Train to Riyadh

--December, 2008: Saudi Arabia

I closed my eyes, and I could see the Arabian Gulf just as I had left it that afternoon. The sun was still cruel at the edge of the desert, but the invading dust had settled, and everything had been swept clean. Hard daylight made the water look glassy and deceptively cool just beyond the salt-caked beach. There was no sign of the bombs being tossed somewhere beyond the sharp horizon. Still, it was a world at loggerheads with the heat.

I opened my eyes, touched my own reflection in the window, and waited for the present to overtake me. Time was different here. My mind tried to race to the tempo of the countryside slipping by—a sallow wasteland lapping at the window, making me forget, trying to make me sleep.

There were large stones scattered over the desert floor. Random boulders stood sentinel, like Lot’s wife turned to salt over and over again. Ghastly shapes looked on from a distance. Smooth stretches of sand flowed behind them and down the rippling valleys among the dunes, crisp against the sky. Moments became hours as the beige land rolled and tripped beneath the scrub. Gradually, the tired afternoon sun coaxed golden highlights and long, comfortable shadows from the underbrush.

A pair of shining, dark eyes appeared over the top of the seat in front, and smiled. They were too big for their tiny face, too beautiful. I winked playfully, first left then right. They laughed, and bounced out of sight, down into the muffled rhythm of the train.

A few moments of childish whimpering, and the eyes reappeared across the aisle. They belonged to a little girl dressed in taffeta and crinoline. She sat on the lap of a kindly old man. In his desert-soiled ghutra and thob—the shifting gingham head-cloth and Biblical white robe—he was Abraham playing across time with the new Hagar. She prodded the old Bedouin, and he pushed her gently, both of them toying and cooing.

“Ma tibghi hada?—don’t you want this?” His large, fleshy hand dangled a shiny bracelet before her eyes.

“La, la.” She pushed it away. But her dark eyes flashed coyly, and she began pulling gently at the teasing hand. “Illa, abgha, abgha...—I want it, I want it!”

“Narju intiba...!” The public address system spewed a flood of static and feedback into the coach. I straightened my back against the cool vinyl, and gathered my quilted jacket up off the seat. In spite of the stifling heat outside, the train’s air-conditioned comfort had turned to wintry cold.

Electrical sputtering dissolved into a clear sound, the unmistakable music of the Arabs. An enchanting rhythm swept over us, as the sound of tortured stringed instruments ebbed and flowed. Joyous and plaintive; passionate, seductive. Unashamed of itself, it stirred, deep beneath the skin.

Through half-closed eyes, I watched the Bedouin and the child. Caught up in the unsettling music, she began to struggle against his fatherly embrace until, like water through a broken dam, she poured across his lap. A spark of grace seemed to pass through her as her toes touched the floor.

She began to dance, with the old man watching her in simple adoration. She spread her small arms softly to her sides, first one, then the other. In perfect time with the warming rhythm, her hips began to rise and fall, a child’s parody of adult sensuality. The movement, small and tentative at first, grew with the music, and she scanned the crowd for admiring faces. She saw my drowsy smile, and laughed.


The door opened suddenly at the end of the coach, and a portly, middle-aged Pakistani emerged from the din. He hopped and stumbled into the aisle with his carton of refreshments pressed against a half-raised thigh. His young Sri Lankan assistant followed, fighting with the access door behind them and muttering under his breath. In a tightly swung arc, the carton’s weight brought the vendor to what should have been his first customer, an urbane Saudi gentleman immaculately attired in Biblical polyester. But the gentleman recoiled as the carton of stock landed with an assertive thud on his armrest. At the same time, the assistant lost his battle with the door and plowed into his supervisor, who in turn thrust the carton onto the hapless passenger’s spotless white robe.

The Saudi glared at the filthy container pinning him to his seat. His anger surfaced a moment later, and rumbled. The Sri Lankan’s dark eyes flitted nervously among the passengers. I looked away, unable to cope with Laurel and Hardy in third-world translation. Once again, I let the desert, the train, and the music lull me to complacency.


