Right behind my backyard is
the playground of what used to be my elementary school, and just beyond that is
the creek. Of course we were never allowed near it during recess. But after
school or on weekends I would sometimes go there with my neighborhood friend
and we would try to make it across on the natural stepping-stones without
getting wet, all while incorporating everything we did into the larger story of
our Let’s Pretend game. The grown-ups could cross the creek on a small green
wooden-plank bridge that led to the other neighborhood. Technically I think we
are supposed to be all the same neighborhood, but the creek decidedly divides
us.
When I went away to Harvard,
I lived on the other side of the Charles. Cambridge faces Boston but is removed
from it. From the eighth floor of Leverett F-tower in the evening you can watch myriad
pairs of headlights move along the highways and crisscross the city that is lit
up in all its urban beauty. You can watch Boston live, but you don’t live
there. If you are munching on goodies at the Resident Dean’s study break on the
eighth floor of F-tower, you live in Cambridge. More specifically, you live in
Harvard Square. Normally, you think, Why go into Boston, when on this side of
the river I can eat sinful chocolate-raspberry cake at Finale and slurp raw
oysters at First Printer? When Zachary Quinto is acting in The Glass Menagerie
at the American Repertory Theater and Salman Rushdie is signing books at the
First Parish Church? And then you go into Boston and you think, Why don’t I
come here more often and sit and read in Boston Common? Or eat sesame chicken
in Chinatown or lobster ravioli in the North End?
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| The Charles |
Even when I studied abroad
in Granada, I lived on the other side of the river. The Genil is a sad, mostly
dry little rivulet that divides the main part of the city from a suburban area.
But I still sat by it many a time and thought about Carlos Fuentes and life and
boys as I looked into its glassy surface. The outer area of the city beyond it
wasn’t particularly pretty—although you could still glimpse some of the little
white houses up on the mountain with their orange lanterns—but there was more
space here. The host family I lived with had a garden with a dog and a pool. It
was a thirty-minute walk to the center of town, but it felt worth it to live in
this house with this family.
Now I am living on the
other side of the river again. Just across the Guadalquivir from Sevilla
proper is the old, picturesque neighborhood of Triana. My neighborhood.
Technically Triana is part
of Sevilla. But as Antonio, a doorman at the office where I write, has told me,
“Mira si soy Trianero—que cuando cruzo el puente, me siento extranjero.” (“See
if I’m not from Triana—when I cross the bridge, I feel like a foreigner.”) The
river seems so benign now, the breeze ruffling its surface so it’s hard to tell
which way it’s flowing. But before its tributaries were re-routed, it used to
flood Triana every other year with its angry swells. And even today, as it
flows ever so calmly, it marks an inescapable divide--it is not innocent.
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| The esplanade by the Guadalquivir |
The divide is more evident
than ever on weekends. While on the Triana side old men wear hats and take small
steps with their grandchildren as they walk up and down the length of the Calle Betis, across the way on
Paseo Colón cars roar by in four lanes and young people drink beer and mixed
drinks as dance music blares from the kiosks where they ordered them. While
on Calle Betis people dance flamenco without costumes, across the way on the promenade
down by the river people go jogging and young couples
hug one another to each other with their legs dangling over the water.
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| The crowded esplanade today |
Perhaps I am drawn to the
“other side” of the river out of familiarity. Perhaps I like it because there
are always gems on the other side that you can’t find in the main part of a
city, and not so many people fighting over them. Perhaps I like it just because
then I get to look out over the wide river at the loud streets, the touristic
landmarks, and the people—but I don’t always have to be there. The river gives me breathing space, and inspiration, and
calm. And when I cross it—in either direction—I cross into another world.
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| Flamenco on the steps to Calle Betis, with Sevilla proper in the background across the way |
