Brother Íbice opened the door to his house, and we walked in.
Quite some years ago, hiking in a mountain range in the center of Spain, we were visited by a group of Íbices. I still remember the expression of their eyes, strange as the eyes of every other animal different than ourselves, and yet amused at our presence in their mountain. Most encounters in the wild are, at least to me, tingled with fear. It is pretty much obvious that you are the intruder, wandering from the city into the land of others. What will they do? Will they accept your presence, would they welcome it? Or would you be run away? Íbices are imposing animals. It is absolutely clear that with their horns they could blow any of us, or all of us, away at any second. But nothing like that was in the air. They looked at us, almost smiled, winked their weird and expressive eyes, and walked away, as if amused at our visiting their place.
From our extended family, I most say that brother Íbice is the most spanish of them all. Could you imagine an Íbice being happy away from his own steep and spectacular mountains? Me neither. And our brother is the Íbice Ibérico par excellence. Pretty much every other time that I have met him we talk, few minutes after having spotted each other, about the pleasures, the advantages and, of course, the superiority of spanish food. In pretty much any other person this sort of conversation will bother or bore me. Yet that has not been the case with brother Íbice. There is so much enthusiasm in his love for his own country that it is almost impossible not to share it.
More important, brother Íbice spares no effort in making all of us try and enjoy and share whatever bits and pieces he happens to have from the prodigal, almost cornucopial, spanish food. I have tried slivers of serrano ham in seminars hosted in The Netherlands, I have been made to choose the best spanish dish in a restaurant, we have been feed with great paellas and better spanish pastries. It is not only that brother Íbice is convinced the Spain is best, it is that he wants to share his Spain with us all.
So, in our last visit to Spain, he invited us to see his house. His karate house, that is. Because long before brother Íbice walked the road of the sword, he walked the way of the empty hand. And he still does. Brother Íbice is a master of karate, and teaches in a small dojo, to which we were invited. It was a small place indeed. Broad windows allowed the sun of the far away mountains to seep in, but there started and ended the majesty of the place. The ceiling was a rough aluminum net, behind which electric cables and water pipelines were to be seen above our heads. The walls, where not covered by old karate posters, were unpainted concrete. Some columns interrupted the continuity of the space and bits and pieces of tatami were stacked at a side wall.
Yet if you would think that I am describing a poor place, you would be mistaken.
Because after having taken the first look at all what I describe, and then some, I did look at brother Íbice. And I look at father Snow Monkey. And they both were smiling to each other. And then I look again, and I saw. I saw a place where people had been training for decades, a small place like many other places where an art have been cultivated by a long long time, a place like no other. Almost with the wink of an eye, I saw the real place, the real home of brother Íbice, a place to walk beyond in good company. He who has shared so much of his country with us already, was now sharing his own home, build with his bare hands in the last thirty and more years. I skipped a breath, and smiled.
And so brother Íbice smiled back, almost winked an eye, and was happy with us at his home.
