Bangkok, Thailand
March 22, 1985

Dear Folks,

Another American traveler pointed out to me that my visa for Thailand was good only for two weeks, not the two months I had thought. Having learned this unexpected detail only the day before the visa was to expire, it was all I could do to catch the next express train out of the country.

Because of one of those bizarre quirks of foreign bureaucracy that I'll never quite learn to appreciate, one could not obtain a visa extension for Thailand in Thailand. Rather, one had to go to another country to obtain a new visa, at one of Thailand's foreign consulates.

On the 36-hour train ride to the quite unMalaysian-sounding town of Butterworth (a vestige of Malaysia's days as a British colony), I discovered, to my pride's relief, that a large part of the packed train was made up of other foreigners likewise hurrying off to Malaysia for Thai visas. Indeed, I learned that the same train was continually rushing dozens of new visa aspirants to the otherwise lonely fishing village of Butterworth. It was to the point anymore that any Westerner who stepped into the Bangkok train station was automatically directed to the ticket window for the southbound express.

Now maybe I was wrong, but I certainly couldn't help wondering if the Thai king's treasury didn't have a veritable genius when it came to figuring out how to make the railroads and foreign consulates pay for themselves. At $20 for each visa, it wasn't too difficult to understand how the consulate in Butterworth (actually in a nearby island city called Georgetown) could be housed in such a magnificent mansion.

Still, his majesty's treasurers were mere amateurs compared to others far more experienced, like the Italians, who could make you smile broadly no matter how many traveler's checks fell prey to your signature. So I decided to let the others do the huffing-1 would settle down and make a point of enjoying what otherwise seemed to be a very special sort of journey.

Continue reading ""Tracks To Romance"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bangkok, Thailand
March 8, 1985

Dear Folks,

The thick Bangkok traffic rolled up to the red light. Engines roared impatiently. Drivers stared intently through swirling fumes like racers on some colossal drag strip.

Along the edges of the six lanes of asphalt jostled another jam of humanity. Dressed mostly in American-styled jeans and T-shirts, the mob pulsated to the comings and goings of overloaded buses and over-amplified American rock music. Though hardly a lip knew a word of English, many a chest displayed such messages as Pittsburgh Steelers, Laurel High School Wildcats," or--as one unknowing boy's did--such faddish cliches as Cute Girl.

Red--

Yellow--

Green--

Vrooooom! The race was on again!

Lurching and darting, the "racers" zipped along their tracks of concrete or asphalt to wherever it is that crowds are always scurrying. While some of those encased in the sleek Japanese steel and chrome bumbers of their cars might eventually somehow find a familiar garage or parking space, many of those on foot spun off into lush, multi-storied malls to be surprised by the latest punk designer fashions and bleeping, blooping computers. Yet others sped on tirelessly, peeling away from the pack only to replenish their stomachs with Big Macs, Kentucky Fried Chicken, A&W root beers, Dairy Queen banana splits, Shakey's pizzas, or, as one pit crew's sign simply put it, American Fast Food, Hot Hamburgers, Served With No Waiting.

Continue reading ""The Greatest Shopping Center"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Calcutta, India
February 23, 1985

Dear Folks,

The slow waters of the river cast back the sun's last light like some old dirty mirror. This was, I pondered sadly, perhaps the final time our meandering paths would ever cross. For behind me were the entire width of the Indian subcontinent and the 1,500 miles of the Grand Trunk Road.

I was done, or nearly so. Calcutta, the "Royal Route's" eastern-most anchor, was but a few hundred meters away at the end of the bridge on which I'd paused. It was so hard to believe I'd actually done it, actually made all those supposedly "deadly" and "diseased" miles between the Afghanistan border and Calcutta on foot and alone.

Gripping the bridge railing and standing tall, I looked back toward the land to which I'd just given so much of my time and emotions. A river breeze tousled my hair and tickled the stubble on my cheeks. I laughed aloud, causing a rainbow of parrots to stretch out over the river. How utterly absurd to think that all I have seen, learned and felt these past months could ever be put into ordinary words! There was nothing in any dictionary that could have described my time here.

I watched in awe as the sun settled onto the lance of a poor farmer's rake and burst into the heraldic rays of a magic wand. Was not all I'd seen the greatest magic possible? Surely every second was a miracle.

A rumble to my right caused me to turn. There, with its smokestack horns flaring and its dark labyrinth snarling, lay the "Black Hole" . . . Calcutta! With a never-ending poverty stirring restlessly inside its hulk, it looked to be the most evil of urban pain. But it didn't scare me in the least. If I am sure of anything, it is that fear is an unnecessary part of life. Oh, to be sure, there were dangers inside that beast, but I also knew from my journeys that they would quickly flee in the face of boldness.

Continue reading ""None Is A Stranger"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dhanbad, India
February 10, 1985

Dear Folks,

I shall never forget the roses: so large and so regal as to be from the pages of a tale, each flower a perfect sculpture of nature's poetry.

Nor shall the kindly image of Baba (the Elder) be easily dismissed from my mind. His mysterious figure had guided me to those roses . . . and to the very special gift of love they watched over.

