4 - Sight Unseen

This article originally appeared in The Lens, a Carleton campus magazine.

***

As our bus zooms by metal-roofed shacks and luxury hotel compounds, my class passes several groups of camels. We stop at the fourth, which is identical to the first, the second, and the third. The group of students, on a four-day trip from the University of Seville, is stopping for camel rides en route to the market in Marrakesh, Morocco—it is two Euros to get on a camel. Two Euros, by the way, isn’t much to any of us. In Seville it will buy you a coffee or a beer, and over the course of this summer term, my American companions have been buying a lot of coffee and beer.

The camel ride staging area is brown, with palm trees dispersed throughout.

“I don’t even want to go for a ride, I just want a picture,” a girl explains.

“It’s just proof of, like, having been on a camel in Morocco!” another says.

A motorbike with two men on it passes by. The passenger grabs the driver’s shoulder with one arm, leans back and pantomimes masturbation at us. I am rooting for him.

“Do you care that the road is in the background?” a girl asks, as she gets ready to photograph her friend. God forbid the authenticity of that camel-ride photo be compromised.

It smells like camel and camel shit. Already sick from something I ate yesterday, I get more nauseated. My classmates giggle, I self-righteously scorn and try to avoid vomiting.

***

The camel rides fulfill the expectations I formed during the trip’s discouraging prelude. Even before we’d packed, the group’s heavy Orientalist baggage weighed on me. The week before our departure, my fellow students hummed with excitement and tittered away: “I hope we don’t have to poop in holes on the floor.” “No way am I eating outside of the hotel.” It is a group of Americans who are troublingly unconcerned about postcolonial power dynamics and a group that doesn’t care whether or not authenticity should be bookended with quotation marks.

The next week, when we finally arrive in Morocco, no one else chokes on the air of imperialism which stagnates in our Marrakesh hotel’s lobby—the walls hold paintings of Moroccan warriors on horseback and the sheikh’s court; the only photographs are black-and-white colonial scenes; a pool’s bright blueness catches everyone’s eye through the floor-to-ceiling windows—an oasis in the parched yellow countryside and the dusty russet streets.

Travelling with my classmates stimulates reflection; what else is there to do on a lonesome eight-hour bus ride?

There is something sad in their ceaseless, desperate acquisition. The end of each of our group’s journeys is to attain an item, and, aside from purchasing, they do not enjoy any activities per se, with the exception of lounging poolside. A similarly disenchanted friend of mine had taken the same class the previous term, and her horror stories were enacted before my eyes: “This girl Alex just kept saying ‘I want to buy shit,’ like, all the time.” To tourists such as my companions, buying souvenirs marks the high-point of any excursion. Witness the livening that happens between the tour’s end and the entrance to the gift shop at any major landmark—you’ll see: the tour is a toll which you must pay to get at the goods.

My classmates also obsess over acquiring photographs. One of them videotapes every tour, even as he complains that they are boring. They photograph things that they haven’t properly looked at. Between stops on the tour bus, they huddle over their cameras’ screens, savoring the same moments which they declared boring ten minutes ago.

They travel only to obtain goods—knick-knacks and photographs alike.

The acquisition is confirmational, not exploratory. The group walks around for four days snapping pictures of women in burqas, but never the numerous Western-dressed women. This is why the camel rides make me so angry. Each of the 16 who go for rides want their picture on a camel in Morocco because this is the image that they had of Morocco a week previous—forget the preponderance of motorbikes, forget that we haven’t seen a camel in our three days here; they want photographic proof of their stereotypes of Moroccan culture, even as the country before them directly contradicts their preconceptions. Their trip is not the exploration of new culture but instead the willful confirmation of ill-informed images.

They attach themselves to stereotypes for a variety of reasons (racism and cultural imperialism, in my book), but maybe they are just grasping for stability; in being photographed on a camel, they have partaken in the Morocco of Casablanca, and they have captured an enduring, comfortable memory. They will be able to say that they have seen the static image of Morocco which will always be part of the Criterion Collection.

But this desperate clutching is misguided—our travels are even more ephemeral than the dynamic cultures we visit. You can spend four days or four years in Morocco, but ultimately, you must leave. Still, we expect that you’ll have something to show for it. We tend to believe that a trip is something that can be “gotten,” reduced to a store-bought memento, or a Facebook album, or a magazine article. But that is to diminish the significance of travel.

A souvenir is only a reminder that you were once somewhere and that you will likely never return. Honest travel, on the other hand, will impress itself in the putty of your soul.

***

Later in the night as I walk around Marrakesh’s bustling market, I feel that I am doing it right. I listen to a little ensemble in a big crowd. There’s a banjo player? Of course there is, the banjo is from West Africa. I hear the call to prayer and watch some stores close and others stay open. I talk to a Moroccan man who was once engaged to a woman in Denver and thinks that Coloradoans are warm (no one tell him that I wrote this). As night envelops the plaza, I eat some bread, drink a Coke, and think about what my professor had said a couple of hours after the camel incident.

