Conversations with a Traveling Man

He had an interesting air around him, as if he knew more than others, as if the world opened up to him in a different light, revealing more of its secrets, letting him in on more of its wonders. I sat next to him in a popular shisha place in Istanbul as he cracked jokes with his friends, recounted anecdotes from his numberless trips and munched on nuts and grapes. A wave of strange bittersweet softness would light up his face when he talked about travels. Sometimes he seemed disappointed with the harshness of the world and other times he seemed utterly in love with it.

(Photo: The Traveling Man & the Author)

The writer inside of me was dormant during this trip, but after few encounters with him I felt an urge, almost a calling to put down all his collected thoughts about travel on paper. What you will read below is not the usual guide on wonders of different countries, the most coveted sightseeing spots and suggested tours. These are observations of a man that managed to walk hand in hand with the peoples of countries he visited. This is a story of a man that was able to look past the architectural wonders and crowded museums and delved straight into the lives of the ordinary.

The Simple Desire

It all started with the simple desire to travel, to find answers to random questions about livelihood of people in different countries that have accumulated with years. Some answers were found, yet the more I wandered, the more questions arose inside of me. Travels allowed me to look at my own upbringing from a bird’s view, opening my eyes on how we are all accustomed blinding judgment. How many times I found myself sitting in one of my aunt’s well-lit living rooms, witnessing conversations that spanned a person’s life from childhood (Which hospital were you born in?) to death (What was served at his or her funeral?), always barely touching the surface, uninterested in the deep essence of things.

Having visited so many countries, shared food with people of different nationalities and watched the sun rise and set in all four sides of the world, I am astonished how such details could be taken into consideration. Traveling helped me get out of this thing once and for all. I’ve seen too many lives pass by me, heard too many stories and got myself into too many situations to helplessly float on the surface of things. Each destination plunged me deeper and deeper into a sort of a universal understanding and acceptance of the world and the peoples that it inhabited.

Passing the Border in Zimbabwe

Some of the stories I brought along from my numerous travels still visit me from time to time. I often recount them to a friend during a warm summer evening, or think of them alone as I sit on the cozy veranda of a near-by café. They offer a much needed escape from my busy life. In fact, I often depend on these colorful snapshots as they drown out the continuous buzz of life in the west. Let me share one with you, my dear reader.

I was trying to pass the border from Zimbabwe to Zambia without a visa. So I gathered all my charms and approached the border control desk. The border officer was a tall, skinny man in dark green uniform, a toothpick between his white teeth and a suspicious look on his face. He appeared so serious at first that I thought there was no way he’s going to let me pass, but then we started talking and I noticed how his eyes lit up when he realized I can speak and write in English. I lacked all the documents to enter the country, but my ability to read and write in English seemed to intrigue him enough not to turn me away from the get-go. I had a small, but reasonable chance of getting in.

"So you speak English, brother?" he looked at me sideways. "You help me write a message and I let you in?"

"Deal" I replied before he changed his mind.

Typing up a simple message in English seemed like a small price for such a huge favor as bypassing the immigration laws, but somehow it did the trick. As I typed up a cute, romantic message to Mr. Officer’s wide-eyed fiancée, I learned the story behind my fortune. It turned out that Mr. Officer spent the hot uneventful afternoons at the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia dreaming of a day when he perfects his English and lands a job at the ministry, which will allow him to marry his beautiful fiancée. An elaborate romantic message in English to his bride-to-be served as a promise that the wonderful future was closer than she thought. I am no poet or an eloquent lover, but I did my best. As the officer pressed “Send” on his outdated small Nokia, he looked at me with infinite gratitude and a huge, complete smile.

I thanked him and prepared to cross the border and as I walked towards an oversized green tableau pointing towards Zambia, I realized something. There was something unattainable in the happiness that shined on his face once the message was sent, as if his life’s biggest dreams were delivered along with that message.

I tried to come up with a scenario that would make me as ecstatic as the young man at the border. My thoughts ranged from a trip to North Korea to a coveted next position at work, to convincing my large family to reunite during a summer vacation in the Mediterranean among other things. And still, I was not convinced that I could taste the look of complete happiness that lit up his face.

These thoughts haunted me the rest of the day. In the evening, over my humble dinner made up of eggs and beans and tea, I realized that the comfort of life in the West deprived us of such instantaneous and complete joy because our dreams and wishes are always long term and sound more like a to-do list. We’re constantly planning to enter or are in the middle of some master’s program, working towards a coveted position at work or waiting for Christmas to buy that 52 inch tv for our fully decorated living room. Being in a company of someone who needed so little to be happy, I felt uneasy about the regular boredom that I experienced living a life full of smart phones, TVs, ATM machines and devices that silently tracked my every step and read my every thought.

It occurred to me that perhaps it was the absence of all the comfort so prevalent on our side of the world that added such vibrant colors to the eyes of these simple people. Their bodies lacked the weight of all the material goods that we accumulated, and without which we could not function. Somehow, this made them less attached to the ground. Their happiness was louder and their tears – more sincere. If happiness was the inverse of struggles that one encountered, then it all made sense. How pale and unfortunate and deprived of the purest happiness I now appeared, the weight of my education and experience pressing on my shoulders.

Now the Important Question!

But would I trade places with the dark-eyed, skinny officer at the Zimbabwe-Zambia border? Would I abandon my life, full of devices, spotted with business meetings and traffic-filled city smog to enjoy the bliss of simple life now that it was within my reach? I heard a firm and honest “No” echo inside of me. They seemed so happy because they only heard of all the opportunities and comforts that polluted my life, because if they have tasted it, the desire to own more and more would infect them once and for all. I put away the tray with my dinner and laid down on the small twin bed of my hotel room, locked my arms behind my head and stared at the ceiling. Even though I would not trade lives with him, I felt slightly lonely and incredibly jealous of the officer.