Foolishly, I had wandered from the Grand Trunk Road to follow the banks of a small river channel that seemed to be paralleling the road. However, the river soon veered sharply to the south, and I had little choice but to plunge into a thick forest of bamboo shoots and banyan tentacles in the direction that I hoped the road still lay. Soon I was snarled in the vine and root cords of the leafy net draped about my stumbling figure, haunted by the approaching night and unseen wild cries. Worse, I was in the region of Uttar Pradesh, the home to India's most deadly cobras and many of the nation's man-eating tigers. Why just the day before I had read of a veteran British guide being killed in the bush of Uttar Pradesh by one of those tigers.

As dusk became thicker and every trail I stumbled along led me only to more fleeting shadows and confusing swamp, I began to wonder if the maze in which I was trapped might be my last vision of this world.

It was in a raffish jungle where my worried eyes first met the little citadel of silence and humility that others respectfully called Baba. At the time I was over 700 miles into India, and I should have been advancing toward my final destination of Calcutta--almost an equal number of miles to the east. Instead, I was hopelessly lost.

Continue reading ""The International Guest House"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Varanasi, India
January 27, 1985

Dear Folks,

Thunder boomed. Water drummed relentlessly against water.

Rushing bodies and weaving bicycles, their movement intensified by the pitch blackness and angry horns, surged against and past me. It was all I could do not to stop, turn my tired leached body around, and become another piece of human driftwood. How tempting to let myself be swept back down the Grand Trunk Road to the quiet little side pools of mud huts and banana trees where most of the mobs were undoubtedly heading.

Those rushing past me were anxious not so much to escape the cold winddriven rain, as they were the mire of painted flesh, bad-sweet odors, and ankle-deep mud in which they had spent much of the day. Over two million Indians--all Hindu and mostly very poor--had made the pilgrimage to the holy city of Allahabad in the past week to celebrate the festival of Mankar Sankranti. From all over the nation they had come, most with babies in both arms and pots and blankets on their heads.

"Mother Ganga," the Ganges River, had called their souls. It was the time of the new year to bathe body and spirit in her oily, muddy flow, to wash away sins and give the gods reason to smile once again.

Continue reading ""The Spirits of Mother Ganga"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Agra, India
January 7, 1985

Dear Folks,

My ears were struck by the shrill of a single cicada: brilliant, eerie, a sound as sharp as two finely-edged swords brushing in midair. Gingerly, I pushed a hand-stitched blanket of burlap from my eyes. A farmyard of silvery moonlight and statuesque oxen, still tethered to their clay feeding bin, floated into view. The largest of the bulls, Zebus, a veritable giant with a floppy hump as thick as a fat monkey, turned his long neck ever so slightly, and the small bell secured to it tinkled with a beautiful subtleness.

Beside me, on another blanket spread on the same straw-covered dirt floor, a black-skinned boy stirred uneasily in his sleep. He was of the lowest caste, a shudra, and I wondered if perhaps the ox's bell had stirred in his subconscious a fleeting image of all the udders to be drained by his hands in the morning.

The gentlest of breezes kissed my forehead. Mother Nature's sweet perfumes momentarily transfixed me. Images of the farm I had explored beneath a pink evening sky drifted into my mind: a bent and toothless ancient grandmother squatting barefoot on the cold, finely-swept dirt beside a broken clay pot, churning milk in the pot as she sings; a shy young mother plucking ripe guavas from branches bent to moist clay because of the sunny fruit's abundance, as her baby clings papoose-style to her rainbow-colored dress; lean beautiful children, playful and friendly, taking my hands and walking along, oftentimes stopping to burst into somersaults and laughter.

Continue reading ""Tears In Paradise"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Choma, India
December 31, 1984

Dear Folks,

With 15,000 extra police manning the election polls in New Delhi on the December 24 elections, peace reigned in that crowded megalopolis over the Christmas season. Still, I cried.
In a phone call to home on Christmas night, I learned my father is no longer with us. After years of struggling, his heart finally surrendered last Thanksgiving, my mother told me softly.

Not wanting to talk, yet not wanting to be alone, I have walked these past six days in silence. More than anything, I have wanted to end what seems like a silly, stupid journey, and go home.

As my family has become little more than a long-ago memory, I find myself increasingly gripped by terrible bouts of homesickness. I reflect often how all through South Italy and the Muslims' paternalistic societies, I had watched the close, lifelong bonds between the sons and fathers with a deep envy. Now, my own father is no more. He will not be waiting at home for me. And there is nothing I can do.

Continue reading ""My Father's Death"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Delhi, India
December 26, 1984

Dear Folks,

Someone struck a match and an oil lamp's wick flickered to life. Monstrous shadows leaped and loomed with the unsteady flame. I hugged myself. Hideous alien shapes seemed to throng about me. The cold air was thick with dampness and musty smells that settled deep into the lungs.

I stared, as if mesmerized, through the diffused glow at the darkly stained mud brick walls and dirt floor. My mind momentarily hesitated to believe I was still in the twentieth century, let alone on the same planet. Several hump-backed, horned beasts tethered to iron rings set in the wall upon which the lamp glowed made me think all the more of the Middle Ages.

A tall, narrow figure wrapped in a ragged blanket pointed a long finger at me, then at five hempcord cots lined against a far wall of the stable. A dozen other similarly shaped and clothed figures clustered beside the cots, anxiously waiting for my shivering body to join their company. I sat down slowly on the middle cot. Their forms closed around me like the fingers of a giant hand.

"It is a great problem for us these days," murmured one.

