My first time in Marrakech, it frightened me. It was September 2009 and Bryan and I had stayed up all night at London Luton for the flight to Marrakech. We arrived to feral cats skulking around the airport and taxi drivers to confront in my lousy French. The taxi driver turned to scold me when I began to fasten my seat belt. Trust Allah, he told me. You don't need a seat belt in Morocco. Through the anarchic traffic of donkeys, mopeds, bicycles, cars and horses, he took us to the gate of the Medina and dropped us off. We would have to walk to the hotel, he explained. No cars go in the Medina. This registered as impossible to us. But we hefted our big backpacks onto our shoulders and trekked into the maze of the Medina. In the walled old city, the streets narrow and winding and crammed with pedestrians, cyclists and stoic donkeys pulling their loads. Women passing in burkas, men in hooded djellabas. Merchants leaning out of their shops to call to us, promising the premium quality of their goods. We were helplessly lost. A boy no more than 12 came up to us. We asked where our hotel was and he insisted he take us. We followed him through the narrowing maze of the streets, the stone ceiling soon dropping over us, claustrophobia quickening my heartbeat. It was soon evident the boy didn't know where the hotel was either, and he stopped at those rounded doors recessed into the stone walls to knock and ask, again and again while my fears rose. We saw a rabble of feral cats consuming the remains of a chicken in the street. Finally we were at the door of our guesthouse, our young guide demanding payment.
When we got to our room, I fell on the bed and cried. As a traveller I'm hard to ruffle. I started traveling at 18 with a one-way ticket to Paris. I've slept on the floors of train stations and airports. I woke up once in a Dublin hostel with a drunk Englishman leering over me ("And who's little girl is this, then?"). I once checked into a Prague hotel and saw a dog fight outside my window. I worked in a homeless shelter in Ireland. At 18, I would call my Papa who would tell me, always, "Stay calm." That as long as I kept observing and thinking there was nothing I could encounter that I couldn't handle. From traveling, I learned a certain stoic calm.
But Marrakech was beyond my exhausted senses. The confusion, the claustrophobia, the aggressive approach of the Moroccans, the total otherness of it. I cried and cried and repeated I wanted to go home. I had never responded to a place with so much fear. Bryan settled down next to me and pressed me to him and calmly talked me through it. We would sleep and eat something. We'd go back out and try again. If I didn't like it we'd go to back to the airport in the morning and fly on to Paris ahead of schedule. We went up to the rooftop terrace that night, watching the smoke curl up from the grills in the Djemma el Fna, listening to the call of the prayer from the minarets. I fell asleep on the roof, my head in Bryan's lap until he gently woke me to go back to our room.
And in the morning, armed with maps from the guesthouse, a good night's sleep and a proper Moroccan breakfast (msemen slathered in butter and jam, coffee strong enough to stand your spoon up in, fresh orange juice), we fell in love with Marrakech. The ingenious charm of the hustlers, the ancient beauty of this city and its peculiar smell of mint tea and donkeys and sunbaked stone. Bryan said Morocco felt "holy." I thought so, too.
When I got off the overnight train from Tangier this morning, I shifted my bag onto my shoulders and navigated my way through the Ville Nouvelle and into the medina. I had that proper Moroccan breakfast (with two coffees) on my own. I made my way to the hostel and then into the souks, into the familiar confusion and the barrage of voices. My Andalucian tan and curly hair has the merchants stumped-- all day I've heard "Ola, guapa! Ola, hermana!" And when I ignore that, "Bonjour madame!" and then, finally, "Hello, British girl!" The women hidden in the drape of their burkas and the old men in the pointed hoods of their djellabas, the feral cats and the donkeys are still here and the Medina traffic of bikes, donkeys and mopeds is still perilous. Instead of a beautiful guesthouse room to return to with my boyfriend I have a lousy hostel room to share with three traumatized-looking Japanese students and an urn tucked away in my backpack. It's the widow's reconquest of Marrakech (and me a Kelsey of Arabia with my scarf and poor but functional French).
Though I've been confident and self-sufficient without Bryan, Marrakech seems a very different place without him. I remember our old route through the souks and the Medina beautifully. But I see the curve of a door where I stopped to snap his photo, remember his exasperation when I insisted on stopping to pet every donkey we encountered (how I pitied their sad lot then), the terrace of a cafe where I remember lingering over tea and pastries with him and it hurts, it hurts. I thought of Marrakech as ours. As it becomes mine it seems a lesser, duller place, even though the same snake charmers practice their arts in the square and the muezzin calls the same haunting prayer.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
sunbathing alone
My last night in Seville, two American girls checked into my room.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Ohio," they said. "You?"
"Michigan."
"Do you play euchre?"
Dios mio. I would'ved run at Olympic speed down to the shops below for a deck of cards and a bottle of riojo, but alas, we didn't have a fourth (the skinny, 4-eyed German girl with the Schopenhauer paperback didn't look eager to learn regional card games). Me and the Ohio gringas sat up talking. When asked why I'm traveling, etc., I don't give my gloomy specifics. Just traveling, I say ("Oh, are you, like, finding yourself?" a California girl on a Seville walking tour asked me). But when my Buckeyes asked, I gave them the brief sketch: traveling in Morocco with Bryan, his death, the ashes.
"That's intense," one of them said.
Indeed.
It was almost as good as a conversation I'd had earlier in the day. Walking in Seville, a rabble of pubescent boys came at me, rambling in Spanish. I smiled, no habla espagnol, and kept walking. "English!" one of them called. I turned.
"We are... we have... gymkhana," he said, extending a piece of paper to me. "Can we take a picture with you?"
I asked what a gymkhana was, and from there group attempt at explaining in painful English, it sounded like a kind of scavenger hunt.
"So you need a picture of an American for your gymkhana?"
"No, not American. A person... who is.... a person from...."
"Foreign!" another yelled.
"The feet!" cried another.
"A picture of a foreign person with..." His friends yelled, helping him find the right word. "Las sandalias," he finally said.
