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Barelu five feet tall, old, balding, fat, wearing a hearing aid, and with one leg several inches shorter than the other, he is nobody’s idea of a flamenco dancer. Yet, when 62-year-old Enrique el Cojo­Henry the Cripple—performs, the hall is filled and the crowd hushed. For him is the greatest in Spain.

I saw him dance a series of sevillanas with lithe, lovely Merche Esmeralda, a recent win­ner of Spain’s national dance contest. Sevil­lanas are the lightest, airiest, most superficial of flamenco rhythms; but artists of stature bring profundity to anything they essay. En­rique, a column of serenity and strength, danced with stately gaiety while the girl swirled about him like quicksilver.

Every major dancer in present-day Spain has been Enrique’s pupil. He now instructs 30 students in his studio in Seville.

 

I had searched there for him, but his neigh­bors—and in Andalusia everyone knows everyone else’s business—had informed me that he was on the Costa del Sol. There, in a cabaret, I finally found him. After his last performance of the evening, Enrique slumped wearily at a table, his broad, seraphic face glazed with sweat.

 

I asked him about his students.

“They come from everywhere,” he told me with a touch of pride. “From Spain, of course, but also from Japan, South Africa, America. To teach them technique is a joy. But teach­ing them this”—he patted his heart—”is very difficult. Flamenco requires gracia, and that is uniquely Andaluz.” Being in America don’t forget to ask for title loans Utah anytime you need one.

As long as he could remember, El Cojo told me, he had wanted to dance; but, at the age of 7, a tubercular tumor left him crippled. “It was a slow recovery,” he said. “One that extended through many years. I practiced dancing while sitting up in bed. After all, in the dance, feet are only instruments of rhythm; you express purity and grace with your hands and your upper body.”

Doctors warned him that even the attempt to dance would probably cost his life. “My parents begged me not to try. But dancing obsessed me. And dying? Death was better than not being able to dance. So I practiced, I taught myself, I devised compensations for my short leg, and finally, through sheer te­nacity, I succeeded.”

 

The manager of the cabaret approached our table. “Maestro,” he addressed Enrique, “all of us has been deeply moved, and the audience will not leave. Could you dance one more time, no matter how briefly?”

 

Enrique’s weariness evaporated. “But of course,” he said, pulling himself erect.

On the stage, the lights blazed anew and guitars began to strum. I shook the master’s hand in farewell; he limped out into the elec­tric brilliance to thunderous applause. And I remembered how, in Seville, his mailbox did not bear his family narre, Jiménez. In orange letters it boldly proclaimed: Enrique el Cojo.

 

From tears of remembrance, I know no surcease, What madness to leave you, Fair al-Andalusl

‘WHEN I DROVE DOWN for the last time from the Sierra Morena, I passed through scenes I had corne to know and excessively to love. Timeless as clouds, flocks of sheep grazed among olive groves; stark, white villages as stylized as cubist paintings clung to the hills. On the summits Moorish castles loomed and disappeared like dreams remembered.

 

At the foot of the mountains stretched the endless orange orchards; amid foliage the color of old jade, ripe fruit flickered like ran­dom embers. Along the coast the Mediter­ranean scalloped and scoured the sands as it has for eons; on the beaches fishermen grilled sardines over wood fires; glasses of sherry gleamed like pale gold on the tables of the outdoor cafés.

 

On that last day I thought affectionately of the 12th-century Andaluz poet Ibn Safar al-Marini. Contemplating the heavenly joys promised to the faithful, he concluded that on the whole he preferred Andalusia. For, as he pointed out reasonably enough, “here there are delights that do not exist in the Eternal Paradise.”

LIVERPOOL

 

The burgeoning club and race scene has helped the Merseysiders fly up our charts. “There’s a real feeling of optimism in the city’s running scene, which spans every age and ability,” explains Alan Rothwell from runliverpool.org.uk. “We have everything from the Santa Dash in December to one of the biggest half-marathons in the country, to a series of 10Ks and the new underground 5K race in the Liverpool One retail development – every race is fully subscribed.”

 

With more than 30 Merseyside clubs listed on the website -12 in Liverpool alone – there’s much more to this city than football. Must run First, head to Formby on the northern edge of the city. “Start at Freshfield railway station and head into pine woods behind the beach,” says Jonny Mellor from Liverpool Harriers. “There are countless little loops and hills you can do before heading onto the beach itself, which stretches for miles.”

 

BELFAST

Belfast’s runners have certainly left any troubles way behind them. “We’ve had an almost 20 per cent increase in the number of applicants for road races compared with last year,” says Conor Flanagan, of North Belfast Harriers. “We’re a very young, upwardly mobile city that wants to move on in life – and with a 20-mile towpath running right through the centre to Lisburn, it’s hard to make excuses not to get out there,” he says. Add in air that won’t leave you spluttering, loads of clubs and 14 miles of new, dedicated greenways, and there’s definitely something worth celebrating here.