Continue reading ""Shadows from Another Time"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Delhi, India
December 20, 1984

Dear Folks,

The temple stood in a slight patch of eucalyptus and mango trees, just on the edge of a small lake that reflected a blue sky and several white hump-backed sacred cows. It stood on its own and looked out over a broad spread of dormant rice paddies. Not a remarkable temple in any sense: squattish, peeling, made of cement blocks, and with a veranda wrapped around a thick, steeple-like center.

And yet, it was its utter simplicity that probably drew me away from the slow-motion bicycle riders, hopelessly lazy buffalos, and shade of the Grand Trunk Road in the first place. Places of worship, I've discovered, can be very much like cities and towns: In enormous cathedrals, like in cities, those one meets are often fidgety, rushing around with a great air of significance, their minds seemingly preoccupied more with tasks than people; In the simpler homes of God, as in little towns and villages, there is usually someone around only too willing to sit down to a cup of hot liquid and an earful of questions.

In the small courtyard around the temple, I timidly kept my distance and intently observed the strange new scene that greeted me. Several beautiful young village women, barefoot and in plain cotton pants and dresses, were taking turns pouring water over the small statue of a resting cow at the temple's entrance. During this they also bowed three or four times to the statue, then circled the temple itself, sprinkling water on its sides and on the floor of the veranda. All the while, a very frail old man sat nearby on the temple's steps, in the warmth of the morning sun's rays, deeply absorbed in a book.

Continue reading ""Candy From The Gods"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lahore, Pakistan
December 4, 1984

Dear Folks,

As long ago as the fourteenth century B.C. the road along which I'm walking from Peshawar, Pakistan, to Calcutta, India, was known as the Royal Route. It was for thousands of years the principal route over which many of the Indian subcontinent's dynasty-makers directed their armies, and perhaps even their worshipers. Millions of pilgrims trekked over its congested potholes to pray at the sites where the Buddha had dwelt during his many reincarnations.

Today the former imperial roadway is simply known as the G.T. (Grand Trunk) Road. Yet, while the royalty and mystics, together with nearly every one of their hundreds of forts and monasteries, have crumbled back into the earth, there remains, as vibrant as ever, the masses. Rudyard Kipling, in his story Kim, perhaps best summed up that throbbing, ever growing vestige when he described this west-to-east artery of energy as a "a river of moving life, such as does not exist in any part of the world."

Since continuing my journey eastward from Islammabad over two weeks ago, I have entered into a fertile plains region known to some as "the land of five rivers." Here I have found very true the words of the many who've told me that everything I see and experience will greatly multiply the deeper I progress toward Calcutta, the very womb itself. As the land grows more productive, so too shall mankind and all its trappings, good and bad.

It is in this same area, what is now east Pakistan, that the Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang wrote in 630 A.D. of one of the rivers, "The Sin-tu (Indus) is extremely clear and rapid. Poisonous dragons and evil spirits dwell beneath this river in great numbers. Those who embark carrying rare gems or celebrated flowers find their boats suddenly overwhelmed by waves."

Hsuan Tsang spoke from experience. On his return journey the Indus claimed 50 of his manuscripts and all the seeds of exotic flowers he hoped to grow in China. The pilgrim, however, was spared: He crossed over on an elephant.

Continue reading ""Dragons Along The Royal Route"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 8:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lala Musa, Pakistan
November 25, 1984

Dear Folks,

The words of a stranger. How often I hear those, and yet how few I can still recall by day's end. Most are of the simple and ordinary things in life, like how the weather is, or praise for someone's work. While other times those words from an unfamiliar voice are too important to ignore, and to forget them, to not pass on their message, may mean all the difference between living and dying for others.

A lot of tragedy, oppression, and need reaches the ears of one willing to listen earnestly to the voices of the public. This is especially true when, as I sometimes do, you let the others know you are an actual journalist searching for their view on life. So, how do I decide which of those stories or messages is retained and shared with others in my writing, and which are to be condemned to silence? It's never an easy choice. Sometimes, something as innocuous as the look in the other's eyes, when they tell me their words, can be the key to my taking any action after we have parted and gone on to new distractions.

For almost two weeks now, I have had just such a pair of eyes tormenting the back of my mind. Ironically, they belonged to another journalist about the same age as I am. He was an Australian, and when I met him in Peshawar he had just returned from one month with the mujahadeen (freedom fighters) in Afghanistan's battle-blackened Panjshir ("Five Lions") Valley, just north of that occupied nation's capital city, Kabul.

Continue reading ""The Afghanistan Journalist"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 8:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wah Village, Pakistan
November 15, 1984

Dear Folks,

The road explodes into dust with each step. Every morning my tent is frosted with brown. Winter's rains have yet to venture down from their Himalayan nests. Each leaf is thirsty, each face needs a bath.

The towns are flash floods of faces, colors, sound, and movement. Mankind has become like an ant colony: always moving and going somewhere. Nothing rests, not even the invisible. Never would I have thought the air able to bear the weight of so many smells and sounds. Surely I am fallen into the orchestra pit of the very universe itself. An orchestra conducted by not one, but a million mad conductors!

These musicians don't play violins or clarinets. Rather, they toot auto horns, buzz scooter engines, ting-ting-ting bicycle bells, clang hammers against glowing iron, crack horse whips, bubble curry over crackling wood fires, and thump bare soles over packed dirt and garbage. They are the music of life overflowing, of too many proclaiming to the very reaches of the universe the energies burning inside them.

