Bewildered Travel: The Sacred Quest for Confusion

Introduction

as i was finishing this book, i was mugged. it was nothing terrible, a two-inch bruise on my upper arm was the only physical e=ect. The teenager who robbed me shouted that his friend had a gun, which caused the strongest emotional e=ects, fear and intimidation. I surrendered what he wanted, my cell phone and some cash. I o=ered no resistance when he hit me several times, just bending to shield my head. I surrendered any ability to question, to object, to challenge, to resist. I became a victim. But as such things go, it was a mild incident. He was so preoccupied with the cell phone, >shing it out of my pants’ pocket, that I was able to protect my wallet, taking two bills out from among the mess inside. Maybe he got forty dollars, maybe he got two. He didn’t seem to look. He wanted the cell. I got away more or less unscathed. I begin this book with the incident for a number of reasons. It • 1 Introduction happened eight-tenths of a mile from my home, as I walked to catch the Washington Metro, and so, in a way, it took place traveling . No one is mugged at home. But as soon as we walk out of our front doors, the journey begins, and travel means mischance. It means misfortune. It means the safety and protection of home are gone. Home is where there are walls and doors and locks, and the people there mostly don’t steal from us. Leaving home means taking risks, whether it’s eight-tenths of a mile away or a thousand . Our homes are on streets and not far are other streets. They lead us to misfortunes. I bring it up, too, because of an odd feeling I have had through the years of writing this book. In the chapters ahead I recount travels by Paul Bowles in Morocco, by Henry Miller and Jack Gilbert in Greece, by Susan Brind Morrow in Egypt, by Alphonso Lingis in Thailand, Nicaragua, and the Philippines, as well as my own in Mexico, Ghana, India, Israel, Turkey, Iran, the Netherlands , and the Czech Republic—and there are many other foreign places discussed. But I have had the feeling throughout that I didn’t need to go so far. Of the seventeen thousand people in my town, a close-in Washington suburb, nearly a third were born outside the United States, half of them in Latin America and most of the rest in Africa. There is a neighborhood a mile away that is predominantly Latin and West African, and when I go shopping for food there, I am among Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Hondurans , Dominicans, Ethiopians, Nigerians, and Eritreans, and I could as easily buy foods that puzzle me as foods called normal in much of America. When I walk into the tiny shop where I get my hair cut, there are chairs sta=ed by women from Cambodia and a man from Vietnam. I am the outsider. Why travel abroad? Why cross the border of the town, not to mention the state or nation? I say again, once we step across the threshold, we are abroad. As soon as we step into the street, we are about to encounter everything I describe in this book. In some ways it could be much more fascinating to study travel near home, the travel that is not home though it seems to be, as going into our own attics, basements, and garages—even into the cab2 • bewildered travel inets and under the sink—is leaving home, too. But “abroad” is where we have gone. We have felt the need to step across the border , to ?y across the ocean, to go “far” away, and yet we should not feel at home while we are still “here.” Bewilderment with all of its values is here, too. Two more reasons why I bring up the mugging. As I look back at the description I have of it, I notice all the sentences that begin with “I.” We are taught not to use the >rst-person pronoun when we write academic prose. Our high school English teachers sternly warned us. The style manuals for journals discourage it. If our analysis is to be persuasive, the impersonal voice is crucial. Reason is speaking in academic prose, not a person, as much in the humanities as in...