I have always depended on the kindness of strangers

Sunday, June 17, 2007

I feel drained. So much and little has happened this weekend. Everything is a haze of hookah smoke, embellishment, and loss. We left for Granada on Saturday morning… I threw my bag under the bus – stopping momentarily to take out my wallet and journal – and we took a three hour journey to Granada.
When I arrived in Granada, my bag was mysteriously missing. There was no explaining it. People claimed to have seen it under the bus, the drivers claimed that they had stood guard. Whatever the case, my bag – along with its contents disappeared. My only real losses were my tarot cards and my camera… I refused to be upset by it though. I was in Granada, I was in Spain, and I wouldn’t let bad luck destroy the weekend.
Granada. Awash with hippies and Moroccans. A city of artists and craftsman. Of life, and youth. It felt… like Austin. Where Sevilla is my District of Columbia, Granada is my Austin. The night was spent quietly bonding with people amidst hookah smoke, Arabic tea, and shwarmas…. Oh dear god the shwarmas. They were among the best I’ve ever had in my life and the people the most friendly. Fitting for the second largest college town in Spain, the city of an intellectual, free spirited, crazy adventure. Perhaps my bad luck of loosing my bag granted me good luck in areas of my life.



I was given gifts of falafel by street venders, baklava by bakers, tea by tea sellers. People were stopping me in the street asking me if I was from Granada. My Spanish was excellent. My Arabic was reemerging. My social skills blossoming. The trip was a reprieve from reality. It was as if I was fasting, pardoned from material things – clothes, a clean shave, contacts.
And again… the city. I cannot even begin to explain how much I loved this university town nestled in the mountains. Streets taken from Arabian nights. Ancient tea houses smelling of Arabic philosophers. A populace awash with youthful energy. Cheap and delicious food. It was an oasis.
Granada in Spanish means pomegranate. Like this delectable fruit, the city was sweet and juicy. It was exotic and a luxury. It was filled with a thousand pits of lost bags and bad luck but sugarcoated with a personality that made all pessimism vanish.
Above all places I have visited in Spain, in Granada I could live forever.