And what of the dance floor? Pakistan is a land decorated in the ugliest poverty but also with more color than a thousand springtime mountain meadows. Then, too, there are the singers, wailing the Koran from lotus-shaped mosque towers, chanting from overcrowded schools, and harping of their gold, silk, or rotting fruit from inside seedy closet-sized shops.

Finally, there are the dancers themselves. As numerous as atoms they twist, roll, squirm, bob, and side-step from one spot to another with all the quickness of untiring sprinters. Most are dressed in turbans and mustaches. Many are young. A few peer over veils with eyes as seductively beautiful as those with which earlier civilizations graced their goddesses. Nearly all seem happy to be swirling with life's forces.

Continue reading ""The Music Of Life"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Peshawar, Pakistan
November 7, 1984

Dear Folks,

After escaping from the brutal police commander in eastern Turkey, I had no choice but to make my way back to Greece. With my imprisonment by the Turkey police being but a stone's throw from Iran, I had in effect accomplished my goal of crossing all of Turkey on foot.

In Athens, Greece, I rested and made preparations for the second half of the Worldwalk. I then flew onward to Pakistan. On the long flight aboard the Russian Aeroflot jet--first to a freezing Moscow, then to a steaming Karachi--bouts of frustration gripped at my insides from time to time.

I was mulling over my failure to gain the permission I'd needed to cross Iran on foot from Turkey to Pakistan. I had visited the Iranian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, before my return to Greece, in the faint hope of finding a way to cross its interior on foot. But, alas, the results were as disheartening as ever. I was told I must wait up to eight weeks for a visa, and then I could only visit (not on foot) certain areas for a very short period. Any way I looked at the conditions offered, it amounted to a waste of my time and energies.

Perhaps it is as well that I had to go around Iran, for while inside the consulate I had studied a map which showed that much of Iran's western area, even up near the U.S.S.R., had suffered attacks by the Iraqi army or air force. Also, there were posters and blown-up photos on the walls--dozens of them, all screaming of death and the glory of spilling blood.

It was so saddening to think the once beautiful Persia had aged into something so wretched and devoid of smiles. Had she no more compassion or love or humbleness? If she did, they hid themselves well from my eyes.

Continue reading ""Safety Among The Unconquered"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Athens, Greece
October 15, 1984

Dear Folks,

Turkey, in the remaining miles to the Iranian border area, was as desolate as my own boots. Dirt turned into restless dust, then into rock, then finally into cooled lava battered into grotesque forms by centuries of Russia-bred winds. Objects like farmhouses and grazing livestock, normally barely noticed in passing, stuck out from the earth's baldness as starkly as the subjects in a Salvador Dali painting.

The people themselves often took on the raggedness and ugliness of those in a Charles Dickens' slum. From the hairy lips of many of the men there no longer came forth offers of tea and food but, rather, fanatical exhortations to the greatness of Allah and bitter grumblings about their deepening poverty.

When the tractors turned into oxen and the stacks of firewood into high cone-shaped piles of cow dung, an uneasiness grew inside me. The villages had decayed into settlements nearly as primitive as those Genghis Khan's arrows had once targeted, and the dirty faces that stared at me from inside the smoking mud-walled homes had an intensity I'd not seen since Africa.
There are many who say the Devil himself presently reigns in neighboring Iran, a beautiful and exotic land once known as Persia. Perhaps there is more truth to that than the rational mind is willing to give credit: From the amount of war-related material moving in that direction and the deteriorating state of nature and man as I drew closer to its borders, I was left with a strong impression that beneath the curtain currently draped over the Iranian society there are few rays of laughter and song.

Continue reading ""Hell in the Shadow of Iran"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Erzurum, Turkey
September 29, 1984

Dear Folks,

Just before the one-quarter mark of my journey, I wrote the following from Spain to a friend:
"The World Walk continues to provide me with more romance, excitement, beauty, and wonderment than I'd ever have imagined possible. So much has happened to me that at times I am moved to tears by the impact of all that I have seen and learned.

"What an incredible planet we live upon. How will I ever be able to properly share with others even a tiny fraction of all the new things I have become aware of? Indeed, these past months since departing from my hometown of Bethel have seemed more like fiction than reality. Can life really be this magical?, I've asked myself so many times. Let no man tell you that he is bored or that life is dull, for there can be no excuse for such feelings on such a paradise of activity as Earth. And, likewise, let no one convince you there is not heaven, for it is all about us."

Continue reading ""Halfway Around a Magical World"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Koyulhisar, Turkey
September 17, 1984

Dear Folks,

His face was ugly enough to scare away the meanest grizzly, his hands thick enough to be roots of the mountains guarding his golden rice paddies. In a more primitive setting, say in central Africa, his strength and 73 years would have made him the village chief. To the one hundred or so inhabitants of Guney, Koyu, however, most of whom worked in his rice fields in the valley far below or were related to him through his four previous wives, Aydi Bekir was simply the boss, grandfather, or father.

My path across north-central Turkey to his mud-walled domain had taken me through a land whose character changed quickly and erratically. One day I might be staggering over terrain as barren as a lunar plain, while the next day I would be floating through a deep river valley as lush and green and filled with children's laughter as a postcard from Katmandu.

Continue reading ""Tea and a Manly Host"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tosya, Turkey
September 5, 1984

Dear Folks,

Like some endless procession of long, rectangular and angry elephants, they rumble through the bottleneck entryway into Asia Minor as if the dusty brown hills still hold the bandits of centuries past. With air horns trumpeting loudly and with insides fuming, the eighteen-wheelers of Europe charge to and from warring and material-starved Iran and Iraq in numbers that seem insane.

