All That Glitters…isn’t Zara

Writing in the local paper. Local Issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs, which can now be seen online (in Spanish) as well.

Years ago I was following the trail of the great 14th century tangerine
traveller, Ibn Battuta through S.E Asia for an travel piece that I was writing.
Passing through Kuala Lumpur, I had a chance to meet up with some former Yemeni
students of mine who were then studying in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur was a world
away from the mudbrick skyscrapers of Sana’a and as a travel writer, I was
curious to see the gleaming Asian metropolis through their eyes. After showing
us their university campus, they were anxious to show us their discoveries in
this exotic place that was so foreign to all of us. 

Even though they were all
from a hot place, what they couldn’t get used to was the humidity and the
intense rain showers that punctuate the days in this part of the world.
Ingeniously, their solution was to use the seemingly endless air-conditioned shopping
malls to explore the city. These modern temples were not the open-air souks
full of individual traders of their homeland. Under the shadow of the Petronas
towers, at the time the world’s tallest buildings, the never-ending shops that
were so unlike their experience exemplified for them what was different and
therefore worth seeing. 

Now I read in these pages that one of the leading ideas
for new uses for the Hospital de la Montaña here in Caceres is to turn it into
a shopping mall.  The reconversion of
such a key, iconic building in the heart of the city is an opportunity to make
a Guggenheim-style, transformative change in our city. Not taking advantage of
this opportunity to revitalize the centre of the city would be on par with the
colossal mistake of banishing the University campus to its present location in the
far off steppe. 

By the end of their first year in Malaysia, my students would
write me of new and different discoveries they had made, long after the initial
shine of the commercial temples had worn off. With a little experience, they had
quickly learned that all that glitters indeed isn’t gold. Now, in the Amazon-era
with the shuttering of brick and mortar shops across the globe, from Malaysia
to Pintores, I’m sure that they would also agree that the last thing the world
needs is a bigger and shinier Zara.