Read Following the Sun for Free Online

they called Al Andalus, better known in our time as Andalusia.
    The seven-hundred-year period of Muslim sovereignty over Spain and southern France, contrary to Western cant, was one of the more benign periods in the long record of European politics and warfare. It was a period of great artistic, scientific, and commercial advancement, and also a time of great tolerance, imagination, music, and poetry. Moors, as the Europeans called the North African Muslims, entered Europe from the south led by the Caliph Abd al Rahman I in the middle of the eighth century, and within two hundred years had turned Al Andalus into a bastion of culture and commerce. They brought with them the technology of irrigation and turned the normally dry plains of the south into an agricultural cornucopia, supplementing the olives and wheat that already grew there with pomegranates, oranges, lemons, aubergines, artichokes, and almonds, as well as saffron, sugarcane, cotton, and rice.
    One does not get far in Andalusia without reminders of this great age. You see the Moorish influence in the architecture and the tiles, in music, in the physiognomy of the southerners, even in advertisements. Besides, anyone you talk to will often bring up the fact that the Moors, their former enemies, laid out gardens and built marvelous structures admired the world around. Spain does not easily forget its past.
    By midafternoon I arrived at El Puerto de Santa María, a town of many hidden courtyards lined with bright red geraniums, buttressed churches, and, like many villages in this region, a deep history. There are several Paleolithic sites in the area, and the actual founding of the village is credited to the Athenian leader Menestheo, who stopped in here after the Trojan War. But as usual in Andalusia, it was the Moors who really settled the place. The town used to be called Alcanatif, which means Port of the Saltworks; Alfonso X conquered the city in 1260 and changed the name to Santa María de Puerto. Some of the later voyages of Christopher Columbus set sail—so it is said—from this small harbor, and the pilot for the Santa Maria was born here.
    I rode slowly into the town plaza, dismounted, and wheeled my bicycle around the plaza like a tired racehorse, looking for a good café in the sun. Genuinely fatigued by now, I sat down, ordered a coffee, and stretched my legs out toward the square. It was about three o’clock and the town had entered into that afternoon somnolence that affects sun-blasted villages the world around. Many of the shops were closed, save for the tourist kiosks, and most of the people out and about were northern Europeans. A group of Germans or English had descended upon one of the kiosks that sold hats and were trying them on while a blond gentleman in short pants with a great arching paunch and a camera recorded the adventure. The shop women watched with bemused cynicism, their arms folded and an attentive eye to their hats—they had seen this sort of thing before, no doubt, and were leery lest their merchandise be ruined.
    I noticed an old man in gray trousers and a gray vest standing next to the café, also observing the scene. He was the last of the old peasant types that you still see from time to time in this tourist-ridden coast, dark eyes, grizzled, poorly shaven, and hands like rocks, clearly a man of the soil.
    â€œThey probably won’t even buy a single hat after all this,” I said to him by way of openers.
    He tipped his head to one side, cynically.
    One of the tourists dropped a hat onto the stone plaza.
    The old man shook his head again. “These women work hard for their hats. I know their fathers and uncles. They are good workers, although one uncle.…” Here he lifted his thumb toward his mouth to indicate drinking and winked at me with a smile.
    â€œDo they live out on a farm?” I asked.
    â€œThey raise bulls, not far from here. Another works for Tio Pepe.” He meant the