In the Beginning, Spain

How do you bring home nine days in Spain? Slowly, sleepily. Day by day in photos, if you can remember this and that garden, which gate, what street. You bring it home in poetry, some already found, some waiting to be discovered.

You say, 'This was the view from our window in the quiet city of Granada. Morning air was cool, filled with birdsong and the babble of fountains. And these are the garden flowers of the Residence. There is my girl writing poems on our terrace, the Alhambra watching over her. That is the airport of Madrid we passed through on our way here... isn't it a work of art?'

But mostly you feel silenced by the experience of another place— wine and apples, warmth of double kisses from everyone you greet, tapas at open-air cafes, cumin and saffron and curry powders and teas for sale on cobblestone streets, and always the thick sweetness of Spanish weaving the days.

















Photos of Granada and Madrid, Spain, L.L. Barkat.