all things spanish, part one

from what i understand hemingway has covered this topic pretty thoroughly, but what the hell.

there are two main distinctions when buying tickets for a bullfight: whether you prefer the cheap seats in the sun, or the better, pricer shade tickets. the third distinction, i guess, is ringside, but that is so far out of my budget it doesn´t exist to me. of course i planned to purchase the "mas barato" possible, but when i finally got to the ticket stand the best i could do was 20 euro. at 8 o´clock i climbed to a top tier of the area and squeezed into a spot that was relatively close to my assigned number (painted in what had become the makeshift stairway). from here i could see the sun shining into the eyes of those i now considered suckers. actually, it was worth the extra 13 euro. the seat was well-located on the side of the ring where most of the action took place, and not so high that i could not check out the traditional tight pants of the bullfighters.

the night went more or less like this: a maddened, gigantic bull comes trotting into the arena. three assistant toreros, let´s call them, then take turns jumping out into the arena and baiting it with bright pink capes. every so often, one of these guys lures the bull into circling him a number of times. when this happens, the crowd yells "¡ole!" more often the bull will just chase the asst. matadore, who must posess a reasonable sense of timing to excel (or survive) in the job. the ring is equipped with narrow gates through which the assistants slide, ducking behind a thick wood panel the bull jams his horns into from the other side.


now the real torero rides into the ring on a horse (a short trumpet fanfare ensures that everyone will notice.) the bull takes notice fairly quickly, and as soon as he is through chasing a pink flag, takes the opportunity to go over and ram the side of the horse, which is covered with full armor. from his vantage point, the matador takes his first blow, getting the bull at the top of the neck until he yields. a few minutes later, the real torero leaves the arena (fanfare), and the assitants take center stage again, this time for spear throwing. each will take a turn running straight toward the bull, release two sharp sticks at just the right moment, and then get the hell out of there. one might miss, but usually these spears hit the same mark on the back of the neck. these sets of matching sticks dangle over the bull´s back for the remainder of the fight. there is already a lot of blood at this point.

cue the re-entry of the torero, sans horse, with flashy outfit. he will spend five minutes or so convincing the bull to circle him, waving his red cape, feet set apart, back arched, bending through precise, fluid motions. after each encounter he turns his back on the bull, dragging the cape on the ground and looking toward the audience (especially the expensive seats) for approval. we approve. it´s not hard to see some beauty in the movements, or appreciate the closeness of the bull´s horns to the body of a man protected only by what appears to be lycra... when the crowd is satisfied- or the bull seems to be wearing out from his injuries, i´m not sure which- the matador takes a thin, sharp sword from an assistant on the edge of the ring. he charges the bull at close range, springing over the horns to plant the sword deep between the bull´s shoulder blades. incensed and hurt the bull charges at anything moving, but within a minute or two, he is at the side of the ring, folding his legs under him and giving up. this is the bit that i found unsettling. because he isn´t just left to die. he´s poked and prodded by Red Cape and his Pink Cape posse even as blood is dripping from his mouth and gushing from his back. it smears on the wood paneling. when it´s determined to be over, the torero takes a short dagger and gives the bull one last stab. now he dies quickly, falls to his side. the fighters collect the dagger, sticks and sword from the animal´s back as a team of three horses is led into the ring. the bull is attached by the horns, and the horses are whipped to a run, dragging the dead bull in a semi-circle around the ring and out through a gate. a set of men dressed like Maytag repairmen are spread around the ring now, sweeping, and one chases after the bull, pretending to sweep away its trail. the Maytag men have made only limited progress when fanfare signals the arrival of the next bull. rewind and press play.



the only notable difference in the artful slaughter of six bulls is the bravado of the fighter. one is especially flashy. he is the only one to take a walk around the perimeter of the ring after his fight to collect flowers, toss back hats that float down from the bleachers. like all the toreros, he wears bright pink stockings to his knee. (in spite of this he is clearly popular with the ladies.) ...the tradition of the fight is striking, from the outfits to the audience participation- most were prepared with white kerchiefs to wave when the dead bull is pulled away. ...i can see why animal rights activists would cringe at the idea of these "fights," but it doesn´t seem like change is likely. except for the clicking of cameras, i could have been watching a fight from 100 years ago.

nuns, tapas, and a giant metal bull

in the plaza where maria and i take our break between morning classes, a giant bull is parked behind a row of park benches. i say parked because it has wheels. four wheels, instead of feet, which support a wide angular frame of sheet metal. in fact, there is nothing particularly bull-like about him. only a pair of horns, and the fact that this is sevilla, would lead you to conclude that this hollow tank with antennaes is a work of public art, and a bull. this is one reason i love spain.

from this angle it looks like a bull, i guess

another is that my spanish teacher paints her toenails black. i see them as she darts back and forth between a regular whiteboard and an electronic one, and tries not to ruin the latter by writing on it with normal markers. i´m distracted by her eclectic fashion and bypassed by technology, but i still manage to pick up a lot of spanish in four hours a day. nine other students ring the table. a few come and go over the weekends, but for the last two weeks the core group is the same: a handful of brits, maria and another german, a filipina. a japanese guy spent only one week and joseph from israel left after two. i like the mix and am relieved to be the only american, even if the burden of explaining american customs rests solely on my shoulders. at my level, of course, we are talking "popular meals." this is not foreign policy.

