In the Wake of the Moriscos - By Jamal

I didn't understand it as a story, but I liked it.

It was poetic. A lot of people, animals, scenarios and action in one just place: Mediterranean. I liked it.

There isn't an explicit story here but I had to like it because of how well-written and evocative it is. Well done.

I think the story is how the bull jumps over the wall to avoid his tormentors.

This has been written by a vegan or by a vegetarian.

The story is how life goes on, everyone minds their own business, ignoring the suffering of the bull. It is an evocation to care for each other and for each animal.

It's a string of observed events that do not add up to a plot.

Reply to Bitter Crank Quoting Bitter Crank

t's a string of observed events that do not add up to a plot.

And it ain’t philosophy

In the Wake of the Moriscos

With a little help from wordhippo:
In the Wake of: following (on from)
Wake: a trail of disturbed water left by a ship; a series of connected events or thoughts; a mark or line of marks left by a person, animal, or vehicle in passing; formal observance of a body before a funeral.

The Moriscos. Who are they? First impression - Italian mobsters.
Then wiki tells the tale.
An excerpt:
Quoting Wiki - Morisco

Spanish for "Moorish") were former Muslims and their descendants whom the Roman Catholic church and the Spanish Crown commanded to convert to Christianity or face compulsory exile after Spain outlawed the open practice of Islam by its sizeable Muslim population (termed mudéjar) in the early 16th century...
The word morisco became a "category" [...] used to identify Muslim converts to Christianity in Granada and Castille. The term was a pejorative adaptation of the adjective morisco ("Moorish").

So, we get to know a little of the history, the place and people.
Now, a modern view of the landscape where the author describes 3 different scenarios; richly poetic:

1. Quoting Caldwell

Above the town, deep in the mountain’s shadow, a family of wild boar force their way through a fence, into the garden of a vacant villa...

2. Quoting Caldwell

In the town, Hugo slices the leg of a pig while sparrows fight over fallen fries and paella rice under a table...

3. Quoting Caldwell

At the port, mullet gather in the water where little Marta has thrown some bread, and a bull jumps off the harbour wall to escape its tormentors...

1. 2 characters - Janine and Tony.
High up and well-off with a wonderful view of the port; the wakes of a ferry.
Two ravens communicate on the fly past to the coast...passing into sunlight.
Not sure about the symbolism here. But it sounds good.
Smirnoff ice and grilled sausages (pork?)

2. Down below in the hub. Hugo ( a butcher?), rich Stefan and a dead Nazi still remembered with flowers. A dead pig, sparrows, and a hoopoe.
Fries discarded under a table. Tourists. We can almost smell the decadence.

3. A busy port. Fishing and travelling. Little Marta caring for the mullet... or feeding them up for later consumption?
Next, we catch the extraordinary sight; unimaginable. A bull on a harbour wall. What?
Must be a small bull or a massive wall. Probably the latter, built as a defence?
Escaping torment. How much torture has this place seen for different reasons? I want to find out more.
Alejandro - surely not a pursuing matador; perhaps an abbattoir assistant, butcher or opportunist.
Anyway, knives out again for a kill and food.
No sign of pigs or pork. A muslim section, then?

The croaks of the ravens heard as they fly or flee free. Symbolic but of what?

***

There's so much more to this than first meets the eye.
A unique take I think on the short story structure?
Each paragraph separate but connected. A wake and trail of breadcrumbs.
Looking forward to hearing from this brilliant author who knows his birds, words and history.

Exceptional :fire:

Quoting Amity

The Moriscos. Who are they?

Just to add a brief information to your excellent analysis; yes, Spain still has a lot of Moriscos culture and architecture. Valencia, Alicante, Dénia, Oropessa, Mallorca, etc... the Moors had a big influence in those cities (more than Castilla).
A good example of Moor influence is Altea (a city of Valencia community). Look the picture:


Looks like Palestine or Tunisia right? Well is the Mediterranean Spain :smile:

Reply to javi2541997
Wow. Thank you for sending this postcard which helps me envisage the story better.
Amazing. I want to fly there. Like yesterday :cool:

I did get the historical reference and thought it was a beautifully constructed, intricate portrait of a place, a tradition, a social organization - all doomed, as its livestock is doomed - and the wildlife continues, hopefully, about its natural occasions.

Intrigued by the bull jumping the harbor wall escaping tormentors. I assume it to be a bit out of the ordinary, aside everything else that is going on. There is just a bit of strange disconnect with the bull having jumped and Alejandro showing little concern over it. Just doesn't seem to add up.

