Cordoba at Night

"Do not let yourself be conquered by anything alien to your spirit."

- Seneca the Younger, Stoic philosopher, native of Cordoba (4 B.C. to 65 A.D.)

Plaza de la Tendillas

There are some cities that should be seen at night.

Amsterdam is one. By day, one wanders the canal-side streets with strangers, many of them tourists hoping to see a Van Gogh, learn about Heineken or down some herring like a seasoned native. At night, however, the world belong more to the locals. It's almost another city, more small-town-like, the cafes and bars bustling, friends and family buying each other another round of Amstel or Wieckse.

Cordoba is another such place meant for nightfall, especially in the summer. During the day, the heat is unyielding and extreme and though, yes, there are slender shadows of respite in the alleys, it never seems enough. One can take refuge under a cafe umbrella or beside a fountain but the sun is white, resilient and intense. The beer from the taverns is cool but the ice cream melts fast.

And during the day, of course is the only time you can explore the museums, or fully appreciate the architecture but there is something more vivid and yet dream-like about the lantern lit streets and courtyards. I don't know, maybe one feels spiritually closer to the ghost of the past, catching a glimpse of another century, whether Roman or Moorish. 

Seneca statue

The famous philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born here when the city was the capital of Hispania in the Roman Empire. Wandering the calles and quarters, one can find his statue near the old gate and in a small square not far from the Tendillas. And not far from the latter, an old Roman ruin, cut off from the public by a steel fence, a lone orange tree growing amidst the rubble. 

The orange tree was brought to southern Spain by the Moors. 

The city's fame rests more perhaps on the Moors than the Romans. Not long after Abd al-Rahman I of the Umayads left his home in Damascus, his family slaughtered by the rival Abbasids, he made his way west. The land of southern Spain which fell to the Vandals after the fall of Rome now fell to the Berbers, followers of Mohammed in north Africa. It was said Abd al-Rahman's mother was a Berber, a tribeswoman of what today would be Morocco.

He amassed support in Malaga and by 755 became a threat to the rulers of the city. They tried to marry him off. But no. He would have Cordoba.

Six years after his family's murder, Abd al-Rahman proclaimed himself emir in Cordoba (instead of caliph, which he could have rightfully done)

It was Abd al-Rahman that set the standard for the city. Though he wanted peace, it would be a long road to his own tranquility. As emir, he helped build the first great mosque of Cordoba, the Mezquita inspired by the Mosque of Damascus.

Interior, Mezquita

During the summer days, the mosque (now a Catholic church) is quietly mobbed by tourists. One walks through the Door of Forgiveness, buys a ticket in the Orange Tree Courtyard and heads to the Door of the Palms. Upon entering, one encounters the first nave, constructed in the emir's time. The mosque was built on the remains of the San Vicente Basilica and through a glass window in the floor, one can see the lost, brief world of the Visigoths who were vanquished in 711.

Amidst the over-lapping arches and the endless array of columns, there is a a kind of quasi-evening peace in the mosque. Abd al-Rahman, before his reign, was said to have written a poem in which he compared himself to a palm tree, lonely and in exile. Standing in the solemn, subdued light of the Mezquita's interior one could liken the experience to standing in a forest of palms at dusk. It is something fitting in that he made the lone palm of his melancholic poem into an icon of perseverance and strength, turning the one into many, building strength from the solitary.

Mezquita and Tourists

At night, the mosque is lit up, the walls a bright golden-brown. There are a few tourists and amidst the ledges, one can see the pigeons have found a place to rest for the night. 

In Cordoba's Golden Age, at the height of the 10th century, the city was a centre of vast wealth and culture. There were said to be 900 baths, tens of thousands of shops, running water from aquaducts and a library containing some 400,000 volumes (this at a time when the largest library in Christian Europe housed a mere 400 manuscripts). 

Hrowsitha of Gandersheim, a German canoness under the Emperor Otto I described the city as the 'brilliant ornament of the world' shining in the west. Perhaps she had seen the city at night. The streets were well-paved and public lanterns provided illumination. 

