I lived in a
convent in Toledo,
Spain for a few months awhile back. It was a beautiful
convent. Buried in the city, not much to look at from the
outside (except that it had some
beautiful archways on the back side of the
building that could be seen from the nearby mountains. If you've ever seen a picture of
Toledo, you can pick it out. The Alcazar on the left, the Catedral on the right, somewhere in the middle there is a building with seven arches. That's where I lived.) I had a
room underneath one of the archways, looking out onto the
mountains. In the mornings if I had my window open, I could hear bleeting
sheep and their little sheep
bells.
Truth be told, it was no longer a convent. It was more of a dorm. I was studying the
art and
history of Toledo at the time, and this is where the
University chose to put me up. It had been a convent prior to the
Spanish Civil War, but the nuns had been raped and
decapitated by solidiers, and as a result, the
order had died out.
About a year later I was back
home and having a
discussion with a guy
friend of a friend about
different types of government and what they offered the
people. He thought
anarchy was the only way to go and kept talking about how the people had fought the
monarchy, and
oppression, and all sorts of other things in
Spain during their
civil war. I brought up my nuns, and how the church had offered them
protection from
rape,
torture and
death, and how they weren't offered protection in the
context of the
anarchist movement.
Ya well, the nuns had it coming he said. I
disagree. I had to resist the urge to
punch him.