"You need a picture of a foreigner in sandals?"
"Yes!"
I agreed. A 12 year old Spanish boy slung his arm around me and another snapped a photo. They thanked me and I walked on, captured for Spanish middle school posterity.
I had hoped to go from Seville to Barcelona. I woke up painfully early, hefted my bag to the train station, and got in line. But the 8 o'clock was full and the rest were high speed trains at twice the price. I didn't throw a dart at a map of Spain, but I looked at the departures board and decided on Cadiz. Travellers I'd met in Andalucia said it was not to be missed-- glittering coast, relaxed vibe, plenty of sun. I found a hippie hostel run by an aging British surfer with a rooftop terrace to dull the ache for Morocco: hammocks and potted plants and French kids bumming cigarettes from each other. Perfect.
I've been wandering around, taking long walks on the beach (Spanish girls sunbathe topless-- the Midwestern, euchre player in me is scandalized by this), languishing in the hammock with books and sangria. A vacation in a vacation. Resting up for Morocco and the sensory demands of the Marrakesh souks, I think.
Yes, Morocco. Monday.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Ohio," they said. "You?"
"Michigan."
"Do you play euchre?"
Dios mio. I would'ved run at Olympic speed down to the shops below for a deck of cards and a bottle of riojo, but alas, we didn't have a fourth (the skinny, 4-eyed German girl with the Schopenhauer paperback didn't look eager to learn regional card games). Me and the Ohio gringas sat up talking. When asked why I'm traveling, etc., I don't give my gloomy specifics. Just traveling, I say ("Oh, are you, like, finding yourself?" a California girl on a Seville walking tour asked me). But when my Buckeyes asked, I gave them the brief sketch: traveling in Morocco with Bryan, his death, the ashes.
"That's intense," one of them said.
Indeed.
It was almost as good as a conversation I'd had earlier in the day. Walking in Seville, a rabble of pubescent boys came at me, rambling in Spanish. I smiled, no habla espagnol, and kept walking. "English!" one of them called. I turned.
"We are... we have... gymkhana," he said, extending a piece of paper to me. "Can we take a picture with you?"
I asked what a gymkhana was, and from there group attempt at explaining in painful English, it sounded like a kind of scavenger hunt.
"So you need a picture of an American for your gymkhana?"
"No, not American. A person... who is.... a person from...."
"Foreign!" another yelled.
"The feet!" cried another.
"A picture of a foreign person with..." His friends yelled, helping him find the right word. "Las sandalias," he finally said.
"You need a picture of a foreigner in sandals?"
"Yes!"
I agreed. A 12 year old Spanish boy slung his arm around me and another snapped a photo. They thanked me and I walked on, captured for Spanish middle school posterity.
I had hoped to go from Seville to Barcelona. I woke up painfully early, hefted my bag to the train station, and got in line. But the 8 o'clock was full and the rest were high speed trains at twice the price. I didn't throw a dart at a map of Spain, but I looked at the departures board and decided on Cadiz. Travellers I'd met in Andalucia said it was not to be missed-- glittering coast, relaxed vibe, plenty of sun. I found a hippie hostel run by an aging British surfer with a rooftop terrace to dull the ache for Morocco: hammocks and potted plants and French kids bumming cigarettes from each other. Perfect.
I've been wandering around, taking long walks on the beach (Spanish girls sunbathe topless-- the Midwestern, euchre player in me is scandalized by this), languishing in the hammock with books and sangria. A vacation in a vacation. Resting up for Morocco and the sensory demands of the Marrakesh souks, I think.
Yes, Morocco. Monday.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
in seville
One of the pleasures of traveling alone is the chance encounters you have with people. Without a companion to constantly talk to, there´s less of a social barrier between you and other travelers, locals. In Granada I had perhaps the most extraordinary chance conversation I've ever had. And it began (I'm not sure if I'm more mischievously amused or embarassed to write this, with my mother, in-laws and UM-Flint faculty reading) with a remark about my boobs.
At the foot of the Alhambra, in the Albazyn, the old Arab neighborhood, I stopped at a shop. There was a blouse hanging outside it: one of those tunic style things the Spanish girls wear, loose and flowy with a slightly scooped embroidered collar to show off your lovely collarbone (if you're a lovely Spanish girl, of course). Indigo with pale blue embroidery. But, a small. I asked the shopkeeper if there were any mediums. "No," he said, "But that will fit you." I asked if I could try it on. He considered this, looking over his shoulder into the small recess of his shop. "Okay," he said. "I will wait outside."
Alone in the shop with the lanterns and tagines, I wiggled it over my t-shirt and stood in front of the mirror, deliberating. A touch snug, as expected. The man came back in. "Very pretty!" he said. A little small, though, I insisted.
He considered this.¨"It is only because you have the...." He pinched the fabric above his nipples and drew the shirt away from his skin, creating imaginary breasts.
If I were an American heiress in a Henry James novella, I would have fainted and my chaperone would have come to collect me and fire off incensed letters to the ambassador. Being a Flint homegirl, I laughed. "I´m sorry," he said. "I didn't mean...." I assured him it was okay and we began chatting. Typically I find when you travel in major tourist areas people don't ask you much. They know why you're here, and they want you to spend your money and get out of the way. The Spanish are quite different, though. I get asked all the time-- wth seeming genuine interest-- what I'm doing here, what I make of it. It's heartening. So I told my Moroccan shopkeeper I was en route to Kenitra. And it turns out Kenitra is a few kilometers from the town where he grew up.
"I was born when your grandfather was there," he smiled.
He told me about the relationship the Moroccans had with the Americans stationed at Port Lyautey during the 50s and 60s. The jobs the Moroccans took on base, how they learned English from the Americans. The Moroccan girls wooed by GIs who were whisked off to the States, never to return. In his halting English, he told me about when he was a student in Tangier in the 80s, how he fell in love with a British girl and took her home to meet his family. In the town there was a familiar beggar, handicapped ("in a chair," he said, spinning imaginary wheels) and living on the streets. When he took his British amoureuse home the beggar began chatting to her in perfect English and as a young man it was a revelation: this tolerated charity case, this friendly bum had a flawless command of English. It changed his idea of the man, he said. From then on, when he returned home to visit he always sought the man out and gave him a little money and talked with him a while.