“Hi! Hoe are you? Fine? Fine? Hoe are you?” The vendor seized my hand and shook it vigorously, with an engaging, crooked smile across perfectly straight teeth.

“I’m fine. Fine…thank you…and how are you doing…this weekend?” My voice bounced along above our locked and bobbing hands. I struggled out of my stupor and tried not to stare at the fascinating stains on his once-white shirt. “What happened to the fast train?” I asked, reclaiming my hand.

A muddled cloud dampened his sparkle. He looked down at the largest stain, disoriented.

“I thought they were going to put on a fast train to Riyadh,” I explained. “Sometime this week, wasn’t it?”

“Fast? Train? No. No fast train. Ah, yes! Apter one month, fast train apter one month.” His tone was more authoritative than it needed to be.

“Oh, it’s a month now, is it? That’ll be some time before the Second Coming, I guess.” I tugged absently at loose threads, winning my battle with guilt. This was my time for soaking up the Kingdom, for peaceful contemplation. Society and manners would just have to wait; school, in short, was out.

“Fast train. Apter one month. New. All new. Different. All new and different.” Each word was a scaled mountain. I gestured that I had no need of refreshments, he echoed a few good-byes, and I waved foolishly, immediately regretting my lack of Judeo-Christian charity.

The large man shouldered his wares and pushed on, with his assistant trailing meekly behind him. After the dark perma-pressed trousers ambled out of sight, a handful of coins clinked against the seat’s metal parts. They came to a muffled landing on the threadbare carpet that ran the full length of the coach. The Sri Lankan’s square shoulders fell to the floor, and his bony hands darted frantically across the wine-colored runner silently retrieving the coins. With each movement of his lean back, printed flowers danced on his silk shirt against the glaring overhead light.

Then the music stopped.

The silent backwash was instantly flooded with train clatter and conversation in half a dozen tongues. With the little dancer cuddled on his lap, the old Bedouin turned a deeply furrowed, desert-worn face to the rear of the coach. He stared expectantly at a small space where seats had been removed to create a place for prayer. His heavily brilliantined head of jet-black hair tossed a pungent, sweet scent into the lingering bouquet of gamy chicken and spice.

Beyond the polished hair, a lithe Saudi teenager sprang to his full, imposing height. As he stepped into the aisle, his head-dress slipped awkwardly to one side. Long fingers reached up to adjust the flowing, white sumada, setting it more securely on the embroidered skull cap. He repositioned the simple black crown that held it in place, then tossed the loose fall back over his shoulders. Tugging gently at the soft, white cloth, he brought it to a jaunty peak over his high forehead. Suddenly, he bent down over his friend, who had looked away from the narrowing horizon still glowing across the desert. They whispered mischievously to each other; then the towering youth turned to walk up the aisle and join the others for prayer. His right hand seemed to pull him along, swaying limply out in front.

As he passed, another young Saudi greeted my obvious curiosity from across the aisle. He had the face of a cherub oddly punctuated with a scraggly beard.

“You are Muslim?” His accent in English was soft, his manner gentle.

“No. Ana masihi,” I said, returning the language favor. Messianic, I said—a charming, primal word for Christian, with portentous possibilities.

“Titkallam ‘arabi?”

“Shweya bass. Adrus—I’m learning Arabic, but I still can’t speak it very well,” I recited in textbook Arabic.

“Lazim tisallim—You must be Muslim. You, you will become Muslim.”

“Why?” I said in English, stifling an indignant chuckle.

“Because the man is not happy.” Just then he seemed to take on a guru’s glow. “The man is not happy,” he repeated, “because there are many changes. Some are good, but together they are not good. Islam will help you to be happy. Lazim tisallim—you must become Muslim.” Judging from his unfailing grin, it had made him very happy indeed.

“But how do you know, in this country, if a woman is beautiful?” I challenged without meaning to, this time.

“Lazim tisallim. Then you will know.”

“Inshallah—God willing,” I said, to respect and to end the conversation.

“Inshallah,” he replied, and stood for prayer-call as two columns of black cloth floated between us.

I turned toward the rich ochre tones filtering through mottled glass, and counted five camels in the distance. They were running fluidly across the sand, their legs gathering, reaching, gathering and reaching. In my mind, I could hear the music playing again; and my own muscles flexed and relaxed, over and over, as I watched the camels.

