#10 Between Archers and Beer Cans ...

Tumult last night. I flew out of bed, crossed the living room in two steps, flew down the steps to the kitchen, and through the window next to the front door of our cave house, I saw beams of light on the patio. I didn't understand what was going on, but how something could be going on was obvious. The steel door that gives access to our patio jams when the sun shines on it. It sometimes happens that Heidi and I start working early, lose track of time, and can't open the patio door when, midmorning, we want to ride our bikes to the gym. To avoid having to call our neighbors to the rescue, we carefully close the patio door in the evening without pushing it into its lock. That way, we’re still able to pry it open, if we forget to open it before the sun hits it.

Brown uniforms with yellow logos on them. Security guards! Through the window, they blinded me with their Maglites, though not enough for me to notice the batons in their hands. Authoritatively, they ordered me out of the house, and as I bent down to put on my shoes, Heidi descended the two steps into the kitchen. Sleepily, she asked what my plans were.

“Idiots with batons on the patio,” I replied excitedly. “According to Spanish law, I'm allowed to use force if my house or property is locked and someone gains access without permission,” at which Heidi burst out laughing.

"What …?" I muttered angrily, straightening up as the calls for my surrender grew louder.

“Nik,” Heidi said, “you're wearing a pair of hiking boots and nothing else,” which was true but by no means diminished my spirits. Still, Heidi positioned herself in front of the door and said, “Listen, we'll do what anyone would do in this situation and call the police,” and she thrust her phone into my hand. I dialed 112 and spoke to a police officer, who assured me his colleagues were on their way. Heidi slid the kitchen window sideways and, through the bars in front of it, said: “Señores, hemos llamado a la policía. Está aquí dentro poco.”

The security guards made a runner for it, leaving the patio door wide open, and somewhat cross, I said, “Estará.”

“Estará?”

“La policía estará aquí dentro poco the police will be here soon, not está aquí dentro poco.”

"Oh man, you’re an annoying dwarf. Push that patio door shut—there won't be any police coming tonight—take off your shoes and come to bed."

No police last night. It is one o'clock in the afternoon now, and I am sitting in the grass, my back against a castle wall, staring over Antequera, a small town in Andalusia, where Heidi and I have been living for six weeks now. From a neighbor, I learned that security guards were chasing someone last night. They were convinced that the person they chased had entered our house, and … September 16, 2024! Today, I calculate, it has been 614 years since the Spanish prince Fernando conquered the walled village, held by the Moors back then, of which the castle I am leaning against made part.

That walled village, a medina, about three by four hundred meters in size, was called Medina Antagira at the time. Apart from the garrison stationed there, about two thousand people lived in Medina Antagira in 1410, and save for some farmland and a few orchards, the fully built-up area over which I stare today was uncultivated.

As early as 1361, the Spaniards attacked the medina. The Moors repulsed the attack, and in the years that followed, they strengthened the medina’s walls and towers. Fernando began the encirclement of the medina on April 26, 1410. Rain and a lack of equipment prevented him from launching an attack, which, according to history books, allowed the Emir of Granada to raise eighty-five thousand warriors. Those warriors marched west and set up camp about fifteen kilometers from Medina Antagira on May 4. Trying to imagine the march of eighty-five thousand warriors—gathered within days—I realize the chroniclers must be wrong, realize a force of eight thousand five hundred warriors is more plausible.

At a place where Heidi and I regularly walk, and which I can understand was strategically important at the time, a battle took place on May 6 between part of Fernando's army, stationed there under the command of the Bishop of Rojas, and the forces of the Emir of Granada. Rojas and his men were cornered. Fernando came to their aid with part of his main force, and the emir's force fled back to Granada.

Fernando rejected the emir's subsequent attempt to negotiate because he knew that the conquest of Medina Antagira would strengthen his claim to the throne of Aragon. The Moors in the medina, meanwhile, thwarted an attempt by Fernando's soldiers to dig a tunnel beneath the walls, but then, Fernando successfully positioned archers on the mountainside opposite the water gate, whom the Moorish archers on the tower next to that water gate—it still exists—could not reach with their arrows. As a result, no Moor dared approach the Río de la villa, a stream about forty meters from the water gate, and those inside the medina were forced to rely solely on water from the medina’s single well. In addition, Fernando ordered parts of the outer two of the three moats around the medina to be filled in and had three assault towers built on large carts. Two of those towers carried crossbowmen, who could target defenders along sections of the walls around the medina. The third tower was designed for infantry. It leaned slightly forward to bridge the inner moat, the one immediately around the walls of the medina, and at its highest point, the tower was equipped with a retractable walkway over which soldiers could cross to the parapet of a defensive tower.