"But I think he is dead now," he said, shaking his head. "He was very unwell."
I asked him if he thought it was safe for me to travel to Morocco now. The protests on the 20th were largely peaceful and whenever I mention to people here that I've been nervously putting off my journey on to Morocco, they laugh at me (silly gringa, scared of the Arabs) and say Morocco is safe. Morocco is not Libya, not Algeria. My Moroccan friend said the same. "Safer than Spain," he said. I bought a different blouse a beautiful pomegranate color and continued my walk through Albazyn, swelling with happiness of our encounter but still not entirely at ease about Morocco's political climate.
And if I don't make it to Kenitra (again), what will that mean? Will I have carried this urn across Europe only to carry it back home? I don't know.
As another Papa pilgrimage, I took the train to Seville last night. I don't remember much about Seville, only that he was here, briefly. I've spent the day wandering this beautiful but vast and labyrinthine city. The largest gothic cathedral in the world. The Alcazar. The Golden Tower where Colombus set sail. Flamenco dancers performing in the square for Euros from charmed tourists. The sad streets of Santa Cruz, the former Jewish district wiped out during the plague and the Inquisition. The old Moorish minarets converted into bell towers, topped with defiant crucifixes. What streets did my grandfather walk down? Did he take his tepid beer standing at one of the high sidewalk tables? Did he eye the pretty girls walking under the orange trees in this vivid, extraordinary sun? Did he have his love for Don Quixote then, or did that come later in life?
Off to Barcelona tomorrow morning. Morocco next week. Hopefully.
At the foot of the Alhambra, in the Albazyn, the old Arab neighborhood, I stopped at a shop. There was a blouse hanging outside it: one of those tunic style things the Spanish girls wear, loose and flowy with a slightly scooped embroidered collar to show off your lovely collarbone (if you're a lovely Spanish girl, of course). Indigo with pale blue embroidery. But, a small. I asked the shopkeeper if there were any mediums. "No," he said, "But that will fit you." I asked if I could try it on. He considered this, looking over his shoulder into the small recess of his shop. "Okay," he said. "I will wait outside."
Alone in the shop with the lanterns and tagines, I wiggled it over my t-shirt and stood in front of the mirror, deliberating. A touch snug, as expected. The man came back in. "Very pretty!" he said. A little small, though, I insisted.
He considered this.¨"It is only because you have the...." He pinched the fabric above his nipples and drew the shirt away from his skin, creating imaginary breasts.
If I were an American heiress in a Henry James novella, I would have fainted and my chaperone would have come to collect me and fire off incensed letters to the ambassador. Being a Flint homegirl, I laughed. "I´m sorry," he said. "I didn't mean...." I assured him it was okay and we began chatting. Typically I find when you travel in major tourist areas people don't ask you much. They know why you're here, and they want you to spend your money and get out of the way. The Spanish are quite different, though. I get asked all the time-- wth seeming genuine interest-- what I'm doing here, what I make of it. It's heartening. So I told my Moroccan shopkeeper I was en route to Kenitra. And it turns out Kenitra is a few kilometers from the town where he grew up.
"I was born when your grandfather was there," he smiled.
He told me about the relationship the Moroccans had with the Americans stationed at Port Lyautey during the 50s and 60s. The jobs the Moroccans took on base, how they learned English from the Americans. The Moroccan girls wooed by GIs who were whisked off to the States, never to return. In his halting English, he told me about when he was a student in Tangier in the 80s, how he fell in love with a British girl and took her home to meet his family. In the town there was a familiar beggar, handicapped ("in a chair," he said, spinning imaginary wheels) and living on the streets. When he took his British amoureuse home the beggar began chatting to her in perfect English and as a young man it was a revelation: this tolerated charity case, this friendly bum had a flawless command of English. It changed his idea of the man, he said. From then on, when he returned home to visit he always sought the man out and gave him a little money and talked with him a while.
"But I think he is dead now," he said, shaking his head. "He was very unwell."
I asked him if he thought it was safe for me to travel to Morocco now. The protests on the 20th were largely peaceful and whenever I mention to people here that I've been nervously putting off my journey on to Morocco, they laugh at me (silly gringa, scared of the Arabs) and say Morocco is safe. Morocco is not Libya, not Algeria. My Moroccan friend said the same. "Safer than Spain," he said. I bought a different blouse a beautiful pomegranate color and continued my walk through Albazyn, swelling with happiness of our encounter but still not entirely at ease about Morocco's political climate.
And if I don't make it to Kenitra (again), what will that mean? Will I have carried this urn across Europe only to carry it back home? I don't know.
As another Papa pilgrimage, I took the train to Seville last night. I don't remember much about Seville, only that he was here, briefly. I've spent the day wandering this beautiful but vast and labyrinthine city. The largest gothic cathedral in the world. The Alcazar. The Golden Tower where Colombus set sail. Flamenco dancers performing in the square for Euros from charmed tourists. The sad streets of Santa Cruz, the former Jewish district wiped out during the plague and the Inquisition. The old Moorish minarets converted into bell towers, topped with defiant crucifixes. What streets did my grandfather walk down? Did he take his tepid beer standing at one of the high sidewalk tables? Did he eye the pretty girls walking under the orange trees in this vivid, extraordinary sun? Did he have his love for Don Quixote then, or did that come later in life?