The forward thrust in the neck, the supple flow. Legs gathering, reaching, gathering—

“It's a show,” I whispered to no one in particular. The dark eyes smiled at me again over the top of the seat. “It’s the Greatest Show on Earth,” I said, smiling back. I thought of black columns, and floated between the desert and the dream.

Thrust, flow, gather, reach—

Alhamdulillah.

Thrust, flow, gather, reach—

Praise God.

And I slept.

© Copyright 2008 by Cary Kamarat . All rights reserved.

Please share your travel experiences and impressions by clicking on the word ‘comments’ below. Alternatively, send your comments to the author directly at dinosasha@juno.com.

American Powwow

--November, 2008: Nanticoke Indian Country, Delaware

Powwow is the Native American way of visiting with old friends and making new ones. In the time between two harvests, the Nanticoke Indian Powwow brought the nations together beneath towering stands of maple, oak, and pine. It was a day when the rhythms of the drum connected old and new Americans with each other, with Mother Earth, and with Spirit, in the Indian way.

I had driven inland about ten miles from the Delaware coast, to the town of Millsboro. Down the road from the Nanticoke Museum, I parked in a large clearing bordered by lush walls of sassafras and grapevine hung with over-ripe fruit. Smiling volunteers guided me to where newly painted tractors pulled the long carts that carried visitors from their cars to the ceremonies deep in the woods.

I chose to walk along the trail to spend more time with sweet, rich country smells. Between one tractor and the next, there was just enough time to imagine what it was like to live on this fertile land in the time of the First Nations, walking toward the Powwow grounds with the drumming and music getting closer and closer.

When I reached the crowded clearing, it reminded me of one of those little villages in Europe that go from town to country in a few short steps—no tapering off, no suburbia, no milling around on the edge of town. Look one way, and it’s countryside, wild and free; look the other, and it’s the bustle of civilization—or in this case, what looked like the social event of the year. The dances and honor songs hadn’t even begun, but the event was clearly in full swing.

Scanning the crowd, I realized how much the American Indian Powwow has come to resemble a really large church picnic, at least in Nanticoke Country. Not altogether inappropriate, since the United Methodist Church had provided lots of manpower and logistic support for the event. But in the midst of all that apple-pie familiarity, there was something else going on.

I could see that the Powwow had done more than gather in the Nanticoke Nation. The range of traditional dress ran from mere traces—a ribboned fringe, a hair-tie, a feather—to full if not flamboyant attire; and there was a very full racial and ethnic range of people sporting all the variations. It was obvious that truly all the nations the Nanticoke had embraced throughout the years—including the tribes of Europe and Africa—had been duly gathered in.

I thought of all the Americans I’ve known who have claimed Indian heritage, from one-half or one-quarter, down to even the tiniest percent. In a sense, all of us must have a certain share in our common Native American heritage, simply by virtue of having been born in Indian country. After all, people of European background claim African heritage by birth on African soil; and humankind is tribal, global and everything in between. Enlightened by my Sunday morning epiphany, I no longer felt like an outsider looking in. Neighborly ease and friendly folks helped me feel welcome as I went off in search of severed roots.

I had been advised to bring my own chair, since Powwows don’t always have enough seating for all comers. A blanket was all it took to reserve a place in the dancers’ circle, on the benches just inside the roped-off arena. These were filled to capacity, along with much of the outside ring of folding chairs. Some spectators sat as if they were there for the duration, chatting as comfortably as on a home visit. But the sitting and rising of a constantly milling crowd seemed to give everyone the rest they needed, when they needed it. There was a clear sense of ‘go with the flow’ that made room for all important things. I followed the crowd through a pervading scent of pine, toward the beckoning smell of barbecue and fry bread.