On June 27, the time had come. According to the history books, Fernando ordered a heavy bombardment before his soldiers stormed the medina. Yet, the pot-de-fers in use at the time were incapable of delivering anything resembling a bombardment. The chroniclers’ mistake may stem from the word bombarde, which refers to a pot-de-fer in Latin languages and from which the word bombardment is derived, and my thoughts wander to Afghanistan, where I witnessed how Dutch soldiers, again and again, used the word attack after hearing an indefinable bang somewhere in the distance and used the word fight when, following that bang, they fired wildly from their armored vehicles at everything they could fire at, innocent civilians included. That, initially, led to journalistic errors. Later, it led to historical errors, and ... damn-it! I don't want to think about Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan. I want to be a Moor in Medina Antagira.

Peeking past stretched hides and rugs, my friends and I and the three archers with whom we have entrenched ourselves on a defensive tower watch three assault towers slowly advancing. Until moments ago, we still dared to rise, hurling and swinging stones at the Spaniards while the archers loosed their arrows through the crenels. The assault towers are too close now, the Spanish archers horrifyingly accurate with their strange short arrows. Archers and villagers on the walls below us shout that the ladders the Spaniards use to cross the dry moat and climb the walls are too short. That gives us some hope until, from the top of the largest assault tower, a walkway slides toward us. Through the slits between the planks that shield them, we see Spaniards moving on the tower. This is the moment our archers could effectively strike, but the Spanish archers on the other two towers are so close now that no one even dares showing a limb from behind her or his cover. Instead, stumbling over our own legs, we rush down the stairs, throwing open the shutters on some of the windows we pass, and set fire to the flammable materials with which we have packed our tower over the past weeks. Soon, flames burst from the windows of the tower. Thick smoke blows toward the Spaniards, and … the plan succeeds! The walkway catches fire. The Spaniards retreat, pushing and dragging the burning assault tower with them.

July, August, and the first two weeks of September pass. We have just enough food and water in the medina to survive, but we survive in constant fear, partly because the Spaniards, at odd moments and with a loud bang, send stone balls whizzing toward us from clumsy machines they have placed on a hilltop. From the walls, we see that the assault towers have been rebuilt and fortified more heavily, and when clouds of dust on the horizon reveal the arrival of Spanish reinforcements, we know the next attack will not be long in coming.

When that attack comes, on September 16, I man the same tower I manned during the first attack. The Spanish archers are more accurate than ever, and sooner than I had expected, our own archers retreat to the castle. A woman beside me is struck by an arrow as she throws a stone. It's a normal arrow, not one of those strange short ones, I notice just before she rushes down the stairs, screaming. Today, we cannot fight the large assault tower—the one that comes closest to us—with fire. The wind blows the wrong way, and the Spaniards have covered their tower in even more hides. When the walkway slides in toward us, we know we are lost. My companions and I rush down the stairs and, as we’ve been instructed, hack with our axes at the narrow bridge spanning the moat around the tower—inside the medina, there is also a moat around the tower. Just before the first Spaniard appears in the doorway of the tower, the bridge collapses, trapping the Spaniards inside the tower—for now. But if we hold the walls, I realize, there still is a chance we repulse this attack as well. The Spaniards who just captured our tower, though, from the top of that tower and with little risk, can aim their arrows at our people on the walls, and of course, the Spaniards use longer ladders today to storm those walls.

As I run toward a staircase to a wall walk, I get the fright of my life. A Spaniard crawls into the medina through a rainwater drain. The Spaniards must have widened that drain from the outside! More Spaniards crawl out of the drain. I scream, but no one hears me because everyone is screaming and shouting. And smoke is everywhere. This time, the Spaniards are responsible for it. They have thrown horns and hooves onto their fires. The heavy smoke that produces drifts over the walls and into the medina, which adds to the confusion. No one responds to my screams, and I know it is too late. The Spaniards who just crawled into the medina throw open a gate from within. Hordes of Spaniards now storm in, cheering, and ... what a mess! Junk lies scattered all around me, I suddenly notice, somewhat surprised not having noticed it earlier!

After an endless journey past municipal offices, I rode here to shake off the frustration the civil servants I met had stirred in me. I laid my bike in the grass, sat down, my back against a castle wall, thought about the commotion on our patio last night, dreamed myself to 1410, and only now do I notice the mess all around me. Plastic glasses and bottles, broken glass beer bottles, lemonade cans, napkins, McDonald's bags, Styrofoam boxes, cardboard cups, pizza boxes, aluminum foil once wrapped around kebabs, empty bags of chips, and ... oh man ...