Off to Barcelona tomorrow morning. Morocco next week. Hopefully.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
at the top of the alhambra i sat down and wept
While I walked up Sabikah Hill to the Alhambra yesterday morning, I thought about a book I read before I left on religion in India and how the varied and ancient traditions of the country are reconciling themselves with modernity and Western influences. I found the passages about the Jains especially effecting. Striving toward freedom from attachment and desire, toward divine cosciousness and peace. The book followed a Jain nun on her walk from town to town, only taking food when it was offered to her, dressed in rags and carefully sweeping the road in front of her to avoid harming even the measliest bug. I find most of my friends are proud cynics and atheists, religion an irrelevant notion, a system of antiquated superstitions. I'm precisely the oppposite. On a good day I can believe anything, so long as its based in compassion and charity. I like the idea of god and the spiritual rituals that order and sustain life. I still cannot quite settle my mind on the idea Bryan and Papa are in heaven with harp-strumming angels, drinking black coffee and waiting for me, but I prefer to think there's a grand design, a meaning to things. I think it was Einstein who said that you can live as though everything is a miracle or as though nothing is.
I could've been a Jain nun yesterday, walking up that hill, lush and green and swelling with birdsong. Scaling the division between Islam and Catholicism, Europe and the Arab world that makes Granada so beautiful and fascinating. With my poor toe, I haven't had as much exertion as normal, and I could feel the difference yesterday, my heart thudding in my chest as I climbed and climbed, passing the statue of Washington Irving (a famed visitor at the Alhambra) and the fountains. A meditative walk. A "what am I doing here?" kind of walk.
After three weeks, I should know the answer. The obvious one is I'm traveling to do what I thought best with Bryan's ashes, to pay homage to my grandfather, and give myself a greater peace of mind (though perhaps not divine consciousness). But no one goes to Morocco by way of Poland.
When Bryan died, I soon after wrote a letter to an old professor and asked him to recommend some books to me. In those long, quiet days after the funeral, all I wanted was to feel the ground beneath me a little more solidly. I wanted to reinforce all the things that made up my sense of self. Books, writing, travel. And if I pushed myself through the motions of being me, than eventually it would all come back, and I wouldn't feel so painfully self-conscious and uncertain. I'd get back to being myself, no longer a grieving negative of that old self. So I've tried hard to do that, tried hard not to ever question the life I've been given or allow myself to sink into self-pity or pass the days in bed. And that, I think, is what this trip is about. To return to old places-- pre-Bryan places, like Poland-- and to reclaim for myself some of the places I think of as "ours," like Morocco. And to find some new places inbetween, like Spain.
But also, I realized, to feel a little more at ease with death. Where better to go than Europe to understand and accept that time passes, that we die and that's okay, because there is no other option. Away from the American culture of rebuilding and constantly starting anew, to this continent where people devoted their lives to the construction of cathedrals they wouldn't live to see completed. To these places scraped flat by the roller of wars, wars, wars and commemorated in multilingual plaques. To run a hand along a stone wall and murmur a prayer in a church that's been their since the black death. A church that used to be a mosque, in this beautiful city where the Spanish routed out the Moors in the name of the Catholic church. Yes, we die. The centuries carry on without us, though sometimes if we're good they'll put up a statue of us for the pigeons to shit on.
So I approached the towering palace. I got my ticket and found myself in line behind a quartet of Americans. Two pretty girls in expensive looking boots and jackets with their fashionably rumpled boyfriends. They looked like they could've been Kennedy heirs, or Harvard students on spring break. They looked like they stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad. I looked like Little Orphan Annie. One of the boys kept nattering on about Ferdinand and Isabella in a precociously gravely voice, and every so often his girlfriend grinned and pulled his mouth to hers, obviously pleased with herself for finding such a good looking and clever boy to explain Spain to her. I couldn't help the thought: they did not climb the hill thinking about the Jains. They would not retun to their shabby hotel rooms to an urn. I felt-- I don't know. Embarassed for myself and ashamed for feeling that. For feeling jealous I've been denied their seeming privilege and ease when I ought to be full of gratitude for a life that's allowed me this journey, these sights, these ghosts of the Spanish Inquistion to mull over.
And finally into the Alhambra. Relic of a lost way of life, a lost paradise. Columned palaces with their every inch covered in tiles and ornate arabesques. Pools glittering in the courtyards. Then through to the Generalife gardens, fruit trees and succulents and palms. All of Granada, all of Andalucia sweeping below. I sat down on a stone and cried. Not because I don't look like I stepped out a Ralph Lauren ad, I don't think, but the whole of it. For all the reasons I was at the top of the Alhambra. It was a rare outburst, and it startled me-- I'm not much for crying. And once it started it was hard to stop. I climbed the towers to the highest point of the complex, still sniffling. Crept slowly down the narrow dungeon stairs, sniffling.
I walked back down the hill and sat at a Moroccan place near the Plaza Nueva. Mint tea to sip while I made sense of the day, slowed myself back down. Te magrebi, I told the waiter behind my sunglasses. He asked something and I had to smile and make my daily confession here-- no habla espagnol. He shifted to English, laughing easily when he couldn't remember the word he wanted. Infectious Spanish happiness. My tea came, and though it wasn't as sweet and replenishing as I remember in Morocco, it was good. I returned to normal, back to the eager tourist. My waiter walked past me, his shift over. "Bye, gringa," he grinned at me. I laughed, delighted.
I could've been a Jain nun yesterday, walking up that hill, lush and green and swelling with birdsong. Scaling the division between Islam and Catholicism, Europe and the Arab world that makes Granada so beautiful and fascinating. With my poor toe, I haven't had as much exertion as normal, and I could feel the difference yesterday, my heart thudding in my chest as I climbed and climbed, passing the statue of Washington Irving (a famed visitor at the Alhambra) and the fountains. A meditative walk. A "what am I doing here?" kind of walk.
After three weeks, I should know the answer. The obvious one is I'm traveling to do what I thought best with Bryan's ashes, to pay homage to my grandfather, and give myself a greater peace of mind (though perhaps not divine consciousness). But no one goes to Morocco by way of Poland.