At night in modern Cordoba, the one Arabic bath and the many shops are closed (no where near the number of ten thousand). But the streets are certainly lit up. One can get a feeling, if not an archaic echoing of the what it must have been like to visit the great 'ornament of the world'. It is said that when London was a dark city of muddy streets, Cordoba shone.

The Moors introduced citrus fruits to what is now Southern Spain as well as rice. They were the first to perfect irrigation in agriculture, allowing the dry dessert lands to become fertile fields of abundance. They were ahead of Europe in the sciences and math, philosophy and literature. Deodorant and perfume were first introduced in al-Andalus. 

Sadly, the Golden Age, like so many in humanity's history came to an end. By the eleventh century, warring factions within the Moorish community weakened and tore up the great Andalusian world of tolerance, culture and peace. Like the Vandals who had fallen before them, they too were plagued with civil strife and corruption. Cordoba would suffer. King Ferdinand III, after a siege of several months took control in the thirteenth century.

'Flamenco Fountain' - Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos

In the south, along the banks of the river, you can find the great former palace-fortress of the Catholic Monarchs, the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos. In the day, for the tourists, it is a lovely, tranquil garden to visit. Despite the piped-in world music, there is a fountain to sit beside in the shadow of leaves. You can smell the lovely olive trees in the noon-day heat.

However, when you return at night with your ticket, you are plunged into another experience.

First, you watch a light show displayed on the interior walls of the castle courtyard, showing the history of Cordoba with accompanying music. Following this, you are treated to a fountain show. There are three fountains with the water dancing to the rhythm of the Moorish tunes of al-Andalus, the Medieval flutes and strings of Medieval Spain and the Flamenco guitar of modern times.

Though there is an aspect of kitsch involved, it never feels fully tacky. In a way you can appreciate the diversity of such a lost world. Today, most European cities are centres of multi-culturalism. Cordoba was one of the true firsts, whether through policies of tolerance (the Muslims of al-Andalus were accepting of the peoples of 'the book' meaning Jews and Christians could live and worship as they pleased) or its history. 

The aura of times past may have a resonating charm. Still at night, there is the atmosphere of relief from the sun. In many countries throughout Europe, children are fast asleep by midnight. In Cordoba, because of the mid-summer sun, many families take a siesta. Shops are closed, only a few places are open to satisfy and placate the tourists. By four or five, they re-open. This means, people are still wide-awake at midnight. The children too, many of them playing in the fountains throughout the city.

As for the bars, they stay open late. But it is never feels wild. Patrons sit and drink outside, smoking their cigarettes, eating their tapas. They down their cool wines and beers. They converse.

For me Cordoba is suited for night. Its glory days are past, good memories within the nocturnal walls and along the streets.

In a sense, history is a story of ghosts. The old heroes, the great victories, the wondrous libraries and the downfalls all belong to the dust, their weight on our lives is no more than just a wonderful, passing if not entertaining tale, a distraction really.

In the place where armies met, there are houses and suburbs.

In the old Jewish quarter, a statue of Maimonides rests. In front of him passes the slap of sandals, the chatter of voices, the snapping of pictures. Women with sun bronzed shoulders go by with their boyfriends. They hold hands, they point at something interesting. In a few minutes they will have a cerveza at the tavern around the corner and go off to the shops to buy a scarf for her, some local olive oil or sherry for him. 

At night, it can only be different because of the dream of the past is more alive. With enough imagination and wonder, you can feel a tremble there in your skin, as if remembering a life you might have lived. To stand on the Roman bridge and look towards the city, to see the ancient pontoons still holding up a legacy, the Catholic church facade of the converted Mezquita, the distant tower of the Alcazar and of course, the nearby tanned skin of an Andalusian beauty one might feel time to be a hopeless illusion, a tool we try to tell ourselves is useful when really it distracts us from the symbiotic beauty of existence. How everything is all at once and never quite real.

Yes, how Cordoba is a symbol of what is, what remains and what isn't.

That Lost Sense of Home

It's raining in Kingsville. Apparently it hasn't been like this all summer. Which is nice to know, considering last year. But a light rain after a dry summer, a kind of gift. 

