Gezellig

The brightness outside is a squinting contrast. More visitors are entering Mezquita as it becomes later in the afternoon, and I am glad I have avoided going in with these groups for company. A large block of steps on its perimeter leads up to the mosque at the highest point - it is another way of finding your way to it once you are at the walls of the town: by taking the ascending direction whenever streets intersect. On the other side of the Mezquita the land falls away sharply: it is when you realize that the slight ascent wandering through this maze of streets has led you to the top of the hill. The Guadalquivir flows by the walls down below, a natural barrier; Mezquita at the top is the centrepoint to which everything, the curve of the streets, the density of the houses, even the increasing concentration of souvenir shops, is built towards, the town woven into the landscape it resides in. Walking along the top step around Mezquita, the wooden, dark green blinds of the windows on the upper storeys of the houses facing it are drawn all the way down. The step is wide enough. These are signs, I decide, and settle down to a nap.

An hour later one must search for coffee, determined to avoid the (overpriced, surely) tourist cafes in the vicinity. It is about four o clock, firmly siesta time, a couple of hours to go before I meet Marcos after his class. I set off to find a cafe outside these immediate streets. Their names are simply the names of people, without "street" or "road" ("calle") to qualify them. A new street is thus the name of a person, this neighbourhood is Pedro Lopez, Sanchez de Feria, Magistral Gonzales Frances, each letter of the name printed in black on a square white tile set on a whitewashed wall. Who were they? Did they once live in one of the houses along their street? The roofs of the houses are flat, the terrace parapeted so that it can be used as part of the house: on it there are television antennas and clotheslines. (My aunt in London said after this trip, "The houses there, don't they look just like the houses in Coimbatore?") There is no traffic now, some streets end in dead ends, others twist to form tiny, cut-off squares, all streets on which only residents pass. Although I would still like to take the odd picture I put my camera away. By all evidence I am the only person here who is looking around; it is a quiet afternoon, people are sleeping in their homes, the ones that pass on the street perhaps on their way home for an afternoon nap. I must try to be as less intrusive as possible.

An hour later I am outside Marcos's university building -- I had met him there last night, today I have found my way to it without looking at the map. A young woman in pigtails is standing nearby, waiting for her class to start. She smokes a cigarette and is drinking coffee out of a small plastic cup. We strike up a brief conversation. She tells of working for a few months in a year, and of taking the rest of it as it comes.

"I work four month" she says, pausing after saying each word to translate the next one. "Turistic". "As a tour guide?", I ask her. "Si si, tourist from Sudamerica." And the other months? "Mmm... sometimes I study, in the university, sometimes I travel, sometimes I live with my friends..."

"And the money, from four months?", "that is enough for the year?", I ask her.

She considers that for a couple of seconds. "Hmmm... si." "I survive", she adds with a happy smile.

And there is nothing else for you to consider before choosing this?, I want to ask. This girl is young, in her early twenties, but many others I have met who have answered the "what do you do?" question similarly, like Marcos or his friends at the bar last night, were older, in their thirties. No other 'factors', no roles of social hierarchy to play, no unspoken-of responsibilities to keep? Our language barrier prevents me from sharing my questions -- and besides, how to frame questions like this adequately, the way I am thinking it, to someone here, someone who isn't from there? Surely there are rules of engagement in every society, unspoken codes for youngsters and adults, men and women to live by -- just like what prevents me from being able to communicate ours to them, maybe I will know how it is here only if I was from here and have lived here. Right now, all I can do is be struck that whatever these codes are in Spain, they do not seem to get in the way of people choosing to live this way. By that token, it is a charmed life.

Marcos has told me yesterday -- and laughingly reminded me several times since then -- that I must cook dinner for them tonight; he is keen to get to the supermarket before it closes at seven. I mention the girl outside the university to him, "Why didn't you ask her to come?", he asks. I laugh at that, but he is all seriousness, even a little pained that I haven't invited her. "That is how it is in Andalucia... you just meet someone, then you ask them to join you." I remember the long conversation him and the girl selling trinkets outside the mosque, whom he had never met before, had yesterday. "I don't know how many people you should cook for", he says. "People will bring their friends. Maybe five, maybe twenty."