For all the heavenly smells, I had a devil of a time finding plain fry bread with nothing on it. I wasn’t looking for the taco variety, or barbecue—just that deep-fried doughy experience so bad for the arteries but so good for the soul. When I finally got around to burying half my face in all the soulful goodness, I got several understanding grins from passers-by. One woman teased, “Good, isn’t it?”—winking as if we were old friends from way back—her long, dark braids falling gracefully over a sky-blue dress, down to the matching fringed blanket she carried over her arm. She seemed to accept the muffled enthusiasm of my choked reply as all the response that was needed.

I had missed the morning service that opened the Powwow, and was told there had been nothing particularly ‘Native-traditional’ about it. “Just a United Methodist service,” according to my angel of information. I could never understand how a faith imposed by conquerors could develop such firm roots that they managed to survive such a long history of abuse. But faith and love seem to dwell comfortably in the present, along with the Powwow.

The Grand Entry—an opening parade of elders, dancers, and organizers into the arena—is another positive, modern twist on potentially oppressive memories. Preceded and honored by the American flag and other banners, the entry seems to carry no negative trace of its forerunner, which was the forced procession through town announcing Indian dances for public amusement. There is, indeed, a very strong sense of honor and decorum as the flag, normally carried by U.S. Veterans, signals respect for the duality of modern Native American existence. There is both respect for this country and for all who have fought for it as well as memorial honor for all the ancestors who have fought against it.

The song that framed the Grand Entry seemed to meld everything physical and spiritual around us. Chief Norwood had handed me a kind of holy-card along with his welcome:

“Jesus Loves You, Celebrate! God is Love. He wants you to remember your Spirit...”

And with the sudden silence still reverberating at the end of the procession, an opening prayer carried the same American Indian sensibility forward, into the dance:

“God of all creation and of all people, we come together today to worship you...”

The dancers had all been encouraged to wear traditional clothing, but no one was left out when the moment came. And there were dances for everyone—the gentle, understated movement of the women’s dance, the informal solemnity of the dance for veterans, the stumbling innocence of the dance for tiny tots, the dazzling color and bold strength of the warrior’s dance. The list went on, with experienced and novice performers all following behind Head Dancers. The routines for particular steps—snake, buffalo, trot dances—could be followed and learned on the spot, with leaders allowed to make a complete circle before others joined in.

The ceremonial drumming and vocables were ideal accompaniment for a leisurely stroll through the broad array of arts and crafts—pottery and jewelry, paintings, wall-hangings and dream-catchers, shawls and ribbon shirts.

Mother Earth’s Own Herbal Therapy offered natural herb packs for aroma therapy and the relief of pain. Artist Eli Thomas handed me his card, a torn bit of matting board that looked more artistic than torn. “The earth is our mother, the sun is our brother, nothing stands alone,” he said, explaining one of his paintings. Mark Barfoot sat sociably engrossed in his craft, among love flutes, dreamer drums, and lionheart knives hewn from elk bone. He shared a trade secret as he tightened a drumskin: “Elk skin’ll last for seven generations. Deer won’t last more than about two years. So I use elk skin. I just put aloe round the rim skin, and it’s a lifetime guarantee.”

As I watched a few relaxed browsers through the web of a large dream-catcher, I couldn’t help wondering how differently things might have turned out if only, after the first Thanksgiving, our country’s first two nurturing cultures had continued to respect and learn from each other. If only, instead of conquering the West, we had somehow managed to build it together.

From that rarefied perspective, an old dream-catcher legend came to mind:

Many years ago, on the Great Plains, an elder had a vision. Iktomi, the great teacher, appeared in the form of a spider, and began to spin a web with the old man’s willow loop. As he spun, he talked about the circle of life—our passing from infants to children, and on to adults, then our final return to infancy in old age.

“But in each stage of life,” Iktomi said, spinning his words, spinning his web, “there are both good and bad things. If you focus on the bad, you will go the wrong way. But if you pay attention to what is good, you will go in the right direction.”

The teacher finished his web and handed it to the elder. “You see,” said the teacher, “it is a perfect circle with a hole in the center. You may use this web to help your people. If you follow the Great Spirit, the web of life will capture your good dreams, but the evil ones will fall through the hole and will no longer be a part of you. Make good use of your dreams.”