When Bryan died, I soon after wrote a letter to an old professor and asked him to recommend some books to me. In those long, quiet days after the funeral, all I wanted was to feel the ground beneath me a little more solidly. I wanted to reinforce all the things that made up my sense of self. Books, writing, travel. And if I pushed myself through the motions of being me, than eventually it would all come back, and I wouldn't feel so painfully self-conscious and uncertain. I'd get back to being myself, no longer a grieving negative of that old self. So I've tried hard to do that, tried hard not to ever question the life I've been given or allow myself to sink into self-pity or pass the days in bed. And that, I think, is what this trip is about. To return to old places-- pre-Bryan places, like Poland-- and to reclaim for myself some of the places I think of as "ours," like Morocco. And to find some new places inbetween, like Spain.
But also, I realized, to feel a little more at ease with death. Where better to go than Europe to understand and accept that time passes, that we die and that's okay, because there is no other option. Away from the American culture of rebuilding and constantly starting anew, to this continent where people devoted their lives to the construction of cathedrals they wouldn't live to see completed. To these places scraped flat by the roller of wars, wars, wars and commemorated in multilingual plaques. To run a hand along a stone wall and murmur a prayer in a church that's been their since the black death. A church that used to be a mosque, in this beautiful city where the Spanish routed out the Moors in the name of the Catholic church. Yes, we die. The centuries carry on without us, though sometimes if we're good they'll put up a statue of us for the pigeons to shit on.
So I approached the towering palace. I got my ticket and found myself in line behind a quartet of Americans. Two pretty girls in expensive looking boots and jackets with their fashionably rumpled boyfriends. They looked like they could've been Kennedy heirs, or Harvard students on spring break. They looked like they stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad. I looked like Little Orphan Annie. One of the boys kept nattering on about Ferdinand and Isabella in a precociously gravely voice, and every so often his girlfriend grinned and pulled his mouth to hers, obviously pleased with herself for finding such a good looking and clever boy to explain Spain to her. I couldn't help the thought: they did not climb the hill thinking about the Jains. They would not retun to their shabby hotel rooms to an urn. I felt-- I don't know. Embarassed for myself and ashamed for feeling that. For feeling jealous I've been denied their seeming privilege and ease when I ought to be full of gratitude for a life that's allowed me this journey, these sights, these ghosts of the Spanish Inquistion to mull over.
And finally into the Alhambra. Relic of a lost way of life, a lost paradise. Columned palaces with their every inch covered in tiles and ornate arabesques. Pools glittering in the courtyards. Then through to the Generalife gardens, fruit trees and succulents and palms. All of Granada, all of Andalucia sweeping below. I sat down on a stone and cried. Not because I don't look like I stepped out a Ralph Lauren ad, I don't think, but the whole of it. For all the reasons I was at the top of the Alhambra. It was a rare outburst, and it startled me-- I'm not much for crying. And once it started it was hard to stop. I climbed the towers to the highest point of the complex, still sniffling. Crept slowly down the narrow dungeon stairs, sniffling.
I walked back down the hill and sat at a Moroccan place near the Plaza Nueva. Mint tea to sip while I made sense of the day, slowed myself back down. Te magrebi, I told the waiter behind my sunglasses. He asked something and I had to smile and make my daily confession here-- no habla espagnol. He shifted to English, laughing easily when he couldn't remember the word he wanted. Infectious Spanish happiness. My tea came, and though it wasn't as sweet and replenishing as I remember in Morocco, it was good. I returned to normal, back to the eager tourist. My waiter walked past me, his shift over. "Bye, gringa," he grinned at me. I laughed, delighted.
Monday, February 21, 2011
your greatest american hero
Food is my least favorite part of traveling. From the pages dedicated to eating-- what, where, how much-- in guidebooks, I'm guessing this is abnormal. There are too many vagaries: do I just sit, or is it self-service? Is the menu in a language I understand? Do I tip? How do I signal for the bill? Then there's the added trouble of vegetarianism (or more precisely, picky pescatarianism). I prefer to buy and cook at the hostel, or cobble together al fresco sandwiches. I'd rather eat like a bum on a park bench then sit awkwardly alone at a restaurant with a menu I can't translate. And as my Papa used to say, "Eat to live, don´t live to eat."
But today is my 25th birthday, and I've just arrived in Granada. I decided that merits a proper meal in a restaurant. As an appetizer I sat in the sun on the Plaza Nueva and had a mammoth glass of sangria. Giddy and empty-bellied, I started walking and was soon happy for anything. A little empty restaurant near the Gran Via allured; menu in English in the window. Inside two ancient Spanish men sat smoking and watching a dubbed 80s TV show (Greatest American Hero) in the shabby decor (Coke cans and cheap wine in the deli case, tacky souvenirs on the counter, old pictures of Granada on the walls). I thought of Atlas back in Flint-- that coney island near Bryan's place on Augusta with the terrible formica and the angry old Greek owners. Perfect.
The menu was a useless lure, as neither spoke the language. When I ordered water-- agua--my waiter stared at me as if astounded and repeated, "Agua?!" Si, senor. I pointed to the daily special: fried fish. My waiter relayed this to the cook and settled back with his ashtray to watch TV while I scratched in my journal and listened to my birthday dinner pop and crack in the grease.
What arrived was not fish. It was a heaping mix of shrimp, octopus and something else, fried all to hell. A plateful of eyes, fried black and wishing me happy birthday indeed. Were I at home, I would have insisted, "This is not fish," and sent it back. But an American alone in Granada, eccentric enough, apparently, to order water, no Spanish save a few phrases and what a lifetime of Taco Bell commercials have taught me, I felt I'd made my order and we had to get along, these little eyes and I. I tried not to look any of it too closely, thought of the Omega 3s and ate. I managed about a quarter of the plate before giving up. Heavy with grease, still a touch tipsy, I went up to the counter. The cook gave me the loveliest, proudest smile and said something I'll never know, but can only imagine: wasn't that wonderful? Don't you love Spanish cuisine, American girl? Aren't you delighted you spent your 25th birthday with a plate full of dead shrimp eyes? The waiter had moved on to an old Western, more Spanish voices thrown over ruddy American faces. I smiled and paid. I walked toward the hostel chanting "Don't throw up, don't throw up."
