Sinning Across Spain

by Ailsa Piper

  When unfolded, a map of Spain showed various pilgrim routes. The Via de la Plata was the longest, but the map didn’t even show the Mozárabe, my longer road, which joined the Via at Mérida, four hundred kilometres to my north. I really was walking the less travelled road.

  ‘Comienza, peregrina,’ I whispered. It begins, pilgrim.

  Pocketing my treasure, I climbed to the Alhambra.

  The site is marvel enough, high on its hill overlooking the city, ringed by the Sierra Nevada. Then there are the palaces and fortress …

  The Nasrid Palace is a feast of detail in tiles, carvings, arches, mosaics, wood and terracotta. And water: trickling, running, tinkling, pooled; the sound of it; the reflection of light on it; the relief of its cool dampness.

  Al-hamra. In Arabic, it means ‘the red one’.

  The Alhambra was built from the red clay on which it stands. It literally rises from its own earth. Visitors massed over every inch of it. After two hours of splendours, I perched on a stone seat at the fortress, the Alcazaba, to thaw in full sun. Birdsong cut through the crowd chatter from the courtyard below. Trees were thick with crimson-pink blossom, against a cornflower sky. The mountains stood sentinel in the distance.

  I wondered if other species strive to build for an aesthetic or to stare down mortality, to express a love of the divine or of another person.

  The bowerbird came to mind.

  The Alhambra had bowers: corridors and anterooms; spaces that fluctuated between intimate and generous; places for trysts and stories, intrigues and parties, pomp and romance. It exuded a powerful aura of peace, despite having been taken from its Muslim creators by Christian kings. Simultaneously a temple, citadel and domestic sanctuary, it invited awe yet gave me welcome.

  In the Palace of Charles V, a great colonnaded amphitheatre, a grizzled German tourist launched into song. He flung wide his arms and let rip. The stones soaked it up.

  Later, in the gardens of the Generalife, I roamed in the heat among Dutch iris, wisteria, magnolia, lavender, roses, peonies, marigolds, cockscombs, rosemary for remembrance, pansies for thoughts, and red poppies for the fallen. The waft of purple stocks reminded me of my mother, of childhood, my brother and his Sue.

  For hours I wandered the Alhambra, losing myself in memories, then finding myself in centuries-old courtyards and archways. Hungry to walk, I followed a path along the Río Darro, which was all bubbling water, stone and blossoms, up to the lookout of San Nicolás, where I gazed beyond Granada to the north. My way …

  Down in the centre with its Moorish souk and Catholic cathedral among the orange trees, there were practicalities of a twenty-first-century nature: a battery charger for my borrowed camera; postcards and phone cards; and thirty euros of stamps—my village was waiting for news.

  Strolling back to the hotel, the night air was chilly. Myriad flowers pumped scent into a starry sky. Shadows trailed me on the stones. Families were visible against the gold glow of candles and the blue sheen of television. Narrow streets wound me about, much as they would have if I’d walked them centuries earlier.

  In 1492, Spain’s Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, wrenched the Kingdom of Granada away from its Moorish ruler, Boabdil, after more than a decade of battles. It’s said there is a spot where Boabdil, his heart broken at the loss of the city and the Alhambra, looked back over Granada. This place is known as el último suspiro del Moro. The Moor’s last sigh.

  The Catholic monarchs gave Jews and Muslims living in Granada four months to convert to Christianity or leave the country. In so doing, they created the conversos—converts. Those who abided by the law and converted were subjected to harassment and suspicion from both the community they left and the ones they attempted to join.

  I recalled another stroll one morning through familiar antipodean streets. A man had stood on a corner near my home. He’d removed his hat, and held out a scrap of paper with an address on it: the local school.

  ‘Please,’ he said, his lips struggling to form the single-syllable word. ‘Please,’ nodding and looking into my eyes.

  I indicated to him to follow and asked his nationality.

  ‘Home,’ I said. ‘Where is home?’

  ‘No home,’ he said. ‘Iran. Kurd.’ He paused, repeated it, touching his chest. ‘No home. Refugee.’

