Whenever I’m on a trip I think about my mother’s book: ‘Around the World by Mistake.’ In 1962-63 my parents took my brother and me on a year-long freighter voyage. They wanted to inspire us to regard the whole world as our home, and people from every country as our friends. ‘Around the World by Mistake’ is the true story of that freighter voyage. Part travelogue, part inner journey, and part adventure tale, it was an amazing journey that most people only dream of doing.
Here’s an excerpt, where she describes how it’s not the politicians and tyrants who make history, but the poets, the story-tellers, the parents, and the travelers:
Alex joined us eventually and we sat up to dangle our feet over the side of the boat, watching the dazzling rainbow sparkle of flying fish. The smack of the prow thumping along at full speed drove clusters of the winged creatures out of the water. Each group flew for a minute or more, their silver traces marking the air to the back of the ship, there to mingle with the circling of the seagulls and the lacy curls of the wake.
We were sailing East of Aden to Bombay and it would take about seven days. The vast landmass to the north of us was not all a mystery to us. Alex and I had visited a good deal of it on magazine assignments at one time or another.
The whole thing was more a living picture of geography and history. It harbored more than a dozen distinctive peoples. Yet they shared the one identity of time and place: like each other, say, with characteristic differences, rather like those between a Vermonter and a Texan – both American. But this Mid-Asian Continent with No Name, as I called it, resembles America in size. Except that it has nations instead of states, and does not enjoy the protection of one well-guarded boundary. Nor does it have one federal government dispensing fairly equal justice; nor one set of federal laws; nor one currency, nor just one military. Instead, there’s nationalism, racism, repression, and burning embers of revolution.
Over thousands of years, traders, conquerors, pilgrims, teachers, have crisscrossed this continent, moving along dangerous ways and byways to storied cities worth every hard, hot step. From Kabul to Istanbul; from Karachi to Damascus, Marlik to Mecca; from Babylon to Balkh and Baghdad, from Persepolis to Petra.
All jewels in the crown of the Continent with No Name.
Three modern-day world religions spun out from this land: first Judaism, with Christianity and Islam following each in turn. All preached “the One God.” Or one Good. Or one good after another. And yet they have divided rather than united as they killed one another.
Conquerors insist on only One God, describing that Being as Top Dog. Through conquest they carry their own rules and religions with them, ponderously imposing them on the conquered as they pursue their bloody ways. Conquest is always brutal, always despoiling sandcastles not built in a day. Those fleeing the iron chariots go lightly, carrying their songs, chants, and stories with them. Usually their culture and religion is often all they carry – that and their children.
Tyrants coerce, whereas poets, artists, storytellers sing the daily life, the immediate life, the only life we have, the one we love. Jelaluddin Rumi, one of the supremely great poet-sons of the Continent with No Name, is an example of such creative mixing. Born at Balkh, (now in Afghanistan) he was exiled by the Mongols, and walked to the other end of the Silk Road to settle in Konya, Turkey. Rumi spoke in Turkic, wrote in Persian, and chanted the holy Qu’ran as it was written, in Arabic.
A vivid memory catches your soul as a dream-catcher catches your dreams. This is particularly so sailing across wide expanses of oceans. It’s all dream, immediate experience, and memory. If you’re not interrupted, you can sort things out and drop a lot overboard.
Idly from my vantage point, I watched Bjorn round a corner, tiptoeing in and out of the deck shadows. He had been spending the last few days sunning himself and his tan had deepened to a rich cherry-wood stain. He was looking for someone. I hoped it wasn’t me.
Like an animal in the jungle, he felt my eyes and looked up. A few minutes later, he climbed the ladder and waved cheerfully.
“Ah, there you are! I have been searching all over for you.”
If you’d like to buy the book you can find it here: http://janewinsloweliot.com/writing/around-the-world-by-mistake/