I want to be nice, but the sardines push me over the edge. I think it's the sucking that gets to me the most. The long forceful slurps, like he has no hands and has to make the fish jump the gap between his mouth and plate. Either that or the growing pile of severed heads with buggy fish eyes staring at me. I make a pact with myself. He will not ruin my Granada. Tomorrow I will wake early and chase the poetry of these streets without him.

In Granada, even the names of hostels are poetry. My room, number 206, is in a hostel on the Alhambra hill: "El agua es como la luz" ("The Water is Like Light"). Seven years before, I had discovered Lorca, and was hooked. Now, after two days with nothing but pensamientos (thoughts) to sustain me, I have arrived in this city of my dreams. This time, it will be me floating through the Albayzín watching the Alhambra glow red on the hill above me, sipping Spanish beer while gypsy music enfolds me in its rhythms.

Arriving at the hostel, I enter my room, then stop. On the far bed, a furry pile of a man is sweating in his underwear. A tangle of hair connects loosely to the top of his head, but could hurl off in a hundred different directions at a moment's notice. Running down the left lens of his glasses is a large fissure, threatening but never quite splitting it in two.

"Salud," he says.

"Salud," I repeat. "I am sharing the room with you tonight."

"Bon, bon," he mumbles, while fumbling around and rearranging the possessions on his bed. "Your bed, no?" He points to the unmade bed where he is not sitting.

I nod.

"Bon, bon. Your sheets, no?" He hands me a pile of neatly folded, starched white linen.

"Merci." I place the linen on a chair, and start to make up my bed.

"Yes, tonight is very good. I am French."

"Yes, I can tell. Where are you from?"

"France."

"Yes, I know you are from France."

"Yes."

"Where in France?"

He looks at me for a long time, then violently rubs his face and head. Bursts of breath escape as his hand runs back and forth across his nose and mouth, and white flakes of dandruff drift down around him, as though he were trapped in a Christmas globe.

"I speak English only a little."

"Habla español?"

He answers in English. "My Spanish is only a little."

"Well, I speak almost no French." I pick up a pillowcase and stuff my pillow into it. "So I guess we're stuck."

He claps his hands together loudly, smiling widely. "Marseille. In France, I am from Marseille."

I nod and toss the pillow onto my bed. Down the corridor, someone says the word, "Bon." In a show of athleticism that belies his roly–poly figure, my roommate leaps onto the floor, keen to find the source of the sound. Everything wiggles, jiggles and shakes: his cheeks, his legs, his jello gut that falls over the waistband of his underwear. Even the bed where he has been sitting jostles back and forth, spilling his haphazard stacks of postcards.

"The person, he is French, no?" I shrug my shoulders. He hesitates a moment, then walks through the door clad only in his underwear. I can hear him rubbing his face as he pounds up and down the corridor.

After about five minutes he returns to the room and stands between our beds, staring at the door. I tap him on the shoulder. "I am going out to eat." I make a scooping motion with my hand, open my mouth, and pantomime like I am chewing. "Would you like to come?"

"Bon, bon. Yes, I would like to eat. I will dress, no?"

"Probably a good idea," I say, and wander into the bathroom.

He puts on brown slacks and a rumpled blue shirt. The collar pokes up in different directions; his shirt is missing a button in the middle where his belly pokes through. The pants are also wrinkled, and about an inch below the top, the zipper is pulled onto the fabric and stuck. A small bit of blue cloth pokes through the hole like a warning flag.

"Ready, no?" He holds his hands up wide.

City of my dreams, Granada. And after all these years, I get this.

"Sure, let's go."

Directly beneath the hostel, the street bends off to the left and starts its zigzagging descent through the forest surrounding the Alhambra, tumbling down to Plaza Nueva at the foot of the hill. Pedestrian traffic follows a more direct route down the hillside. Where the street turns left, steps lead down to a gravel pathway that cuts its way through the trees. Stately trunks mark the edges of the path, and above us, a criss–crossing canopy of branches serves as a backdrop for long, dancing shadows cast by the streetlamps.

I imagine Lorca walking this same pathway years before me, see him stopping to lay back in the gravel while shadows play across his body, envision him writing "Canción Otoñal" beneath this canopy of limbs that roofs the trail. His words reverberate in the wind–rustled leaves. "What are you doing, the United States?"

Lorca is jarred from my mind. "I don't understand."

My companion rubs at his face nervously. "You are in the United States. What are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm a student. I go to university."

"Yes, yes, I went to university some." He claps his hands just once, exuberantly.

