Cordoba, Southern Spain
With every day we come closer to Africa, Cordoba shrinking behind and an unknown continent looming ahead. To be on the road again feels uncomfortable, calmly moving towns, swapping hotel rooms and generally moving on like a couple of spies. Now we are on our final train, olive plantations passing on the left and freshly plowed fields on the right. A small-whitewashed farmhouse offers visual relief from a stark environment and a hovering bird of prey makes me smile as the sun glints off its dark feathers.
I was watching Motorcycle diaries on my way to Granada and a line of Che’s struck me, “ Por esa vagar sin rumbo por nuestra mayuscula America me ha cambiado mas que queria. Yo ya no soy yo. Por lo menos, no soy el mismo yo interior.” Loosely translated by Steve it reads “But this journey lacking a fixed course through the greater America has changed me more than I intended. I am no longer I. At least I am not the same I on the inside.”
As we continue our journey down through Spain, the more I can relate to the statement you just read. Those who fret about my political stability shouldn’t worry; it is not likely that I will become a communist revolutionary any time soon, at least until I can grow a beard.
I am changing though; my ideas altering from the months spent studying with a fervent idealist like Steve. I am becoming more readily eloquent, able to express ideas in words that used to be confined solely to paper. Combine this skill with something new to say and I feel unstoppable as I turn my attention to things currently bothering me. The major vent for my scorn has been the Christian eradication of Islamic thought in Spain and the negative affect it produced.
We just seen the second of the three Islamic wonders of Spain and like the first it has been converted religiously. Standing in the many-pillared hall of the Mezquita mosque in Cordoba I felt awed at the simple continuation of the whole structure, red and white topped pillars extending like a forest of poplars in every direction. Later, walking into its center I found a church, an edifice of pink marble and candles that was at odds with the surrounding structure and that had obviously been transplanted there.
Why this massive plagiarism, building a church inside a mosque and thereby taking claim to something that is not theirs? The Islamic court in Spain welcomed people of any faith and Christians, Jews and Muslims studied side by side to achieve higher learning. The fact that this, one of histories most tolerant institutions were replaced by an Christian inquisition that would inspire fear from all of Europe for hundreds of years is purely shocking and something for anyone who reads this to think about. I am not saying that you, the reader should change your core beliefs and I am certainly not Muslim, but please do not infringe upon others, however foreign and threatening they may seem.
