Triumphs and Tragedies

I have been meaning to write something on my trip, last September, to Spain.   That I have not yet done so cannot be explained by want of inspiration, for whether driving through Andalusia or walking in the streets and alleyways of Granada, my head was spinning with thoughts, phrases, words and metaphors to explain and explore the images, the vistas and the history before my eyes.   Nor can I plead a lack of time, as I have had the time, which I have frittered away on God knows what.  Certainly not laziness: I continue to write copious amounts for work and occasionally even for the blog …

 

No, I have not written because I have been missing a “handle”, a theme, a Big Idea, with which to anchor the images and the phrases, disparate and confusing, that have crowded my head since the latest Spanish adventure.   So I have waited, and ruminated, and pondered, and searched, and sought.  All for naught – until last night, Christmas Eve.

 

The day began pretty much like every other day in a Swiss winter.  I woke up in the mountains, had breakfast with friends, went skiing, got my skis scratched because there was no snow … We came home early, put the turkeys in the oven, cut the veggies, buttered the carrots, spread the fois gras, and sat down to a sumptuous Christmas dinner.  And then, as we were picking on the bones of the poor bird, there was a knock on the window: “There's a fire; the chalet behind yours is burning.”   And so we went out, and an unusual Christmas Eve drama played itself out over the next two hours.  Many of you have seen the pictures I sent out.   But of course, then and there, it occurred to me that write I must, not only on Spain, but on the year, a year punctuated by more personal sadness for me than any other over the past twenty, and yet a year filled, almost overflowing, with wonders and happiness; a year of small personal triumphs and grand tragedies; and, as the chalet burnt before my eyes and yet no one was hurt, I thought, a year of tender mercies.

 

For those of you who have bothered to follow these epistles, the year began amazingly well and then sank into a trough for about three months.   I ushered in the new year at my place – as I have done in each of the past three years – in good health and with close friends who had come over for dinner and Champagne.   Soon after, I left for Toronto to teach an intensive course on trade litigation, the first such course in a Canadian law school.  I met the class on the 9th and all seemed to go well …

 

Life – at least mine – has a habit of rebalancing itself.  For each triumph, I am saddled with a setback; to mark how ephemeral happiness is, Life occasionally ladles sadness onto my plate.   On January 13, I heard of the death of a good friend and mentor; soon after, I found out about a friend's wife having breast cancer; upon my return to Geneva, another friend was stricken by acute leukemia that took three courses of Chemotherapy and three months in the hospital to overcome.  

 

In May I started teaching at a Queen's University campus in the UK.  Lovely grounds, a Tudor castle, excellent students … the course went well; the students loved me; the Dean was really impressed with the programme and the course.  I came back, flushed with a small measure of professional success in my part-time teaching activities – to be faced with a serious professional setback in my day job.   I cannot claim – I cannot pretend – that I was not disappointed.  Of course, the setback – like all the others I have had from time to time – did not actually change anything in my life.   And, in any event, in the big picture, I've got everything I need right now and a promotion a year or two late – or never – would not really add to my state of happiness.   Still.  It was disappointing, and it was frustrating, and it remains both, though the initial shock has worn off and the sharpness of the first feeling of let-down has dulled to a low intensity grumble.

 

If I believed in God, I'd thank her for St. Augustine's serenity prayer; as it is, I can safely thank Khayyam and Hafiz and a thousand years of Persian Sufi mysticism and resignation for keeping me sane, still optimistic, and wary of cynicism.

 

It was thus, in this frame of mind, that I found myself in Siena, Venice and Croatia.   Having relaxed and spent an uneventful August in Geneva, I was ready to be seduced by the charms of Al-Andalus.  For this time, there was a specific object to my Spanish voyage: to go to Granada and to visit the jewel in the crown of Islamic architecture in Moorish Spain.

 

The Moorish civilization in Spain spanned some seven centuries and was responsible (at least in part) for the re-introduction of Greek classics to the barbarized Christian world.   At its height, the capital of the Moorish Empire, Cordoba, boasted a library of a hundred thousand volumes, three faiths living peaceably alongside one another, one of the most vibrant Jewish communities since antiquity – and architectural masterpieces that, nearly a thousand years hence, continue to captivate, seduce and marvel.

 

Keyvan and I visited one of these sixteen years ago on our small tour of the South-Western corner of Andalusia .  In Seville, I was simply awed and overcome by the intricate and yet graceful lines of the Alcazar; by the lovely gardens and its citrus trees; by the sheer – ah, that word again – civilization of the place.  Few other palaces in Europe have impressed me as much since; I think the jousting hall in the Prague Castle has come close, but that was that.  Until, that is, I went to the Alhambra.

