If I were a building...

People change, the world changes. Gracias a Dios!! It would be a very boring place if it were not so. We have new experiences that affect us greatly and then we cannot be what we were before. We are always trading one identity for a new one; we loose faith in one idea and find it in others. Sometimes we can choose to change, sometimes it just happens, surprises us. We go home and feel a stranger. Today I went to the Alhambra with David, a childhood friend who came to visit me this week. The Alhambra is an amazing palace of Moorish architecture. At onetime it was the center of a kingdom that valued the cultural mingling between Arabic, Jewish and Christian communities. It was the home of libraries and monasteries. Throughout the palace, written on the walls in Arabic are the words “There is no conqueror but God;” a pacifistic interpretation of the Koran. The subjects of the kingdom of Granada lived peacefully under this ideal for almost 800 years until the catholic kings re-conquered the peninsula in 1492, killing or deporting all Muslims and Jews. Since then the Alhambra has been home to various Spanish rulers such as Isabel and Ferdinand (who were mainly responsible for the re-conquest as well as the funding of Columbus’s encounter with new world) and their grandson, Emperor Carlos V who destroyed part of the palace to build a renaissance theatre/bull ring. In 1812 Napoleon’s forces occupied and looted it and then left it, all but abandoned for many years. It has now been restored and has become one of the most popular tourists cites in southern Spain. Throughout it’s long history, the Alhambra has seen many changes but has retained its simplistic name meaning “the red fort.” In the same way, I have always been called Ross Voorhees, a less simple name but one just as static; when I was a baby, my parents called me that. When my family moved to the UK and I went to pre-school for the first time with cowboy boots on, I was called that. When I got into a snowball fight at Ravenwood Elementary and the principle called me down to her office, she called me that. When I got my Eagle Scout award and everyone was so proud of me, I was called that. But each one of those Ross Voorheeses was someone different.

Now in Spain, I feel like the Alhambra; tossing aside one identity while putting on a new one. This change comes with much excitement but also sometimes fear, insecurity and nostalgia for the things I have lost. People change just like kingdoms. Spain is becoming a part of me and I am becoming a small part of it. Neither of us will ever be the same again.