  He held out both hands and looked at the ground, as though this was a personal failing, some mistake he had made, to be born Kurdish.

  We were met at the gate by another Kurdish man who spoke some English. He explained it was a trial day; there might be permanent work as cleaners.

  ‘Good luck,’ I said, shaking their hands. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Walking the Francés, I felt I gained some understanding of the plight of the dispossessed. There’s no status to flaunt when you’re trudging along a road, grubby and footsore, looking for a place to sleep. Walk the breadth of a country with reasonably settled politics, and you’ll want that stability for all the world. The words ‘peace’ and ‘freedom’ felt personal and tangible out there.

  But of course that’s rubbish. I always knew I could go home.

  ‘No home,’ he’d said to me.

  In the Arabian Nights air of Granada, a flamenco guitar played. Gypsy music. Different. Other. I hoped the Kurdish man had a job and was making a home.

  At a ciber, a net café, there was mint tea and lines from a friend: Whenever we are truly present, wherever we are, we bring peace.

  She’d put her finger on my problem of the preceding days. I’d been projecting into the future—the distance, the difficulties—and reflecting on the past—the grief, the warnings. You can’t walk when your thoughts are ten miles ahead or ten years behind. Now. Here and now. All there is, is now.

  Why had I forgotten that?

  Next day I walked to the Convent of the Comendadoras de Santiago and knocked on the grille of their wooden door. It slid open, and a face appeared. ‘Sí?’

  I held out the credencial.

  ‘Por favor, puedo tener un sello?’ Please can I have a stamp?

  Each church, town hall, refugio, albergue, bar or restaurant along the way has its own sello, or stamp, which is pressed onto the pilgrim’s credencial when they make a stop. The images vary enormously: civic, commercial, traditional, religious. Santiago Peregrino occasionally features. The stamps become badges of achievement for pilgrims, but they also serve a practical purpose. The credencial is examined to ascertain that you’re a genuine pilgrim. Basically, that’s to do with distances between stops. They’re a way of checking that pilgrims are not being ferried along the road. Some pilgrims collect sellos from as many places as possible, even if they haven’t stayed in a town, making a mosaic of multi-coloured inky memories. I always had my journal stamped too, so my scrawl was divided by sellos, like primary school notebooks with their stars and elephant stamps.

  The nun took my passport and slid the grille shut. I waited. The grille opened, the passport appeared, and I heard ‘Buen camino’ as the grille slid closed.

  I assume they are a silent order.

  That first sello was red ink and oval shaped, with the cross of Santiago at the centre. I studied it as the ink dried, then photographed the convent’s tiled pilgrim benediction, before turning to look for the first yellow arrow.

  There it was.

  On the grey wall of the building opposite, to the left of a broken downpipe, under a scrawl of graffiti, pointing the way for pilgrims to progress.

  I walked.

  I followed arrows on hydrants, fences and pavement. I hadn’t planned it, but my feet led me out through the town. The streets were no longer beautiful, but no matter. I was walking and something was being restored.

  After three hours, I realised I had better get back to my quarters. Wandering without sins was all very well, but there was a pack to load for the real business ahead.

 
On the bus back, I opened my journal and read the words of Rainer Maria Rilke that I had been sent to help me begin. Words on a page. Sustenance for the soul.

  A WALK

  My eyes already touch the sunny hill,

  Going far ahead of the road I have begun.

  So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;

  It has its inner light, even from a distance—

  and changes us, even if we do not reach it,

  into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are,

  a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave …

  but what we feel is the wind in our face.

  I wanted to share it with the silver-haired woman leaning on her stick, trying to catch the chatter of the teenagers in front of us; to tell her that her city had helped me believe I could begin; to say I could feel the whisper of wind in my face.

  I didn’t have the words.

  Instead I listened to the sounds of Andalucía. They don’t always pronounce the ‘s’ and so Andalucía becomes Andalouia. Beso becomes beo. I wondered how that had evolved, feeling my lack of knowledge of the Spanish people’s different languages and cultures, and their complicated relationship to history, faith and tribalism. I only knew wildly impractical things. Poems, poets and pathways.