As it has probably been since the time of Alexander the Great, Allah's Turks hold the overland keys to the Near and Middle East. And like the banner-draped caravans of long ago, today's cargo haulers still wear the distinctive color of their place of origin. The covered semi-trailers of communist regimes, for example, are always uniformly sharp, taut, of spotless military gray or blue, and marked with nothing more than efficiently-stenciled block letters spelling the nation's name. On the other hand, those of capitalist societies such as the very rich West Germany boldly fly the colorful badges of their entrepreneur lords.

Continue reading ""A Maelstrom of Misfits"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Istanbul, Turkey
August 23, 1984

Dear Folks,

As the geographical and cultural meeting point of West and East, Turkey will provide many of the best adventures yet on the walk. With Istanbul as the door into Asia, it seems fitting that the journey's halfway mark is only 500 miles further.

I must confess that originally this nation of 45 million was not on my walk's planned route. It was only with the greatest reluctance and anxiety that, long after the start of the worldwalk, I decided to cross Turkey's windswept plains and rugged mountain passes. It was while I was in Morocco that I realized I would reach the Middle East during the hottest part of the year, and I knew then I would have to forfeit my original target of Egypt and, instead, cross the cooler terrain of Turkish Asia Minor.

Continue reading ""Allah's Warm Dagger"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kauala, Greece
August 7, 1984

Dear Folks,

It was circus time in Kauala, a popular vacation town along Greece's northeast shoreline. Time for the locals to set aside one night, to visit the striped Hoffman London Circus tent, and Ooooh!and Aaaah! with chapped lips at all the twirling leotards, prancing hooves, and glittering spangles.

Like most of the audience, I was to spend a good bit of time gripping my seat's edges and applauding. But then, when all that remained in the ring was sawdust, I found myself secretly wishing for still more bedazzlements. And so perhaps it shouldn't be any surprise that, when the others in the audience filed out the front of the tent, I ventured toward the back curtains to seek the fulfillment of a fantasy many of those of us with the heart of a child will always carry--that of living with a circus, if only for a short time. And as has happened so often when I seek to feed my curiosity, I found my wishes being granted through the kindness of total strangers who, like myself, find life too filled with wonderment to not be shared with others.

Continue reading ""In Memory of a Cowboy"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Titov Veles, Yugoslavia
July 18, 1984

Dear Folks,

Nearly every Yogoslavian home, business, and public building I've been inside has had a framed photo of the deceased Marshal Tito on one of its walls. Also, it's common to find the crisply-uniformed Tito parading proudly on the windshields of buses and semi triucks.

Much to the chagrin of the present communist collective leadership which, according to a journalist I spoke with, wants to phase out Tito's influence and get the country moving forward, the spirit of the former paternalistic "president-for-life" continues to be strong, even though he has been dead for over four years. As is common in eastern Europe, changes among the common people are sure to be extremely slow and arduous.

But while all this "backwardness of the common people" (as one eastern Bloc leader recently termed their clinging to the habits and beliefs of the past) may be proving to be a headache to some, for me it has provided a wealth of wonderment: In a sense I've been able to travel back decades and dwell in a world where the horse is still a necessity, where gypsies wander from smoking and seclusive camps to dusty villages to sell handmade tin pots and firewood that is being carried on the backs of donkeys, where religion--be it of church or mosque--invokes a great sense of devotion and mysticism.

Continue reading ""Country Folk Are Gentle Folk"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Titograd, Yugoslavia
July 7, 1984

Dear Folks,

One of the longest continuing debates in discussions on international politics is whether this nation of 24 million is communist or not. To listen to its leaders and media, one would say that it is, or at least a sort of fervent socialism. Yet, to listen to the men and women on the streets, the government is no such thing. Indeed, the average Yugoslavian can't seem to come to any firm consensus as to what their form of government is--other than it's not worth their breath to ever praise it.

"Communism is brute!" spat one old Slovenian farmer, while sharing with me the customary large white tin cup of homemade wine. "We are not the damned Russians. We are socialist...I think."

"Socialism? Hah! Only on the front page of the newspaper each morning," scoffed a village merchant. His wife, who, like her husband, had worked most of her adult life outside of the country, nodded firmly.

When I'd met the merchant and his wife, it had been late in the evening. After a long hard day of working in their store, they had been on their way to till their small farm plots, to work in them until it was too dark. It was something they had to do, they'd told me, if they expected to eat and still have enough money left for a decent standard of life.

"In Yugoslavia the people work only to pay taxes, social security, and hopefully have enough left over to get drunk," the merchant had joked with a touch of seriousness.

Their combined take-home wages each month totaled around $400. That actually wasn't bad, compared to the lawyer who told me his state-controlled wage was $200 a month. Or, how about the 53-year-old doctor who revealed to me that his yearly salary was $5,000?

Continue reading ""We Are All Policemen"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sibenik, Yugoslavia
June 18, 1984

Dear Folks,

I continue to be astounded at the great differences in lifestyle existing between the European societies, even though their borders are as compacted as those of our states. Italy and Yugoslavia provide a perfect example.

