Andalus: Unlocking the Secrets of Moorish Spain by Jason Webster

Author:Jason Webster [Webster, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Essays & Travelogues
ISBN: 0552771244
Google: hHNS0NAK33AC
Amazon: B003XVYENC
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-08-02T22:00:00+00:00

SEVILLE

‘You sure your friend’s OK? He’s been gone a while.’

I turned my head away from the stage and looked back through the cigarette and hashish smoke in the direction of the toilets to which Zine had disappeared earlier. Glancing up at a clock on the wall I reckoned he must have been gone about fifteen minutes.

‘He’ll be all right. Probably got food poisoning or something.’

Amadeo laughed. ‘It’s usually us who get gut rot when we go to his country, not the other way round. Perhaps he can’t stomach all the ham.’

I poured out more thick red wine into our scratched tumblers. I was worried about Zine. We had got over the worst of our fight in Cordoba, without actually having managed to apologize to one another, but he was still less talkative than normal and had spent the last couple of days moping around, barely lifting himself out of bed. This time, at least, he hadn’t protested when I insisted he shared a room with me. I still wasn’t sure what was wrong, but was convinced he was in no fit state to go cruising the streets of Seville looking for a ‘bed’ for the night. It might just be fatigue, I thought, or perhaps some stomach bug, judging from the amount of time he’d been spending in bathrooms. If he didn’t show signs of improvement soon I might have to get him some medication.

He had insisted on coming with me to the flamenco tablao that night: having seen him look so rough all day, I thought perhaps he was feeling better and felt like seeing something of the city – Ishbiliya, the Moors had called it, and Zine still referred to it by the old Arabic name. On the way we had passed the Giralda, brightly lit above the orange trees and droppings from horses ferrying tourists in shiny black carriages. The bell tower and symbol of the city was the Almohads’ greatest architectural legacy in Spain – the minaret to the mosque that had previously stood where now the Christian temple took its place – sister minarets in similar style still stood in Marrakesh and Rabat. Thick and square, with geometric patterns in brickwork creeping up its sides, the Christian King Alfonso X ‘the Wise’, when still a prince conquering the city for his father Ferdinand III, had saved the tower from destruction by Muslims fearful of it falling into Christian hands.

Across the square stood the Alcázar: Seville’s Alhambra – a lusciously decorated Moorish palace still used as a royal residence when the king came down from Madrid. Its delicate archways, pools of water and yeso plastered ceilings, however, had been built for a Christian king – Pedro the Cruel; this defender of the Catholic faith had the royal escutcheon painted on the walls of his bedchamber emblazoned with Arabic script proclaiming, ‘Glory to our Sultan Don Pedro, may Allah aid and protect him.’

Zine had been fine for the first hour at the tablao, pushing his way towards the front to grab us a seat just under the little wooden stage.

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