  But I know how to walk, I told myself.

  One foot down. Then the other.

  And tomorrow I begin.

  7

  Moor, Moor, Moorish

  I woke in darkness, allowed myself the luxury of a morning shower, and then read the list of sins. My new ritual. I tucked my journal into my mochila, filled my water bottles and crept downstairs, feeling the same nerves as in my acting days when the Stage Manager would call us from our dressing rooms.

  ‘Act One beginners onstage please. Act One beginners to the stage.’

  That was me. A beginner. The fluttering in my stomach confirmed it.

  Chill air greeted me in Granada’s lamp-lit streets as I left the Alhambra behind, hurrying through the suburbs of the previous day’s mini-camino. With the sun rising over my shoulder, my ten kilos of pack inched left, then right, before eventually settling into its place. My hiking poles click-clacked along silent pavement and my legs found their rhythm. Walking. At last.

  After about fifteen urban kilometres I reached Pinos Puente, a pueblo on the outskirts where I stopped for the vital first coffee. When I said I was from Australia, the truck driver beside me said it was la otra parte del mundo—the other part of the world. At school, he said, he had been taught that if you drilled a hole through the core of the planet from Madrid, you’d emerge in red desert surrounded by kangaroos.

  I said that we refer to Australia as ‘down under’—abajo debajo—but he shook his head and laughed. Perhaps I had missed a double entendre!

  I pushed on into irrigation channels, birch trees and just-opening poppies. The sky was clear and the sun warm. I was focused and footsure. Until I got lost.

  The yellow arrows had petered out, or been bulldozed by farmers, and my guidebook didn’t mention any of the visible landmarks. The raging river in front of me was definitely not the trickle I was hunting and the only bridge was made from sheets of plywood, which hung low, almost touching the torrent. I didn’t fancy plunging in, so I forged on through mud and clay.

  Eventually I came to a fence made of frayed lengths of rope strung between trees. It held dozens of suckling lambs, their tails wriggling as their mothers chomped on iridescent grass. A shepherd limped towards me. His breath was a blast of lethal spirits as he laughed at my quest for a bridge.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, pointing me back to the plywood construction. ‘That way.’

  He said it would be an extra twenty kilometres if I didn’t cross there.

  That sealed it. The temperature had already reached the predicted mid-twenties maximum, and the stage was over thirty kilometres—a mix of pavement, asphalt, sand and mud. I was not lengthening it. Back I went.

  When I got close to the bridge I could see that it was flimsy, held together by rope and hope. Soil crumbled on the bank where the support beams were inserted, and the river roared, confirming reports I’d heard of recent flooding. A willow hung low, making me think of Ophelia’s death in Hamlet.

  I looked around for a miracle, for a knight or a saint.

  They weren’t coming.

  Dappled light danced on raging water, and the bridge was a dun-coloured ribbon across it. There was nothing for it. I stepped out.

  The bridge swayed. I stepped back.

  I shortened my hiking poles and hooked them through my belt loops, then placed my boot back on the wobbling surface. Despite the willow’s shade, sweat dripped from my temples and nose.

  Step. Toes gripping insoles. Step. Don’t look at the water. Don’t even glance at it. Step. Nearly there. Step. Keep breathing. Step. Step again. And …

  Land! Solid ground!

  I punched the air, twirled my poles like a cheerleader, high-fived myself, and shouted Hallelujah. My heart was pounding and my body was drenched. My boots were caked with mud, red dye seeping into their camel leather. They looked like they’d been walking for weeks.

  ‘Get used to it,’ I told them.

  I loaded up, buoyed by my triumphant crossing, and hit a dusty white road that led into groves of olives. Miles of them.

  Oliven. Aceitunas. Olive. Olivjen.