I hope the autumn is dry and cool and there are few days of showers to mar the smoky air. I look forward to watching the corn fields come down with the harvest. I am looking forward to seeing the leaves yellow and orange. 

I am looking forward to this. And following it, winter. 

But I can't help but say I'm a little bewildered. Leaving Europe was like leaving the comfort of something so familiar. Almost as if I was saying goodbye to a beautiful woman, walking away from her presence and bed to return home to another woman, a kind, but unloving wife. And it's not that I've cheated myself or anyone, just seen something new, something different, a way of life that I would say makes more sense. 

In Germany, you can drink beer in public, on bridges, on park benches, in the streets, on trams and trains. And why not? I rarely if ever saw violence break out. No moments of publich intoxication where the cops had to be called in. The parks are filled in the summer. You can smell the aroma of BBQ. Picnic blankets lie on the grass. There are coolers, bottles of wine. There is nothing really to fear.

Here, the parks are empty, even on the most serene of days.

Spestraat, Haarlem, The Netherlands

In Amsterdam, Haarlem and other Dutch cities it is easy to get around. The trams are so easy to negotiate. The bike lanes are well-paved and amazing. You don't need a car, really. (But be aware of the rules of the road, just because you're a cyclist doesn't mean you can ignore them - and the everyday Dutch are hard on those who defy their regulations.)

Here, the bike lane is the pebbled shoulder in most cities (though some of the bigger are more accommodating of two-wheeled, methane free travelers).

I felt at home in that world. And now I'm 'home'. 

And though it is familiar, I have forgotten the names of some towns and places. I know the roads still but the small differences are there, I can feel them. And it's not all bad, no. But it's not the same.

Before Kingsville, I was in my hometown of St.Catharines. I stayed with friends of mine. They were kind enough to host me for a few days. I didn't really contact family. The old tensions don't seem to go away. We are Dutch so being stubborn (hardnekkig in Nederlands - or thick-necked, how appropriate) and habits like that are hard to be rid of.

But Kingsville, as if the rest of Canada was another continent and in between vast corn fields and wind farms, highways that give one a preview of the prairies. Kingsville where public transportation doesn't exist. Either you drive or bike (on the above-mentioned shoulder). Kingsville where the quiet is continually interrupted by the crickets, the sound of lawn mowers. Kingsville where the liquor store closes at six most nights, where the books on the library shelves are basic bestsellers, literature and art and poetry rare.

Kingsville, the home I would never had expected. Had you told the proverbial previous self of two years ago I would be living here, he would have chuckled and then asked, Kingsville, you mean Kingston, right?

St.Catharines like the other cities of my past are closed doors. I lived in them long enough to discover I didn't feel at home there. But in Germany, I found home. Curiously enough, in Leipzig where yes, the parks are filled and bicycles are seemingly everywhere. Leipzig where it felt like leaving a familiar, loving room where now someone must now touch the other side of the bed and let out a sigh in my absence.

Toteninsel - Arnold Böcklin

The Leipzig of Bach, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. The Leipzig Wagner didn't think too highly of but now he would probably would, what with both the beautiful opera and symphony house facing each other on opposite sides of Augustuspatz. The Leipzig of the silent revolution on Nikolaistraße. The Leipzig where nearby in the late 1700s Schiller wrote his famous An die Freude ('Ode to Joy'). The Leipzig of Klinger and the art museum where you can find my favourite version of Arnold Böcklin's Toteninsel (Isle of the Dead).

Yes, that Leipzig. The Leipzig of friends Sebastian, Mira, Kevin, Tom and crazy Marco who during the volleyball game one Sunday flirted with his teammate's wife. Albeit accidentally and innocently but Marco isn't too innocent.

The Leipzig of trabbi tours, their motorboat, methane-like exhaust and the Stalin building and the Panorama Tower and the grand Promenaden in the Hauptbahnhof where Sundays the groceries stores are overrun. And in the south, the Cospudener See where some parts are for naturists. There on the sand you can find untanned bottoms and love handles without swimming trunks to accentuate their folds. And for one shining, transcendent moment, you might see someone attractive strip down after her bike ride to cool in the waters. Yes, for once, but rare... because you soon learn that most public nudists are overweight, over-tanned men who consume far too much beer, their bratwurt proudly (and unpardonably) on display. In Germany, one needs to misquote the adage and shake your head realizing yes, 'if you don't have it, flaunt it.'

