Chapter 2 – A Village By The Sea
“In order to deliver us from our misery and gloom in Madrid, Mother made some inquiries as to where we could find the famous Spanish sun. We were told to head south to Andalusia. So we boarded a diesel-fueled train fitted with hard wooden benches and rambled across the plains to Córdoba where we were received by equally gray skies and chilly temperatures. A rickety, horse-drawn carriage piloted by an ancient driver took us from the sleepy train station to our hotel. I felt sorry for the mangy horse as it carried us around the ghost town past its crumbling walls. I didn’t know at the time that Córdoba had once been a thriving metropolis and the envy of the world.
We dropped our bags off at the hotel and went to visit the cathedral. I entered the building and received an unexpected surprise: a forest of alabaster columns festooned with colored arches stretched into infinity before me. It was the interior of a huge mosque—the Mezquita—that had been preserved inside the Christian temple. It stole the show from the Catholic structure that was built around it. I felt like I was in the movie set of The Thief of Baghdad and that Douglas Fairbanks would come out of the shadows at any moment and relieve us of our valuables.
I wandered around lost in the dimly lit labyrinth until all of a sudden a light went on. I was immediately blinded by a dazzling structure covered with alabaster conches, roseate stones and domes emblazoned in purple, gold and green. It took my breath away. The apparition itself was the mihrab—the old Mezquita’s center of worship. I was so enthralled by the vision before me that for a moment I forgot the cold. (…)”