Granada, Southern Spain

Imagine a Spanish Palace, its towers soaring into the blue void of space. This is a place of tranquility, where the sound of trickling water greets visitors, where cats lounge on tiled floors upon which, Spain’s ruling caliphs once trod. Walking over a mottled bridge above Granada I found such a place in the Alhambra, a fortress-city and gateway to another time. Stepping through the gateway and wandering through light flecked halls, detailed patterns eye catching with every step, I have found something beautiful and calm.

Nothing like this is untouched, and as I explore, so do maybe a thousand other tourists, moving past each other to snap pictures like ants foraging through a kitchen. I may join them in their journey but I still feel shame as I stand under an arch to have my picture taken, feeling like Hitler posing before the Eiffel tower. This feeling of guilt comes not from something I did but of acts committed by others hundreds of years ago.

The Spanish did not build these halls, this palace and the university of Cordoba. These are Muslim buildings, the Arabic on the colored tiles faded but still visible. And where are they, the men who built this palace, whose creative scope flows from every wall and surface? They are gone, their mosque flattened and a monstrosity of a church built over it. They are gone, thrown out, evicted not from a town but from a country, for the simple crime of being Muslim. In today’s media driven world many tend to look at Islam as a religion of hate followed by fanatics ready to die for any cause. How can we forget the learning that5 Islamic scholars introduced into Europe? How can we forget the royal courts of the Caliphs where Jews Christians and Muslims intermingled freely?

Now I am on a bus, heading through a land of olive and palm, of wandering goats and hardened shepherds, the heart land of Spain around me. This is Andalusia and ahead is Cordoba and after that the straights of Gibraltar and all of Africa. This is a history book of terrain, a land marched by Moors and Carthaginians, roads that have seen Hannibal’s elephants and Franco’s shock troops. This then is Spain and I am traveling through it towards Morocco, following the trail of Islamic influence towards its source, keen to find some meaning in all I have already seen.