unguided tour

Down the deserted street
goes a black horse
the wandering horse
of bad dreams.
(FG Lorca)

Perhaps the best way to get to know the ghosts of a city is by looking for an apartment. A sucker for historical settings I begin my search in the Albayzin, the city’s oldest quarter and for almost eight centuries the heart of muslim Granada. Today the district houses the most complete structure of medieval muslim domestic architecture in Europe and was declared UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. Situated on a hill opposite the Alhambra (another World Heritage Site) the Albayzin attracts tens of thousands of tourist every year.
Very few, if any, muslims are left in the Albayzin. When the Catholic Monarchs conquered Granada, they initiated a process of forced conversion, expulsion and dispossession. Today the Christian owners of one of the world’s most famous muslim World Heritage Site, well aware of the tourist’s taste for history, advertise their lodgings as “traditional moorish,” “uniquely Arabic”, or simply “historic.” The “historic studio” I end up renting belongs to a white woman from North America.

I don’t sleep well in my new home. Troubled by nightmares I  decide to move to a less touristy quarter. The Realejo district, south of the Alhambra, seems a better choice. Before 1492 most of the city’s 20,000 Jews used to live here. Unlike the Albayzin, the Realejo does not advertise its “tradition.” Except for a monument to the 12th-century scholar, translator, poet & physician Yehuda Ibn Tibon, awkwardly placed in front of a large tourist restaurant and a bank, finding traces of former synagogues, bath houses, book shops is left to my imagination. Granada, which owes its name to Gránata al-Yahud, the name of the flourishing jewish quarter when the city was still known as Ilbiria — refuses to pay attention to its jewish history. (Ibn Tibon’s monument, erected a few years ago, was paid for by his family’s descendants.)

The statue is placed such that this “son of Granada,” whose slender upright figure signals curiosity and openness, seems to greet the colonizer and Jew hater, Isabel la Catolica. The huge monument — erected at the end of 19th-century and within eyesight of Ibn Tibon’s — shows the queen sitting on her throne handing money to her obedient protegé Christopher Columbus, funding his voyage to the New World. A few yards further south another son of Granada, one who didn’t have to pay for his monument, is honored: José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the fascist Falange party. “Granada a José Antonio, November 1972″ reads the inscription on the plinth.

Although most of the buildings in the Realejo district go back to the 15th century or earlier, all the apartments I look at are decorated in a neutral, relaxed, modern style. In the lovely studio I decide to rent — brand new with breathtaking views of the city — everything from desk to sofa to bed to plates to sheets & towels comes from IKEA. A postmodern way of exorcism, I guess — but not a very successful one. My nightmares persist. After a few days find myself longing for local color. In a tourist shop on Cuesta de Gomerez I buy plates, bowls and cups in the traditional white and blue pomegranate (granada) design.

* * * * *

There must be after-effects when a city, within just a few months’ time, places itself on a new symbolic foundation — changing from a muslim inspired multi-religious, polyglot culture to a Christian monoculture that speaks + understands only castellano — but keeps much of the old architecture and infrastructure.

What does it feel like to go to sleep and wake up in a stolen house?

What does it feel like to pray in a church built with  tombstones taken from a vandalized muslim cemetery?

What does it feel like to earn a comfortable living from the revered architectural achievements of a culture & religion whose books were burnt, whose adherents persecuted, and whose  followers are still regarded with hostility?

There are no simple answers, no definitive conclusions. There are only personal responses.

* * * * *

In 1492 Granada moved from the center to the periphery. Once the home of world famous scholars, poets, artists and architects today it’s mainly tourists who come to Granada. Is that why Granadinos seem so unperturbed? Oblivious. Am I the only one who is worried? The unconscious never forgets, the repressed is part of memory.  History, this “the wandering horse of bad dreams,” is wide awake. I worry how much longer the city will go on living under the deceptive protection of its triumphant Madonnas,  proud church towers, and five-hundred years of self-righteous national catholicism.

Nightmares anyone?

Tags: albayzin, granada, yehuda ibn tibon

Posted: October 1st, 2009

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