Christmas Tales

Bir Ali, Yemen

Different places, different times, different Christmases. This week's Camino a Ítaca goes back to the beaches along the coast of Yemen in search of the Three Wisest of Men. Click over to the original piece in Spanish or read the English version below. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

Fingers of white sand scratched up the black, volcanic mountains flanking the half-moon bay. The sharp contrast gave the impression of an inverted black and white photograph of snow-capped mountains. Dun desert scrub extended beyond the lifeless bastions of rock and framed the image, making it seem even more like an old print from time gone by. Down below on the beach, a pair of unaccompanied camels plodded along the shore as the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Aden rolled out towards Somalia and the horn of Africa 300kms away across the strait.  

It was Christmas Eve and we were camping outside the tiny fishing village of Bir Ali on the near virgin coast of Yemen in hopes that the wild dolphins that frequent the bay would make an appearance while we were snorkeling.  

It was a reverse pilgrimage of sorts, the inverse of the scene that you see in so many homes at this time of year. This is because, according to local lore, one of history’s great enigmas began here. Those one-hit-wonder pop stars of classical antiquity that get only a brief, obscure mention in one of the gospels, yet whose image can be seen trotting towards miniature mangers all over the world. It was from this corner of Arabia Felix, that one of the Three Wise Men began his journey.  

It’s a claim that becomes all the more plausible if you consider the fact that this is one of the few places in the world that produces two of their three gifts, frankincense and myrrh. Rather than coming to us though, we had come to them. With what, I wasn’t so sure. 

In between swims I decided to climb up the craggy stones and see for myself just what was left of this biblical port that used to serve three different continents. Just a few years before, amphorae dating back to the first century that had sunk with one of the trade ships that ran from here to Africa, India and beyond had been found out on the reef. The draw of the story kept me going. 

Archaeology though, even on such an amateur level, is never easy and even more difficult in a country so beset with inner conflict, war and strife. Unless we found some more amphorae, goods like wine were impossible to find and the few cans of warm Heineken that we had managed to find on the black market looked like they had fallen off of the back of a truck, both literally and metaphorically. Bir Ali’s days as a major centre of trade between continents were long behind it. 

I finally reached the top and found nothing. Unless it was buried away under the sand, any real trace of what once was had disappeared. Their trail, and story, ended here. 

Years later I would find myself once again face to face with the kings, or at least their remains, this time in Cologne, Germany. Though their tale began in Yemen, it wasn’t until much later that they were ‘rediscovered’ in Europe in the fourteenth century and then go on to become central to so many Christmas carols, mantels and children’s wish lists. 

It was then, amidst the heaving Christmas crowds jostling to get a glimpse of the ornate golden coffer of bones, that the epiphany came to me. It’s not the facts that necessarily matter. It’s not necessarily even what actually happened. It’s the story and the power they have to keep us dreaming and rolling on. 

The True Doctrine

Conservatism's new defender, Isabel Ayuso

As 2020 limps to its end I see swarms of bats surrounding the frog symposiums that are advising the worm conventicle in the great corner of mud. The end may be near,  but end well it won't. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at the fall of the Great Cheeto and steaming pile of excrement he leaves behind. Click over to read the originally published Spanish version or read the English version below. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

The heathens are at the gates. Their sordid encampments line the defensive walls of long-standing institutions, from the gluttonous streets of Washington to el Pazo de Meiras, el Palacio de la Zarzuela and the banks of the rio Cinca. Their long-planned assault will leave no one, born or unborn, unscathed and no establishment untouched. Segregatedmadrasas run by smarmy Opus Dei sycophants are frantically looking for new sponsors and are beefing up security. Even in the Sierra de Madrid, surveillance has had to be stepped up at the Prince of Vallecas’ retreat in Galapagar.

Gente de bien in their desperation have been seen fleeing across the Pyrenees en route to Switzerland with their passports and bank books held firmly between clenched teeth. Those without the means or Swiss bank accounts are being rallied to take up arms in their stead to do battle in each new sortie of the culture wars.

With the impending fall of Christendom's greatest defender of conservative ideals, the twice divorced reality TV star with a penchant for pornstars, a great howl of grief has been heard across the conservative world.

In between shock, disbelief and outright delusion, rallies are being held in Atlanta, Warsaw, Budapest, Downing Street and la calle Bambú in support of the man who once proudly boasted that if Ivanka wasn’t his own daughter that he’d perhaps be dating her. Like it or not, conservatism's greatest champion since Henry Kissinger and his network of friendly dictatorships on the ‘right’ side of the political spectrum is going to have to tell the movers how to pack up his vast collection of remote controls and take-out menus.

