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  Andalus

  Unlocking the Secrets of Moorish Spain

  Jason Webster

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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  Epub ISBN 9781407094816

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  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  Published 2004 by Doubleday

  a division of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Jason Webster 2004

  The right of Jason Webster to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBNs 0385 605072 (cased) 0385 607717 (tpb)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

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  Papers used by Transworld Publishers are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Praise

  By the same author

  Acknowledgements

  Map

  The Farm

  Musa the Moor

  The Promise

  The Road to Valencia

  Valencia

  Alzira

  Moriscos

  Windmills

  The Road to Almería

  Almería

  Chapiz

  Muhammad

  Alhambra

  Cordoba

  Seville

  Tarifa

  Niebla

  The Secret Mosque

  Mértola

  Belmonte

  Toledo

  Montserrat

  Barcelona

  Cyber Mary

  The Baby

  Casablanca

  Glossary

  Andulus Timeline

  For Pepe, Zine el Abedine B. and Lucía F. S.

  Duende: A Journey in Search of Flamenco

  ‘A compelling account of a culture closed to most

  guiris (foreigners) and infinitely darker and more dramatic

  than the colourful tourist spectacles would have

  them believe … a page-turner.’

  Observer

  ‘Unputdownable. The autobiography-as-travelogue that is also

  a rite of passage is a form which worked brilliantly for Laurie

  Lee and Bruce Chatwin … Ladies and gentlemen, we have

  a new star of the genre: Jason Webster.’

  Daily Mail

  ‘A fascinating book, the most gripping I have read for years …

  Jason Webster is an exceptional writer, and this is a great book.’

  Guardian

  ‘An impressive début … passionate and evocative.’

  Sunday Times

  ‘Outstanding début … the most authentic and compelling

  account of flamenco in English, and one of the best books ever

  written about Spain.’

  Literary Review

  Jason Webster was born in San Francisco in 1970 and

  grew up in England and Germany. After studying Arabic at

  Oxford and living for several years in Italy and Egypt, he went

  to Spain to learn to play the flamenco guitar. He currently

  lives in Valencia with his Spanish wife. He is the author of

  the critically acclaimed Duende.

  By the same author

  Duende: A Journey in Search of Flamenco

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people for their help with this book:

  José and Maribel Valdivia; Emilio Galindo; Dr Robin Ostle; Alan Jones; Dr Jeremy Johns; Jessica Hallett; Conceiçao Amaral; Belén D’Souza; Santiago Macias; Fernando Tuvilla; Esther Lieft; HRH Prince José-María de Almuzara y Navarro; Miles Roddis; Juan Ferzerode; Muhammad López; Faelo; Amadeo García; Sayed Arash and Hazel Debestani; Shaykh Ziyendi; Salma Grimwood; Kifah Arif; Oriental Institute, University of Oxford.

  My agent, Natasha Fairweather, has been a constant support, patiently putting up with my crazier ideas until the right one came along. Emma Parry in New York also gave very useful advice at the start. Everyone at Transworld has been superb, particularly Marianne Velmans, Diana Beaumont and Kate Samano. Very special thanks go to my editor Sarah Westcott for her invaluable contribution.

  And, of course, to Salud. Con todo mi amor.

  Spain, first civilised by the Phoenicians and long possessed

  by the Moors, has indelibly retained the original impressions.

  Test her, therefore, and her natives by an Oriental standard.

  Richard Ford, A Handbook for Travellers in Spain

  Travel, and you will see the meaning of things.

  Moroccan proverb

  THE FARM

  ‘If they catch you they will break your legs. You must leave at once.’

  The old man looked away and moved as if to return to work. His thin dark skin glistened under a fur of grey whiskers and his purple lips were cracked and bloody from where he bit them and licked the scab with a circular motion of his tongue. His hands, bloated and hard, were stained pink from the endless fruit he had picked over the course of the season. How many dozens of oranges, strawberries, nisperos and lemons I’d eaten had been plucked by this man, I wondered.

  The heat under the sheeting was tremendous. We were in a tunnelled underworld stretching for acres over the landscape: a gigantic flat greenhouse made of plastic designed to produce fruit at all times of the year. It was the only way to make things grow in this area – a toe-grip of the Sahara in Europe. This part of Spain was dry, but conditions, they said, were worsening. One day not even the plastic and the artificial conditions would be able to prevent it from becoming real desert. In the meantime the farmers were determined to extract everything they could from the soil using cheap immigrant labour.