Back to the hostel kitchen tomorrow, I think.
Dead urchins aside, it's been a pretty good birthday. To Atocha Estacion this morning, drinking coffee and waiting for the train to Granada. I have a great affection for train stations, but Atocha is quite something. The main hall is swallowed up by an atrium, all palm trees and towering fronds, a pond to sit and watch the turtles slowly carry on with their day (with my bulging backpack and lingering limp, I felt great kinship with the tortugas this morning). Then all the Japanese tourists and I climbed on for the 4 hour journey to Granada. Out of Madrid, the red clay earth undulating in hills dotted with low shrubs. Then in the last two hours, Andalucia and the kind of landscape I have never seen. Sweeping landscapes: the orchards, the Sierras, the verdant grass. The Japanese girls behind me started making these wonderful yipping noises in excitement as they took photos through the train window; a kind of shrill oomoomooyeye that made me giggle into my hand. And Granada itself, beyond my still slightly nauseous powers of description this evening. The tightly winding streets like I remember from Morocco opening into European boulevards. The Arabic tiles and the Catholic churches. The sun and the ruins, the Alhambra on the hill and the mountains in the distance. The fruit trees already dropping oranges on the cobblestones.
Spain was a kind of impulse when I planned my trip. I wanted to see Tomcat in Poland, but there was no inexpensive way to move between Poland and Morocco-- I need to go via Spain or circle back to England and fly from there. I checked out a few guidebooks from the library, skimmed them and decided Spain sounded okay. The whole of the trip was hard to plan. When Bryan died, I was told to take things one day at a time, and I accepted that advice and clung to it as my means of daily survival. Shaking myself out of that mindset and trying to imagine myself alone in Europe, in Africa, was nearly impossible. I made the most basic itinerary, booked the necessary flights and left. So I arrived in Spain with just a few ideas-- the Prado, the Alhambra, Barcelona-- and no real preparation. I have never traveled this way before: without expectations, without a schedule. Truly discovering things as they come and making of them what I will.
And never have I fallen in love with a place so instantaneously, so blindly as I have Spain. The easy-going, easy-humored nature of so many of the Spanish. The thrill of the journey into Andalucia and Granada-- a city I couldn't have dreamt up. These clashes of culture-- finding traces of my beloved Morocco when I woke to the disconcerting news protests have started in Casablanca and Rabat. Drinking sangria in the sun.
... but still some underlying sadness. A birthday alone. Just an urn to greet me when I climb the stairs to my hotel room. The memory of my last birthday-- margaritas with Bryan, a bottle of perfume (my first and last grown-up birthday present from a boyfriend). No cake and ice cream, just a plate of blackened shrimp eyes (I'm sure I'll dream of them).
But today is my 25th birthday, and I've just arrived in Granada. I decided that merits a proper meal in a restaurant. As an appetizer I sat in the sun on the Plaza Nueva and had a mammoth glass of sangria. Giddy and empty-bellied, I started walking and was soon happy for anything. A little empty restaurant near the Gran Via allured; menu in English in the window. Inside two ancient Spanish men sat smoking and watching a dubbed 80s TV show (Greatest American Hero) in the shabby decor (Coke cans and cheap wine in the deli case, tacky souvenirs on the counter, old pictures of Granada on the walls). I thought of Atlas back in Flint-- that coney island near Bryan's place on Augusta with the terrible formica and the angry old Greek owners. Perfect.
The menu was a useless lure, as neither spoke the language. When I ordered water-- agua--my waiter stared at me as if astounded and repeated, "Agua?!" Si, senor. I pointed to the daily special: fried fish. My waiter relayed this to the cook and settled back with his ashtray to watch TV while I scratched in my journal and listened to my birthday dinner pop and crack in the grease.
What arrived was not fish. It was a heaping mix of shrimp, octopus and something else, fried all to hell. A plateful of eyes, fried black and wishing me happy birthday indeed. Were I at home, I would have insisted, "This is not fish," and sent it back. But an American alone in Granada, eccentric enough, apparently, to order water, no Spanish save a few phrases and what a lifetime of Taco Bell commercials have taught me, I felt I'd made my order and we had to get along, these little eyes and I. I tried not to look any of it too closely, thought of the Omega 3s and ate. I managed about a quarter of the plate before giving up. Heavy with grease, still a touch tipsy, I went up to the counter. The cook gave me the loveliest, proudest smile and said something I'll never know, but can only imagine: wasn't that wonderful? Don't you love Spanish cuisine, American girl? Aren't you delighted you spent your 25th birthday with a plate full of dead shrimp eyes? The waiter had moved on to an old Western, more Spanish voices thrown over ruddy American faces. I smiled and paid. I walked toward the hostel chanting "Don't throw up, don't throw up."
Back to the hostel kitchen tomorrow, I think.
Dead urchins aside, it's been a pretty good birthday. To Atocha Estacion this morning, drinking coffee and waiting for the train to Granada. I have a great affection for train stations, but Atocha is quite something. The main hall is swallowed up by an atrium, all palm trees and towering fronds, a pond to sit and watch the turtles slowly carry on with their day (with my bulging backpack and lingering limp, I felt great kinship with the tortugas this morning). Then all the Japanese tourists and I climbed on for the 4 hour journey to Granada. Out of Madrid, the red clay earth undulating in hills dotted with low shrubs. Then in the last two hours, Andalucia and the kind of landscape I have never seen. Sweeping landscapes: the orchards, the Sierras, the verdant grass. The Japanese girls behind me started making these wonderful yipping noises in excitement as they took photos through the train window; a kind of shrill oomoomooyeye that made me giggle into my hand. And Granada itself, beyond my still slightly nauseous powers of description this evening. The tightly winding streets like I remember from Morocco opening into European boulevards. The Arabic tiles and the Catholic churches. The sun and the ruins, the Alhambra on the hill and the mountains in the distance. The fruit trees already dropping oranges on the cobblestones.
