Terry invites us to her home; it is newly rebuilt in an old colonial style. The house is open to the sky, so that her kitchen and living room surround an open courtyard. The weather never changes here. Her walls are adorned in the stories of her storied life; African masks given to her by heads of state, portraits of humanitarian political leaders from the Balkans, a Central Asian statuette. From the outside, her home looks like the rest of Granada. She lives on an ordinary street, and when we leave, a number of Granadans greet her.
We ask an American ex-pat to help find us a guide. Later, we see her at the hotel and she shows us an apple. Alison holds a small thing, a dainty little green apple that’s really yellowish-brown. "You know," she says, "somebody gave me this apple today. I'm really happy whenever I get an apple. You know, they don't really grow here."
She explains that apples cost between 6 to 12 cordobas, which is about 30 to 60 cents. "Wages are different here, so you have to adjust the way you live, you can't just buy apples. They are a fortune."
Alison moved to Granada from Connecticut, to work on her master's thesis in tourism management.
"Would you ever consider staying here?" I ask. I meant forever. "I don't know," she says. "I love it here. I mean look at this place." She kind of rolls the tiny apple around in her hand, looking at it. Out the door, horse-drawn carriages on the street, gliding fork-tailed flycatchers in the air. The smell of dinner, the perfect air.
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