COLUMN #60, 11 September, 2002
The year of traveling dangerously | Don George

Despite what everyone was saying a year ago, most of our lives have not been irrevocably changed by September 11. For many of us not directly affected, hours, days, sometimes weeks can pass without a single terrorist-related thought crossing our minds.

Of course, all that changes as soon as we start planning a trip.

Just over one year ago, when I was preparing to fly somewhere, I did not pack provisions and paperbacks just to get through the baggage check-in and security wait. I did not think about alerting security when I saw an unaccompanied bag on an airport floor. I did not scrutinize fellow travelers for cues or clues that might reveal them as a terrorist. I did not mentally brace myself to die trying to disarm a passenger in mid-flight. In all these senses, September 11 planted small and insidious seeds of unsettlement deep inside me.

For Americans, the world of travel has changed in manifold ways - some superficial, some profound - in the past 12 months; it may never be as carefree as it was before. But it is important to look beyond the headlines and TV images to one crucially important fact: whatever you might have heard, Americans have not rejected the world and pulled the continental comforters over their heads. In fact, our experience at Lonely Planet indicates that Americans are more interested in getting out and about than ever. Lonely Planet has sold more guidebooks in the USA in the first eight months of 2002 than it did in the first eight months of 2001. And our top 20 best-selling titles over the last year were not only guidebooks to San Francisco, Hawaii and the USA, but also included Brazil, China, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Costa Rica, Japan, Peru and India. Clearly, Americans are still packing up their passions and taking them on the road.

I’m one of them. Later this month, I’m traveling to Jordan - my first overseas trip since September 11. Like most travelers, I am feeling more cautious than ever. I plan to be vigilant around crowds and attuned to any hint of danger. I will not take risks lightly. But I don’t want to let myself be bound by fear.

I travel to learn, to make discoveries that stretch my head and connections that stretch my heart. I don't know what I will find as a traveler in Jordan, or how people will react to me as an American. But I know what I hope. Sometime on my trip, I hope to wander into a tiny cafe and strike up a conversation with a man in a flowing white beard and white robes, whose daily rites and beliefs are absolutely foreign to me. At first we will be tentative with each other, awkward, maybe a little suspicious, but after a while we will communicate. We may have barely 20 words in common, but I will ask him what he does and thinks and why, and I will tell him what I do and think and why. Our conversation may be conveyed through gestures and drawings more than words, but before too long, we will toast each other, smile and laugh. And when we part, we will clasp each other's hands in a way that I will never forget.

I believe this will happen because it has happened to me so many times before. When I open myself to the culture and people of a foreign land, that culture, those people open themselves to me, welcome me into their homes and hearts. Everyday travelers are the planet’s best ambassadors: When people from one country encounter people from another with curiosity and respect, all the built-in barriers fall; bridges soar across chasms.

This is why I passionately believe travel is humanity’s greatest hope, and why the wonder and promise of travel seem especially important right now. But, some will ask, isn’t traveling to the Middle East dangerous? Well, I’ll reply, not as dangerous as not traveling to the Middle East.

Today, as we commemorate the tragic events of one year ago with silence and solemnity, I hold this moral in my heart: We can succumb to the demagogues and zealots of the world, who use ignorance as their ammunition. Or we can forge arcs of understanding from Amman to San Francisco, from village to metropolis across the globe.

That’s why I’m going to Jordan. Because the past year has made one truth urgently clear: We who cherish the planet must venture to foreign lands and build the bridge of peace with loving care, hand by hand.



  posted by spidergrrl @ 6:45 AM