Initially, my plan after Madrid is to head down to Córdoba, the historic capital of the Caliphate of Córdoba, which ruled the Islamic state of Al-Andalus for just over a hundred years in the tenth and eleventh centuries. But despite being in the off seasons, accommodations there are expensive, and so I head further south, to the city of Granada.
Granada itself interests me from a historic standpoint, as it was the last Islamic holdout in Spain. The fall of the city in 1492 marked the end of the Moorish presence in the Iberian peninsula and the end of the Reconquista, and marked a change in the Spanish approach to the world. That date, in fact, so famous to Americans as the year of Christopher Columbus’ famous voyage, is no coincidence: Columbus was funded in large part by the wealth the Spanish government captured in Granada. The main street, Gran Via de Colón, is named after the explorer.
I arrive in the outskirts of the city, in the dilapidated but relaxed modern district, and it’s a sunny half-hour walk into the center. Behind the city rise the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, which mark the first snow I’ve seen since leaving the Rockies way back in June.
Once near my hostel, I turn up into the Albayzín, the old Arabic quarter, and immediately the right-angle grid of the modern town gives way to the narrow twisting alleys of classic Arabic urban layout. My hostel, Oasis, is set up in a beautiful old four-story building with a covered central courtyard and roof terrace, and I immediately feel at home. Granada is cheap and relaxed; a beer or glass of wine costs about a euro fifty, and comes with a surprisingly substantial tapas plate free of charge. Two or three of these can make a lunch, and if you’re still hungry, a falafal wrap or lamb sandwich runs you around three euro.
I stay in Granada for about a week, working and writing. My young adult novel, which I’ve been composing in a series of notebooks, has come to a standstill, and so I stop the forward composition and go into intensive restructuring and historical research on topics ranging from the first Crusade to the Mongol conquests of the 13th century to the French occupation of Syria in the early twentieth century. As the research and plotting picks up, so do the book plans; the middle third of my notebooks is full of notes and ideas, and my computer copy slowly starts to reform in a way more to my liking.
One morning, I take a truly excellent walking tour up through the Arabic quarter to the church that crowns the hill in the center. From here, you can see the caves lining the hills behind the district. Divided by a path into the Gypsy caves and “the hippy caves,” this area has been a haven for the disenfranchised since the Muslim days, and local legend has it that the rich tradition of the Spanish guitar began there.
Music in general is taken very seriously in Granada, and talented street musicians are everywhere. Several are staying at my hostel, and late-night music sessions on the roof are shut down more than once by apologetic staff pleading sleep for those in the rooms just below us. It all makes me wish for an instrument; I play piano, but pianos are hard to come by when traveling. So instead, I interview several of the musicians staying at my hostel about the nature of travel with a guitar. Finally, I make my choice; I don’t play, but I can learn, and I figure carrying it around with me will force me to practice.
So I take a tour of the city’s many guitarrerias, where old master craftsman build instruments by hand, and where a good guitar can go for prices approaching a thousand euros. I, of course, have nowhere near that amount to spend, and so finally find a place that sells cheap guitars as well. I sit down to try a Made in China model that sells for thirty-five euros. The strings are stiff, the sound is flat, but, I think, it will work to learn on.
Then the shopkeeper pulls a guitar from the rack and hands it to me. “This is my cheapest hand-made model,” he says, “it’s probably more than you want to spend.”
I pick it up, and even though I don’t play guitar as yet, I’m immediately in love. It’s both lighter and stronger than the machine-made model, the sound is rich, the strings pliable. I find myself unable to set it down. “How much?” I say.
Half an hour later, new guitar and case in hand, I walk back to my hostel with a lighter heart and a lighter wallet. It was worth it, I think; I can eat rice for a few weeks.
Before I leave, I visit the Alhambra, the massive Arabic fortress that crowns one of the hills above the city, full of fortifications and palaces that served as inspirations for famous artists from Washington Irving and Salman Rushdie to M.C. Escher to Claude Debussy.
Immediately apparent is the different value system held by the North African Muslim rulers compared with their European counterparts; in Islamic culture, based til that point in fairly arid parts of the world, water, not gold, was the primary way of publicly displaying wealth. So whereas in places like Versailles or the Vatican gold and filigree are the most visual elements of construction, Islamic palaces like the Alhambra display wealth in their gardens, fountains, and waterworks. Construction is done in intricately carved wood and stone, streams run through carved channels behind and beneath pathways, every terrace holds a garden, and fountains are everywhere.
By the time my stay in Granada is up, I’m sad to see it go, and promise myself that I’ll come back. Maybe I’ll live in the hippy caves, learning flamenco guitar; who knows. But for the moment, Morocco is calling.
