Silencio - Silence

 

If Ica with its incredible jumble of honking taxis and mototaxis was the culmination of noise and chaos, the afternoon I spent at Santa Catalina monastery in Arequipa was the exact opposite.

 

Arequipa itself, with its beautiful colonial buildings, cobbled streets, big trees and relaxed atmosphere was very appealing to us, and our lodgings at the 'Casa de Ana' in the quiet neighbourhood of Yanahuara were at least in part responsible for this. Ana herself, our hostess, was very helpful with advice where to go and what to see in and around the city. She was the one who insisted that if we were to look at only one thing in Arequipa it should be the Santa Catalina monastery, 'a city within the city'. We had explored the centre of town – its Plaza de Armas with too many pidgeons and the surrounding streets and buildings – earlier on Monday, and Johann didn't want to spend time looking at a monastery that covered two city blocks - (five acres!). Arequipa is a reasonably safe place to walk, and once we had consulted the map so that I would find my way home to Casa de Ana, about two kilometres from the city centre, he headed back to our lodgings and I entered the gates of Santa Catalina.

I had read only the most basic information about it, but could have easily received a tour (free after paying the admission fee of about $13) from one of the guides waiting on a bench just beyond the gate. There is a lot of history contained in these walls, many artifacts and wall paintings are waiting to be discovered – yet it didn't feel like the right thing to do on this sunny afternoon. I decided to walk alone.

I was immediately stunned by the bold colours: the stark white and soft grey I had expected were set off by walls in a red somewhere between vermilion and scarlet, depending on the light, and azure. Trees graced the flagged inner courtyards: ficus varieties and orange trees, and well-placed potted plants added to the feeling that this was a place where I could walk in quiet contemplation. 

I entered through the gate so aptly bearing the inscription 'Silencio' – Silence. Discreet arrows pointed out the path I was supposed to take, leading me from the novices cloister to those of the ordained nuns. It was like walking through an enchanted world: through arched doorways I stepped into cells of varying size and decor, some very simple, others more elaborate than I would have expected from a nunnery.

Signs informed about the rooms and their uses and special features. I read that, at the time the monastery was built (late sixteenth century) it was the custom for wealthy families to send their second daughter to a monastery. They were set up fitting their social position, were expected to pay a considerable amount of money – a dowry, really - to the church for this privilege, and their life within the walls of Santa Catalina would have been not so different in many ways than it would have been in the outside world. This explained the beautiful furniture, expensive chinaware, exquisite embroidery that could be found in some of the cells.

Yet, the nuns no longer inhabiting these quarters, the feeling remained for me that this was, more than anything, a place of meditation. Sacred music from the different centuries this monastery had been in use was played unobtrusively over the sound system, enhancing the peaceful atmosphere.

The labyrinth of little arched walkways, steps leading to an upper floor that was, for the most part, no longer there because one or the other earthquake had destroyed it, so, really, led nowhere, the still present scent of fire in the blackened hearths, rooms cleverly designed that natural light could enter through well-placed windows and skylights, the humming of bees, the twitter of birds, the sound of water from a fountain, and, above all, the absence of people – all that added up to make this one of the most memorable experiences of this journey for me.

Strangely – or maybe not so strangely at all – what I experienced in Machu Picchu and here was not so very different: not only were some of the architectural elements the same: niches for placing sacred objects; water lines connecting parts of the structure, providing water to different areas; the shape of the windows; the skylights providing extra, if indirect, light, but, more than anything, what they shared was the sensation that this was sacred space.