Albaicin

I spent a large part of 1971 in a town that so utterly captured my heart that I never wanted to leave. I had just landed in India after more than three months in Thai prisons. I saw a giant picture of the Himalayas and Tibetan monks in the window of the Government Tourist Office of West Bengal. Although I had almost no money I knew I had to see that place. I fell in love with Darjeeling almost instantly and wept for hours when the Bangla Desh war brought down an edict that all foreigners had to leave sensitive border areas, among which Darjeeling was unfortunately numbered.

Throughout subsequent years that became decades I always nursed the thought that if it all turned to custard I could just go back to Darjeeling. Three years ago it did, and I did. It was a journey that came close to breaking my heart. Everyone I had known was dead and the town itself had been comprehensively and brutally trashed by random, hasty and ugly development. My home street, Tenzing Norgay Rd, had been one long, lovely vista. Too narrow for cars, all I ever heard outside my window was voices, footfalls and the bells of the various wallahs who brought milk, bread and shoe repairs, among other things.

Now the lower side of the road has been completely built out with shitty brick buildings. All you see is filthy walls, there is rubbish everywhere and noisy motorbikes and scooters zoom by, horns blaring. Almost the whole town has suffered this fate. I left, shattered.

But fate has been kind. Incredibly kind. Three years later she has given me the Albaicin, the old mountainside Arab quarter of that most wonderful city, Granada. Strangely, many of the qualities that made Darj so special are present in the Albaicin. Cobbled streets too narrow for cars. Voices and footfalls. Bells, many bells, not of pedestrian traders but churches. Here they still ring the Angelus.

The architecture, this architecture, is protected for all time. Whitewashed walls, terracotta tiles on a hill so steep that your immediate view is often your neighbour’s roof, just like Darjeeling of old.Towering over the streets and houses not the Himalayas but a man-made wonder, Al Hambra castle, against the backdrop of Spain’s highest mountains, the Sierra Nevada. They say it is listed as one of the ten most beautiful structures in the world.Perched on a hill and stretching a good kilometre of castellated towers and walls it is oddly reminiscent, to me at least, of the great Kanchenjunga massif that floats in the sky above Darjeeling.

The people, too, have similar qualities to those others back then. At the top of the hill poor but cheerful, warm people live in caves fronted by shanties. The shopkeepers are full of laughs. Shopping is done at a cheerful shout – my Spanish is getting better all the time, but I won’t be happy until I can join in the shouting. That has started. Buying bread at the panaderia the other day, the big, jolly builder said with a big smile what I thought was, “Sank you bery much.”

“Thank you very much,” I answered. No, he said, in Albaicin we say ‘Sank you vene mas!’ and roared with laughter. So did I – it was a great joke. Vene mas means come again or come more often. He reached out, still laughing, and shook my hand.

At the little Coviran grocery store on Plaza Larga the woman serving greeted me with, “Holá vecino!” “Hello neighbour.” I had been here for less than three weeks.

Yesterday morning I was up among the caves hauling sand for my guitar teacher’s cave building when a 30ish African man came out and started calling. He had an odd accent and it took me a moment to clock that he was greeting me. I went over and shook his hand, exchanged smiles. He was very clean, not so common up there, and had a big string of beads around one shoulder and under the opposite arm with two large icons, one of the Holy Family, hanging from them. His beautiful, full set of teeth were well cared for, also not the norm in the caves.

“I’ve got work,” he said, grinning broadly. “Congratulations,” I replied, “doing what?”
“Singing and playing.” He made a drumming gesture.
“Well done, man,” I said. “When did you start?” I was a bit doubtful that actually had a job, but he did – for a week now he had been playing a regular gig at a club in town that features African sounds. He was just so happy about it, I guess he was telling everybody. I congratulated him again, we did that upside-down-handshake thing that ends with the fist-to-fist touch and went back to filling my wheelbarrow, warmed by the moment.