Travel Plans

I wish I were making travel plans that include airplane tickets and a hotel. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be leaving Michigan any time in the near future. Between work, family obligations, and school, who has the time to go travelling? Not me.

Lack of funds might also have something to do with it, too, but that's a completely different discussion.

In all honesty, most of my travelling is done through reading. Although I'm not an English major (I know! The surprise!), I am an avid reader. I have visited many wondrous and fantastic places without needing a passport or a series of shots to stave off things like malaria and dysentery. From the safety of my home I can set sail on a ship bound for the Cayman Islands, or I can walk onto a train platform and buy that ticket to Chicago. A little suspension of reality and disbelief can take me even further. I can jump between solar systems or visit a magical world where dragons fly and unicorns step through dense forests.

Fiction has been my escape for more years than I care to admit. It became so much a part of me that I soon found myself creating my own little imaginary worlds and populating it with people I loved and despised.

As I've matured both in reality and in terms of my writing, I've discovered that my imagination needs to be fed. I'm not talking about inspiration. This is not about those instances when an overheard phrase or partial conversation can trigger an entire scene or provide the theme for your next big project. The kind of nourishment I'm referring to is found in the very real world in which we live. It's experience. It's tangible.

I signed up for this class because, to borrow a cliché, I knew it would broaden my horizons. I don’t expect to visit the Middle East any time in the near future. Heck, I don’t even know if I’ll be visiting it the distant future. Of all the places I want to go, the “Middle East” as I think of it, doesn’t make the list. I think one of the main reasons would have to be because of the constant threat of danger that seems to linger there. I’m all for travelling, but only if my safety is pretty much a given.

So while I may never walk in Mecca, Medina, or Jerusalem, I can visit these places the only way I know how: the Internet. I’m kidding! Sort of. The truth is the Internet is a great resource for researching almost anything. Yet, it doesn’t always turn up the results you most desire. Searches can be thwarted by pages and pages of nonsense, misrepresentation, or untruths.

I think this is one of the reasons why I thought travel writing would be great. First-hand accounts may carry misrepresentations, untruths, and nonsense, but unless the narrator is a complete fraud, the information contained in their stories is real. Their observations may be skewed by any number of things (education, religion, exposure, biases, prejudices..) but these writings aren’t fictional. They are someone’s truth. They are someone’s insights and explanations.

I will never be able to experience 16th or 17th century life in Algeria or Turkey. I can’t climb into a time machine and set the dial to whatever year suits my fancy, but I can read an accounting of what life was like for this man or that woman. I can look through their eyes and see a world so unlike my own.

Already I've collected quite a variety of images. Here are some of my favorites:

From Joseph Pitts I discovered the mateeja. This plain is transformed into a marketplace several times a week. I imagine the makeshift markets between the farmhouses. I don't know exactly what this would look like or smell like or sound like, but I have an image.

Later in his work he describes a military encampment where "the bey's tent is pitched in the middle of the camp, and all the tents are pitched so close together that an horse cannot pass, and this is so ordered that there may be but one entrance into the camp, which is directly toward the door of the bey's tent". (p. 237) Can you see that? What it must look like? Now try to imagine the sound of soldiers going about their business, of talk and prayer drifting through the night air. It seems a strange custom, dangerous even, but yet it must have worked. Figuring out why is the challenge.

Even their most common punishment is fascinatingly bizarre. I can't imagine being beaten on the soles of your feet. Ouch!

Even Biddulph, that holier-than-thou preacher, managed to incorporate some interesting comments on the culture of the area he visited. There's a paragraph were he discusses the marriage practices of the Sultan's sisters. Even if this is complete bunk, which it probably is considering the source, I still found it interesting. Apparently these women are told " 'Daughter, or sister, I give thee this man to be they slave and bedfellow; and if he is not loving, dutiful, and obedient unto thee, here I give thee a canzhare (that is, a dagger) to cut off his head.' And always after, those daughter or sisters of the king wear a broad and sharp dagger." (p. 95) How funny!

So in answer to the question, what are my travel plans this semester? I’m going to keep reading. I’m going to visit the times and places our narrators take us and I’m going to try to make the most of it. I’m going to keep notes on interesting cultural differences and customs. I’m going to try to read between the lines and figure out the character behind the byline. In short, I’m going to feed my muse.

Any maybe learn a little something along the way!