Cigarettes and being alone
In my first hour in Granada, after many hours of flying, waiting for buses, and riding on buses, I was in a taxi from the Granada Bus Station to my hostel. The taxi driver, Miguel, was chatty. “Today’s Election Day,” he said. “I’m not voting.” Okay, I said. A taste of home!
As we drove through the city, Miguel pointed out the sites we could see from the street: a glimpse of the Catedral [Cathedral], the Plaza de Toros [Plaza of the Bulls], and a spot in the center of town, close to my hostel, that he described as “the best place to see the girls of Granada.” After a pause, he added: “Or the boys of Granada. Doesn’t matter to me.”
I can’t remember where we were when he said that, and I’m not sure if I’ve been to that spot in the near-week since that taxi ride. I assume that I have, since it feels like all I’ve done since I arrived last Sunday is watch people. The little kids of Granada, wearing school uniforms. The young people of Granada and the middle-aged people of Granada. The old ladies of Granada, who like to walk down the sidewalk in groups of 4, arm-in-arm. Of course, the tourists of Granada, consulting maps and wearing khaki shorts. I’ve spent my evenings wandering, getting to know the city and taking it in. I often feel like I walk for kilometers in one direction only to find myself right where I started (at the wheelchair/walker store down the street from the hostel).
One thing I’m good at is spending time alone. I am confident that I’ve spent more time alone than most people my age. I lived alone for two years of college (one of which was spent in lockdown). I spent a summer in Rhode Island that I spent largely in solitude. Even after I started living with roommates again, I made deliberate efforts to find solitude: doing things without company grew from something forced upon me to a way of exerting independence. I go out to eat alone instead of bringing food home. I have a glass of wine alone on a sunny afternoon. On weekends, I relish the opportunity to drive to Durham or Mebane to an unfamiliar library or coffee shop: being alone in a new place is exciting and refreshing.
And yet, being alone in a foreign country has been unfamiliar and difficult. I do it, and frequently: my walks through Granada usually end when a particular restaurant seems more enticing than the rest. There are a few customers inside, a sign of life, but not too many, for a crowded environment interferes with my ability to hear and understand. There’s table service rather than bar service, which gives me more time to decide what to order and compose a script in my head. I avoid restaurants with groups of people (locals) my age, since I know how we can be. By the time I find the right place, I’m reliably hungry.
How odd it is, for me, to be driven in this way by anxiety and fear. I am confident and comfortable in my daily life, and I know that I am fortunate in this way. I dine alone, I bring a book, I find myself refreshed by my own company. But in Spain whatever respite I found from my tightly scheduled existence is replaced by overstimulation. I am always watching. I watch the restaurants, to ensure they will provide as easy an experience as possible. I taste my food and wine with gusto, so that nobody perceives me to be uncomfortable: so that maybe I will believe that this table is right where I want to be. Before I enter the bakery I pause outside, hidden next to the doorway, so that I can hear exactly how the woman in front of me ordered her croissant, eager (desperate?) to order in the same, unobtrusive way. I don’t like croissants, but the ritual doesn’t ask me what I like.
What it is, for me here, but maybe for me anywhere, is something about feeling watched. In my normal life I dine alone with ease because I move with ease through space and engage with ease with people; I act in deliberate steps. I consider the usual questions that others may have about me and put them aside, since I know my belonging in the spaces I fill.
I fear that this short blog post is more depressing than I mean it to be: I don’t mean to imply my own misery or invite wellness checks. Only to observe that a carpenter, no matter how able, may still find a ruthless master in a new variety of wood.
When you’re alone in another country, immersed in a language you don’t command, you move in labored lurches and long, nervous stares. You inadvertently agree to an egg on your shawarma; you reluctantly agree to switch back to English when the ticket-taker gets bored. You feel yourself watched, marked as a foreigner, catered to for this reason. Watched in this way you lose your grasp on the farcical belief that you’re more or better than the bumbling American or German tourists at the next table over. You wonder whether you’ve developed a nicotine addiction, second-hand, or whether walking down the street and sipping a glass of wine with a cigarette in hand might make you feel like what you’re doing, you’re doing on purpose.
I may have to eavesdrop outside the tobacco shop first, but when I’ve acquired my cigarettes I’ll be as Spanish as the gaggles of well-dressed old ladies or the men in skintight, dark-wash jeans. When a taxi driver takes his company through the streets and past the crowd where I sit, cigarette in hand, he will say: Look here, the best place to see the boys and girls of Granada. The traveler will look at the crowd, but he won’t see me there.
