The Pirates of the Levant by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

him a headache). Olivares despised sailors, too, for he considered theirs to be a low and vulgar occupation, fit only for Dutchmen — except, that is, when it brought back from the Indies the gold he needed for his wars. And so, what with Kings, their favourites and one thing and another, once the days of the great corsair fleets and the stalemate of various empires' naval chess games were over, the Mediterranean became a blurred frontier, the realm of low-grade pirates from the countries along its shores; and piracy, while it changed the course of many lives and many fortunes, did nothing to quicken the pulse of History. Also, more than a century had passed since the conclusion of the Christian Reconquest, a period that had lasted nearly eight hundred years during which we Spaniards had forged our identity; and the subsequent policy of carrying the fight into Islamic territory, once backed by Cardinal Cisneros and the old Duke of Medina Sidonia, had now been abandoned. Africa held very little interest for a Spain that was at daggers drawn with half the world.
The garrison towns in Barbary were more symbolic than anything else. They were maintained only in order to keep the corsairs at bay, as well as France, Holland and England, who, watching for the arrival of our galleons in Cadiz, did their utmost to establish themselves there with their pirates, as they had in the Caribbean. They were always snapping at our heels, which is why we would not leave the way free for them, although in the corsair republics they were already well supplied with consuls and merchants. And although we will return to this subject, I will only say that, years later, Tangiers ended up belonging to the King of England for two decades — thanks to the Portuguese rebellion — and that during the siege of La Mamora in 1628, a year after the events I am describing, the men digging the trenches and directing the siegeworks were English sappers. Well, bastards of a feather will flock together.
We went out for a stroll. Copons guided us through the narrow, whitewashed streets with their tightly packed houses, which, apart from the flat roofs, reminded me a little of Toledo; the buildings had solid stone quoins and few windows, the latter being set low and protected by blinds or shutters. The damp sea air had caused the plaster and rendering to flake, leaving dark ugly patches. Add to this the swarms of flies, the clothes strung along washing lines, the ragged children playing in courtyards, the occasional crippled soldier sitting on a stone bench or on the steps outside his house, eyeing us suspiciously, and you have a fairly faithful picture of how Oran appeared to me. Yet there was also something inescapably military about the place, for in essence the town was a vast barracks inhabited by soldiers and their families.
As I discovered, it was spread over quite a large area and was arranged on different levels, with no shortage of ordinary shops, as well as bakers, butchers and taverns. The grand, well-proportioned kasbah, which housed the governor and was the military headquarters, dated from the days of the Moors — some said from Roman times — and it contained a; magnificent parade ground. The town also had a prison, amilitary hospital, a Jewish quarter — to my surprise, there were still Jews living there — and various monasteries: Franciscan,' Mercedarian and Dominican; and in the eastern section of the medina, there were several ancient mosques that had been converted into churches, the main one having been, transformed by Cardinal Cisneros, at the time of the Conquest, into the Church of Our Lady Victorious. And everywhere, in, the streets, in the cramped squares, beneath canvas awnings and in doorways, people stood absolutely still — women glimpsed behind shutters; men, many of them veteran soldiers? maimed and scarred and clothed in rags, their crutches leaning, against the wall beside them — all of them staring into space. I thought of