Interesting the books we end up reading on journeys. The first ended up being about philosophy, faith and reason and the love of three men at three different times with a woman who was either a pagan or a jew – regardless, an outsider. Then _dead air_, a marvellous book about politics and conviction, again with a rant about reason and faith and again with questions of betrayal and what you would do for someone. Now I’m reading _The Impressionist_ by Hari Kunzru, a superbly written piece about belonging and culture and shaping yourself to fit an idea of how you think you ought to be. Rather appropriate really.
I’m glad I took that leave of absence. Even though I feel a little lazy and I could probably do some thesis work, my supposition that the Spaniards would have D&G in French turned out to be incorrect. The Biblioteca de Castilla-La Mancha has got all the books I need but only in translation – to Spanish. (This is another issue: do I call it Spanish or Castillian? There are actually four languages in this country. In some ways, calling it Spanish is like calling English British). Anyway, I had thought that, since I found Foucault actually easier to understand in French than in English that I could try reading D&G in French too. There’s no way I’m going to be able to read them in Castillian though. (Besides, there are rumours that the reason Foucault is so impossible to understand in English is because the translation was done by his Japanese boyfriend who was translating from French to Japanese to English).
I went to the Exposicion Centro Cultural de San Marcos yesterday and wandered around the quite amazing “Claves de Toledo, llave del futuro” (clues to Toledo, key to the future) exhibition they have at the moment. A journey from the physical siting of the area – the caves, the river, the difficulties of getting water from the river up to the city which has plagued the place since its establishment (so obvious, but I hadn’t thought about it; they’ve only had running water since 1948) – to the history, the way the physical location has influenced the buildings, the different cultures and their impacts on the architecture… I knew the flying buttresses were Christian and the curving arches I love so much Visigothic and Moorish but I hadn’t realised that the lack of public squares was an Arabic influence; that the focus is on private space not public space and so the open spaces are all inside the houses, in grand patios around which the rooms are placed. That the only big square, Plaza Zocodover, is so named because it means beastmarket in Arabic… it was not the public space we use it as today, but rather that size for trading.
There is so much more: the way the city became a centre for translation around the turn of the millennium because the library at Cordoba was rushed up to Toledo for safekeeping and there were scholars in Toledo who could read Latin and Hebrew and Arabic, and could all speak Spanish, so they could communicate with each other and translate… they could struggle through the Greek texts that survived…
The idea that the Jews were here before the 4th century… that they probably arrived as part of that first diaspora after Nebuchadnezzar…(or however you spell it… took me ages to work out that Nebocodonezir or however it was spelt in the exhibition’s text was the same guy; it takes me ages to struggle though the Castillian text on the walls as there’s no English translation). That for centuries Toledo was a centre of learning, mathematics, alchemy, astronomy, even rumours of necromancy in the caves under the city. The nascent Christians co-existing quite happily: a form of Christianity called Mozarab Christianity that apparently still survives in four churches today.
And then the Catholics turn up and it all goes to shit. Of course, it isn’t that simple – and no offence, silverblue – but I do tend to lose interest once they show up anywhere. All that orthodoxy, and insistence of faith rather than reason. Full circle.
At the entrance of the exhibition was a glass display filled with ancient keys, large iron keys, 500 years old. They are keys to doors to houses owned by Sephardi Jews, expelled from the city by the Church in 1492. These keys were taken to new lands in the hope that one day they would return. They were sent to relatives. Handed down from generation to generation. One day, they would say, we will go back and we will use this key to open the door to our family’s home again. Their names are written on the wall behind the keys. Ysaac. Avraham. Yuçaf. Yacob y su mujer.
The next cabinet has keys to the city. And the names of famous people the keys have been given to over the ages: Marie Curie; Pablo Neruda; Hilary Rodham Clinton.
And in the next, the every day keys to Toledo today. Keys to houses. Keys to shops. Keys to the libraries and the bakeries and the hotels. Keys to the Cathedral and the Town Hall. And behind those, the names of the every day people who live in Toledo now. They are mostly good Catholic Spanish names. Garcia. Rodriguez. Orgaz.
Lots to process. Where do I, tourist, desperately trying to pretend I’m not a tourist but rather a journalist or an academic, of Jewish (but Ashkenazi not Sephardi) heritage, fit into this procession of people and keys? How has this shift in the way we move priveleged people around the world, this flow of tourist dollars in concert with the abject refusal to allow others – refugees, immigrants – to move freely around the world, how has this changed culture, space, authenticity? The people here are keenly aware that Spain changed significantly when the first tourists came. Before, under Franco, life was hard. When did it change? An old man replies: when the Americans came.
There’s even a McDonalds in the Plaza Zodocover now. I have no answers, only more questions… academic, journalist indeed.
I ran out of time half-way through the exhibition. I’d been there three hours and for some reason, they wanted to close at 8.30pm. Ah, well, I shall return.