After the clap, he is quiet for a moment. I peer into the woods, but my eyes are unable to penetrate beyond the first grouping of trees. Gazing up into the branches, I am fascinated by the lamp–lit patterns of clarity and blankness, but Lorca doesn't return.

Eventually, an outdoor café comes into view. People in linen suits sit at cloth–covered tables drinking wine from expensive–looking glasses. He heads straight for the menu. I follow a few steps behind.

"Much money," he says as I approach, snapping his fingers against the post where the menu is displayed. People turn around, and the waiters glare. "Is too much no? We should go down to square. More people, less money."

"That's fine. I just need to eat."

"Bon, bon. We find food. We find good prices. Is very interesting for me, the prices." Just below the restaurant, the road meets our path once again. We cross the street, follow a second set of steps, walk past a fountain and round a corner. Our path disappears, and gravel turns to cobblestones. Trees become houses, hotels and shops, pressed too tightly into the road and each other.

The stillness transforms as well. There are people in doorways, standing on porches smoking cigarettes, darting in and out of the many hotels along the street. Behind this activity is the hum of Plaza Nueva, distant enough for individual sounds to blend and twist together like the constant rush of water. Suddenly, I know what Lorca meant when he wrote, "la canción del agua es una cosa eterna" ("the song of water is an eternal thing").

"At the plaza, many restaurants will be there, bon?"

"Bon. What kind of food do you like?"

"I want eat like people here, no."

"Yes, but what? Do you know paella?"

"Paella, yes. Bon, bon." He claps and giggles. "We have a paella. And sun–gria. It is vino with the fruit, no?"

"Oh, sangria. Yes, it is very good."

"Bon." He struts slightly ahead of me, and the street spits us out into the plaza like that – him prancing in front, blue banner of shirt poking through his zipper, me walking behind, awed by the grandeur of it all.

The plaza is filled with people, street bands, couples walking hand in hand, waiters expertly carrying trays through the ever–changing mass of bodies and café tables. An orange–and–white restaurant awning is right in front of us. He shoots towards it, walks right in front of three people already looking at the menu. He snaps his fingers against it. They step back, hold their hands up at chest level in self–defense.

"Paella 650 pesetas. Is good, no?"

"Yes, that's great. You want to eat?"

"No, we must go back in streets. Go small places, bon?" He gives one clap, and is off. I follow him to four more restaurant windows, meet the stares of people around us as he snaps his fingers loudly into the menu. Finally, I can't take it anymore.

"I'm going into this restaurant to eat now." I point to make myself clear.

"I join you," he says, sadly. But the maître d' informs us that they have just closed.

"Bon, bon. I know a place. Come this way." And he is off again, his confidence restored. He leads us back to a restaurant we'd passed only a few minutes before. It is open, but they are out of paella.

Overcooked chicken and french fries is not the meal I had in mind for my first night in Granada. Across the table from me, my roommate is tearing the heads from sardines and swallowing them whole, every gulp accompanied by a long sucking sound. Periodically, a stream of liquid escapes his lips and runs down his chin.

The next morning I get up while he is still in bed, shower and dress quietly, but my movement wakes him.

"Today, I will come with you. We get a better room somewhere."

"No," I lie. "I might leave the city today."

"It is okay. We get a room together tonight. You leave tomorrow."

"No, thanks. I don't want to tie myself down."

We shake hands, and I walk out of the hostel into the streets of Granada, done with him, finally free to search for the poetry I have come to find.

Scrapping my plan to visit the Alhambra, I decide I want to spill so deeply into the city that no one can track me down. I need distance, and start down the Alhambra hill. The walk doesn't disappoint. Last night's shadows have dripped down from the branches and now dance upon the gravel. I think again of Lorca, of the inspiration he drew from this hillside. Heading left into Plaza Nueva, I enter the heart of town and walk for an hour, then dart into a tiny café for a shot of water and directions to the nearest hostel. One block up and two blocks over. Next to the Carníceria.

Paying my bill in advance, I go upstairs to my room. Of the four beds, only one is taken. A haphazard stack of postcards rests upon it.

The door to the bathroom swings open, and out he steps. Left lens fissured, hair matted wildly onto his head, same roly–poly gut hanging over the fold of his towel. The towel then comes untucked, falling painfully to the floor. "Ah, roommates again." He comes towards me with his arms outstretched. "I am the big lucky, no?"

Reproduced with permission from Rite of Passage: Tales of Backpacking 'Round Europe © Lonely Planet Publications 2003