About Me
- Troy
- Troy Nahumko is an award-winning author based in Caceres, Spain. His recent work focuses on travels around the Mediterranean, from Tangier to Istanbul. As a writer and photographer he has contributed to newspapers and media such as Lonely Planet, The Globe and Mail, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Toronto Star, The Irish World, The Straits Times, The Calgary Herald, Khaleej Times, DW-World and El Pais. He also writes a bi-weekly op-ed column 'Camino a Ítaca' for the Spanish newspaper HOY. As an ESL materials writer he has worked with publishers such as Macmillan and CUP.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Mending Wall
Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.
They surround us for the better part of our days, whether we are aware of
them or not. We shelter behind them during the brief winter and then take refuge
behind them during the Spanish summer’s long assault. We raise them with bricks, drywall,
words and sometimes just a look. The more famous run through places like the streets of Berlin,
the more infamous divide olive groves on the road to Bethlehem and the more
intimate record our children’s growth on their faces. An unpopular American
president boasts of extending one from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico while
long before a compatriot of his reflected upon repairing one because good walls make good neighbors. Homer, speaking of my namesake wall warned us of raising walls against the will of the immortal gods. When Pope Francis said that building them isn’t Christian, I’m
sure he wasn’t referring to ours because I’m not exactly sure when a Spanish muro
becomes a muralla. Whatever the case, I look out on one every day from my window as it slowly crumbles away.
Its birth was pagan, its adolescence Muslim, its adulthood Catholic and it now languishes
in its retirement in the limbo of the ill-defined secularism of the Spanish democracy. It
may not be as famous as the one that crosses the mountains of China, those built around the same time, like that which surrounds Diyarbakir or even those that protect nearby Avila
from the snows but that doesn’t mean it is less impressive. In many places its
majesty is simply hidden, look up from the square and you only get a glimpse of
it among the add-ons crowding out the Torre de la Hierba. As it encircles the
old town, in some places it no longer only protects but actually forms part of homes
and thus a part of our lives. In deciding to fix the wall, we no longer need to
ask to know what we were walling in or walling out, and to whom we were like to
give offense. By repairing the wall, we have a chance to redefine its use. I’d
like to think we are no longer keeping people out but instead, inviting them
in.
They surround us for the better part of our days, whether we are aware of
them or not. We shelter behind them during the brief winter and then take refuge
behind them during the Spanish summer’s long assault. We raise them with bricks, drywall,
words and sometimes just a look. The more famous run through places like the streets of Berlin,
the more infamous divide olive groves on the road to Bethlehem and the more
intimate record our children’s growth on their faces. An unpopular American
president boasts of extending one from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico while
long before a compatriot of his reflected upon repairing one because good walls make good neighbors. Homer, speaking of my namesake wall warned us of raising walls against the will of the immortal gods. When Pope Francis said that building them isn’t Christian, I’m
sure he wasn’t referring to ours because I’m not exactly sure when a Spanish muro
becomes a muralla. Whatever the case, I look out on one every day from my window as it slowly crumbles away.
Its birth was pagan, its adolescence Muslim, its adulthood Catholic and it now languishes
in its retirement in the limbo of the ill-defined secularism of the Spanish democracy. It
may not be as famous as the one that crosses the mountains of China, those built around the same time, like that which surrounds Diyarbakir or even those that protect nearby Avila
from the snows but that doesn’t mean it is less impressive. In many places its
majesty is simply hidden, look up from the square and you only get a glimpse of
it among the add-ons crowding out the Torre de la Hierba. As it encircles the
old town, in some places it no longer only protects but actually forms part of homes
and thus a part of our lives. In deciding to fix the wall, we no longer need to
ask to know what we were walling in or walling out, and to whom we were like to
give offense. By repairing the wall, we have a chance to redefine its use. I’d
like to think we are no longer keeping people out but instead, inviting them
in.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
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