 

The most amazing thing about the Alhambra is its scale: its human scale.   There are the occasional soaring arches and high ceilings, but by and large, the spaces are intimate rather than impressive; sensual rather than glorious; graceful rather than rich.   The intricate decorations, carvings and calligraphy reminded me of Iran, of course, and so did the gardens.  But they also reminded me of something else: descriptions of paradise in my childhood.   This was a veritable earthly pleasure palace, meant for the most refined and sensual of palates.

 

Contrast the grace of the Alhambra with two monstrosities that were built on the very same ground after the conquest of Granada , the last outpost of the Moors, by the Catholic Majesties, Isabella and Ferdinand, in 1492.  There is a renaissance church there; it sits in the gardens of Alhambra like a slab of overcooked boiled beef in the middle of a plateful of truffle-stuffed quail; Charles V, Isabella's grandchild, is said to have wept at the sight of the beast in paradise.   Well, weeping is fine – Charles used to do that a lot, especially when he sacked Rome in 1527 – but the point is, what do you do about it?  Charles V proceeded to build another monstrosity there: a palace of no discernible purpose or charm, looking passable only because the church next to it is so unutterably ugly …

 

The Alhambra proved to me two things. 

 

The first is a rather philosophical point about history.   There are those who believe in the “Great Man” theory of history, and others who consider history a movement driven by laws independent of the men and women who are affected by it.   I'm not sure about the first and certainly cannot vouch for the second, but I know this: it is possible that great nations arise regardless of the men and women who lead them; I have no doubt, however, that individual leaders have the capacity, irrespective of their populations, to destroy great nations.

 

Of all the tragedies that have befallen nations, few have had more calamitous results specifically traceable to a single reign than that of Spain under Isabella and Ferdinand.  They unified and re-Christianised Spain by throwing the Moors back to Morocco and driving the Jews out of Spain, but at what cost!   With the Moors gone, the flower of Spanish culture withered away; with the expulsion of the Jews, Spanish industry and commerce ground to a halt; with the Inquisition, Iberian creativity and spirit of discovery was killed.   On the strength solely of Habsburg arms and American gold, the Spanish Empire went on for a hundred years more (and then lost its Armada in one fell swoop), but inside, it was dead.   Only with the reintegration of Spain into Europe in 1986 has it begun to regain what it lost five hundred years ago.

 

The second point that a visit to Alhambra underlines with brutal clarity is the utter madness of Osama Bin Laden's claims in respect of recovering “Al-Andalus”, the Moorish name for Spain.  After all, the sensual, cultured and cosmopolitan Moors are as far apart from Bin Laden's Wahabbi austerity as would be Mother Teresa from George W.   Bin Laden's sick mind might well yearn for a Caliphate from the Hindu Kush to the Pyrenees; he and his ilk might even, one day, achieve it.  But let us not sully the Moorish accomplishments by claiming that their Al-Andalus would have anything to do with Bin Laden's.

 

Go visit the Alhambra; get lost in its paradise of a garden; enjoy the graceful notes of its chambers; weep for Spain for what it became, and for Islam for it has become.

 

Aside from Granada, we also stayed at two other places.  One of these was a lovely hotel in the mountains just West of Malaga.  The views were spectacular, the rooms lovely; we ate figs and oranges and walnuts and cactus fruits off the trees, played pool in the evening and mini-golf during the day, and walked in the pine forests.   On our last night in Spain, we stayed at a casino hotel South of Malaga; I played €50, lost it all in three minutes flat and remembered why I hate gambling – or “gaming” as it is called these days.

 

Since then, life has been pretty uneventful.  As of the first of December, I have co-rented an apartment in the mountains – in Verbier, one of the largest ski resorts in Switzerland – and even though we have not had much snow, the place is warm and cozy and simply wonderful to go and relax.   Friends have come in from Spain and Germany for Christmas, and other friends are organising a large party for the New Year.  And in the new year?   I don't know what life will bring; only that in the first week I am likely to go to Dubai to visit an aunt I have not seen since leaving Iran. 

 

The fires are no longer smouldering; the chalet that had lit up the night sky last evening is brooding over us, scarred and black and no longer in one piece.   But I find myself more or less in health, generally at peace and among friends.  I cannot ask the Universe much more that than.   And so it is that I bring to a close this long letter and a year filled with mixed emotions and vivid memories. 

 

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