The Secret Music

Inside one note, many more are hidden.

I learned this from my father, who played the oud, that antiquated “lute” of the Moors, as did his father before him, and so on, all the way back to the time of Alfonso the Wise. I hereby state that my name is Juan de Granada.  I was baptized in that city in the spring of 1492, when I was ten years old. Since then, I have been as good a Christian as any.

I am seventy-two years old, and the last leaf of my father’s tree. I am ready to fall and be done with it.

Of my family, I have only a few things to tell. We lived in Granada’s dwindling Jewish quarter until, in the days following Fernando’s triumph, our neighborhood was branded a nest of criminals and the sadly misguided. But well before this, my parents had made sure my brother and I were circumcised, and bestowed upon each of us two names: one to carry into the world, and one to keep hidden in the heart.

Naïve, defiant, or simply exhausted—it is not for us to judge. After all, for ten years, rumors of Christian conquest had come and gone every day; who could keep up with them? To be on the safe side, our mother had taught us the Castilian of her own northern childhood, while our father taught us to play the oud and sing in the Arabic of our native place. He still held out hope that one of us would succeed him in...