Italy was money and frivolousness, oftentimes carried to their most absurd levels. Venice, the "crown jewel" of my walk in that nation, was perhaps an excellent microcosim of that country's character: There I found a breathtakingly beautiful city of culture and history and, too, a conglomeration of religious architecture so splendidly huge and richly adorned that no modern-day government could afford to recreate such a fairytale setting.

Yet, at the same time, Venice was as much a carnival, a "historic Disneyland," as it was the sophisticated former kingdom it likes to portray itself as. Side by side with its ecstasy and the Peggy Gugenheim museum's art pieces were what seemed to be innumerable vendors of just about anything plastic or sweet imaginable--from MADE IN JAPAN gondola lamps to what is undoubtedly the most scrumptious ice cream this side of the real heaven.

As in most of Italy, the number of visitors (mostly German and American) this time of the year seemed to make the Italians an "endangered species." During the four days I explored Venice's maelstrom of big-headed dieties, clanging church bells, flapping pigeons, delighted laughter, and clicking cameras, I honestly believe I met more twangy-voiced Texans and Okies than I'd ever met at any one time in San Antonio or Oklahoma City.

But, if its basics one wished to explore, then perhaps the "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" would be more appropriate. It is a nation that is "officially" not a nation but, instead, six nations: Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, and Moslems. (Although eight percent of the populace is of that faith, in this case Moslem does not have anything to do with the religion.)

Largely because of the disagreements created as a result of combining so many "independent" states, the general poverty of what is mostly a rural lifestyle, and a long history of invasions by its more powerful neighbors, the Slavs have remained about as basic and simple in make-up as the Italians have advanced financially and technologically. With the typical Yugoslav rural family, for instance, a major home improvement project might be a fresh coat of paint on a pair of old, wooden window shutters. In Italy it would have been something more along the lines of new brass-ringed storm windows and aluminum shutters for every door and window.

Continue reading ""Politics of Repression"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 3:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Trieste, Italy
June 7, 1984

Dear Folks,

Since this letter will be reaching you around the Fourth of July, I would like to share with you a story from the worldwalk that concerns others' struggles for freedom. In this special story, which still haunts me even now as I'm reflecting on the very pleasant walk I had through Italy, I want you to mentally journey back to Africa with me. I want you to meet someone very young: a 14-year-old Polish boy named Luc. I met him in Boudouaou, Algeria, last February, and he reminded me how lucky I am to have a free nation like America as my birthplace. Luc,as you will see, knew all too well what it is like to live in a society where the people are controlled by an outside power.

At the time Luc "Skywalker" and I met, his parents (both professors of mechanical engineering at an Algerian university) and he were staying with a Polish priest in whose home I was also a guest. The boy and I shared the same bedroom, and late one evening I couldn't help thinking that Luc was the brightest lad his age I'd ever met. In addition to speaking six languages, he could discuss just about any subject with the utmost comfort. To my further delight, he even picked an entire album's worth of tunes--from the Beatles to bluegrass--for me on a banjo.

I told him that with such intelligence, his future should be extremely promising. However, rather than being pleased with my comment, he grew silent and looked sad as he set his banjo down onto his bed. In the weak glow of the ceiling light bulb, his face looked as if it had aged 20 years. His eyes ceased to sparkle, and his voice grew deeper with much seriousness and thought.

Continue reading ""Dreams of Freedom"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 2:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Venice, Italy
June 2, 1984

Dear Folks,

May 31 was my second birthday on this walk, my 30th overall. Normally I don't pay much attention to my birthdays, but still I couldn't help contemplating at the time how eventless the day was turning out to be. Afterall I was in northeastern Italy, and I had hoped on this day of my transition into my fourth decade to treat myself to the gondolas and arched bridges of Venice. By noon, however, I had to admit that the fabled canals of Venice were just too far away to reach before sunset.

A little forlornly I surrendered to the shade of a sycamore tree that towered over an abandoned lane of weeds and crickets. No friends...only myself...not much a birthday at all, I mused, as I settled down to a long afternoon of writing and waiting for what I wasn't sure.

Many hours later, in that period of the day when dusk is born, a mass of panting fur and saliva startled me from my thoughts. I looked up to find a collie dog and its teenaged master only a few tails lengths behind.

"Are you in need of anything?" the conservatively-dressed lad asked in a soft and refined manner.

Still confused as to where he and the dog had come from, I answered that I was thirsty and out of water. The boy told me to grab my goatskin water bag and to follow him and "Yudda" into a nearby forest.

Hidden deep in the trees was an ancient barn that had surely been used by a race of Goliath-sized farmers. The barn was set into a tall and massive stone wall, as if it had once been a guard tower of an ancient city. It took all the strength that Guiseppe could muster in his thin arms to pull open the wall's thick, 20-foot-high doors. We then passed beneath one yawning archway, and another, and at last stepped onto a football-sized courtyard of sculptured shrubbery and manicured grass so emerald in color that it hurt my eyes.

I stood as still as the many statues about us. Stretching far to our right was an immense yellow home. It was dressed in wrought iron frills and white hems that rivaled the roses in cheerfulness.

Continue reading ""Birthday Cherubs"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cesano, Italy
May 16, 1984

Dear Folks,

Gone are the wind-brushed fields, the darting lizards, and the sun-splashed towns of south Italy. In their places I now have fog-shrouded forests, fat snails, misty breaths, and...rain. And more rain. So much so that the Adriatic Sea I've been camped alongside the past nine days no longer whispers but roars.

