Granada, Spain

by Jonah Goldberg

I follow the smell of my friend David’s sunscreen as we wind through the streets of Granada back to our host mother's apartment; my eyes and ears are consumed by the birds flying overhead.

The small black creatures are swarming like insects, cutting through the air with their sharp wings and two-pronged tails, darting across the sky without stopping, filling the air with harsh, bat-like screeches instead of friendly chirping. The horde, at least two hundred birds strong, has persisted throughout my stay in Granada, and each winged monster in the massive cloud above me is waiting, every last one of them, for the city to die.

I too am witnessing what the birds see, and I talk to David about the little kids who stole our friends’ phones, the merchants that have been interrupting our meals to offer things worthless to us but whose profits are vital for their next meals, and the cracked, vandalized walls of the narrow roads. In this moment, all of Granada seems on the verge of collapse, the people and architecture bound to crumble at any second and be carried out into the ocean by the trickling remains of the city’s rivers.

At night, David and I go out again, and I witness Granada’s hidden majesty. As the birds slowly disappear from the sky, their energetic movement is replaced by the people around me. The alleyways are left in shadow as the boulevards and plazas fill up with friends, families, and couples. Rainbows cascade from the fountains honoring saints and royalty, and I’m laughing with the waiter as we ask for the check at a tapas restaurant.

When the next day begins and the city masks its life again, I smile at the impatient birds, knowing that they’ll be waiting for decades more to come.