June 28 - out of Granada

Winding my way through the cut mountains of Andalusia, passing abandoned stations with names like “Las Maravillas” (The Wonders) and endless fields of sunflowers and golden wheat, on the train from Granada to Algeciras, the famed city at the edge of the Iberian Peninsula, the landing pad of thousands of African immigrants looking for a better life up North. I’m on my way south.

Two days in Granada. Much too much life to stop and write and actually put down words that reflect the extreme beauty of this city. Two days. It starting to feel like time is stretching out its wings. More time to through the motions of loss.


Many years ago my mother brought back from her trip to Granada a small tile with a timeless inscription: “Give him some alms, for there is no greater suffering than to be blind in Granada.” I tried to walk with my eyes closed through the alleyways of the Muslim quarters, but I didn’t make it too far. So, I just closed my eyes and tried to listen. Young tourists everywhere. English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, a dog barks, the bells from a nearby church, the far away blast from a construction site and the music of a dead Michael Jackson playing from everywhere, car radios, shawarma shops, tapa bars. It was definitively time to open my eyes. I looked for a blind beggar on my walks through the Abayezin muslim quarters but found none. Actually I saw no beggars anywhere. I have a feeling they’ve been forcefully removed. If I were in charge of the tourism bureau of Granada I would hire actors to play beggars. They would remind us how blessed anyone is to be in the presence of a city built on intricate twists and turns like a living wooden carving from the famous palace of Alhambra. A place I had wanted to visit for a long time. Two weeks ago, I bought, on line, the last spot for the 9 AM entry to the Palace for that Saturday morning, my only full day in Granada. Ticket receipt in hand I proudly walked up to the top of the hill through a path flanked by rushing man made water creeks fed by a mountain spring waterfall scintillating in the morning filtered sun light. Wow. Magical. At the top sits the Palace. Hundreds of disappointed tourists without tickets wait in line to have a chance to visit the gardens. I waltz in and enter the grounds of the Palace.

Now, somewhere in the middle of my visit to this palace so exquisite that any “description” would be a pointless exercise in style, I found myself in the grips of an existential nausea. The kind that grabs you and tells you it’s time to leave. It’s a slippery pressure point that wont let itself be captured by rhyme or reason. Any attempt to try to put it aside, makes it worse. Nausea is like virus, you’ve got to let it run wild and hope it leaves quickly. Or do what I did in 2000 during my second trip to Morocco when I found at the top of another mountain in the Riff mountains, outside Marrakech, in the burial grounds of a saint. Then a voice clearly said: “Leave. Go back to your family”. I had still five days left in Marrakech but I turned around, re-booked my ticket and fled back home to my wife and children.

But this time, I fought the urge to flee and I went through the main Palace with my sickness and exited through the gardens, like everyone else (the hordes of tourists) but unlike anyone else, I was guided to get lost and somehow walk out of the main path and I found myself by the entrance. There were still two more palaces I could have visited, the one built by Charles the Fifth and another Moorish smaller palace. But I could not go on. I left. Grabbed a bus and escaped back to the Hostel.

Later I described what happened to a young woman from Brazilian I had met on the Bus to the Hostel. She had just returned from Morocco with her own existential tribulations and we found we had much in common. Born and raised in central Brazil she had entered the mystical universe of a subculture of wandering healers who mixed African and Catholic energies to heal and bless the communities around them. It was her thesis, just like mine had been on the Gnawa of Morocco, who mixed African and Islam in their healing rituals of possession. I found a good hear and I was able to understand what the hell had happened.

My first thought was that it was time to leave before I started to hate everyone around me. It happens. And that’s why I stay away from touristy monuments that attract armies of visitors, camera in one hand, audio tour in the other. Restless bodies taking more photographs than they’ll ever know what to do with, them. As I moved from one vast vaulted room to another adorned beyond comprehension to perfectly manicured inner patios and small intimate places I tried to imagine how the space had actually been used. But, there was no furniture, just emptiness, and the endless chatter of inane commentary. I couldn’t stand it. It’s not that I felt superior to them. No. It felt like… on second thought, it felt like none of us belonged there. These rooms had been built for Sultans, architects, alchemists, poets, musicians, mathematicians, esoteric scholars and calligraphers. At some point in time a very limited amount of people had been given the right to actually see what I was seeing today after paying my 12 Euros. That’s all. That’s the price I paid to see with my own eyes these wonders that had once been hidden from so many. I’m all for democracy. But that doesn’t me that everything and anything should be turned into a spectacle. I mean, what right do I have to enter this palace and occupy these once private spaces with my footsteps and my digital camera? I have none. I had no business being there and I’m sorry I went because for a few precious hours I was just another foot soldier in an invading army of marauding thieves taking what is not theirs. The imaginary space the Alhambra once occupied is rotting away. I hope something else even more beautiful comes out of it. And this time it better cost me some blood.