  I had only been under the plastic for twenty minutes and I was already feeling faint – at an extremely humid thirty-nine degrees it felt as though there was barely enough air passing into my lungs to keep me alive. The light, steady and blinding, seemed to radiate from every surface, while the smell of labouring bodies blended with the sharp sweet scent of the fruit, producing a sickly, sweaty cocktail. But these m
en, of all ages, from youngsters in their late teens to the old Moroccan in front of me, worked nine, ten hours a day like this. And the little pay they got – if they got any at all – depended on how many boxes they could pack. Some could do as many as eighty-five or ninety in a day. But they were usually the lucky ones – people treated well and given proper contracts, with perhaps even a home to go to – Russians or Eastern Europeans. These men, all Moroccans, were less fortunate.

  ‘I paid five thousand euros to get here,’ one of them told me. ‘I’ve been working three months now and they haven’t given me anything.’

  We spoke in a combination of Spanish, French and Arabic, making ourselves understood as best we could. Their grasp of the European languages was limited, while my Egyptian-dialect Arabic was strange and only partially intelligible to North African ears. I pushed the sweat away as it streamed into my eyes. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could stay under here, trapped in this surreal white world, where the arched wooden ribs that held up the sheeting were the only breaks in the monotony of a plastic sky just inches above our heads.

  ‘They keep us locked up at night. We can’t get out. I haven’t spoken to my family for weeks.’

  Slavery was alive and well here. These men had been duped into working in Spain, tempted by the chance to earn money in Europe and perhaps make better lives for themselves. But instead some mafia-style organization had smuggled them over and forced them to labour in barely human conditions for no pay. They were underfed, confused and frightened.

  ‘This place is dangerous,’ the old man repeated, speaking in the high sing-song voice typical of North Africans. There was an increasing nervousness about him and the others gathered around. ‘You must leave.’

  He lifted himself from the crouching position we had adopted by the low metal rack used for supporting the fruit boxes. His dark-brown trousers were stained and dirty, frayed around the bottom. His ill-fitting shoes slipped up and down as he walked away. Some of the others who had gathered around made to move with him. It was too risky; fear overcame their curiosity in the foreigner who had suddenly appeared among them. I began to wonder if coming here had been such a good plan after all.

  A few days earlier, I had spoken to my journalist friend Eduardo about the idea that had been preoccupying me for some time.

  ‘The Arabs in Spain?’ he said.

  ‘Not only the history,’ I replied. ‘What about now? Moors and Christians used to get on fine, but look at Moroccans and Spaniards today. It’s a different story.’

  I knew I could rely on Eduardo to give me interesting leads. He was the kind of journalist who always knew much more than he could ever write about – plenty of stories were kept out of the newspapers for fear of libel, or because of the proprietor’s political connections.

  ‘I’ll tell you where you’ll find the real thing. It’s a scandal.’

  He listed the farms along the coast where Moroccans and other North Africans were forced to work like slaves.

  ‘Slaves?’

  ‘They can’t go to the police because they’re here illegally and would just get sent straight back to Morocco,’ he said. ‘It’s time you opened your eyes.’

  ‘They’re trapped, then.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy getting in and out, son,’ he said. ‘We’re talking mafia here. The farmers keep the workers under tight control. And they may well be armed. I’ve been wanting to break this story for months but my editor won’t let me: says it’s too risky. But don’t worry – you’ll be fine.’

  And of course I jumped at the idea. I’d seen hundreds of North African immigrants in Spain – the area where I lived in Valencia had one of the highest concentrations in the country. And many, I knew, were here illegally, smuggled over the Strait of Gibraltar in fishing vessels or speed boats, or strapped underneath trucks crossing on the ferry from Ceuta or Tangier. The ancestors of these people had once ruled Spain – Al-Andalus, as they called it – but today they were as unwelcome as though the Reconquest had never ended. The Spanish didn’t put them to the sword any more, but if caught they were quickly sent back over the water.

  Eduardo’s words echoed in my head as I watched these men melting in this plastic city, enslaved on a farm, picking plastic fruit for plastic supermarkets.

  ‘Why have you come here?’

  As the other Moroccans picked themselves up and returned to work, one of them, a young man I guessed at being in his mid twenties, stayed behind, beckoning me with his hand to remain seated a moment. I hadn’t noticed him before: in jeans and trainers, he was dressed like a typical young North African man in Spain. But his hair was longer than usual and he seemed less nervous than the others. He spoke better Spanish as well.

  ‘I heard about the conditions here. I wanted to see if—’

  ‘You’re a journalist?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m treasure hunting.’