A stream of people came that evening while I was in the kitchen, the men's greeting a handshake and a large "Como esta?!", the women's a kiss on either cheek. Most are in their late twenties or early thirties. Many are Marcos's friends, some are friends of friends that he has never met before. He is meeting Ernesto, a friend through couchsurfing, after two years, just back from working in Tibet as a tour guide for a few weeks (when I asked Ernesto what he did, he said "Well I have been travelling for a few years now..."). I meet Davide, whose room I occupied last night, the one who is also a musician. One or two others who are old friends of Marcos's: they also work only in the summer, as tour guides in Barcelona or Madrid. And Bosco, whom Marcos introduces as being perfectly bilingual having spent his teens in New York City. Marcos is telling them about his time in Mumbai as I join them in the living room.

There are close to fifteen people. One of them adjusts the light so that it is not too bright. A conversation is raging on. Bosco is the life-saver, turning to give me translated gists at just the right intervals. There is beer, but it is just there, its drinking is not pursued actively; Chorros is doing the rounds, originating at different points around the room, some partaking, some passing on to the next person. In Spain marijuana is quasi-legal, and quasi in a most Catch-22 sense: Bosco quite delights in pointing out the inherent contradiction, roughly You can grow your own (as long as you don't get caught smoking it). It is everywhere in Andalucia, the waft of marijuana and hash never too far, on the street you're walking down, from tables at roadside cafes, in the bar on that small street last night where it was being freely passed around (not to mention the potted plants lovingly cultivated in this house's balcony). I smelled it more here than even in The Netherlands (where personal consumption is permitted and there are shops to buy it from). They say the law is an ass - here in Spain it certainly sounds like this law was written by one, but it must also be said that its enforcement seems sublime, not in letter but purely in (good) spirit.

The conversation now, Bosco says, is about the elections coming up this weekend. "There are nationalist parties, Catalan, Basque, Galician, they all have strong support. In Andalucia the nationalist party is not so strong, but in this election it looks like they will do better than before. They are saying they will take a tougher stance on immigration." How do people feel about immigration? "Well people are mostly ok with it but people are scared; how many people are coming, they want to know. But now the nationalist party is sort of pandering to those fears, trying to gain support."

"The reason the nationalist party in Andalucia is not so strong is language. We speak Spanish - it is different from the way they speak Spanish in the north but still it is the same language. Catalunya, Country Basque, Galicia... they all have their own language, that is why their own nationalist parties are stronger. In Andalucia we speak Spanish, and I think we connect more to the idea of Spain as a country because of it."

Between breaks in their conversation, in those moments when no one is speaking and the look in everyone's eyes is as if they are thinking about the last few minutes, the only sound is of the saxophone in the background, the volume turned low but the playing ferocious. The racks of music CDs with handwritten labels in Davide's tiny bedroom where I stayed in last night, Olmo the flamenco singer, the poster on the wall of the man playing the trumpet, the CD that Bosco passingly popped into the player earlier this evening just as people started to arrive... there is music in this house; I love it.

Most if not everyone in the room are from here, the south of Spain, Cordoba, or Sevilla, or like Olmo from a village nearby, and it strikes several times that they are. A subject discussed animatedly is a proposal to build a new airport outside Cordoba, which will put the town in the flight path. I say to Bosco quite without thinking that London is having a similar debate about a new Heathrow runway: "It's a little different don't you think?", he says to that. "London already has five airports. Cordoba... is not London." Opposite me a woman holds forth, passionately. I cannot understand what she is saying, but there was one sentence in the middle that I was able to make out, Esta es nuestra Cordoba ("This is our Cordoba.")

There is a Dutch word, gezellig, roughly translating to the warm feeling one gets in a gathering of fellow beings. What is the Spanish word for it? I cannot think of an equivalent in English that might capture this. But that's ok, sometimes it is nicest when the ineffable stays ineffable.

At one thirty or so in the morning people begin to leave. Many I could not converse with -- or only indirectly with Bosco as interpreter -- but we shared something, food, time. As we part ways the smiles we exchange are a little larger, the handshakes easier, the kisses planted fuller. They leave in ones and twos, until the living room is empty, and its couch is mine for the night. I picture them on their scooters, riding carefully over the clacking cobblestones.