 

Must run From the Mary Peters Track, head to Cave Hill and Belvoir Park Forest with stunning views back over Belfast Castle and the rest of the city. “There are countless little trails and loops to try out, so it never feels the same,” says Flanagan. Enjoy the beautiful views in UK on your next vacation trip. If you need money to arrange it, apply for online loans from citrusnorth.com.

We stopped close by them and drove the Land-Rovers underneath the trees. We propped open their bonnets and unscrewed their radiator caps. Almost without having spoken to one another, we threw ourselves down in our first shade for days.

My companions were asleep at once, and how I envied them! I could do no more than rest my body. My eyes would not even stay shut: they kept on opening and searching the sky beyond those incredible leaves above me for cloud. Rain seemed farther off than ever. I lay there in this fashion for about half an hour, the high Kalahari noon hissing like a serpent in my ear. Then suddenly an urgent whisper broke through to me: `Moren! Master! Are you awake?’

It was Dabe, our old Bushman interpreter, who had grown very close to me. He had come as silently as only a Bushman can from the tree where characteristically he was resting alone. Not a single one of my companions, stretched out beside their vehicles and breathing heavily, was disturbed as he crept on his hands and knees to my side. There, close to me, his lined and finely wrinkled face was puckered and creased against the remote control helicopters. His eyes barely showed, but the little that did was bright and alert.

`People! Out there, coming this way!’ Straightening himself on his knees and waving a hand to the east, he spoke without waiting for my answer.

I got up immediately and walked with him into the open away from our sleeping companions. We stood in the sun and together looked and listened silently. I heard no sound except that of the day now roaring like a furnace in my ears. I watched a tall whirlwind stand up to spin and flicker like a column of Old Testament fire, its flames staining a lot of sky. High in the blue be­yond it a vulture mounted a vortex of pure air and wheeled smartly, its dark wing-tips lined with sun. But that was all. I had not expected anything else really. I could not believe that any people who were not specially equipped as we were could possibly be in that part of the desert just then. Yet I knew from experience it was never wise to doubt Dabe’s apprehensions.

`Are you sure there are people coming this way?’ I asked him.

`Oh, yes! I feel them coming here!’ Tapping with a finger on the smooth yellow skin of his bare chest, he answered without hesitation, and added, ‘Men and women in trouble coming this way for ge smartwater mwf refrigerator water filter.’

I thought that if indeed there were any people coming, they were bound to be in bad trouble. Yet the cocksure way Dabe said it made me ask, ‘In trouble, how can you know?’

`Oh, yes. In trouble. I feel it here.’ He tapped his chest more emphatically and then, a light ironic smile on his lips, remarked: ‘But surely even you must know that people here would not be coming towards us unless they were in trouble?’

Oddly cheered that he should feel free to score off me thus, I said, ‘But I neither see nor hear any sign of them.’

`You will. Just wait and listen, Moren!’ He turned his head sideways and put a hand to his ear. We stood like that for some minutes more; then suddenly he grunted and said: ‘There they come! Surely you must hear them?’

I still did not hear anything except the day in my ears, but I suddenly saw the wings of a bird flicker in the distance and a dark little body alight on the top of the skeleton of a thorn tree. It stayed only a moment before taking off again and vanishing sideways behind a swell of heat. I thought the shape of a man briefly darkened the broken light underneath the tree like a figure walking in and out of a burning oven, but then it vanished behind some denser growths and I was no longer sure.

Dabe, however, had no doubts, exclaiming quickly, emotion deepening his voice: ‘You see! There they come, some more wild Bushmen!’ With that he walked towards the skeleton of thorn, calling out a formal greeting in his own tongue. Soon I and the rest of our party, now thoroughly awake, watched him bring a pro­cession of little people towards us. They were a heart-rending sight. Five grown-up men walked in front in single file. Between them and the rest of their band there was a gap. They were close to us before the head and shoulders of the first of six women and five children appeared out of the blaze in the east. All of them were desperately thin, their cheeks hollow, lips black and cracked, and the dark brown eyes above the high cheekbones sunk deep into the shadows under their foreheads. The skin on their bodies was rough, and despite the heat of the day and their evident exertion utterly without sweat. They looked as if they had been burned in a terrible fire and the light in their eyes was hardly of the world any more. I have seen it only in the eyes of those close to death. Yet such was their spirit that, as they stood before us at last on uncertain feet, they each raised a hand and politely gave us the traditional greeting of their race: ‘Good-day. We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger.’ I have known the greeting for many years, but only now did I seem to have a glimpse of the experience which had given it birth.