Spain was a kind of impulse when I planned my trip. I wanted to see Tomcat in Poland, but there was no inexpensive way to move between Poland and Morocco-- I need to go via Spain or circle back to England and fly from there. I checked out a few guidebooks from the library, skimmed them and decided Spain sounded okay. The whole of the trip was hard to plan. When Bryan died, I was told to take things one day at a time, and I accepted that advice and clung to it as my means of daily survival. Shaking myself out of that mindset and trying to imagine myself alone in Europe, in Africa, was nearly impossible. I made the most basic itinerary, booked the necessary flights and left. So I arrived in Spain with just a few ideas-- the Prado, the Alhambra, Barcelona-- and no real preparation. I have never traveled this way before: without expectations, without a schedule. Truly discovering things as they come and making of them what I will.
And never have I fallen in love with a place so instantaneously, so blindly as I have Spain. The easy-going, easy-humored nature of so many of the Spanish. The thrill of the journey into Andalucia and Granada-- a city I couldn't have dreamt up. These clashes of culture-- finding traces of my beloved Morocco when I woke to the disconcerting news protests have started in Casablanca and Rabat. Drinking sangria in the sun.
... but still some underlying sadness. A birthday alone. Just an urn to greet me when I climb the stairs to my hotel room. The memory of my last birthday-- margaritas with Bryan, a bottle of perfume (my first and last grown-up birthday present from a boyfriend). No cake and ice cream, just a plate of blackened shrimp eyes (I'm sure I'll dream of them).
Saturday, February 19, 2011
"about suffering they were never wrong, the old masters"
I woke to rain drumming on the roof. Rolled off my hostel bunk for my complimentary croissant and coffee and decided it was a good day for museums. With my hood up and my toe still tender on the cobblestones, I walked to the Prado. When I arrived in Madrid yesterday, it was one of the most immediate and intense first impressions I´ve experienced when coming to a new city. Love at first sight. The fabulous, stylish people in the subway after the serious faces on the Krakow trams. The flood of sun. The balconies hanging over the calles, lined with plants and drying laundry. There´s a certain epic grandeur to Madrid that registers with the usual ideas of European cities-- the palaces and parks lined with classical statues and fountains, like Paris, like London-- but it seems more easy-humored, more colorful, more sincere somehow. On my meandering walk to the Prado, snapping pictures as I went, it occurred to me: why have I never been to Spain before? This is my 4th time leaving Michigan for Europe. In 2004, England, Ireland, France, Poland, Czech Republic. In 2006, England, Ireland and Poland. Then in 2009 with B, England, Holland, France and Morocco. Why have I never ventured toward the sunny (with some exceptions for museum-going days), stay-up-late-with-wine-and-friends, lust for life kind of places? Why so much Britain, so much Eastern Europe, but no Spain, no Italy, no Portugal? Because I´ve never fallen in love with any Spanish writers, perhaps.
So into the Prado, and an item crossed off my art snob bucket list. The in turns celestial and bloody sprawl of Spanish art: all those Madonnas in the lapis lazuli folds of their robes attended by the seraphim and cherubim, all those Christs bled white on their crucifixes and the martyred saints I never remember. Those artistocratic Goya ladies with their fluffy black curls and corseted waists. Velazquez´s peculiarly beautiful dwarves. El Greco´s elongated faces and vivid colors. Those chubby Reuben nudes. Threading through the Saturday crowd of tourists, I found myself drawn, perhaps predictably, to those sad-eyed portraits of women, inevitably the story of their widowhood adjoining. Like Goya´s "Maria Teresa de Vallabriga." I kept thinking of Auden´s "Musee de Beaux Artes":¨ About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters."
In my 11th grade humanities class at Central High School (another hollow structure on the Flint landscape now), Mr. Eufinger said something that has always, always stayed with me: art never gets better or worse, it just changes. I find that calming. Even in those colder climates of my previous travels, whether at the Louvre or the Tate or the Metropolitan Museum, the idea of art and the echoing voices of creative expression provides my greatest solace. I think Auden was quite right. We happen to share a birthday, Auden and I: the 21st. Perhaps Monday night in Granada I´ll raise my sangria for him and toast the poets and the Old Masters and the young literary aspirants attempting to find a place among them.
So into the Prado, and an item crossed off my art snob bucket list. The in turns celestial and bloody sprawl of Spanish art: all those Madonnas in the lapis lazuli folds of their robes attended by the seraphim and cherubim, all those Christs bled white on their crucifixes and the martyred saints I never remember. Those artistocratic Goya ladies with their fluffy black curls and corseted waists. Velazquez´s peculiarly beautiful dwarves. El Greco´s elongated faces and vivid colors. Those chubby Reuben nudes. Threading through the Saturday crowd of tourists, I found myself drawn, perhaps predictably, to those sad-eyed portraits of women, inevitably the story of their widowhood adjoining. Like Goya´s "Maria Teresa de Vallabriga." I kept thinking of Auden´s "Musee de Beaux Artes":¨ About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters."
In my 11th grade humanities class at Central High School (another hollow structure on the Flint landscape now), Mr. Eufinger said something that has always, always stayed with me: art never gets better or worse, it just changes. I find that calming. Even in those colder climates of my previous travels, whether at the Louvre or the Tate or the Metropolitan Museum, the idea of art and the echoing voices of creative expression provides my greatest solace. I think Auden was quite right. We happen to share a birthday, Auden and I: the 21st. Perhaps Monday night in Granada I´ll raise my sangria for him and toast the poets and the Old Masters and the young literary aspirants attempting to find a place among them.
Friday, February 18, 2011
papas
Yesterday my cousin sent me an email about a letter he recently found, written to him by our grandfather the day he was born. The letter welcomes him into the world and ends, "I won´t write again until you reply." In the Krakow internet cafe, remedying a little Michigander homesickness by Youtubing Motown jams, it made me laugh out loud. I´ll be 25 years old Monday, but still the thought of the loss of him makes me feel small and young. Orphaned.