“siempre buscamos el auténtico”—“we always look for the authentic.”

Good grief.

Still Alive

Dearest Readers,

as you might know, I went to Morocco a while back. After I returned to Seville, I was working pretty hard on writing something about Morocco - which I'm still doing because the trip was inseparable from cultural imperialism, etc.- and sort of neglected general updates.

Hence: after four days' travel in Extremadura, I'm in Madrid for a week. Madrid is, needless to say, fantastic. In my father's words, it is a 'legitimate city.' There's lots to explore here (today I accidentally went to the naval museum, for example), the Prado is free from 6-8pm every night, and coming from Andalusia and Extremadura, it feels positively cool outside. The only drawback has been the average price of a cup of coffee (~2€ instead of ~1.20€).

Stay tuned though. You can only spend so many hours a day in the Prado (2. because there are only 2 free hours.).

3 - Generalizations About Spanish Culture

After five weeks studying in Seville, I feel more like a resident than a traveler. The paths of my first month’s aimless wanderings have intertwined and blurred in my memory, leaving an impression of the streets in my head. I now hate tourists, I am no longer impressed by most Sevillanos’ leather shoes, and I have walked enough to recognize chains and avoid patronizing them. To be sure, five weeks isn’t sufficient time to learn a city, but it’s time enough to find something:

Seville is visibly alive. More alive than any city I’ve visited than New York, but more visibly alive than any. The city abounds with parks, plazas, and innumerable café-bars, and unlike many American public spaces, Seville’s are more than hangouts for the homeless—they buzz with life. In every part of the city, at any time of day (excepting the siesta), people socialize in public.

Tellingly, there is a café-bar on almost every block in Seville. (Allegedly, Seville has the most bars per capita of any European city.) Like pretty much everyone else, the Spanish have a rich and active alcohol-consumption culture. Drinking is a basic part of life. Walking around the city in the morning, you always see men pushing kegs of Cruzcampo—an inoffensive pilsner brewed in a massive factory a mile from my apartment—into bars. God bless them. Cruzcampo’s ubiquity is total—if you walk into any bar in Seville and say ‘cerveza, por favor,’ you will receive a glass of Cruzcampo. There’s been no comparably omnipresent beer anywhere else I’ve been.

Sevillanos drink small glasses of Cruzcampo at lunch, in the afternoon, in the evening, after dinner, and late at night, but you rarely see them drunk (except the youth, of course). This horse has been pulverized beyond recognition, but for the record, most Spaniards have a markedly better relationship with alcohol than most Americans. Part of this is because their beers are so sensibly sized—the standard serving is 200ml, which is about 7 ounces. You can function after having consumed an eight-ounce beer at three in the afternoon. After a pint or two, not so much. People here just don’t get hammered. Café-bars are lively, loud places to have a beer and talk with friends, and shots (deceptively called ‘chupitos’) are reserved for nightclubs and the row of bars on the always-disheartening, always-disgusting Calle Bétis.

Speaking of libations, my favorite part of Seville’s nightlife is the ancient tradition of botellón—public drinking. You know how Americans pay cops to clear the parks of intoxicated delinquents? Here, no one harasses the people who flock to plazas to drink beer and tinto de verano (a foul concoction of table wine and lemon or orange soda). Rumors of a crackdown on botellón have thus far been unsubstantiated, as two police rode by me, some friends, and our open bottle of liquor without incident two nights ago. Botellón is not a quaint and dying tradition, either. On busy nights, the plaza San Salvador’s roar can be heard from a block away.

Now that I have dismounted my high horse, I return to the point: Sevillanos are exceptionally and publicly social. Tapas extend dinners for hours, and it is no accident that these salty dishes go so well with beer. I spent two weeks looking for a quiet café in which to be publicly antisocial (my homestay only stocks decaf) until I realized that these oases don’t exist here. This is because, while in public anyway, Sevillanos are social at all hours of the day. One finds no line of silent breakfasters at Spain’s diner counters. Last week, I went for coffee, toast and jam (one version of the coffee, toast and x breakfast of which Spaniards are so fond), and was stunned to find a shop full of lively, conversant breakfastgoers at 8:30 a.m. This is a people who—near as I can tell—think nothing of Sarte’s aphorism which so effectively captures my relationship with society: ‘Hell is other people at breakfast.’

