Contents
SCENE ONE: As we walk on sacred ground
SCENE TWO: We listen to the woes of Doña Fernanda
SCENE THREE: On a stone bench, a seguiriya
SCENE FOUR: Inside a bookstore on the Calle San Vicente
SCENE SIX: The house on the other side of the world
SCENE THREE: In a Mérida bookstore
SCENE FOUR: A hacienda on the outskirts of bliss itself
SCENE ONE: Inside the oldest cathedral of the New World
SCENE TWO: At the Virgen de Guadalupe Ball
SCENE THREE: Ah! je vais l’aimer
It begins in a once-upon-a-time land, on a remote plain, far from the place we call home. It begins with a dreamy voice, closed eyes, and a glass of warm milk to tame the chill of a too-cold night.
In the background, the first notes sound out, preparing to lure us in.
A seguiriya tonight, perhaps?
“No, something livelier,” she says, “something irrepressible, something joyous.” She stops to think. “Ah, yes, I have it, niños! A bulería sung by the incomparable Lola Flores, all passion, all grit, a voice with which to tame the wind!”
She begins—
In a town in the heart of La Mancha, home to Don Quijote and his windmills, to long afternoons and silent, silent nights, the Clemente family lived for centuries, their fortunes tied to those of a plant: the Crocus sativus—from whose dried stigma comes saffron, the world’s most precious spice. What you may not know is that it takes 160,000 flowers to produce just one kilogram of this culinary bit of gold. When Mónica Clemente left La Mancha for the narrow streets of Seville, she carried the taste of saffron forever on her tongue. More than any bucolic recollections of childhood, Mónica’s memories were imbued with the taste of saffron soups, saffron stews and most of all, the sublime paellas of her Aunt Bautista, who always knew instinctively the precise amount to be placed into the olla, where the chicken, chorizo and thirteen other ingredients blended and brewed. …
Ah, here it was, the opening bars of our grandmother’s favourite story, the one she would tell most often because it was full of the beautiful—forbidden love, unbearable grief, a country lost and another one found and moments of true transcendence. It was the story she would tell most often because it was true, because it was full of joy and sadness too, and the poetry, she would argue, was in the pity most of all, in all the tears shed for life’s pain and life’s losses.
In her accented English, with Spanish peppering the narrative—“because Spanish,” our Abuela would insist, “is not only the language of love, oigan