Leipzig for a month and half and I felt more at home than all the collected cities I resided in while in Canada. And like the confused astronaut in a Stanislaw Lem novel, having returned from the stars, he finds it hard to reconcile the then with the precarious now. Where it made sense is behind him and where he is now is a whole another planet. The rules are the same but he feels the unease, unable to fulfill himself with his new predicament. He'd rather be alone and lonely up there, out there than be here.

Home, always a question, a reaching, an enigma. For some home is the kept and complacent lawns of suburbia and the flower gardens and impromptu front porch conversations. There is always that polite wave to a passing car, a recognizable face but still a stranger, a neighbor around the corner, familiar but foreign. You know they have a corgi and take a walk around dusk but that's it. Nameless and you nameless to them.

For others, home feels cosmically misplaced, as if God and his aimless band of angels wanted to tempt the solemn, modern Job, asking him, can you feel settled here when there is something more out there that is more suitable? That lost sense of home, can you live with it?

Of course, it is hard to put roots down in places that don't offer the comforts and cultural richness of a city like Leipzig. One would assume it to be a task in futility to feel at ease in a place like Kingsville when home was briefly there, over there, across the pond in Eastern Germany. Home in the earthy aroma of parks, in the flat tire near the university and the lemony taste of a weiss bier on the Markt. Home, Faust's golden, lucky foot, Mephisto mocking the troubled student above Auerbach's Keller. Rub the lucky foot, the German couple said, and it means you'll return to Leipzig.

One prays this to be true. Otherwise, for now there is Kingsville (and no, it's not bad). At least there is the lovely, verdant scent of nature, that smell of trees in the evening, of wet earth after the rain. And again, let the autumn be a dry one.

The Netherlands - Gezellig en Tijd

There are numerous words that can't be possibly translated into English. These words are not difficult to understand and it's not they are incomprehensible, it is that they belong to the culture in which they were cradled and raised. We can get an idea of what they mean but they can't fully leave the arms of their native language. To better explain, it would be like transplanting a significant landmark, taking the Eiffel tower for instance to New York or the pyramids to Madrid - it simply doesn't work.

Such is the word 'gezellig' (pronounced hguh-zellick) for the Dutch.

When I first arrived in Amsterdam last week, I was jet-lagged and tired. I had spent over twenty long, inpatient hours travelling and felt irritable and melancholic (weemoed in Nederlands). When I finally got into my hotel, I wanted the rest of the world, the city, the streets, time itself to shut the up and let me disappear. 

I didn't feel at home until the following evening when my second-cousin Annette and her boyfriend took me to a 'gezellig' eetcafe (eatery, cafe...) on the Lijbaansgraacht, not far from the Museum District where my hotel was located. In true Amsterdam-fashion, we had biked there and locked our bikes beside the canal. In her email to me, Annette explained the place was 'cosy', the dictionary translation of 'gezellig', but it wasn't close to the meaning.

The dinner was excellent and peaceful, so different to what I'm used to. In North America, everything is rushed, especially our meals. We eat so fast that we rarely taste anything. In the eetcafe, there were no owners or servers eager to get us in and out. They didn't have the attitude of 'the more people in and out, the better the turnover, the better the profit.' No. The place, the atmosphere was urging us more or less to stay (blijven) and be content. The feeling there was beginning to help me fashion my understanding of 'gezellig'.

I kept hearing the word as I went about the streets, following Annette and Niels to the Dom Square for Dodenherdenking, the day of national mourning in The Netherlands, a day of commemoration. At eight o'clock there is two minutes of silence. Standing amidst the crowd, the queen and her family not far away, her face on the large television screen, I could only hear the flapping wings of the pidgeons as they fluttered about the balustrades and balconies. In a city of ringing trams and methane-coughing scooters, bike paths perenially flooded with cyclists hurrying by, the stillness was vast and laden with a gentle sorrow. People had come together gladly to the Dom, pilgrims of memory to honor the past.

