Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - caged birds

After the Alhambra and yesterday’s meanderings through Generalife, a wondrous garden in the old part of the city, I needed open air, so walked out into the surrounding countryside, wondering if Magellan walked near here before departing from Seville to find the world. A journey he never saw the end of. I feel a kinship with that. He was such a famous traveller and yet it was ironic that it was not he, nor any other great captain for that matter, but rather a Filipino servant employed by Magellan in India many years before he touched on the Philippines himself, that would be the first man to circumnavigate the globe. Sometimes what seems obvious on the surface reveals more unusual truths underneath. I wonder if I am going to end up like Magellan or like the Filipino servant.

I found a wild track that led up to green and gold views of the snow capped Sierra Nevada. Burros carried loads of sand, rocks or straw along the narrow tracks. They looked quaint and charming until I saw a small truck struggling, the driver finally giving up and carrying the load himself. Burros are more practical than poetic here. Local villagers and umpteen children ran and sat out in front of their holes as I passed by, holding their hands out for money. There were dozens of these curious holes cut right into the hillsides, like black gaping mouths looking across the valley. Upon closer examination I found they truly open into homes to these impoverished people. Some had tiny, neat gardens out front, but most led simply to a room cut into the hill. The occasional one even had a door haphazardly fitted into the opening. It looked so odd to see a real wooden door, painted red or green, set in place with the earthen hole it was meant to cover still showing around its edges.

Feeling lucky to have a lunch of bread, cheese and fruit I sat on a ledge across from the Alhambra, but at a higher elevation, so I could see both it and the city below with the distant mountains as backdrop. While there, my eye caught sight of a young boy crouched some distance away. Every once in a while he’d move to another spot, but he never stopped staring intently at something in front of him. My eyes followed his gaze until they espied a few birds in tiny cages hanging in one tree and chirping lustily.

A bird does not sing because he has an answer,

He sings because he has a song.

As I ate, I watched the boy moving around watching his caged birds. Once he looked over to me, with the same furtive and serious expression, so that for a moment I felt I was one of his caged birds. I made myself wave and smile. He nodded back gravely, then returned to his earlier scrutinies, releasing me. He never looked my way again and I never did find out why his attention was so taken with those caged birds.