Every evening, young people gather here, munching and feasting, hunched over their phones. Waste no longer disappears into the bins that stand left, right and everywhere but is tossed onto the ground, and I chuckle inwardly when I imagine how history books will one day treat the phenomenon of people no longer caring for the environment. From 2030 onward, those books might read, to nip an environmental disaster in the bud, Europeans were only allowed to leave their homes with special permission. Future chroniclers, of course, will fail to mention that, since the turn of the millennium, parents increasingly outsourced the education of their children to the state, and that those children spent more and more time hunched over their phones. From both the state and their phones, children learned that pizza is suitable for human consumption and that one more pizza box thrown onto the ground no longer makes a difference, because previous generations had already made an environmental disaster inevitable, and I eh... I often get so tired of myself.

Just before Heidi and I arrived in Antequera, six weeks ago, Heidi confronted me with the truth that I had no choice but to break with my publisher. For years, I had tried to make our collaboration work, but … whatever. New opportunities are knocking on our door. We never refrain from opening that door, and work at our side of it now piles up to the point where I sometimes wonder whether I would not rather be dealing with Spanish crossbowmen on assault towers. That aside, officially establishing ourselves in Antequera is turning into a challenge, and as icing on the cake, an accountant convinced me that I should register as self-employed, which adds journey after journey past offices—municipal and provincial—and again, I chuckle inwardly when I think of my self-employed days in the Netherlands, in a previous life.

Those self-employed days, I ran a stunt team. Organizers of fairs, village festivals, beauty pageants, and whatnot hired my team to spice up whatever it was with a spectacular act. But eh… I took things seriously. I rented a small office—which looked slick after I had painted it and had redecorated it with furniture I had built myself—and work came at me from all directions. My mechanical typewriter soon gave way to an electric Brother AX-10, which soon gave way to a computer running WordStar. I typed letters and invoices in green or orange text on a black screen, which a daisy wheel printer printed for me. Then, I typed invoices, of whose printing a matrix printer took care.

Work, eventually, came at me from so many directions that I converted the hallway to my office into a reception, of which Jeannette took the reins. She was a cheerful smartass whom I hired to handle the administrative burden my self-employment entailed. Man, we worked long hours, Jeannette and I, and had fun in what we did, but at times, my inability to separate the possible from the impossible cast a shadow over that fun. Jeannette sensed flawlessly when it was time for an intervention. She would put a cup of coffee on my desk, would force me to admit what problem I had gotten myself into, and would say, “Listen, you silly dwarf, there's only one way to solve a problem, and that is straight through it,” after which I finished the coffee she had brought me, picked up the phone or strode out of my office, and solved the problem.

But problems back then, apart from the occasional problem with WordStar, were analog problems. Back straight—after a reprimand from Jeannette—and straight through them. Now, here in Antequera, it feels as if I am fighting a seven-headed digital dragon, which is not per se what frustrates me. It's those hollow eyes with which people gaze at me in state-affiliated offices. The helplessness and lifelessness in those eyes and the passive aggression that stirs the moment I meet their gaze …

I want to be back in 1410, but a cheerful smartass hands me a cup of coffee. When I admit what problems I have gotten myself into, she bursts out laughing, and I suddenly realize that what I call problems today are not real problems. The offices I visited this morning I will visit again—and again, if I must—until someone ticks that one box on a screen that has not yet been ticked, at which point Heidi and I will be officially established in Antequera and I will be officially registered as self-employed, and I refrain from bursting out laughing myself when I realize that everyone was happily self-employed back in 1410.

Reminding myself of the work still waiting for me back home—work I wish to whizz through like a stone ball from a pot-de-fer, having survived the battle of Medina Antagira and having run into Jeannette after so many years—I grab my bike, jump on, and hurtle down the hill to our cave home, thinking of Prince Fernando, who stopped waging war against the Moors after his victory here on September 16, 1410, because he lacked the financial means to continue waging that war, the spoils he gathered just behind me notwithstanding. Today, wars themselves are a source of financial means, the spoils gathered before the first battle has been fought, those financial means, in part, going to cleverly designed indoctrination campaigns that convince people how worthy our wars are. Laughingly, people then advance the spoils of wars waged today, wars whose purpose they refuse to even try to understand and from which they benefit not a bit ...

Sign up for my newsletter!