River of Love

Like Spanish punctuation, Aparna kissed me before and after every sentence. We were going to pick up her saint from the saint repair shop. I didn’t know anything like that existed, but it does.

It was the first cold day. She liked to hold my hand in her coat pocket. No matter how hot it got in there, she insisted on holding it, occasionally squeezing my hand when someone particularly ugly or funny looking walked by. My grandmother had done this too when she was alive. What a coincidence that they both liked to squeeze my hand in silent Morse code. They also had the same name. Guadalupe. My grandmother was Guadalupe from birth; Aparna was christened Guadalupe at age12. They were both named after the apparition of the Virgin Mary that occurred in Mexico in 1531 to an Aztec cow herder. The apparition spoke to this cow herder in his native Nahuatl and it is a common belief that she called herself coatlaxopeuh (pronounced quatlasupe which sounds, of course, like Guadalupe). Coatlaxopeuh means serpent-crusher, thus Guadalupe is often depicted crushing snakes under her feet.

What I find most interesting though, is that the first sanctuary to a dark skinned saint called Guadalupe, affectionately dubbed “La Morenita” (the Moorish or dark-skinned) is found on the banks of a river in Spain. This river, used by the Moors during their reign over half of the earth was named by them “Wad-i –al -Hub” (The River of Love), if you say it fast and with a good Arabic accent it sounds like Guadi –al –ube ---Guadalupe.