Raja Alem - The Dove's Necklace

“Either take me or let me out so I can get in a cab.”

He drove off, in no particular direction, until they found themselves at the highway that led south out of Madrid.

“Please, let me help you. What is it you’re running away from?”

She stared at him for a while and then she told him what she’d seen the night before. “You’re his bodyguard, I’m sure you know all about it. What’s he doing with that key and the man who nearly killed me?”

He was silent for a moment. “I’m glad that you trust me, but the only thing I know is that the sheikh was interested in that grave for some reason. Based on what you just said, I can only assume that he was looking for that key.” She seemed dissatisfied so he elaborated: “A month before you two got here, he came here on his own and went to the cemetery, but he didn’t find what he was looking for. He also went to Toledo for the same reason, I think.”

“Let’s go to Toledo then.”

He hadn’t been expecting that. “Listen, if you think you’re in any danger, then the safest thing to do would be to go in the opposite direction.” He saw the stubborn look in her eye so he started the car.

They drove in total silence along the highway to Toledo, which lay seventy kilometers south of Madrid. They passed the line of fortresses erected by the Muslim rulers of al-Andalus as a barrier between themselves and the Kingdom of Castile.

“Come on, tell me something: something about art, or Andalusia, history, highways, anything.” She seemed amused. “At least we’re following Señora Mirano’s advice. Did you hear her telling me that I had to go to Toledo to see the painting by El Greco in the Church of Santo Tomé? It’s called The Burial of the Count of Orgaz , she said.” He felt for his pistol. “Don’t worry,” she said, laughing, “I’m not planning to do anything bad!” He didn’t say anything. “In any case, I don’t have anything to lose any more even if I do do something bad.”

He relaxed and allowed himself to speak. “If we’re not worried about losing something, that means we don’t deserve to have it in the first place. You’re young and full of life. That in itself is a miracle, and you should be afraid of losing it.”

“The only thing I can lose is the search itself, if I stop trying to find myself. You should have never gotten involved.”

“I’m here to protect you.” The stubborn furrow in his brow met her radiant, if enigmatic, smile; she needed to push things as far they could go: if not to break the monotony, then to test how determined he was to protect her.

“All right, then. We can at least look forward to seeing The Burial of the Count .” She opened the window to enjoy the first breath of release. The soft music, the wind in her air, the endless countryside; it soothed her and she allowed herself to consider the path her life had taken. She’d stumbled from one holding pattern to another, passing by two true loves as she chose a third, leaping blindly into the unknown. Ever since she was a child she’d harbored that suicidal instinct. The only lover she wanted now was herself — it made her laugh how dramatic she was being, but honestly what was wrong with learning to love herself? Had she done all this to punish — who? Her father? Herself? She was young when she’d learned that one wrong turn could take you past the point of no return. She’d called it life’s minefield: one careless step and — boom! Was that what she’d stumbled over during her one and only trip to Nazik the Turkish woman’s basement studio? From now on, she was going to walk the walk and talk the talk — whatever that meant. If the only thing she had left was a last shred of determination, she was going to put it to work to keep herself from going back to where she’d started. At the same time, she knew that the idea of going back to where she’d started was a fantasy. There was no such thing as going back to what had been. If she ever did try to return to her birthplace, she’d find that the city and everyone in it had moved on, in thought and in deed. Nothing was waiting for her exactly as she’d left it; she wasn’t even the same person who’d left. She was in the place best suited to her new and shockingly modern configuration, an island that had shot up to the surface from the bottom of the sea, propelled by a volcanic eruption. She could do nothing except continue to live in places that resembled her, and it was by no means a given that the place that resembled her would be the city in which she’d been born.

She realized that Rafi was watching her. The only thing he could see through the windshield was a single nagging thought: this is a race. His mission wasn’t to take Nora away from her past like she’d asked him to, but the opposite. He had to try to stitch together a moment from her past with a moment from the past of a city that she’d never known, like Toledo. He knew where the connection would come: through art. Or through the suffering or death contained within the art. The constant movement, which resembled her, whose revolutions she fit perfectly like a gear, where she was made whole. He was certain that the only way she could have peace of mind was if she could see herself as a cog in a machine she knew well, the machine that created her dreams and made them come to life. The point wasn’t to go back into the past but to catch up with it at some point in the future. The eternal journey alongside and away from an event that was headed in the same direction as her dreams, as part of that eternal process of change and transformation. She had to have some trust. She knew she couldn’t run away, couldn’t get her hands on people or things. All she could do was hop on at a station and ride through countless moments past.

As they approached Toledo, they saw the red mountain looming on the horizon surrounded by the blue of the Tagus River, which had repelled invaders from time immemorial. The city was like an island atop the great mountain. Rafi could see that Nora was struggling to take it all in.

“Toledo was one of the most important cities in all of Spain during the so-called Golden Age. It was once part of the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba, but King Alfonso the Sixth of Léon and Castile captured the city in 1085. Toledo later became known as a holy city in the seventeenth century, and gained a reputation for being open, tolerant, Eastern …

“It’s full of treasures from when it was the capital of the Spanish Empire. Lots of important historical figures were born here or lived here: El Greco, King Alfonso the Tenth — they call him Alfonso the Wise because he was learned, and started the translation movement in the thirteenth century. They translated Islamic learning into Latin and helped spark the European Renaissance. Toledo was a center of culture and home to three monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. At one point, they lived together in harmony, but then came ghettoization and finally in 1492 the Jews and Muslims were expelled. Any who remained were forced to convert to Christianity in 1500. They used to call these people Moriscos, ‘little Muslims’—another way of saying heretics. Of course, the Christians discriminated against the converts and that’s when they started coming up with ideas like pure bloodlines and heresy trials. From the second half of the fifteenth century onward, they suppressed Islamic-looking architecture and the Gothic style began to dominate the city.”

“‘Little Muslims,’” Nora repeated. Everything he’d said rang a bell; it was as though he’d been recounting a history that Nora knew intimately. He pointed toward the gate up ahead.

“Existential conflicts are embedded in the soil of this red mountain like fossils. They go all the way back before the Muslim conquest to the Goths and the Romans and the Christians, actually all the way back to Heracles of Libya and to Tubal, Noah’s grandson who became the first king of Spain.”