Confronting History

Yesterday our program toured the Alhambra.  There is so very much to say about this great place that rises on one of Granada's three hills.  I'm not sure what I have to say even does it credit, but I will attempt to do so.  When I title this post "confronting history", I feel as though I did just that.  There is so much history in that place, it is though it is alive, as though the ghosts of the moorish ghosts still walk through the military sections, waiting for the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella to attack, as though the moorish kings lounge in their gardens, listening to music and reading poetry.  It is alive.

I am in Spain, specifically Granada, studying the influences of Islam in Spain and Europe, so the Alhambra was fascinating to me.  You start in the military section, and as you go through, you see the arab gardens and the palaces of the arab kings and suddenly, it is a palace of European kings and queens.  It feels terribly disjointed.  Comparing the section of the Arab Alhambra to the European Alhambra, the Arab Alhambra is built with much more detail, its walls with carved with perfected detail, with entire ceilings covered in muquarnas, fountains leading into other fountains, and magnificent gardens.

(the wall off to the left is the one I mention)

But I really confronted history in the first part of the tour, in the military section.  Our spanish professor, Aurelio (at later time I will give a profile of Aurelio. He deserves a decent description) explained the military sector of the alhambra as a small city, with living quarter, food, water, dungeons.  The explanation went on.  It was the wall off to the left that was difficult for me to think about.  Aurelio explained that in the reign of Franco, the military dictator of in the 20th century, people were lined up and executed along the wall.  And thats when I came face to face with history.  Maybe it was because I had read so much about the Spanish Civil War and the reign of Franco, and I could envision exactly what Aurelio meant in my mind.  Maybe because it was such a stark and brutal past, but regardless, I suddenly had to confront that it was real.  It had happen.  And it happened directly in front of me.

It struck me then that I had grown up in a privileged, safe world.  The world for the most part isn't safe, and in that moment, I just stared at the wall and let myself face that fact.