Quoting Nils Loc

There is just a bit of strange disconnect with the bull having jumped and Alejandro showing little concern over it. Just doesn't seem to add up.

I assumed Alejandro was the bullfighter and he's already stuck the bull, so it didn't matter to him where it died. Seems that must be a local, informal bull-ring down by the harbour, using the old fortification as one its containing walls to save money on construction. Every couple of weekends, a desperate fleeing animal manages to climb over it - but they never get far.

Gee, the story reminds me a lot of Spain... :wink: It scream Spain just as much as Madonna's La Isla Bonita...

Has a similar writing style to "The Hairpin". I wonder if it's the same author; plus it seems Martita is here as well.

Quoting Daniel

it seems Martita is here as well.

Oh, well spotted :up:
Quoting Caldwell

At the port, mullet gather in the water where little Marta has thrown some bread,

***
Quoting Daniel

Has a similar writing style to "The Hairpin"

Hmmm. We have 2 authors who like to split things up like that.
@Jamal - my first guess. See his Plum [s]Pudding[/s] Pie winner, Competition 2.
and now it seems @Tobias who I had picked as a dead cert for 'The hairpin'.

Muy interesante :cool:

Viva Mexico! :rofl:

A Morisco is a Moor in southern Spain that has converted to Christianity. A curious title.

There are three instances of Mediterranean life at play here separated by their proximity to the sea. Seclusion is one of them - in the mountains, distant, beautiful views, good food and alcohol.
Hedonism and solitude.

The second is the town, business as usual, the Mercedes hints at lavish lifestyle, the wealthy, while the Hugo is a humble butcher - working class.
Society, industry and commerce.

The third is about a child and a bull fight at the port. Closest to the sea. Its about games. The game of bullfighting and the playfulness of childhood - feeding the fishies.
Tradition, entertainment.

All three settings are connected by animals and nature. The Ravens - a symbol of omen (good or bad), respresenting prophecy and insight traverse all three locations as they make there way to the sea.

All in all a carefully planned and thought out story.
As for an ultimate meaning I'm not sure. But I hope my analysis beckons forth others to elucidate "Moor" (more).

Sic transit gloria mundi. Civilizations rise, triumph, flourish, decline and crumble. Nature endures.
I think Wake in the title is critical.

Quoting Vera Mont

Sic transit gloria mundi. Civilizations rise, triumph, flourish, decline and crumble. Nature endures.
I think Wake in the title is critical.

You repeatedly hit the mark with your explanations. That makes so much sense. Brava.

this is my favourite of all the submission. have a couple of close runners-up, but this is gold.

Reply to Vera Mont

Now that I've nearly read all of them and mulled over it a bit I quite like Hairpin. I'm a sucker for something riddled with foldings of depth and hidden meaning.
Also astronaut and waiting for the midnight mouse for more sentimental reasons - as I feel they're very relatable to the human condition.

But I was very surprised by In the wake of the Moriscos. At first I didn't think much of it. Some nice holiday imagery. Nothing more.

But every time I've reread it it developed further, stewing in my thoughts. It's really quite complex and is creeping up fast as a competitor with the others for me.

It's amazing how something can be easily blown over at first but when reconsidered, begins to unravel and reveal itself. The mind truly does takes time to assimilate things with a lot of information packed into them.

Sometimes it's the audience that must be ready for the story not the story that must be ready for its readership.

I was impressed with Hairpin and deeply touched by Good-bye Buzz; liked the Porn Shop and the Shittyass Ghosts very much, and several other less much. Overall, I was gobsmacked by the quality of writing.

Thank you for the comments people!

I might respond in more detail later, but here are some relevant pictures connected with the town of Dénia, which is the model for the town in the story (correctly identified by @javi2541997).




The grave of Hauptsturmführer Anton Galler in Denia cemetery, one of a few graves of German Nazis that are still there. After the war, Denia apparently welcomed and sheltered them.

[quote=The festive retirement of important Nazi criminals who today rest in Dénia;https://www.denia.com/en/importantes-criminales-nazis-descansan-impunes-junto-a-vecinos-dianenses-en-el-cementerio/]On August 12 of 1944, in the Italian town of Stazzema, Galler led the execution after surrounding 560 in the town square, mostly women and children.[/quote]




This is during the Bous a la mar festival, which happens in Denia every July. No stabbing of the bulls is involved, and they get them out of the water unharmed (they say), so you could say my story was a bit unfair to the town. Artistic licence. BTW it's bous, not toros, because it's the Valencian language, similar to Catalan.

One guy was killed this year.