· http://www.elithomasart.com/
· http://www.turtleislandarts.com/, http://www.wolfcreekart.com/
· Mother Earth’s Own Herbal Therapy, (570)-436-0012

© Copyright 2008 by Cary Kamarat . All rights reserved.

Please share your travel experiences and impressions by clicking on the word ‘comments’ below. Alternatively, send your comments to the author directly at dinosasha@juno.com.

WATCH FOR NEW POSTINGS AT THE END OF EACH MONTH.

The Dragon's Cave--a Traveler's Tale of Euro-Jazz

--October, 2008: Barcelona

La Cova del Drac (The Dragon’s Cave) first opened its doors to jazz artists and their patrons in Barcelona back in the 1920s. It was a time when transplanted Americans and Europeans brought a special kind of energy to the Catalan capital. Today they’d be just as likely to make the two-hour drive up to the French hypermarchés, for some bargain shopping just across the border. But back then, they brought a new wave of music to town.

By the end of the decade, the Parlophon label had recorded some of the new artists. Philippe Brun, the first major jazz trumpeter from France, was beginning to transport a quality sound southward across the Pyrenees. Jack Hylton’s orchestra had crossed the English Channel to entertain the crowd at the World’s Fair with its own commercial brand of pop-jazz. Sam Wooding had brought his band over from New York, passing up a chance to open at the Cotton Club in favor of a European tour.

The Harlem Renaissance is a tough act to follow, even when you’re walking on-stage over half a century later. I wasn’t really sure I was all that up-to-snuff when Jordi, my good friend and budding agent, brought me for a first glimpse of La Cova del Drac. We parked his tiny SEAT—Spanish cousin to the better-known Italian FIAT—against the high curb, and all six feet of me thrust into the effort of crawling out of our motorized can of beans. It was the economy model, which meant there was no interior paneling. You could see down to door metal from your low-grade vinyl, minimalist passenger seat as you pushed off for a landing on the sidewalk.

Once we got on our feet, a few older cobblestones glistened through the worn pavement, massaging the thin soles of my dancing shoes. Cold radiated off the stones underfoot, and off the beautifully aged, chipping masonry that seemed to close in around us on the narrow street—like a strangely appealing medieval vice.

“Doncs, clar…you can start with your standards,” Jordi advised. With his broad Barcelona vowels, he sounded like the Catalan version of a New Yorker who knows the score. “Però, home…sooner or later you’re going to have to do some of your own songs. If you really want to go over, if you want to last, you need to sing your own material here, something new.”

I knew he was right. This was the land of singer-songwriters. The medieval troubadour spirit that had tuned Catalunya’s musical heartstrings still lingered, long past its ancient hey-day. On the one hand, music was still encouraged here, in more and subtler ways than in many other places, and with a passion that was and still is widespread among the general populace. On the other hand, it is a discerning public; and no one gives out approval Christmas-wrapped.

“They’re my translations of some old jazz standards,” I rallied; I still felt I had something worth sharing. “I’m the troubadour now, and the tradition we’re talking about is called ‘Trad’. Nobody’s ever heard these songs in Catalan. That’s new.”

“Què dius, ara…sure we have. What’s her name…Nuri… daixonses…. She does ‘Jim’, she does—I don’t know what else she does but she does it so don’t say we don’t have it,” he rattled on, very New York.

“But it’s too clean,” I argued. “It sounds like a language exercise. There’s feeling, there’s distortion in the jazz voice. You can’t just pronounce things like you’re doing a grammar lesson. My God, there’s enough drugs in Barcelona to give you a jazz language that’s been dragged over the coals. And there’s more than enough Angst. You just don’t hear it in Catalan. Not yet. But you will.” I tried to be coy. I don’t do coy.

“Dragged what? Dragged ungst?” He wrinkled his face as if I’d said something in Mandarin. Then he opened an unassuming door to a passageway through the crumbling wall.

Inside, textures were fresher, a bit newer. The feel of the place reminded me of the first time I had shown these time-worn corners of Mediterranea to my son.

“This place looks like a slum!” he had remarked, steeped as he was in all the garnered wisdom of a teenage lifetime spent in suburban Chicago. I tried to explain how older things were appreciated here, how an exterior beautified with the patina of age was often preserved, while the interior would be gutted and completely remodeled.

