Seville Nights
EXTRACT: It is a November evening in 1990 and I am stood in an oak panelled bar in Seville’s Barrio Santa Cruz neighbourhood. The mahogany bar counter is covered in white chalk marks, each dash representing a beer consumed by the patron stood in front of it. There are several rows of customers stood along the length of this counter. Keeping track of which tally relates to each customer is difficult to all but the trained eye. Occasionally a bartender looks up amidst a swirl of tobacco haze and not spotting anyone immediately in front of a set of etchings wipes the slate clean with a damp cloth.
I have travelled down to Seville on the overnight train from Madrid. Breaking my Journey in this large Andalusian city is part of a wider personal mission, one which has always been at the back of my mind since before the start of my footloose Independent travelling days – I am determined to get to Morocco. This part of sub-Saharan Africa has always held a fascination for me ever since, well, boyhood. All those images of desert forts, staccato designed mosques, and teeming souks have stimulated my mind for many a year. Most of all I have always had a burning ambition to make it to what surely has to be its showcase city, Marrakech.
But what lies behind the pulling power of Marrakech? Yes, I’ve always associated it as being part of the hippie trail, flower-power, days. But much more than this, the very sound of the city’s name, and in particular just getting my tongue around its last syllable (with a strong emphasis on the ‘shhh’ bit), well it seemed that no place on earth could have a name like this, without it being extremely exotic. One day, god damn it, I would make it there.
Flying direct to Morocco is expensively prohibitive for me and if I am to pull it off, Spain will be the gateway.
So here I am, in this Seville bar. I have spent the morning looking around one of its beautiful landmarks, the Alcazar, but then move on to more routine matters, making onward travel arrangements to the port of Algeciras. I now have the coach tickets to make the early morning trip. This time tomorrow, I should be in Tangier.
On the train journey down from Madrid, I meet Steve, who is an Australian on and around the world jaunt. I have just bumped into him again outside this bar. So now we embark on a drinking session.
I listen to his travel stories. which so far span Australasia and India. Our chalk strikes on the bar counter are starting to mount up. The bartenders continually pour beer into glasses and hand them to customers Immediately behind us. Each time they do this, small drops of beer spill out of the glasses onto our chalk strikes. By the end of the evening, a few of them have been wiped clean by these spillages of beer. Our final bill can only be an approximation of what we thought we might have consumed. I am sure we have had a few freebies.
Now I move on to talking about my own plans to Steve- Tangier via Algeciras in a few hours time. His head drops and shakes from side to side. He has travelled up from Tangier a couple of weeks ago. “Tangier?”, he asks me, “Are you mad? The first side street you venture down, they will have your passport and the pack off your back within a minute.”
I have heard stories like this before and always ignore them. They just cannot dampen my determination to arrive there one day. But now Steves first hand stories are starting to worry me, especially as I am heading there pretty soon. Then he tells me about the rats that scurried around his hotel room.
This all proving to be a bit too much for me. I place my hands over my ears and say, “I don’t care what you tell me about the place. I have my coach tickets in my pocket and I’m going there in the morning.”
(Continues)
In full, see The Lonely Heart of Darkness
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