Alba Nuadh.