  ‘Here?’ He smiled, his teeth brilliant white against his dark complexion. I noticed one of his teeth was set at an odd angle, slightly lower than the rest and pushed back, as though at some point he’d been punched incredibly hard. ‘You’ve come to the right place,’ he said with a laugh. ‘This is a gold mine.’ He stuck his hands into the ground by his feet, breaking the hard dry shell on top to reveal clods of fresh brown earth underneath, unleashing a baked, musty odour into the air.

  ‘ZINE!’

  There was a rasping shout from behind. The other workers were shuffling as fast as they could in either direction away from us. The Moroccan skipped onto the balls of his feet and peered above the trenches of fruit lined along the tunnel. I turned to see where he was looking, dizziness flooding my head as I pulled myself up onto my knees. Through the plastic I could see three pairs of legs moving towards us, walking briskly and heavily through the sand-like soil on the other side of the sheeting. They spoke Spanish with strong southern accents.

  I felt a slap on the back of my head, and with a thud my face hit the ground, the Moroccan’s quivering hand holding me down.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Quiet!’ he said.

  ‘I can’t breathe.’ My nose was buried in the dirt; lumps of grit flew into my mouth with each breath, a bitter, cloying taste on my tongue. I wriggled to get free, but he held me down harder.

  ‘Quiet! They’re coming.’

  With a twisting motion, I managed to pull my head loose and looked up. The Moroccan stared hard at me with bulging eyes. These farmers were dangerous; the old man had said so. If they found me, I would be in trouble. But despite the warnings I’d been given – even by Eduardo, who usually had a cavalier approach to entering ‘forbidden’ areas – I was still unaware of quite how much danger I was in. At most they’d throw me off the farm, I thought – nothing more.

  But when I saw one of the farmers carrying a heavy stick, I began to wonder. Through the plastic it was hard to make out properly, but it looked suspiciously like a baseball bat.

  There was a moment of silence. The men stopped just beside us on the other side of the sheeting and the two of us remained motionless, hunted animals not certain yet if they’d been trapped or still had a chance of escape. I wasn’t sure how much they could see through the sheeting. Perhaps, I thought with mindless optimism, we could bluff our way out of this. My heart pushed its way upwards through my ribcage, cold passing through my stomach. The dizziness of earlier, I noticed, had gone.

  It became clear, though, that the farmers were being led to where we were. A fourth person standing behind them pointed to the exact spot where we were crouching, and, veiled behind the white sheets, the three of them took a simultaneous step in our direction.

  With a scooping movement, the Moroccan grabbed me by the armpit and hauled me to my feet; within a second we were running like gazelles along the tunnel, heads bent to avoid crashing into the low ceiling, all effort thrown into forward motion.

  ‘¡AQUI! ¡AQUI!’

&nb
sp; The farmers’ shouts came hurtling after us. I had no idea how fast they could run. If we were lucky they’d be middle aged and well fed, unable to keep up with our younger legs. But we were trapped inside the tunnel: we would have to get out somewhere. How many entrances did these things have? Would we have to rip ourselves out of this cocoon and make a break for it across the fields? The few passageways outside the plastic were equally long and thin – if they found us there it would be like being caught in a firing range. I followed my companion blindly, my only hope.

  ‘He’s got a Moroccan with him. Están bajando. They’re heading downhill.’

  It was hard to make out which way the slope went as we powered past the fruit bushes, other workers pulling themselves out of the way as we sped past. The Moroccan was quick, his head steady above skinny hunched shoulders. For a moment I wanted to call out to ask where we were going, but if they heard our voices we would give ourselves away. Not that it mattered. The shouting around us would tell them where we were.

  We ran faster, taking short shallow breaths, adrenaline feeding a belief that we were going to make it, that somewhere further along there would be a way out of this tunnel.

  The Moroccan jerked to the right, ducking his head, and I saw him vanish through a plastic flap into the outside world. Without a thought I followed him through, into the sun on the other side. My lungs clawed at the fresher air. A quick check and I saw there was no-one around, but immediately we were running again, turning to the left and heading down the passageway between one tunnel and the next, ahead of us nothing but more plastic – a dense ocean of white, with distant hilltops the only sign of land. I could breathe better here, but already my legs were losing strength, my heart straining to perform.

  We reached the end of the passageway – a kind of junction with a main corridor that linked various gaps in the plastic. I thought we’d stop and look before crossing, but the Moroccan just kept running. He should know, I thought. But as we passed from one pathway to another, we came face to face with one of the farmers – a short man with no neck, shoulders like a bull and a dull inhuman look in his eyes. He held a baseball bat in his hands.