Last month my wife and I were in Spain, in a city I shall call Milesdeperros. We visit this city biannually, staying in a flat kindly loaned to us by dear friends. Milesdeperros is a handsome, self-assured working city. It feels safe, orderly, hospitable to visitors but not in thrall to them. Lately, we have scant interest in going anywhere else. We have seen our share of the world, and experienced more than enough excitement. We have both come under fire in our younger days: twice, in my wife’s case. Once, when she ignored advice and crossed the invisible sectarian frontier on a Belfast street to buy crisps at a newsagent. Again, when she broke curfew to lead a company of trainee nuns down the fire escape of their Jerusalem hotel on a sortie to a nocturnal falafel stand.
The pursuit of food is less hazardous in Milesdeperros, and we save up our modest discretionary income all year to splurge on its abundance of excellent restaurants. Milesdeperros is also a dog-fancier’s paradise, full of fashionable breeds parading themselves on walks. They frequently make detours to greet my wife. She is one of those people who exert an irresistible allure upon dogs, and she keenly reciprocates this canine ardour.
The dog outside the fruteria was different. We spotted it en route to the supermarket. It stood tethered beside the boxes of produce, a tiny, trembling, shaggy mutt; an angry draft excluder yapping at every passing member of its species. It was still there when we came back almost half an hour later and stopped to buy oranges. We feared it had been abandoned.
I took the oranges inside, and hailed the shopkeeper. He is from Pakistan, and welcomes the chance to use his English. Suddenly a diminutive, eccentrically garbed woman bustled past me like a localised tornado and slammed down a selection of purchases on the counter. She proceeded to enact, at furious pace and volume, a one-woman five-act opera – an improvised and extended masterwork of fortissimo melodrama in which every element of the transaction seemingly imperiled her honour, her safety and what fragments remained of her sanity. She embarked upon great arias of indignation. She flung open her purse, upended it, and emptied a cascade of coppers upon the counter with an emotive brio that would have left awestruck the great Yiddish tragedians of yore. The shopkeeper, evidently accustomed to this, waited with placid amiability for her performance to run its course.
I, however, was looking out of the window. I watched as my wife stooped solicitously over the small, shivering dog. I watched as it somehow pulled its lead from its flimsy mooring, then launched itself at a passing schnauzer, barking frenziedly. I watched as she seized the lead to restrain it. I heard her apologetic, repeated cry of “¡No es mi perro!”, as she tried and failed to re-fix the lead, while the dog made a lunge for some other dog every few seconds. This, I thought, is the proverbial good deed that will not go unpunished. Apparently, we now have a dog. A dog with a severe personality disorder.
Finally, the woman at the counter concluded her Grand Guignol production, exited the shop, and stopped, staring, in front of my wife. “No es mi perro,” said my wife. “Si,” said the woman. “Es mi perro.” “Oh, God,” I thought, bracing myself for a torrent of Latin denunication followed by our arrest on a charge of attempted dognapping
Instead, she cheerfully grasped the dog’s lead, and the pair of them oscillated away down the street, jabbering and yelping in tandem.
I have been thinking about this because I wonder how that ultimately cordial episode might have turned out if I were visibly Jewish. I wonder how different altogether our peaceable, relaxing visits to Spain might be.
Perhaps not at all. But I think of the Jews barracked and abused at the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid in February, then forced by security to leave while their tormentors were permitted to stay.
I think of the Jews ejected from an event at a Barcelona bathouse just a few days ago – although at least that institution has since issued a strong condemnation, and barred the organisation responsible.
I think of the welter of such incidents all over Europe. I think of the Palestinian flag that hangs from a balcony a little way along from our borrowed apartment. I allow myself a mordant chuckle at its proximity to a banner displayed by the local Moros y Cristianos society, who celebrate the Catholic recapture of Spain from its Muslim rulers. Not obvious allies. Then again, there is one common interest over which the Inquisition and the Hamas fanclub might conceivably have bonded.
It’s not that I assume any particular individual among the many pleasant people we encounter would suddenly become unpleasant if they discovered I’m a Jew. Rather, that there is no way of knowing who might.
Spain is seeing record visitor numbers as tourists avoid the Middle East. But for some of us the conflict casts a long shadow. Once I was just a holidaymaker. Now, I’m a holidaymaking Jew, warily evaluating every situation on that basis. Adiós to the carefree innocence of those former days.
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