Spanish Doors

Spain does a lot of little things extremely well, in my opinion. Some examples: every bar has an espresso machine, there's a bit of chocolate at the bottom of every ice cream cone, and many walk signals tell you how long you've got before the light changes (some even have animated men who start running as a red light approaches). The best of these little things is the Spanish bathroom door. Observe:

Notice how the lock is visible, simple, and separate from the handle - you can clearly see whether or not someone else can enter. There's no danger of thinking you've locked the door when you haven't (see: Archer House Bathroom) and there's no danger of locking the door and then spending an hour trying to unlock it. I like this system and hope to see it implemented in the U.S. soon.

@CharlesScribner'sSons: I Hate You

Last week I was reading a book whose back cover informed me that its protagonist dies. Besides the stupidity of the overrevelatory plot summary, this blurb angers me because he doesn't even die during the book. In fact, the last sentence is a reference to his beating heart. Who's in charge over at Scribner Classics?

Employee 1: Hey Steve let's add a bit of dramatic irony to spice up this acclaimed classic of American literature.

Employee 2 (Steve): Sure - how about we tell the reader that the main character dies on the back cover of the book!

Employee 1: LOL!

Employee 2: It's not a joke. We've already shipped thousands of copies.

What a terrible, terrible edition.

2 - A Bullfight

I wake up late on Sunday, around 9:30, eat breakfast in the apartment, and shower. Around 11, I begin to feel useless, so I put my things in my bag and set off walking. Avenida Eduardo Dato, a broad, busy street humming with traffic, leads me from my neighborhood of Nervion to the old city. Even at this hour, it is hot, and I feel my shirt moisten with sweat beneath my backpack’s straps. The old city’s narrow, shady streets welcome me as I cross into barrio Santa Cruz. I press west, deeper into the historic district, and a narrow street spits me out at the river. I find myself next to the Plaza de Toros, where they hold bullfights. The outer fence is open, so I enter and start walking the stadium’s perimeter. A shaved-headed, goateed scalper, his rube-sense tingling, tries to sell me a ticket—apparently there is a fight tonight:

‘Tiquete en la sombra (ticket in the shadows)?’

‘No. Gracias.’

‘En el sol (in the sun)?’

‘Posiblemente.'

I haven’t thought seriously of attending a bullfight, but it seems like a good idea. I don’t want to die without having seen one, I’ve got nothing to do later (most of my friends are on a trip to Lagos), and, I learn later, tickets are cheap tonight because the event is a novillada (a fight with inexperienced matadors and younger bulls). I am now resolved to go.

I try to escape the scalper, who is not to be trusted—my guidebook warns me that they sell fake tickets. He clearly preys on nonconfrontational tourists, so it takes some time to free myself (fortunately, I have nothing to do for six weeks). I don’t see the box office, and I start a search. Twenty minutes later, I have circumambulated the plaza and discovered that some of the entry gates are actually inside apartment buildings, but I still can’t find the box office. Defeated, I return to the area where I found the scalper, intending to ask someone where to buy tickets, but then, I spot the box office! As I enter, the same man accosts me, assuring me of his tickets’ legitimacy. He shows me how his tickets’ prices match up with the official ones. I think about asking him how he’s making money if he’s selling them for face value, but I’m not confident enough to quip in Spanish. I again separate myself from him and go talk to a ticket agent.

(in Spanish)

‘so a guy is trying to sell me a ticket outside. How do I know if it’s legitimate.’

He gives me the stink-eye and there is an uncomfortable pause.

‘I can’t help you with this. I can only sell you tickets.’

I look at the prices—the scalper didn’t lie to me. Nonetheless, I chose the assuredly legitimate 13-euro seat in the sun over the scalper’s possibly fake one. The fight is tonight at 7:30, and, at my prompting, the ticket agent advises that I arrive at 7.

The meandering streets take me back towards Nervion, and I return home for lunch. I ingest my daily recommended calories at this meal. Even my host mother’s mother (who is a great-grandmother) is baffled by the amount of food with which I am presented. After lunch, I nap, wake up, and read about bullfighting on Wikipedia in preparation.

Around 4, I begin to feel useless again, pack my things, and leave the apartment. As I get closer to the Plaza de Toros, I resent the sun more and more. The white stucco plaza is bright in the afternoon sun as I arrive around 5. I search for a café-bar where I can read in an air-conditioned environment, which is one of my favorite pastimes (actually, both café-bar searching and air-conditioned reading are).

As the novillada nears, I go to a bar across the street from the Plaza de Toros. Photos of old matadors, posters, and news clippings cover the wall. Inside and out, men of all ages speak loudly of the toros. A woman, the only one I can see, smokes a cigarette at a table alone. I order an overpriced beer and wander around looking at the wall decorations, my mostly-empty backpack swinging awkwardly behind me. Outside, a group of men in matching blue shirts and pants stand at a table smoking cigarettes and drinking beers—later I will see them raking fresh dirt over wet, maroon areas of the arena floor. The woman leaves, and a father and son take her spot. The father explains a poster to the boy, who looks about 12. I finish my beer as the bar crowd starts thinning, and I go to find my gate. There are a dizzying number of entrances at the circular stadium. Fortunately, they are numbered. A snack stand distracts me en route, and I weigh the merits of gummies and pistachios; I choose the latter—it seems more masculine and bullfight-appropriate. Hemmingway did not eat Necco wafers at the corridas (to my knowledge).