Later, meeting up with Annette and Niel's friends, Martin, Joep and Saunders, Martin better explained the word. "It's a getting-alongness. It's family but like everyone is your family and you just relax. You know what I mean." I nodded and watched as Saunders, the architect student mischeviously poked Marin in his belly.

At Cafe Brand, a local hang-out Joep told me to look around. This is 'gezellig' he explained. All of this. Heads close together in conversation, rounds of beers being bought. The intimacy that is cheerful and reflective, never forced, a being-human-in-a-place without worrying about when to leave or where to go next.

I also noticed the lack of televisions hanging from the walls. How often I 've walked into North American bars to be bombarded with flickering screens showing sports highlights and games, the programs and replays all geared to short attention spans.

In The Netherlands, people focus on each other, on talking and sharing. There is nothing to distract your attention, nothing superficial to take you away the moment.

The following day, Annette's father Piet came to pick me up from my hotel. In the backseat, his parents, Oom Dirk and Tante Tinni. Dirk is my Oma's youngest brother. When we were in Amsterdam Noord (North), he pointed out the homes and the places where his family used to live. Time and circumstances have changed little. The light brown brick walls and the curtained windows of these modest, quaint homes still stand in their tucked-away places. The narrow streets are still narrow. It was interesting to be in the place where my father walked and played. Oom Dirk pointed to a new building, the originally having been bombed. When I was a child, I remembered my Oma telling me the same story, how her friends were killed during an air raid.

Today, the faces here in Amsterdam Noord aren't all Dutch. The people living in my father's old neighborhood are mainly immigrants and there is more garbage on the roads and sidewalks. Nonetheless, I felt moved to see a place connected to my own history, a piece of my life before my own life began. 

Later that day and in the days to come I realized I had experienced 'gezellig' in my childhood. The four of us went on to visit Oom Dirk's sister, Corri in a nearby apartment. We had coffee and kookje and I saw many pictures. I didn't understand much of the conversation but it was like being six years old again, sitting in my Opa and Oma's living room, listening to my dad converse with his parents, the clock gently, timidly ringing in the background, the chimes tinkling through the air. The past reclaimed, so to speak.

From there we headed to father's cousin home in Monickendam, north of Amsterdam. Feijke and her husband Jacob offered to host me at the beginning of my trip. I met their son and daughter, Bart and Marleen (also second-cousins) and they took me to dinner. The family came over that evening and I met Corri's son and daughter, Kees and Seike. Kees and I talked at length about politics, history and culture and he too reminded me of the word 'gezellig'. I told him I had experienced similar mornings, afternoons and evenings long ago with my father's family back in Canada.

Besides dropping in now and then, during my childhood it was custom to visit my grandparents on Sunday mornings. Living so close to my grandparents, my family often walked over in good weather. Everyone else arrived from car, usually after church. The cousins sat in the sunroom where Oma brought us cookies and snacks while the grown-ups sat in the living room, my Opa in his favourite chair beside the window.  

Talking with Kees, images from that time tip-toed through me. I told him how much I missed that world. The earthy, chocolate aromas of mocha moving from room to room, the smell of cookies on the plate, the Delft-blue porcelain on the shelves. And of course, the conversation, how the Dutch language traveled boistrously from the living room to the sunroom, the stories, the arguments and of course the laughter. When my Opa died in 1997, the 'gezellig' in my life disappeared or better yet, was dismantled. There were still Sunday morning coffee at Oma's but it was different. The language was still spoken but less joy in the air. My uncles and aunts still gathered but perhaps more out of fear of the future - how soon Oma would die? - than through the original spirit of coming together. I still went but none of my cousins bothered anymore, their lives being busier and more concerned about work and school.

I suppose for me and many others it is true to say there would be no apprecition of 'gezellig' without the presence and impact of time or tijd.