It's a good time to be shut inside and to let nature get over its growing pains. In my case, that has also meant being away from all the howling, 18-wheeled hurricanes splooshing to and from the factories in Florence and Bologna.

Continue reading ""Faces in the Rain"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 4:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pescara, Italy
April 29, 1984

Dear Folks,

After 5,200 miles and 13 months of walking, I'm beginning to suspect that I'm not directing the worldwalk's path as much as it is directing me. In a way it's uncanny, as if the trip has taken on a mind of its own.

Normally I'm not inclined to be led by another, and yet perhaps this is one time I might be wise to the quiet "follower." I'm finding that oftentimes my best adventures and learning experiences come in places I never intended to visit in the first place.

Thus, I now find myself ambling about the rolling grassy countryside and aged village streets of rural Italy with the devil-may-care freedom of some hobo king: One hour I will be firmly in control, well on my way to Yugoslavia (still hundreds of kilometers away), and then the next hour I'll be wandering about aimlessly, as if hopelessly absent-minded. That's when I know the walk is "doing it again to me," and it's best if I keep my knobby walking stick tapping onward, for surely some enchanting surprise must be awaiting me.

Continue reading ""King Hobo in Storyland"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Matera, Italy
April 17, 1984

Dear Folks,

There are some aspects of my life before the worldwalk I used to consider so mundane that I would go out of my way to avoid them. One such thing was what I often referred to as "kitchen table chatter." You know what I mean: Dad moaning about the grass turning brown; the brother-in-law telling for the umpteenth time of the water pipes freezing last winter; Sis jealously rambling on about the other girls in her high school class.

I remember so vividly how I'd squirm in my seat at the kitchen table during breakfast or dinner and try my best, as the "wiser older brother," to let it all go in one ear and out the other. All the while of course I'd smile or nod at appropriate intervals. And all the time there'd be a tiny voice somewhere in the back of my mind groaning, How boring! The world's on the verge of all-out destruction and another Great Depression, and all they can talk about is that?

Ah, but now? Now I'd give anything to be seated again at that wobbly old wooden table and to be listening to such golden words. Yes, that's right...golden. Golden because now I realize those oftentimes silly bits of chit-chat are the "language" of family and close friends--persons I haven't laid eyes on for over a year now.

Continue reading ""Kitchen Table Chatter"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Cantinella, Italy
April 7, 1984

Dear Folks,

Some wore rags, some dressed in silk. Some talked my sunburnt ears silly, others could only gesture timidly with their dark eyes and dark hands. Yet, there was something all of them--American, Anglo-Saxon, French, Spanish, Arab, and Italian--shared in common, no matter how awkward our speech: That "something" was motherly care and compassion, perhaps one of the greatest morale boosters any one kid so far from home could wish for.

Continue reading ""A Special Mother's Day Letter"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 7:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nicastro, Italy
April 3, 1984

Dear Folks,

Imagine Yonkers, Southern California, and the casts of about one hundred bad Hollywood movies thrown together into one small area of terraced brown mountains and old gray towns, and you'll have a good idea of what my ten days of walking across Sicily were like. If I had any notion that I was going to stroll across some quiet Mediterranean island of vineyards and sleepy fishing villages, that was quickly dispelled in Palermo, my first large city after disembarking at the port of Trapani.

Continue reading ""A Circus Called Sicily"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Aboard an Arab ship on the Mediterranean Sea March 10, 1984 Dear Folks, In some ways it was a blessing that the current animosities between the United States and Libya prevented me from continuing the worldwalk across North Africa. Though the North African Arabs had, in their homes, been perhaps the gentlest people yet, the prevalent poverty and oppressiveness of their societies had been so disheartening. There was an instability to their militaristic governments that offended my democratric ideals and left me wondering if at any minute I might be swept up into another of their frequent violent revolutions. Even as I boarded the ship that was to take me back to Europe, the images of soldiers and guns were still dominating my thoughts of the 1,202 miles I'd walked across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The city I am now sailing from, Tunis, had hundreds of thousands of homeless Palestinian refugees living in shocking squalor on its edges. Only a week before my arrival, the city had been ablaze with anti-American riots, while just a few hundred miles away our own navy had been bombing Beruit at the same time. How utterly mad I would have looked to any of my fellow Americans, had they seen my lone vulnerable figure coursing its way so calmly through those wretched Palestinian refugee camps and the chaos of those last few miles in Africa.

Impressive aquaduct still being used to bring water from mountains to lowlands. One of the many pictures in the photo gallery

Continue reading ""Tests of the Heart"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 1:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Tunis, Tunisia
March 8, 1984

Dear Folks,

In eastern Algeria I was to discover unwittingly that police surveillance is very much a part of life in Third World societies. Twice my camera landed me in a police station for questioning by the "inspector." (Every police inspector I met in North Arica looked to be from the same mold--thin, trench-coated, mustachioed, and always holding a cigarette with a cocked wrist. Not surprisingly, they reminded me so much of actors in a bad Hollywood film, except that they always had a grumpy disposition.)

Continue reading ""Suspicion in Another World"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

El Kala, Algeria
February 28, 1984

Dear Folks,

Once past the suspicious border post officers in the Algerian Sahara, my nerves were able to relax--for a minute. Then the confoundedness that is Africa came roaring back in enough shapes and sizes to drive any man into a fidgety wreck.

