Reflections on the Road: Excerpts from a Manuscript (II)

This is the second "manuscript excerpt" post.  To begin at the first one, CLICK HERE

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Ms. Quy, a survivor of the 1968 My Lai massacre, resting on the grounds where many of her neighbors and loved ones were killed

Ms. Quy, her face wrinkled and eyes tired, sat five feet away.  She held her hat in one hand and ran her fingers over the chin strap with the other, fidgeting with it in a way that suggested stirring thoughts that were throwing up memories that needed an outlet.  I had never looked into eyes like hers and I had never felt so compelled to say "I'm sorry" for something I didn't do. But each time our eyes met, they became a mirror and I saw my nationality sitting squarely on my shoulders.  

            Just a minute before we shook hands, Ms. Quy had been gathering food for her pigs.  Seeing me, a lone visitor across the small stretch of grass, she walked over to take a break from the sun and sit with me for a few minutes.  We were now on the steps of a tiny museum of photographs, but these grounds used to be the hamlet she called home until it was destroyed and her neighbors murdered on the morning of March 16, 1968.  I looked toward the ditch less than a hundred meters away and then back at her.  I knew she had once been in that ditch for hours, covered by the corpses of her friends and neighbors, and that she was one of the very few to survive.  Hesitant to ask the question now on my mind, fearing what raw emotions it could stir and how it would affect the seventy-eight-year-old woman hunched over before me, I asked anyway:  "How do you feel about Americans today, Ms. Quy?"

                                -- From Chapter 11, "An American, a Motorbike, and the Fields of My Lai"

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One of some 200 vultures that took to the air after devouring the bodies of three deceased Tibetans

According to tradition, the bodies would have been left untouched for three days, then cleaned and wrapped in the white burial cloth.  And now as they lay before us, all was silent save for the audible growling coming from the pack of vultures.  The rest of us were hushed, perhaps even a little confused that we were about to see what we were about to see.  These were, after all, the bodies of people who, like us, had hearts, fingers, and legs.  The confusion was not just at the rite we were about to witness; it was also at the very fact of our mortality, about to be mirrored to us with such rawness.

           The cloth was removed.  Immediately the men with cleavers, knives, and bloodied white aprons began their work on the bodies of a middle-aged man and two old women.  Turned on their stomachs, it was the woman with long, grey hair that received the first cut, a long slice across her back.  We onlookers didn't utter a sound, yet I sensed something collective escaping from us.  That first cut into human flesh either drew us toward it or threw us back -- I don't know which -- but in no uncertain terms it brought us together in a way I've never experienced before.  At least it did for that moment.  But quickly our individual personalities reemerged and we began to approach the sky burial in our own ways.

           The lead butcher wore a Nike hat that said, "Just Do It!" and, quite clearly, he was doing it.  The woman's back was stripped of its flesh and he turned her over, chopping her open down the middle of the rib cage.  Her breasts, which once nursed life, were gone, and then her intestines were spilled out.  Throughout her dismemberment the grey-haired woman looked my way, blankly.  I looked at her too, one moment feeling scientific and enthralled, the next feeling horrified and shorn of all comfort.

                                             -- From Chapter 26, "The Road to Lhasa...and Beyond"

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In the Pakistani city of Lahore, guards check passengers as they board a Rawilpindi-bound bus

Back on the bus and before putting on my headphones, I turned to the tall, muscular man sitting beside me and asked his age.  He was eighteen years old, he said, and from Lahore, now on his way back to university in Islamabad.  When I told him I was American, his face instantly furrowed into a perplexed look.  "What in the world are you doing here?" he asked.

           It was a good question and I was happy to share my philosophy of travel.  I could have appealed to Goethe who said, "The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety."  I could have pointed to statistics:  42,643 people died on U.S. highways the pervious year; by being in Pakistan this month I would avoid being one of the more than 3,000 Americans who would die in their cars.  And I could have quoted Maya Angelou, who approaches the issue of travel from a more relational angle: "Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends."  But I think I simply told him that Pakistan was my home too.  While the United States is the place I know the best, it is not the only place I want to know.  And so I travel even here.

           But cruising smoothly at about sixty miles per hour on a road identical to an American interstate, I sometimes forgot where I was.  I saw a chauffeured Mercedes whiz by, a University of Southern California decal prominently displayed in the back window.  And further down the highway a policeman had pulled over a speeding BMW.  It displayed a Michigan Wolverines decal.

                                                                     -- From Chapter 35, "Musharraf's Mom"

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During the two hours I spent in this mosque in the Kurdish-dominated city of Diyarbakir, in southeastern Turkey, nine-year-old Sheyma forever impressed herself into my memory

Everyone looked decently dressed, at least from a distance.  But the view from a distance is never the same as the one that is near.  When people drew close, especially the children, I saw the deteriorating zippers, the holes in the wool and cotton.  And the children often drew close, because they too knew that the view from a distance is not the same as the one that is near.  While their parents prayed they played and sought to engage the curious stranger before them.  They ranged from a shy preteen girl who evaded my camera to an obnoxious boy who bullied others with a stick.  Nine seemed to be the popular age.  Rukiye told me she was nine.  So did Arcanli and Nazemin.  And so did Sheyma Algan, a wiry girl with skin flush to her bones.  Sheyma wore a red sweater, a ragged skirt, socks and slippers, and the look in her eyes told me she knew something about duty, and that I could trust her.  Once, while I briefly ventured off to take more photos, Sheyma guarded my notepad and backpack with a most solemn demeanor.  From time to time as I took photos, I turned to look her way, but not out of concern for my things; it is children like her that make me want to be a father, or a soldier in a "just" war, an advocate for "the least of these," or a disciplined adult whose grip includes the poor.  When an old woman protested my picture-taking and ordered me out of the mosque, Sheyma threw my backpack onto her tiny frame and rushed to the scene, where she spoke out, politely, in my defense.  The old woman was not impressed and smacked her on the head in reply, which somehow sent Sheyma's face straight into the largest grin I had seen all day.

           That's my girl, I thought.

                                                          -- From Chapter 44, "Behind Black Basalt Walls"

IF INTERESTED IN READING A CHAPTER IN ITS ENTIRETY, CLICK ON "Entering Cambodia with A Book".  AND IF YOU MISSED THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF THESE EXCERPTS, CLICK ON "Reflections on the Road: Excerpts from a Manuscript."

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		Joel Carillet, Gather Travel Correspondent
	Joel's column, "Reflections on the Road," is published every other Thursday to Gather Essentials: Travel. His articles, based on extensive travels in Asia and the Middle East, seek to shed light on humanity, both our own and that of others.   They aim not merely to entertain and inform but also to develop a sense of connection between the reader and the world. Joel's writing and photography have appeared in several magazines and newspapers, including the Kansas City Star and Christian Science Monitor.  Currently he is seeking an agent for a book manuscript entitled Sixty-One Weeks: A Journey across Asia. When not on the road, he happily calls Tennessee home. Keep up with Joel's article series by joining his network, or subscribing to his content.