Limping over Krakow yesterday, Tomcat and I forfeited a last adventure for some relaxed "cafe tourism." Final stops in the ongoing wine and coffee crawl: some Celestial Seasonings at the American book store (Massolit), apple pie and espresso at a traditional cafe near the market square, a final glass of mulled wine at a stylish Kazimierz bar with antique portraits lining the walls. I finally asked Tomcat about her grandfather. Our love for our lost grandfathers forms one of our common bonds (as well as literature, wanderlust and languishing in cafes), but I have only ever known the briefest version of the story. So between sips of latte she told me. An intelligent, engaging man. Well-traveled, eloquent. The war broke out when he was 11. His parents hosted and hid Polish political figures and figures of the underground. He served as a courrier in the underground and was captured and imprisoned. He and a friend escaped a concentration camp and went into hiding. On his 17th birthday, the war ended--the most wonderful of presents. But so many of the details, she said, she´ll never get to ask. He died suddenly of cancer when she was 18.
I´ve often thought I lost my grandfather at that agonizing moment, too, between adolescence and adulthood, when the sense of identity with family (or, at least, one´s favorite family) deepens and one wants those stories fleshed out, made more palpable, more personal. I know my grandfather´s stories: selling American cigarettes on the black market in post-war Paris and London to pay for the days in museums and the nights in the Pigalle. Waterskiing in Lebanon. The factotum of jobs in Flint and his studies, his vast knowledge of literature and history. His incomplete novel. But so much more I wish I had committed to paper, and no one seems able to give me the information I want. He was a radio operator on maneuvers in Morocco, but what was that daily life like? I overheard him once talking to an Ethiopian nurse and mentioning his time in Addis Ababa, but what was he doing there? And for how long? And what was the first impression of a young Irish-American from Detroit suddenly transplanted to Africa?
I offered to Tomcat that perhaps our literary impulses are our grace. Always our imaginations to turn to-- the myriad ideas, however idealized, of who are ancestors are, how they brought us to this moment, gave us these thoughts. The idea of our papas and their fabulous destinies. Krakow and Flint. WWII and decolonizing Morocco. All the places inbetween. Perhaps they crossed paths somewhere in Europe, sometime in the 1950s, two men nodding to each other across a crowded square, or in a tram car. Like the black and white faces, the chiaroscuro of thoughtful gazes in old photographs, on the walls surrounding us as we had our drinks, shared my last night in Krakow. Who are these people? How did their images end up on these walls? And isn´t it somehow more wonderful, perhaps, to imagine than to know?
And now I´m in Madrid. Bryan´s urn jostled through the Metro and stored carefully in a hostel locker. Papa´s ghost hanging pleasantly over Spain (I know he was in Seville for a time, but Madrid? Ah, let´s just say he was). It´s warm and sunny and the people in the subway look like extras from Almodovar films. The swelling in my toe is subsiding. There´s the sun and the Prado and churros waiting for me tomorrow. What more could a girl-- even a widowed, spiritually orphaned one-- desire?
Limping over Krakow yesterday, Tomcat and I forfeited a last adventure for some relaxed "cafe tourism." Final stops in the ongoing wine and coffee crawl: some Celestial Seasonings at the American book store (Massolit), apple pie and espresso at a traditional cafe near the market square, a final glass of mulled wine at a stylish Kazimierz bar with antique portraits lining the walls. I finally asked Tomcat about her grandfather. Our love for our lost grandfathers forms one of our common bonds (as well as literature, wanderlust and languishing in cafes), but I have only ever known the briefest version of the story. So between sips of latte she told me. An intelligent, engaging man. Well-traveled, eloquent. The war broke out when he was 11. His parents hosted and hid Polish political figures and figures of the underground. He served as a courrier in the underground and was captured and imprisoned. He and a friend escaped a concentration camp and went into hiding. On his 17th birthday, the war ended--the most wonderful of presents. But so many of the details, she said, she´ll never get to ask. He died suddenly of cancer when she was 18.
I´ve often thought I lost my grandfather at that agonizing moment, too, between adolescence and adulthood, when the sense of identity with family (or, at least, one´s favorite family) deepens and one wants those stories fleshed out, made more palpable, more personal. I know my grandfather´s stories: selling American cigarettes on the black market in post-war Paris and London to pay for the days in museums and the nights in the Pigalle. Waterskiing in Lebanon. The factotum of jobs in Flint and his studies, his vast knowledge of literature and history. His incomplete novel. But so much more I wish I had committed to paper, and no one seems able to give me the information I want. He was a radio operator on maneuvers in Morocco, but what was that daily life like? I overheard him once talking to an Ethiopian nurse and mentioning his time in Addis Ababa, but what was he doing there? And for how long? And what was the first impression of a young Irish-American from Detroit suddenly transplanted to Africa?
I offered to Tomcat that perhaps our literary impulses are our grace. Always our imaginations to turn to-- the myriad ideas, however idealized, of who are ancestors are, how they brought us to this moment, gave us these thoughts. The idea of our papas and their fabulous destinies. Krakow and Flint. WWII and decolonizing Morocco. All the places inbetween. Perhaps they crossed paths somewhere in Europe, sometime in the 1950s, two men nodding to each other across a crowded square, or in a tram car. Like the black and white faces, the chiaroscuro of thoughtful gazes in old photographs, on the walls surrounding us as we had our drinks, shared my last night in Krakow. Who are these people? How did their images end up on these walls? And isn´t it somehow more wonderful, perhaps, to imagine than to know?
And now I´m in Madrid. Bryan´s urn jostled through the Metro and stored carefully in a hostel locker. Papa´s ghost hanging pleasantly over Spain (I know he was in Seville for a time, but Madrid? Ah, let´s just say he was). It´s warm and sunny and the people in the subway look like extras from Almodovar films. The swelling in my toe is subsiding. There´s the sun and the Prado and churros waiting for me tomorrow. What more could a girl-- even a widowed, spiritually orphaned one-- desire?
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