Back
at the flat in Madrid, my cousin and her husband arrived from Grenoble
to join us for tapas and the Millennium New Years in Madrid - and who
wouldn't? In Madrid, the fiesta is king, and the king of fiestas is the
one that only happens every thousand years. Susie and Cristiano are "professional
expatriates," preferring to jump from country to country; finding balance
in that lifestyle only true expats can pull off: skiing, sailing, traveling
and working.
They
speak five languages between them, Cristiano six, no less than Ralph. They
seem comfortable anywhere. They listened as Lily asked Ralph, "what
do Spanish say when they swear?"
"Well
in Spain, it's a matter of 'what you shit on...'" He continued, "For example,
you can say 'I shit on God.' Or you can also say, 'I shit on the milk.'
If you really want to make an impact, you can say, "I shit on the salty
sea', but the really, really bad thing to say in Spain is, 'I shit on
the wafers that you eat in church.'"
He stood up and waved his hands and took a sip of whiskey and said, "People
will really be looking at you if you say, 'I shit on everything that moves.'"
On
New Years Eve, we ate olives and lomo ham and watched the world
as most everybody did, and when the bells in the Plaza Mayor rang twelve
times, we ate 12 grapes, as the rest of Madrid did. 12 grapes for twelve
months of luck, but since the grapes had seeds and the bells of Madrid
rang quite quickly, the lot of us were stuck stuffing ourselves, and swallowing
seeds, and Cristiano said, "Can we drink the champagne now?" 
Then it was black-tie and off to the Hotel Continental just before Madrid
exploded into fiesta - five hundred Spaniards, and the strange mix of
expatriates and Madrid locals who comprise Ralph's band of night prowlers
and partiers. I had met Giora, originally from Israel, before, and he
took to Lily's interest in his country. "You like Israel? I take you
to Israel. I show you all the places to go." "You look like you're Spanish,"
we said.
But
what did a Spaniard look like? After all, Spanish is Jewish, Moorish,
Carthaginian, Roman, Gypsy, Gothic, Greek and Mediterranean. Giora is Madrid because he lives for the wine and the talk. In Spain, it
is called 'Madrugada' - the time between midnight and dawn, the time of
life and fun and cafes and smoky bars.
El
Andalus; Moorish for modern-day Spain, was the center of the world
at the turn of the last millennium. Cordoba; the Moorish capital just
south of La Mancha, was flourishing as the world's largest city. I could
ascribe some sort of meaning to this and Madrid at the turn of this millennium.
But it's not Spanish to look in the past. After all, the monuments and
churches of Spain are for the Americans and the Brits (tourism is Spain's
largest industry) and Franco has put a damper on remembering the past.
So,
on New Year's, we lived in the present and drank Spanish wine.
)
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