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 A Year in the World
Book Review
Continued from page 3
Excerpt 3: Savoring Seville
Days in Sevilla.
Days of sweet air like early spring, sky the same blue as the azulejos.
I'm drawn to the Convent of San Leandro in Plaza San Idelfonso because the
afternoon I happen to visit is Saint Rita's Day, patron saint of lost causes.
The church is filled with flowers and praying women, some clutching photographs.
"Suffering mothers all," I say to Ed. They kneel and weep and visit and hold
each other up. In my life, I have never experienced the comfort of laying down
my burden, down at the foot of someone to whom I say I give up, help me.
And I can only wonder at the succor such an act provides. Do they hear God
talking? Do they dance with God? At another door, we place our money on a carved
wooden wheel that spins into the convent. Out comes a wooden box of sweets from
the cloistered nun on the other side.
In the plaza and along the streets, men in yellow slickers
harvest oranges into big burlap sacks. Our shoes on the sidewalks and curbs
stick and slide in juice and pulp. I ask a worker if they will make juice
concentrate or the famous local marmelade. "Neither," he says, "they're too
close to car exhaust. They will go into soaps and perfumes." Oh, great, perfume
with a hint of toxic fumes. Azahar, Arabic for "orange," and then into
Spanish, "la naranja." Here, they drink orange juice like water,
sweetening it with a spoon of sugar. In the cathedral orange garden, where the
Arabs made their ritual ablutions at the fountain before entering the mosque,
the orange trees are intoxicated with birdsong, dripping and heavy on the air.
Even the pigeons look holy....
Back to:
Book review - page 1
Excerpted from:
A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller
by Frances Mayes
Book excerpt copyright © 2006
by Frances Mayes. All rights reserved. | |
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Durant
& Cheryl
Imboden's