The Dutch are very aware of time. Clocks are everywhere, on churches, on the towers of town halls (stadhuisen) and in museums. In the Rijks, for example, there is a display showing a human Grandfather clock by artist Martin Baas. It appears that a man is trapped inside and with every passing minute, he erases the minute hand of the clock and draws it anew to keep the correct time. The screen on which the face of the clock is displayed looks frosted-over and the man behind it blurred. Baas may be pointing to the blurr of time, how sad and insignificant we are, nameless and faceless.

Such melancholic art is not foreign to The Netherlands. In the Golden Age of Dutch painting, many of the masters created still lifes (or stilleven). On the surface these paintings depict seemingly harmless groupings of flowers, food, books and other objects. But on closer inspection, the flowers are a little wilted, the fruit is going bad and the cup is overturned. The page in the book says 'finis' and the hour-glass with its draining sand is almost done. Everything points to death and time's passing. 

Sometimes the 'momento mori' ('you too will die') is obvious: a skull sits on the pile of books, indicating the futility of life and learning. 

Sometimes the grouping's message is subtle - the walnuts here, for instance. You have to crack them open before you can enjoy them, pointing to how in time, you must live and by living, you are always nearing death, the moment disappearing through its flow and all the pleasures inherit. What else is there? these paintings seem to also ask. If we don't eat the fruit, it will rot without us. If we don't read the books, how else will we learn. We have no choice. The glass of wine or beer must be exhausted otherwise you can't enjoy it without drinking it.

The same with us. The people in our lives, even to love someone else, to hold them, kiss them, talk with them all eventually and irrevocably mean we must prepare ourselves for losing them or being lost. 

Though we don't see people in these pictures, we do manage to see ourselves. The objects are us, the overturned glass like a man lying in his death bed.

(Speaking of art and time, when I visited the Rembrandthuis, I saw how time-consuming it is to make oil paint. The musuem employee demonstrated how the artist had to take oil and powdered stone and mix them using a block-like pummel on a marble board. Rembrandt used fourteen colours. And I could see why. Not only did it take awhile to mix the paint but also the muscle-work required could make you tired. Moving the stone around on the board, the oil and powder together form a sticky substance and you have to hold on and force it.)

Reflecting on our death, we can understand why art is so precious and at times, inexplicably expensive. The artist is dead. They can no longer give us their talent and create their singular, all-too-human beauty and vision. They lived in time, their scenes expressed moments in time, fleeting but made eternal through their work. No more will they paint their drinking peasants, their Biblical scenes or their still lifes. For this we appreciate them but maybe we can't always explain it.

Like with artists, we hold on to whatever trace we can of the people who have passed on before us, what they gave us, what in turn becomes priceless to us.

Sitting with Oom Dirk, the day after the above mentioned family gathering, going through his photoalbums, it felt like I was sitting with my Opa once again, enjoying his presence, his humor, his memories. It was as if time decided to be kind, bringing me a gift instead of taking something or someone away, as if the moments of those long ago Sunday afternoons were in fact lines in a poem and being here in Holland, I could hear the accompanying rhyme.

I have travelled and lived in many places in Canada but never felt as close to the beauty of my past as I felt sitting there with the smell of coffee in the air, the taste of it on my palate and almondel kookje in my hand. And after the coffee and snack, I had some jenever - Dutch gin - and it was like I was having a drink with my Opa.

Now, I know what I've been searching for. And it's nice to give it a name. In English, it is nameless but here in The Netherlands it is alive and important. It's everywhere. In the vibrant, spacious town squares (groot markts) lined with 17th and 18th century houses, in the restaurants, and the brown cafes with their cheery flow of Dutch discussions. Even in the museums. I know I've seen hints of it in the art I've loved and studied since high school and university: the tender, timeless scenes from Vermeer, his milk maid, the jovial group portraits of Hals, soldiers with raised glasses and the works of Rembrandt, paintings of himself and his family, all of them showing a dignity mixed with wistfulness and wonder.

Gezellig. It's in the blood. My blood as well. Seeing my grandfather's face again I feel a familial, timeless peace, a homesickness healed.

Yes...a beautiful word. Untranslatable. I'm finding it everywhere. In the photographs, the conversations, the streets, canals, the people... always the people...