i made the decision to come to spain the way i make most decisions: deliberate, delay making said decision, suddenly commit, see what happens. i came directly to sevilla from morocco, have stayed two weeks and have two more. it took about two days for me to establish a routine: class from 9 to 1, rush to do errands before stores close at 2. lunch and siesta, study, then go out in the town, and either a) do tapas/drink beer or b) go to sleep. spain is definitely not africa, but it also feels less than 100 percent european. take all the napping, for example. and the prayer call has only been replaced by church bells. i´m undecided over whether clanging is more agreeable than a loudspeaker-distorted Allahu Akbar.

the minaret/bell tower

in sevilla i live in a first-floor apartment on a small but busy street. peugeot drivers fight for tight parking spaces, and in the morning a tiny streetcleaner storms past my window. the room i get to call mine is easily the nicest place i´ve stayed in the last three years. when i showed up on the first day all i could do was nod and say "no, this is great" as i got the tour. i´ll spare details since deep down i know that having a bed and an antique dresser is not that big a deal. i´ll say only that a huge window reaches nearly to the top of the high ceiling.. and that above my bed there is a four by six foot painting of a rooster. (the owner of the apartment is recently divorced from an artist.) in the rest of the house, walls are hung from floor to ceiling with art featuring one prominent theme: naked women and dogs. not in separate works, but together. a few have rabbits, and a pottery period has been identified which highlights chickens. so in spite of this, or maybe because of this, i love the apartment. the owner took off for germany, so for the duration of my stay it´s only me, another student, and the women and dogs.

could an art major please interpret?

knowing that i´m here for awhile has made me take my time seeing the place. class takes up my morning hours, and during the siesta hours you may as well not even bother going outside. the two biggest tourist attractions--a cathedral and a palace--i have not gone into yet, though i walk past them at least a few times a week. by now i know some shortcuts. i have a route through the barrio santa cruz that takes me by the palace wall and to the river, for the days i make it up in time for a run. every corner i turn in the old city looks like something from a postcard: another line of three-storey buildings, vines and flowers falling from wrought-iron balconies. bars selling Cruzcampa beer, neighborhood grocery stores and, well, tourist shops with postcards. if i ever take more pictures, you would find them here.

i´ll see it all though. this week looks promising. class is out wednesday; it´s a holy day.

western sahara recipe

this is as good a place as any for the info. mauritanians, knock yourselves out:

to go from nouadhibou to dakhla costs 11,000 um, but this bought a real seat in a mercedes. the cars leave around 1:30 pm from the "garage maroc." buy a spot the day before and show up at 12:30ish. the border crossing takes about 1.5 hours, but is professionally handled by moroccans. then it´s another 4.5 hours to dakhla. the taxi gets in around 9 pm, and you´ll have to take a petit taxi from the garage into town.

in dakhla, mohamed lemine (see entry below) has offered to put up any RIM volunteers in his small but free apartment. he´s a nice guy, so what the hell. i don´t want to put his details here, so email me if you´re making the trip. i didn´t stay long in agadir so i´m not quite sure what there is to do. there was a shopping area close to the water with cafes etc. agadir is nicer than any city i´ve seen in mauritania, so i´m sure there are ways to kill time.

dakhla to marrakech is an extremely long, boring route, so prepare yourself with the usual taxi brousse diversions. the entire road from nouadhibou up is paved, however, and there are rest stops where you can get a coffee and use a (turkish) toilet! not bad.

at noon a CTM bus leaves dakhla for agadir (340 dh, arrives 7 am) or marrakech (430? dh, arrives 12 or 1 pm the next day). a bus from marrakech to casa is 80 dh and from marrakech to tanger is 140 dh. i travelled by bus the whole way mainly because i had a huge backpack... i was able to check it at the station when i stayed over in marrakech, and pay only a bit to put it under the bus. the trains are nice and don´t cost much more, but your bags have to go overhead on a rack. unless you buy first class, you are also not guaranteed a seat. overnight trains mean sleeping on a vinyl bench seat. go for the bus.

in tanger i stayed at the hotel fuentas because i got tired of walking uphill, and the ones in the guidebook tend to be more expensive anyway. it´s close to the pension palace in the medina. it was 70 dh for a single with a hallway squat toilet and shared bath (but free hot water).

one last thing. if you´re crossing into spain, remember there is a two-hour time difference. don´t miss your bus like me.

i did this trip in about five days, spending a night in dakhla, a night on the bus, one in marrakech and one in tanger. it was kind of intense- i think this is almost the minimum in which it can be done. total spent on buses was about $85. and for anyone who´s wondering, i did the trip by myself as a 25-yr-old girl on the small side, and i was fine. i´m so hardcore.