“It still looks like a slum,” my son insisted, reliably unimpressed.

But the interior of La Cova del Drac didn’t really live up to that completely remodeled ideal I’d described to my son. It was close enough not to look quite as ramshackle as the entry-way. But even so, the space was cramped and rough-edged. It felt like a long, thin slice cut into a building that had other parts used for other purposes. Vocalists and musicians would need to make their music down at one end of the narrow space, for the chosen few who could squeeze in, while folks way down toward the street side would just have to do their very best to see and hear, squinting through the smoke.

Well, ain’t that jazz.

My friend Jordi had timed our visit to catch the bar off hours. The bartender offered a warm smile over polished glass, the one that had probably gotten him the job. Two lovers near the door shared a publicly intimate moment, leaning toward each other over their wine and pa amb tomaquet—he, holding her hand too eagerly; she, tucking her glossy hair behind a perfect ear, over and over, to punctuate her most thoughtful remarks. Two men sat against the wall at a small table that barely held their full ashtray and empty glasses. Comfortably dressed in undergraduate grunge, they glanced over casually and tossed a quick greeting in our direction. At the table next to theirs, an ageless, undercover drag-queen freshened her black nail polish, and stared intently at us through troweled mascara.

“Bona tarda,” Jordi introduced me, said I was a singer, asked where the boss was, nowhere to be found, maybe this evening, come back—I caught bits and pieces of their city-talk. Lots of Ostres—no, home, no—what on earth did oysters have to do with it? I would definitely be needing an agent soon, if this was how you needed to negotiate just to get past the help. The bartender enjoyed a macho drag on his filtered Gauloise, and then actually took the time to do that smoke-up-the-nostril thing before going on.

“Black train,” he said, in Castilian, and a few other things I didn’t catch because, to tell the truth, I was still childishly amazed at that smoke-up-the-nostril thing.

“Are we taking a train somewhere?” I asked Jordi, very much needing to be at least marginally involved here.

“No, it’s a group,” he explained, slowing down for me. “They’re playing next Thursday night, and there’s an open mike. A good chance to meet a few people, let them hear you.” The bartender smiled again, stretching his graying mustache as far as it would reach across his face. Then he poured me an incredibly generous cognac—at least two fingers more than I could ever have gotten back home. I soon learned that this was a standard Spanish measure, but at the time it was right up there with—you guessed it—smoke up the nostril.

That Thursday night, the smoke was thick in the Dragon’s Cave. Undergrads and drag-queens were far outnumbered by latter-day hippies and other gainfully unemployed locals. They shared the cramped space with a number of casual-business-dress connoisseurs, and one or two winos who had showered and shaved. The entire informal mix pushed against the shallow stage, to within arms reach of the four-piece Black Train, already plugged in and wailing.

The Train carried one hefty Catalan on keyboard who worked well alongside a leaner Frenchman on sax. The Andalusian bass was reliable, but far too self-absorbed to pay any attention to the Chilean drummer, who squinted and mugged across the rims like a Gene Kruppa wannabe. Their nearly-New Orleans rendition of Saints was reminiscent; but it was too Euro-clean to make it all the way to Basin Street. Still, down in the audience, the frontline druggies were all in love and beside themselves with expendable energy. Long hair flowing, short hair bobbing, their gyrations stirred the reek of hash from their jackets into the smoky air around them.

I later came to suspect that it wasn’t as easy nowadays for an American to become a part of the local jazz scene as it probably had been back in the 1920s. Catalunya was coming into its own now, as a region with a strong cultural identity and national aspirations.

In addition, the European market was forging a successful Euro-identity which, among other things, had its own take on jazz, thank you very much. In spite of all the social and political overlays of the time, there was still a very native openness, that evening, encouraging me to reach across the lights to get the drummer’s attention, at the end of the second set. His smooth Chilean accent made me feel right at home—for some of us living abroad, America becomes a state of mind, an experience, and a place that goes from Canada to the tip of Argentina.

“Sure, why not? The mike’s open. What do you want to sing?”

“Do you know Black and Blue—Negro y triste? In C minor?”

