The rock of Al-Hambra falls into the river and on the farther side rises Al-Baicín, antiphony of Al-Hambra.
In the days of the first Nazrites, here was a place of noble mansions. But when the Moslems, exiled from conquered towns, poured into Granada, Al-Baicín became what it is now—a swarming city. This is as near to the Kasbah of Algiers, to the dense Attarine of Fez as you may come in Spain. The town is a lay of alleys maggoting up the breast of the Sierra. The throngs are dark, aburst with energy. Eyes are gentle and give forth no light. Faces are locked as if in obscure struggle of themselves. This folk is neither gay nor sad, savage nor kind. It partakes of the ineffable nature of the houses. What it is, what it has to say—as with the houses—is detached from the hour, is a minglement of nostalgia and obsession. An incommunicable town, knowing no tongue save an archaic one: its houses speak not to us but to their own old shadows.
A patio stable with its mangy mules, a gigantic oven where bread in memorial Moorish shapes is thrust at the end of a pole ... such are the words of the streets. Beneath the language which the people speak, this rhythmic word of the streets.
Al-Baicín has a soul. What Al-Baicín lacks is body! Groveling life within an ancient molder of walls, patios, wine shops black as warts—this life so halted, so disgraced, so blind is life that lacks a body. And there, polished clean of the clamors of the spirit, shines the body on the opposite hill—soulless Al-Hambra.
d. A Goddess and Don Juan
The air is spiced with murmur, throat call, peal, with stirring of feet, clink of earth-jar; it is a weave through which the horse’s hoof, flick of whip, ar-r-ra and shuh of driver make a swathe. Singing cry of a girl, crying song of a girl cascade to church bells.... Silence.... A little square (Castilians say patio, Andalusians say compás) holds an alicatado fountain: thin water within a sapphire bowl wavers, splinters, fades like stars at a dawn. All about, the wings of a vast Church. Fortress-like they rise, rise in terrace, in forest of sculpture, in buttresses that sweep out of sight. And straight above, a tower. It is the old prayer tower of a mosque—al-minar: the muedzin post which the Christians call Giralda.
In the compas, it is cool; high overhead within the well of the walls, the heat of afternoon is writhing. Heat cannot pierce the eight foot walls of the tower. A pavement, so gradual and wide that a coach could follow it, climbs to the peak. There are windows to tell how you climb. The Cathedral, resonant with statues; the stucco palace of the Bishop beside a compas sleepy and cool like a virgin at dawn; a slant of street with houses dodging sun.... Cathedral roof, a groined and columned symphony with transepts trilling in overtones away; a knot of buttresses that scale a higher wall you could not guess was there; a grove of turrets against the town, green trees; a line of river; town itself keen in the gyrant air ... guitar-like music under the voice of the sun. A scarf of hill, treeless and red. A court within the sapphire day like rubies and emeralds—the patio de los naranjos—a frame of creamy walls holding the rows of orange trees. The top of Giralda.
Seville: No, this body is Isbilíya. Town of the Visigoths, the Yemen Arabs and the Copts, alcázar of the Moorish Yusuf who built Giralda, town whence Ferdinand of Castile with the aid of his friend the Moslem of Granada drove countless Moslems in 1248, bringing in other men who said Christ, not Allah—said it in the same Mosque rechristened, in the same town, under the same sun, from the same Giralda.
The repeopling, the christening could not avail against the might of this past. Christ dimmed again; Our Lady grew. Our Lady who was Isis ere she was Mary: consort of Osiris, Horus, Khem, ere she sat with Jesus. And in her hand, through Seville, through Andalusia, a lily that does not grow in Spain but grows indeed on the Nile ... lily or lotus or more simply still la flor in all heraldry, all holy craft of the land. For Islam had passed to Egypt and won the Christian Copts who were in heresy for that they adored a living Trinity and had no Christ on the Cross, a trinity older than the Pyramids with the new Christian names. And now, for an age, their trinity disappeared. But Our Lady became Fatima, daughter of the Prophet and virgin although she bore miraculous sons. And Arab and Copt march on to Spain. And the Christian saint comes south. And the mosque of Seville is again the church of Our Lady. And from Seville to Rome goes the first urgency to make a dogma of the Immaculate Conception....
The town is so very thick with houses, where are the streets? Those sharp cracks weaving through the roofs are streets? The roofs are live, bewildering planes. White flat roofs under dominant chimneys. Roofs that run with their walls. Roofs that are clusters of rush. Roofs that are little gardens for goats and chickens. Roofs that are vineyards. Roofs that are nurseries. Roofs that are streets on which stand huts of turf. In a court, is a palm; its round head sends green star-rays to the sky.