For starters, another sandstorm blew along. Then I couldn't connect with any buses heading back to the north, where I planned to resume my walking on the Algerian side of the border post that originally had turned me away. Finally, after two days of digging out under sand drifts and chasing after tootling buses that had no intention of stopping for me, I decided to brave the heat and hitchhike.

By the time I arrived back near the coastline and was done with my 800-kilometer "detour," I not only was ready to get back to walking as soon as possible but also ready to be done with any and all North Africans for the rest of my life. If ever there were a people who get a man's senses more twisted than a pretzel, it was definitely the Arabs of the Mediterranean. Their lives are such a tumbled mixture of contrasts that I am never really quite sure if at any moment I am safe or in danger. Take, for instance, the unusual experience I had this time a week ago in a rotting former French resort town beside the sea.

Continue reading ""Scarface"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jijel (Djidjelli), Algeria
February 17, 1984

Dear Folks,

Monkeys screeching from dark grottos high atop red cliffs...snarling long-tusked boars charging through deep snow...deserted stretches of jagged coast littered with wrecked ships... What an adventure the scenery alone in Algeria has turned out to be!

More and more, as I weave my way further east along this nation's serpentine-shaped coastline, I traverse natural settings that won't allow my imagination to rest. Gnarled bare-limbed trees reaching for a painfully blue Mediterranean Sea...panoramic quilts of breeze-kissed meadows of clover...yellow flowers...sunny skies...misty, snow-capped mountains flaunting skirts of long eucalyptus trees...

Does the beauy ever stop? One day I'm dipping in and out of lush fairy tale-like forests of tall thundering waterfalls and cone-covered pines; the next day I'm shivering myself over Himalayan-like peaks. Or perhaps I might even be cautiously stepping my way along some cliff-hugging road that drops away on one side to a thundering surf of boulders and foam hundreds of feet below.

Continue reading ""The Stuff of Real Adventure"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tenes, Algeria
January 31, 1984

Dear Folks,

Of all the countries on my walk, the one I knew the least about was Algeria. To me, it was a big question mark. All the travel books I'd read before my journey had simply ignored this huge North African nation, as if it didn't exist.

Basically all I knew of Algeria, by the time I'd reached its border at Oujda, Morocco, was what I'd heard from secondhand sources. And what I'd learned from those sources was hardly encouraging.

Continue reading ""A Sahara Detour"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 1:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oujda, Morocco January 19, 1984 Dear Folks, How do I even begin to describe these past ten days spent crossing the sand dunes and desert of eastern Morocco? So much danger, love, exoticness, and mystery have I experienced that it is all I can do to remember I am in the 20th Century, not in the 10th or the 11th. It has been the sort of adventure that even a Marco Polo would have had to admire. So many anecdotes to share and yet so little time and space to write it down. Perhaps the best way to give you some idea of what I've been through is to relate to you the events of the day I passed through the town of Taza and began my entry into the heart of the desert

The day's last rays soaking into the mud homes of a Morocco village in the desert of the country's eastern region. One of the many pictures in the photo gallery

Continue reading ""On The Edge of Death"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 3:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fes, Morocco
January 9, 1984

Dear Folks,

Last night I sat still for at least forty minutes in the cold darkness of my tent, with my head resting heavily upon my arm. Never before had I felt so fatigued and alone after only a week of walking through a new region.

Continue reading ""In A Land of Moochers"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 2:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Marrakech, Morocco
December 23, 1983

Dear Folks,

It was the Morrocan king's birthday. Most shops in Marrakech (where I'm staying until I start my walk across North Africa in early January) were closed, and the streets were mostly empty. The quietness of the downtown area was almost unbelievable; normally a Monday morning in this fabled Arabic city beside the Sahara was a constant clatter of horses' hoofs clomping against asphalt, mopeds buzzing llike gigantic insects, auto horns honking wildly, donkeys braying spitefully at robed owners, and veiled women chattering excitedly in a way that--when viewed from a distance--reminded one of black-headed gray-and-white sparrows.

So where was everyone on this day of hot sun and blue sky? After all, wasn't a royal birthday all the more reason for making a commotion?

Continue reading ""Dead Flies, Leeches, and The Devil"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 1:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Marrakech, Morocco December 12, 1983 Dear Folks, "It's totally insane...another world...too dangerous for a lone traveler...they kept coming at us...pawing, reaching..." The frightened faces, the trembling words, the disgust, the fear, the hate. All day at the port in Algeciras, Spain, three days ago, travelers from Morocco told one horror tale after another. Alain, a Swiss student told of two Moroccan men bursting into his hotel room and choking him. "I--I cried like a baby. I didn't want to die." Juan, a Spanish soldier, described a society in that Northwest Africa country growing more poor and more desparate each day, especially now that Saudi Arabia had stopped giving the country's monarchy any more money. "In a car you are half safe. But on foot you'll be robbed in no time," he warned me sternly. Helmut, a German businessman, related how he'd found nothing but greed and open corruption everywhere. "They weren't the least afraid to steal from me. I'll never go back!" He spat. Even the ferry boat ticket vendor tossed words of caution at me. "Never, I repeat, never let them know you are American or that you have any money on you. In Morocco a lone American traveler has no friends--only those who want your money."

The Jaquiths lived in Marrakesh, where the king has one of his many winter palaces. This is a gate to the palace. One of the many pictures in the photo gallery

Continue reading ""Jackals With Knives"" »

Posted by Steven Newman at 2:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)