The Muslims finding belonging in southern Spain

Alora, Spain - The bid chugs steadily retired of Malaga station, its rhythmic clatter carrying it inland towards the mountains of the Guadalhorce Valley, wherever whitewashed villages cling to hillsides.

Beyond the window, pomegranate trees turn adjacent to the tracks. Palms and cypress trees basal alongside young orangish saplings planted successful neat rows and, farther out, olive groves whose leaves shimmer betwixt greenish and metallic successful the breeze. Above the rugged mountains, tiny achromatic clouds interval crossed an immense bluish sky, similar pieces of popcorn.

Over the train's rattle, an announcement successful Spanish comes done the speakers: “The adjacent presumption is Aljaima.”

The sanction derives from the Arabic al-khaima, meaning “the tent”, a tiny echo of different language, different time.

And past Alora, wherever the municipality rises astir a rocky elevation crowned by the remains of an aged fortress. Some etymologists suggest the town's past sanction whitethorn deduce from the Arabic al-lawra, loosely translated arsenic "the light".

The railway presumption is quiescent successful the midday heat.

A ample achromatic pick-up motortruck rumbles into the presumption car parkland and stops. Henrietta Szovati, a British-Hungarian Muslim, steps out, having driven down from the mountains to cod provisions.

Dressed successful a escaped bluish garment and pick trousers, she offers a lukewarm embrace. Silver earrings dangle beside her face, and a sea-blue scarf is wrapped astir her hairsbreadth similar a turban. A brace of red-framed spectacles rests connected top.

She apologises for the truck’s state. Dust has settled connected the dashboard, and bits of dried writer person recovered their mode inside. “It is simply a moving vehicle,” she says, much accustomed to hauling things crossed farmland than ferrying visitors from railway stations.

For the past 2 years, she and her husband, Ajmal Masroor, a therapist and imam, person been transforming an aged farmhouse and its surrounding onshore into the House of Andalus. The task aims to bring radical person to confederate Spain's Islamic past and the earthy world.

Nearly 400 olive trees dot the 14 hectares (35 acres). She wants to works much and marque it a thousand-tree olive grove, she says with a smile, glancing retired of the truck's unfastened window.

The roadworthy winds higher into the mountains. Wildfires, Henrietta says, swept done parts of the surrounding portion astatine the tallness of summer, and the scenery inactive bears the season's harshness. Reddish-brown world gives mode to patches of parched scrub and exposed rock, portion slabs of silvery-grey chromatic jut sharply from the slopes.

"That's slate," Henrietta explains, pointing done the windscreen. The Spanish connection is pizarra, she adds, the aforesaid sanction arsenic the neighbouring town.

Oranges flourish here, arsenic bash figs and avocados. And mangoes that are amended than those from South Asia, Henrietta emphatically declares.

Mangoes thrive successful the lukewarm clime of confederate Spain’s Andalucia portion [Indlieb Farazi Saber/Al Jazeera]

As we thrust further into the mountains, Henrietta gestures towards a neighbouring property. “That's my neighbour, Juan Garcia.”

Henrietta buys lemons, avocados and chromatic from him. Sometimes helium comes implicit to assistance with the olives. It's this consciousness of assemblage and neighbourliness she recovered harder to travel by successful Britain, wherever she has lived since 2001, marrying Ajmal a twelvemonth later.

"I consciousness similar an outsider there. I'm inactive not ‘one of us’ aft much than 20 years."

As a Muslim and arsenic a European, she says, Spain feels acquainted successful a mode nary different spot does. Hungary was ne'er an option, she adds, describing its authorities arsenic “racist and right-wing”. And successful Britain, she says, being Muslim tin consciousness unavoidably political, her religion viewed done headlines and nationalist arguments astir Islam.

In the mountains supra Alora, she feels her neighbours conscionable her archetypal arsenic Henrietta: the pistillate who lives up the way and joins successful colony life.

"Practising Islam present is conscionable easier," she adds.

Yet Spain is not immune to the governmental currents sweeping crossed Europe. The far-right Vox enactment has made absorption to migration and what it calls the "Islamisation" of Spain cardinal to its campaigning, raising questions astir however unafraid that consciousness of belonging mightiness be.

With a sigh, Henrietta acknowledges that being Muslim tin beryllium hard anyplace successful the satellite today. But she prefers to absorption connected what she tin build, alternatively than connected governmental circumstances beyond her control. "Circumstances change, but community, connections and religion don’t," she says.

For her, that means gathering relationships with neighbours, adjacent erstwhile they clasp antithetic beliefs. A consciousness of community, she argues, is forged done mundane encounters alternatively than governmental rhetoric.

On a sojourn to Juan Garcia’s home, his 79-year-old mother, Maria, is funny astir the scarf wrapped astir Henrietta's hair.

The women are lasting successful Maria's surviving room, its shutters drawn against the day sun. A representation of Jesus hangs connected the wall.

Henrietta explains that she is Muslim and that covering her hairsbreadth is portion of her faith, a mode to consciousness person to God. Maria is Catholic. The speech turns to the Virgin Mary, who besides covered her hair.

But Maria insists each that matters is being a bully person. If you cannot beryllium good, nary of the outward signs of religion means precise much.

There is nary awkwardness betwixt them, nary request to support oregon explicate their beliefs. The speech moves on.

It is specified mean encounters that person made Andalucia consciousness similar home, Henrietta says. But her transportation to this portion of Spain runs deeper than the friendships she is making. It besides stems from a heavy respect for a past that stretches backmost much than 1,000 years.

Henrietta Szovati and her neighbour Juan Garcia place the countryside adjacent Alora, confederate Spain [Indlieb Farazi Saber/Al Jazeera]

For British Muslim question writer and historiographer Tharik Hussain, writer of Muslim Europe, the fascination is understandable. Al-Andalus was the medieval Muslim-ruled territory of modern-day Spain and Portugal. Its heartland laic successful the south, successful what is present Andalucia, location to cities specified arsenic Cordoba, Seville and Granada, wherever surviving monuments inactive evoke a play erstwhile Muslims helped signifier European civilisation.

Its eventual loss, helium says, has fixed it an astir “Atlantis-like aura” successful the Muslim imagination, a longing reflected successful Muslim lit implicit the centuries, from the 17th-century historiographer al-Maqqari to the 20th-century writer Allama Iqbal.

For astir 8 centuries, Muslim dynasties ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula, leaving down palaces and fortresses with horseshoe arches, intricate zellij tilework, carved yeseria plasterwork, and curling Arabic calligraphy. Their bequest endured successful irrigation channels known arsenic acequias (from the Arabic al-saqiya), scholarship, connection and traditions that continued to signifier Spain agelong aft the autumn of Granada successful 1492.

Britons person agelong headed to Andalucia successful hunt of a spot successful the sun. But among those putting down roots present are Muslims drawn by thing more: The accidental to reconnect with a past successful which Islam was portion of Europe, and to physique lives wherever their religion feels little similar a defining difference.

Yet the Andalucia they are entering is not a vanished kingdom waiting to beryllium rediscovered; it is modern Spain, with its ain economical pressures, societal divisions, and analyzable narration with the past.

What happens erstwhile the imagination of al-Andalus meets the realities of surviving here?