Things look grim and losing the election might turn out to be the least of Trump’s worries. Calls have been put in to the self-exiled former King of Spain about the best 'clubs' with dinner service in Abu Dhabi and tentative hotel reservations have been made in Riyadh in case the FBI come knocking. This season of the most crass Reality Show the world has ever known is coming to an end.

The smoking detritus of the global political landscape left in his oily wake reminds us where he’s taken us. A legacy that leaves a world in which we see ideas that once would have been called outright lunacy, now debated and even considered, rebranded as alternative facts.

The art of lying is nothing new to politics and politicians. Nevertheless, Trump’s incorporation of the dictatorial, thuggish technique of doubling down on lies when confronted and then threatening his accusers with veiled violence is something new to press conferences outside of Pyongyang. And it works.

It’s a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed around the world. Admirers copy his tweets into Google translate and paste them into local contexts, railing against those who then challenge them. Chats from high-ranking ex-military officials openly discussing killing off 26 millionreds, children included, barely register a blip in the media in the post-Trump world. Opponents are now enemies and are to be dealt with accordingly.

Meanwhile, strategists working for the opposite side of the spectrum plot to create Orwellian Ministries of Truth in supposed attempts to stop the ‘fake news’ of their opponents.

Paraphrasing Ambrose Beirce at the beginning of the last century, there are those who are enamoured of existing evils and those who wish to replace those evils with others. The genie is out of the bottle and with the brutal bleeding hangover no one remembers where the instructions are to put it back in.

Pastel a-la Celaá

Crucifixes in classrooms

Next stop on the Camino a Ítaca is a look at how you can indeed have your cake and eat it too...as long as you 'believe'. You can read the English below or click over to the original in Spanish. You can also find the Spanish version in  PDF format at the bottom of the page. Tambien se puede ver el original en castellano abajo en PDF.

I’ve always loved proverbs. Like linguistic snapshots, they are able to say more than a thousand words in so few. It also intrigues me that many languages tell their stories in similar refrains. In both Spanish and English we search for needles in haystacks, look for worms early in the morning and recognize that it’s always best to have a bird in hand than many beyond your reach.

It therefore came as quite a surprise then to me when I couldn’t find a satisfying Spanish equivalent to the English proverb, ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it too.’ A metaphor we have all wished for at some time in our lives.

I searched for sometime until I finally found something similar yet that meant the direct opposite. It’s a saying that suggests that you can in fact have your cake and eat it too. The proverb is, ‘la escuela concertada,’ also known as private schools that are financed with public funds. That curious Spanish institution, or better said, hangover from darker times that freely allocates public funds to institutions that, in their majority, answer to a foreign city-state. Schools that gladly take the money given to them by the state yet who reluctantly, and at times directly refuse to abide by rest of the rules and regulations dictated by Spanish law.

The ninety-seventh odd change to the Education law has brought religion and its place in schools to the forefront once again. A revolution complete with beastly scenes in parliament of deputies shouting ‘freedom’, somewhat ironically demonstrating our Darwinian linage with apes. Simians protesting that their rights will somehow be infringed upon by the supposed threats to their ‘cake’ and their ‘right’ to segregated schools that concur with their values.  

But what about the rights of the kids?

Parents may choose the tell their children that the world is flat or that the virus doesn’t exist. The state however cannot classify children as Catholic, Muslim or Jewish, just as it would be absurd to see them classified as Socialists, Monarchists or Real Madridists. Children are children and balanced, equal access to quality education is their right.

The cognitive dissonance that must reverberate in some of the kids’ heads must be extreme. In one class they learn about the millions of years that it has taken for different species to evolve, only to be told in another that the earth was created in six days with a sky god taking a siesta on the seventh? In one class they learn that men and women have equal rights, yet in the next they find that women were fashioned from the rib of a man and should be submissive in learning and to their husbands. It’s the equivalent of going from astronomy class to astrology or from chemistry to alchemy class.

Then there are the supposedly distinct values that these private fiefdoms espouse. Schools funded by the state should focus on the values that are encompassed in the constitution and not be the source of fear and abuse. Telling children that their friend, aunt or neighbor will spend eternity broiling in a lake of fire for being non-believers or loving whoever they want is child abuse. Twisted cruelty like this is for some reason permissible in other temples, but it cannot be in temples of learning.

The Spanish education system is grievously flawed, but running away from its defects and creating splinter groups helps no one. It’s time to extract imaginary problems from the debate and focus on real, tangible change because no se debe querer estar en misa y repicando. (be in mass and ringing the bells at the same time. My closest translation.)