  I was surrounded. On and on they went, their leaves catching the sun, making them glitter like chainmail. The trunks were effigies, and their features, formed from a constant tussle with the wind, gave nothing away as I passed between them, heading for the horizon outlined against cloudless sky.

  My eyes already touch the sunny hill …

  And I got lost again.

  Another branch of the river cut me off. All I could see were gnarled trunks and grass in need of mowing. I wondered about snakes. I wondered about spiders. I wondered about wild dogs and boars. I wondered if I was going loca. As I attempted to orient myself by the sun, by buildings on hilltops and by my guidebook, the phone rang. Leonardo, the screen said.

  ‘Hola, amore. Cómo va?’

  There was no way I was admitting I was lost on day one, so I said everything was bien. Muy bien. Going very well.

  Ah, pride. There it was. And a white lie, for good measure!

  He stressed that if I was in trouble, or lost, just to call. ‘Ricardo and I will come. De nada. No problem.’

  Well, I was lost but I wasn’t in trouble. His voice bucked me up and within minutes I found the farm building mentioned in the guidebook and was singing out loud in time with the tap of my walking poles, my body beginning to understand what was being asked of it. It wasn’t necessarily happy about it, as my knees reminded me once or twice, but it was getting the idea.

  The camino gods colluded to give me a taste of everything that first day—cold, mud, stones, pink apple blossoms, yellow mustard flowers, ploughed earth, flooded creeks, heat, mown grass, steep inclines and flat panoramas. And olives. No forgetting the olives.

  In the town of Los Olivares, my river roared a greeting as it raced under an arched stone bridge. Elderly locals gathered on benches at the main crossroad and young mothers played with their children in patches of shade. In the bar, I demolished a bocadillo—a sandwich made from dense, white, baguette-style bread, filled with cheese, omelette, chorizo or ham. Sometimes a little tomato if you are lucky. No butter. No relish. No embellishment. Always good, but lip-smackingly delicious after a long walk.

  The village’s workingmen were in the bar. They smoked, watched TV and talked in gravel voices, all without uttering an ‘s’.

  Bueno día they said, instead of Buenos días, for hello.

  Ma o meno for más o menos—more or less.

  Ma depacio for mas despacio—more slowly.

  I had to s
ay that a lot.

  They were tough and furrowed like their earth, and they watched my every movement as I hoisted my mochila onto my back and walked out into the sun to make for the road to Moclín, the next village.

  Depending on which guide you believe, it’s only two or three kilometres.

  I don’t believe any of them.

  It was a marathon. Straight up. And I do mean vertical.

  Los Olivares dropped away, reducing to a toy town. In still afternoon heat, the olive-decked hills were a shimmering patchwork quilt and the ground blinding white as I slogged around a quarry. A pine grove gave temporary relief, and then up, up, up again in full sun on a narrow, rocky path.

  Mercifully, the unfolding panorama distracted me from my screaming calf muscles. The track wasn’t an incline, as my guide suggested; it was sheer perpendicular excruciation. For the final rock-strewn, rutted five hundred metres of slippery bleached shale, it did seem my nose was going to scrape the ground in front of me; but the path was lined with grape hyacinths and daisies, and at the summit, above the town, a fortress beckoned. I gasped my way up, inhaling blossom and cow manure, the fragrance of rural Spain.

  At the last turn, with the beat of my heart a kettledrum in my ears and my mochila weighing on me like a crate of mortal sins, a farmer stood up on the other side of a wall. I thought my knees would give out. We stared at each other in silence and then doubled over with laughter. He gabbled at warp speed, pointing and grinning. I nodded, though he might as well have been speaking Hindi. I think he was saying I’d frightened him as much as he had terrified me.

  When equilibrium was restored, he asked where I was going. The mirth stopped. He put a calloused hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes.

  ‘Vaya con Dios,’ he said. Go with God.

  I couldn’t tell him I didn’t know where or who God was; not after his blessing, out there in the heat and dung. I didn’t want him to know I was uncertain, possibly unreliable as a pray-er of prayers. I thanked him and began the last few purgatorial metres, following his directions to the main square.