...hope this helps, daryn.

finally, actually leaving

i left mauritania in a car with four guys named mohamed: mohamed abdullah, mohamed lemine, mohamed mahmoud, and mohamed ould mohamed. the driver (m. mahmoud) was pressed for time, and didn't wait to fill the car with two more. so after the police looked over the passports just outside of town, we wound through a section of dirt road at 10 miles per hour, past rusted car frames and two trucks heading south, full of fruit. we edged to the side to give them room to pass and i wondered if land mines weren't the reason we had to keep so strictly to this indirect path. who knows. nothing exploded. after ten minutes, the border zone opened into what is technically western sahara. given the moroccan flag and moroccan cops waiting to take my papers, however, it seemed pretty clear who ran things.

bargaining on a much harder trip i'd stuffed some provisions--a sweatshirt, water-- into my backpack. as it was, i settled in for my last, and easiest, taxi brouse ever. the two mohameds sharing the back seat with me had looked suspicious at first, but after they shared their cookies and milk with me i decided it must be some kind of vitamin deficiency that made them look crazy. poor guys. in the front seat, mohamed lemine asked me what my story was. he turned out to be a french professor in dakla, one of the two larger cities in western sahara. when we got into dakhla past nine, he invited me to spend the night with his family and i took him up on the offer. obviously that's something people don't do outside of this part of the world, but people don't really share milk and cookies with strangers, either. before i left the next morning i found out that he'd grown up between morocco and mauritania, but had lived in europe and the middle east for 20 years, and was writing a book. he encouraged me to write one, too. after refusing to let me pay for breakfast, he walked me to the bus station to make sure i got a ticket. i promised to email when i got into marrakech.

mohamed lemine

i was on the bus for twenty-five hours. i watched the desert smooth out from rocky plateau to dunes next to the ocean, but these changes took hours. mostly i watched the people on my bus. western saharans are basically mauritanians with a higher standard of living and autonomy problems. (an aside: dakhla is what would happen if mauritanians built sidewalks, obeyed traffic rules, picked up trash, and developed an efficient system of mass transit). everyone getting on my bus in dakhla spoke hassaniya and wore mulafas and kaftans or boubous. hennae-ed hands reached up to adjust the air conditioning vents. it was a little surreal. at night the temperature dropped, and i curled up in my seat. i'd spoken to the woman next to me a little, so we were on good terms. seeing that i was cold she unwrapped the end of her mulafa and put it over me, actually tucking it in under my feet. i'm not kidding. throughout the night she was vigilant about my keeping warm.

the view for most of the trip

at midnight the lights came on as we pulled into a gas station and people got out for coffee. it was cold and windy, so i kept to my seat. only one other guy stayed on the bus--a young guy sitting a couple of seats away, across the aisle. he wore a long white kaftan with a track jacket, the kind of traditional/western style lots of guys pull off. he grew a beard, and his hair was a little long and under a cap. i'd noticed him because between listening to music he'd been murmuring verses from a koran. it's a pretty normal thing to do here, but earlier it had struck me that if this scene had taken place on an american bus, everyone would have dove for the exits. young devout muslim guy murmuring the koran on a bus? that's just how it would have happened. so i was surprised when he hung around, and then when he offered me his jacket. i accepted; he pulled out some grapes and i got out water, which was the only thing i had to contribute. then the mulafa-ed seatmate showed up with coffee for me (she was really playing the part of a grandma), so we shared that, too. he spoke a little french, so the conversation was basic: where are you from, what do you do... badra has six brothers and three sisters. he's 23. his dad owns a paint store, and he just opened a bookstore this year. i told him my dad manages radio stations, but the concept was a little vague. he asked if i read, and if i had read anything about mohamed. now i knew why he was talking to me, but the conversion effort didn't bother me the way it sometimes has. maybe i realized it would be the last time, for a while, and i was wearing his jacket afterall. so I told him i didn't read arabic, but that i'd read about mohamed and islam in english books. he asked if i knew muslims (yes- everyone in mauritania falls into that category) and if i prayed with them (no). but i told him what i believe is true--that islam is a peaceful religion. i was keeping things simple for his french, and putting things plainly made me honest. i said that my family was catholic, and it would be very difficult for me to become muslim. i said that i am not religious--that i believe there is one god, but that i am not clear on the details. i said that i try to do good. he listened without moving to interrupt, and just kind of nodded when i finished. by now a couple of people had climbed the stairs back into the bus. he told me he'd practice his french, and actually said, "it's good to communicate." i couldn't agree more.

in the morning the bus was twisting through the atlas mountains, and everything about the sahara had disappeared sometime while i slept. in agadir my mulafa grandma got off, and when we finally got to marrakech i said bye to badra and gave him my email address. in marrakech it's easy to get lost. you can get lost in the souks, or just lost in the tourists. on the bus i'd been the token non-moroccan... here i was just another white chick looking at leather bags. anonymity begins. another full day later i arrived in tanger and checked into my $4 room with the shared bath, and the balcony window that offered a sliver view of the strait of gibraltar. the medina was packed with tourist shops and street food, but wasn't as shady as the morocco book made it out to be. i ate dinner in a square and let some random guys join me at my table. the first was australian, the others were american and british, and one portuguese. they'd just crossed over from spain and were worried about the food and water. they wished there was beer. they wouldn't have time to get any further into morocco, but they were glad they'd made it to africa.

see the water?