Around the world with a laptop

Globe travel writer Tom Haines (thaines@globe.com) sends us periodic dispatches from his adventures on the road.

04/25/2003 12:00

The hills above Tarifa, the southernmost town in continental Europe, tumble toward the Strait of Gibraltar in swaths of soft green. It was here, in the year 711, that the first Muslims crossed the nine miles of fabled sea and stepped ashore a peninsula inhabited by Visigoths, Christians, Jews and faithless others. Today, when the sunlight is strong, the sky blue, villages, even houses, emerge from the hazy Moroccan ridges. In our times, desperate Moroccans, mostly men from isolated regions in the Atlas Mountains, pay mafia traffickers, then wait for their own chance to ply these historic waters in small, unsteady boats. The motivation is not political, or religious, but economic. In Spain, beyond the wind turbines set on Tarifa's hilltops, orange groves and olive fields hold a chance for work. The hopeful huddle and wait for the winds to calm and the waters to flatten, the only time a small boat has a chance of making the crossing. Still, when the boats push off from Africa, the short journey often ends badly, with passengers numbed from hypothermia, or, as happened 20 times last year, drowned. But most days, such drama does not play upon the Strait of Gibraltar. Tarifa, where an engraving in the old town walls still commemorates the expulsion of the last Muslims in 1292, is now one of the world's top windsurfing destinations, a playground for water lovers from Germany and Great Britain, Argentina and America. (Locals, it seems, are not so psyched: the relentless winds are blamed for a high suicide rate.) In tapas bars tucked down alleys in the old town, weary sailors and idling tourists mingle with locals. Opposite a 15th-century church in the town's center, restaurants offer sidewalk tables laden with calamari and fish, pulled from the sea hours before. On one glorious April afternoon, stiff gusts spun the turbines and massive freighters sailed relentlessly between the two continents. Just offshore the white beach that stretches west of Tarifa for miles, vacationers hoisted sails and skipped over whitecaps because, on that day, the wind was good.

04/24/2003 10:19

Up a narrow alley, away from a steep pedestrian street in the heart of Granada's old town which is crowded with shops pedaling glass tea cups and Moroccan slippers, Arabic script is carved above a wooden doorway. Below, a sign written in Spanish advises visitors to ring at the next door. There another sign in Spanish notes that the family on the second floor is a "Christian family." I rang the lower buzzer, hoping to find Sheik Hamid, leader of the city's most influential mosque. A voice answered and I asked for the Sheik. I speak little Spanish, and that badly. "I'll be right down," the man answered in English. He opened the far door, the first I'd arrived at, and welcomed me in. He was not the Sheik. But, speaking good English, slowly, he invited me to take off my shoes and sit on a carpet in one of the mosque's prayer rooms. For the next fifteen minutes, the man, a Spanish muslim named Musa, named influential Muslims in town who may be willing to meet me. He glanced regularly at the clock. It was 10:09, then 10:13. "It's okay," the man said, "I still have two minutes." I asked him if Spain, once ruled by Muslims for eight centuries, holds a special attraction to people from today´s Islamic lands. He searched for the right words, then explained that yes, there is something in this place that is special. It was a good conversation. But it was wrong. I should not have been speaking English. This man should not have been speaking English. He should have spoken Spanish, and I should have been able to keep up with him. Here I was, stepping into his world, and yet, because we were speaking my language, I felt, if not in control, at least not in so foreign a setting. That is the danger, perhaps, of the spread of English. At its best, it helps people communicate and tell their stories to one another. But for an American abroad, it can too quickly recast the world in terms found closer to home. "It is the language of money," Musa said, "and so we learn to speak it." I said "gracias" to Musa and shook his hand. As I pulled on my shoes, Musa dashed upstairs to the mosque´s main prayer room, where a group of Spaniards, Moroccans and others awaited his call to prayer. I stepped from the Mosque and found Musa, already standing on a small balcony above me. His soft, deep voice chanted rhythmically, filling the night with the sound of Arabic.