He looked vacant, like a well-intentioned computer accessing data. “Negro y triste, Black and blue black and blue black and blue…Claro que sí…sure we know it. I think Louis Armstrong did it.” We both started the melody line together, staring at each other’s mouth. “Wait a minute.” He stepped back to huddle with keyboard and sax. The dark and mysterious bass leaned in their direction. A sculpture in decision making, hands jutting out into space. Latins talking.

The drummer scuttled back. “G minor,” he said, as if an important bargain had just been struck.

“I think C minor’s better for my voice, more expression. What, is it easier in G minor or something?”

“No, hombre,” he looked away, wounded to the quick, sounding very Castilian all of a sudden. Here I was, not even a musician, just a singer, how did I dare.

“G minor, fine, G minor. I can do it.” I forced a smile.

The drummer smiled back, with the distinct air of victory that comes from making someone an offer he can’t refuse. Which he had, and which I couldn’t.

“Lluna que cau, malament, vida d’esclau…” From the very first measure, every countenance was turned toward the narrow stage way off in the corner; and I was scared. Did they know it? My, but the looks were strange. Bemused. What’s this, behold a relic? It wasn’t at all what I had expected, unless it was just me not being able to handle the unknown. At long last, the applause was encouraging, but with a decidedly courteous edge to it, behind a few smiles of amazement. Oh my Stars and Garters what am I doing here?

But the musicians—the musicians without end, the one-true musicians—actually wanted me to do one more. Was it genuine admiration, or merely a desire to give the North American upstart just a little more rope? They made it easier to negotiate the next number.

Sweet Georgia Brown, C minor; everybody was happy.

In translation, there wasn’t much about sweet, little Georgia that remained down-home as we know it. She became Sweetie Banyols, from Girona province, who tasted like honey on berries, and left all her lovers lickin’ their fingers—an image that sounded far more playful, much less purple and raunchy in Catalan than it generally might in American. God Bless our Puritan Heritage.

When I sang that the only men who didn’t love Sweetie were the dead ones, a general cheer went up. Bells and alarums. I got to see my audience the way I wanted them, no more charity. They wanted to hear it again; and even the well-coifed winos sang along.

My twenty minutes of fame came to an end, and I spotted Jordi at the end of the bar. I swam through an ocean of smiles over to where he stood, comparing boots and belts with yet another angel in black lipstick.

“How was it for you,” I asked, somewhat appropriately. And Jordi launched into an eager evaluation.

“That’s what you need to do, you need to make it our jazz. Dolça Banyols…és fantastic, això…Ostres…” and he started singing, relishing the line where Sweetie was just the finest beauty in Baix Empordà.

“But what happened with the first one?,” I asked him. “It was strange. I didn’t know how to react.”

“What do you mean you didn’t know how to react—they didn’t know how to react. We got no slaves in Barcelona, not even ex-slaves. We just had a lot of people in jail for trying to speak their mother’s language. Mare de Déu. Not too long ago, too; it’s different here.” He got serious. I didn’t think I liked him that way.

“But that’s another story,” I offered, trying to find a tone that let him know it was a story I cared about.

“Yeah, another story, yeah… Hey, how do you like my boots?,” he bounced back, literally. “I got ‘em from a Barcelona queen.” He grinned and winked at no one in particular.

I glanced down at the spotless, red patent-leather pushing up against his frayed blue jeans. “You’ll go far,” I said.

“Déu n’hi do! You too.” His chin gestured toward the door, and he pushed me out with a rubbery smile that said go on, get outa here buddy.

I walked out into the damp, chilled air. It was after midnight, tomorrow was work, but people still staggered or danced in and out of the club. They were in couples, small groups, larger groups. Nobody walked alone, except for the American.

One happy American. Hailing a cab. Grinning like a cowboy at the harvest moon.

© Copyright 2008 by Cary Kamarat . All rights reserved.

Please share your travel experiences and impressions by clicking on the word ‘comments’ below. Alternatively, send your comments to the author directly at dinosasha@juno.com.

WATCH FOR NEW POSTINGS AT THE END OF EACH MONTH.