My seat is in the sun. This is no surprise—they price tickets this way. I discover that the Plaza de Toros’ equivalent of the lower-deck is the shade. I adjust my hat and unabashedly shield my face with a bandana as I look out on the stadium. Rows of circular seating rise to meet an arcade, which runs the whole way around. The stadium bleachers are hot tan brick, and veteran viewers have brought cushions with them. Two Australians in surf gear ask me ‘how’s it going, mate’—it is going well. They turn out to be western Australians. There are people in Western Australia? People, mining, and some agriculture apparently. As the stadium fills, I discover that I’m in the wrong seat. I move three rows up. A band on the opposite side of the stadium begins to play the stereotypically Spanish trumpet music which had eluded me on my visit thus far. The young matadors enter the ring and we applaud. They all exit, and the fight itself begins.

A young black-and-white bull runs boldly into the ring, where several of the matador’s assistants wait, pink capes in hand. The bull, confused, trots in a big circle and stops near me. He stands there majestically with his head aloft. Underneath his chin, ribbons of saliva glint in the sun. The acolytes call out to the bull and try to make him charge, and eventually, the bull plays their game.

After a few minutes of this, the band plays again, and two men on horseback enter the ring. The horses wear a sort of fabric armor, and they are blindfolded. The riders’ feet rest in protective metal stirrups which encase the entire foot, and they hold pike-like implements. In the fight’s first blood-letting, they are to stab the bull’s shoulder muscles. When the horses enter, the cape-wielding assistants try to distract the bull, who threatens to charge the horses (why they protect the horses and not the bulls is beyond me). After maneuvering, the rider succeeds in stabbing the bull’s shoulders while the animal repeatedly tries to gore the horse with his horns. It happens like this every time—for several seconds, the rider jams his pike into the bull’s shoulders while the bull buries his horns in the horse’s armor. It’s a sort of shoving match. The horse remains unnervingly calm even while under attack, I suspect due to his blindfold.

The trumpets soon sound, and the horses exit. Some assistants now brandish banderillas—colorful, two-foot long cylinders with sharp points fixed to one end—while others hold onto their capes. They lure the bull into more charges as a banderillero positions himself directly in front of the bull, some 10 yards away. He poses like a gymnast after a successful dismount, feet tight together, arms stretched out, a banderilla in each hand. The bull lowers his head and charges. The banderillero, jumping, eludes his horns and drives both banderillas into the bull’s upper back. Two more pairs of banderillas follow, the band plays again, and the matador, finally, enters the ring.

His cape is red to hide the blood, not to enrage the bull—actually, the matador must use his voice to induce charges. ‘Toro!’ he shouts gutturally. The bull runs at him and he nonchalantly dodges. The matador’s every move is bold, his swagger is almost incredible. This is the machoest thing I’ve ever seen (and why not? He’s dodging a bull, crissakes). Early on, he doesn’t even have his sword out—he just has a rod with which to hold his cape.

The bull’s head droops, and crimson blood covers his flanks. The picadores and banderilleros’ blows weigh heavily. He is tired, but there is fight in him yet. The assistants distract the bull with their pink capes as the matador walks to the ring’s edge to get his sword, and the crowd quiets expectantly when the armed matador walks back towards the bull. There are some more passes, more theatrics, but really, everyone waits for the estocada, the finishing blow.

Facing the bull directly, his sword held at shoulder-level, the matador prepares to kill. He will stab, not slash, aiming for the bull’s heart between his shoulder blades. The bull charges and the matador jumps aside and drives his sword in into the bull’s back in a fluid motion. The bull’s hide and insides rip sickeningly as the blade enters. Hilt deep, it sticks in the animal, but he is not dead yet. The bull’s steps are heavy as the assistants provoke more and more charges, and soon, he lies down on the ground. Heaving on the dirt with his legs curled underneath, the bull is done, but not dead. Another assistant with a small dagger comes out. He carefully approaches the bull, who is still quite alive. Standing within an arm’s length of his horns, he stabs at his neck quickly—no, he is still alive. On a third try, the man cuts the spinal cord and the bull finally dies. A team of mules comes out, bells a-jingling, and the bull is harnessed to them. As the band plays, the mules gallop from the ring, dragging the bull’s rigid, lifeless body behind them. Everyone claps.

A brief break, and then another bull. And then four more. Exhausting.

update soon

just letting my avid readership know that i will post an update soon. apparently my "class" has a midterm, which i sort of have to study for, but i should post something tomorrow or thursday.