The expulsion of the Moriscos from Denia. When they were forcibly deported in the sixteenth century, the economy and culture collapsed and didn't really recover till twentieth century tourism. Even with this less-than-glorious history, they still have a fiesta for the event each year.


Despite the rather unflattering portrait that I've painted, I do really like Denia.

Great explanation of the history, pictures of the present and beautiful painting of the expulsion of the Moriscos from Denia.

@javi2541997 did a superb job with his postcard post. It made the story more real for me.
Thanks.

I had wondered about the Nazi grave and its meaning.

Quoting Jamal

The grave of Hauptsturmführer Anton Galler in Denia cemetery, one of a few graves of German Nazis that are still there. After the war, Denia apparently welcomed and sheltered them.

Now I know.

I adored this story. Packed with colourful, detailed description. Also, a great learning experience.
What a creative combination, as always.
Quite the genius, so you are :fire:

Quoting Jamal

Despite the rather unflattering portrait that I've painted, I do really like Denia.

That came through. You really ought to write a book about your many and varied travels.

Quoting Amity

I adored this story. Packed with colourful, detailed description. Also, a great learning experience.
What a creative combination, as always.
Quite the genius, so you are

:blush:

Quoting Jamal

(correctly identified by javi2541997).

When I read the sorty I thought about you because you lived in Valencia. Only a person who knows brief culture of Valencian region knows how the architecture and history of Moriscos is.
I dont know how to explain but this short story reminds me about moros y cristianos traditional party stuff.

Quoting javi2541997

When I read the sorty I thought about you because you lived in Valencia. Only a person who knows brief culture of Valencian region knows how the architecture and history of Moriscos is.

But I didn’t know about the Nazis until quite recently.

Quoting javi2541997

I dont know how to explain but this short story reminds me about moros y cristianos traditional party stuff.

Yeah, that’s about the Reconquista, and the expulsion of the Moriscos happened at the end of that, so it’s all connected.

I've been thinking about how I might improve this story, or at least do it differently.

One way would be to stay with the ravens' point of view. Not first person, just describing what the ravens see, making the movement from mountain to the sea much stronger, tying the whole thing together.

Another way would be to centre it all on Marta. As it is, she appears fleetingly, but I could have done away with Alejandro's viewpoint and stayed with Marta from the moment she appears until the end. So she would be the one to notice Alejandro wiping the blood off his blade, and she would be the one who looked up to see the ravens flying out to sea. Since she's a child, this would have the bonus of asking how the future is going to unfold.

I wonder if you need the bullfighter... for me that is so much screaming of Spain it becomes formulaic. I would have liked it better if it was say, a waitress who spilled a glass of red wine, spilling the contents looking like blood over the cobbled streets (or something). That would tie in with the expulsion of the moriscos, make the theme less obvious and creating a link between the tourism of nowadays to the military purpose it had in the past, the nazi's providing a good middle ground referring also to fascist Spain in transition.

Reply to Tobias I see what you mean but I think I’m happy with the bulls. It’s about the town, and that happens in the town; I didn’t think of using it because it’s emblematic of Spain. And it’s not just any kind of bullfighting: the bulls jump into the sea, as it says in the story, and I don’t think that’s well known.

In reality it’s not really bullfighting anyway—I just invented the bit about the bloody blade to make it stronger. I think maybe that’s the bit that should be taken out.

On the other hand, bullfighting goes on (there are nearby bull rings, in other towns) and, like the Nazis in the cemetery, it’s something that might be thought of as a dark counterpoint.

Good feedback, it made me reassess it.

Reply to Tobias Incidentally, it’s curious that I had “little Marta” and you had “Martita”, which basically means the same.

Yes, a curious coincidence which through a nice little unintended riddle in the two stories :cool: :love:

My impression of this story is that it's like a painting done with impasto strokes. It's telling a story in a picture and forces to us to look at the horizon, the details providing the seed. Our lens should widen to see the bigger picture.

I gave it a thumbs up.

Reply to Caldwell Thanks, that’s something like what I was going for: to see if I could use relatively disconnected sentences but still manage to tell some kind of story.

Quoting Jamal

I've been thinking about how I might improve this story, or at least do it differently.

Don't touch it! It's perfect.
If you want better, write something else.

Reply to Vera Mont Thank you. Yes, I’ve moved on. I happen to think my third entry was better—as yet unrevealed—but I guess that’s because I always favour the latest creation.

@Jamal

Exquisitely evocative. ¡Bravo! :clap: :cool:

Reply to 180 Proof Thank you 180, much appreciated.