There is a sentence that in Seville is uttered between May and October with the solemnity of an oath: “yes, it’s hot, but it’s a dry heat.” We say it while sweating from places we didn’t even know could sweat, with our shirt stuck to our back like a stamp, and still we defend it as if it were a world heritage treasure.
The neighbour says it while fanning himself with a pizzeria flyer. The lady at the market says it as she pushes through fans that ventilate nothing, merely shifting the stuffy air from one side to the other. Even the pharmacy thermometer says it, reading forty-four and seeming to apologise.
The trouble with dry heat is that it is like someone else’s toothache: always bearable as long as it isn’t yours. People come from abroad and we explain, with a smile of contained suffering, that they will get used to it. They don’t. Nobody does. We simply learn to walk hugging the façades in search of that thirty-centimetre strip of shade we generously call “the cool part.”
And yet we will say it again next year. Because complaining out loud about Seville’s heat is allowed, but admitting that maybe it isn’t so dry would be almost a betrayal. So there you go: stay hydrated, find your thirty centimetres of shade and repeat after me, dignity intact and forehead soaked, that here we cope with the heat just fine.
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