The Places In Between

by Rory Stewart

Sometimes a book is a good read because the author has an incredible imagination and spins a story that draws you in and keeps you captive. Other times, a book is a good read because the story it tells is true. It opens your eyes to a new and different world. The Places In Between is such a book.

Imagine walking in the dead of winter from Herat to Kabul in Afghanistan. As it turns out, there’s more than one route. One is longer and circumvents the mountains. The second is more direct, but requires traversing the mountains, climbing over passes that reach 13,000 feet elevation.

Imagine taking this trek and surviving and not getting frostbite. Advice from the Security Service (a scary duo who interviewed the author at the onset) is simply put:

You are the first tourist in Afghanistan. It is mid-winter—there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee. Do you want to die?

Aah, but Rory Stewart is not your run-of-the-mill Scotsman. Indeed, he is used to living and traveling all over the world, working in diplomatic positions for the British Empire for much of his career. He is an Eton and Oxford-educated prodigal son, a historian in the most all-encompassing sense of the word. So, it is like a treasure find to read Rory Stewart’s account.

Not only does he describe what he is seeing, putting the people he meets in context of the land and the culture, but in an historical context as well. And sometimes, we discover, that not much as changed in a thousand years. The places that Rory Stewart visits—the places in between—are hidden from the world. No one covers them in the mainstream media, the newspapers, or journals. If not for Mr. Stewart, these places would not exist to us.

In addition to surviving the elements, Rory Stewart must also deal with a shifting political climate, where even the locals are not sure who their friends and enemies really are.

It is January, 2002, and the “coalition invasion” has just unseated the Taliban. Mr. Stewart gets unasked-for armed escorts and letters of introduction. The escorts are sometimes helpful and sometimes a hindrance. The letters work mostly for the next village alone, and from each village he must obtain letters or escorts anew. Many village leaders are wealthy within their own culture, but not all are literate. Rory Stewart’s language skills, people skills, and raw confidence see him through some tense situations.

Along the way, he acquires and then befriends a worn-out Mastiff dog who becomes his traveling companion and probably saves Rory’s life in a Jack London-type survival vignette.

And through this whole saga, Rory Stewart is carefully neutral on politics, carefully pragmatic I would say. His most political observation is

Most people in this area had not heard of Britain, though they had heard of America. Some had even heard of the World Trade Center, but they had no real concept of what it had been or why the coalition had bombed Afghanistan.

His agenda is historical from the beginning and he continues that work even today, heading a foundation that helps save traditional Afghan arts and architecture, buildings, artifacts, and crafts in Kabul and throughout Afghanistan. The Turquoise Mountain area, one of the place-gems he happened upon in his trek, is the source of his foundation’s name. Rory Stewart currently lives in Kabul.

Émile Zola's Germinal

I selected Émile Zola’s Germinal for Book Club in June. I originally read the novel about 10 years ago and reread it for Book Club. By rereading it I’ve come to appreciate Zola’s work even more.

When I first read Germinal, I came away with the idea that Zola wanted to address issues of economic classes, labor and society, and basic needs of working class people, such as health care and living wages. Sandwiched into these societal issues were more personal challenges such as love, loyalty, honesty, industry and the literary workings of a tragic character. Zola uses irony and he juxtaposes bourgeois families with poverty-stricken families.

The second time I read Germinal I still appreciated the tragic, uphill struggles of the miners and the individual characters that played a part in this epic story. But what was new to me was the feeling that Zola didn’t so much write a novel as he created a series of paintings that beg us to visualize his settings. We enter the museum (okay, I am visualizing now) and in the first room we see a beautiful but haunting painting of the early-spring landscape (April, or the germinal month), treeless with ugly slagheaps, smoke that curls into the grey sky, and grey figures that are but shadows trudging their way to the mine. It is a beautifully-wrought but haunting landscape.

The next painting perhaps shows old Bonnemort and his horse down in the pit. Over and over Zola portrays the mine as a living monster that devours the workers. We see the haphazard timbering, the hay, the wet walls, and the lamps that provide the only light. There is a sadness to Bonnemort’s face and we detect a bond between the man and the horse. The horse and the man are both slaves within the working mine. They bond because they suffer together.

Another painting shows several miners at work. Their shirts are off and their bodies are glistening with sweat. The air outside is cold, but in this living hell, temperatures rise dramatically. Their arms and shoulders which have worked in the mines for all their lives should be strong and steady. Instead, they seem weak and exhausted.

Still walking through the museum, we see an oil painting that depicts the Maheu’s family room. It’s early morning and Catherine is fixing coffee and building up the fire. Again, it is dark and the oil lamps and the fireplace provide the only lighting. She is careworn but young, a sad figure. Yet, there is somehow hope in her eyes. Hope that she can do better than her parents. Hope that she can find a way to create a comfortable living situation for herself. Hope that she can rise above the rabble.

The labor/union meeting in the woods is carefully composed. This painting is not quite a landscape, but larger than the intimate paintings we have seen of the miners. We see the group, with Étienne, Maheu, Rasseneur all prominently positioned with others eagerly looking on. The peasant dress, the lively discussions, and the fallen branches used as makeshift sitting places all help portray the intensity of the meeting.

I can imagine many more paintings. The pub, the company town of Montsou, and the mob scenes (there are several—Zola seems to excel at describing incredibly realistic and frightening mob scenes) all are adaptable to a visual representation.

I heartily recommend this novel.

And how relevant is a 19th century novel about working in a coal mine, dealing with fair pay and disasters where loved ones are trapped, maimed, or sick from breathing coal dust their whole lives? Surprisingly relevant.

March, 19, 2007: Siberian mine blast kills most in 10 years

“Labor union officials blamed the explosion in part on quota systems that encourage miners to work faster and dig more coal, potentially leading to errors. Some government officials in the past have accused private companies of cutting corners on safety measures in order to save money.” (Source)

May 24, 2007: 38 killed in blast at Russian coal mine

And of course, a bit closer to home:

August 6, 2007: 6 trapped in Utah coal mine collapse

Lastly, Germinal is one novel in a 20-volume series depicting several families in 19th century France. Zola’s output is staggering, considering the depth of his characters, descriptions, and actions portrayed in his work.

The Stories of Eva Luna

With The Stories of Eva Luna, Isabel Allende creates a treasure trove of stories, delicious treats of woven fantasy that explore how people cope with, use, and abuse power. As Allende shows us, power can manifest itself in many ways: in many of the stories she gives us the power of love—how it can bring redemption or destruction. Allende draws for us many powerful women (and men)—people who persevere and tackle poverty, injustice, and brutality. In just a few pages, Allende paints a picture that enthralls you and pulls you into a world that is magical and ethereal.

“Two Words” tells the story of a poor, illiterate girl who learns to read and write with an inborn talent. She makes a living selling words, stories, and letters. She ends up taming the most powerful and feared man in her country with the power of her words and her beguiling spirit.

“Toad’s Mouth” brings us a powerful woman, who mesmerizes and enchants countless men through sexual prowess and who, in turn, is tamed by a mysterious foreigner in a hilarious, bawdy adventure of life in a wild and desolate country.

In one of my favorite stories, “The Little Heidelberg” gives us El Capitán, a Finnish sea captain who has retired in an unnamed Caribbean port and dances weekly with a lovely Russian woman, Eloísa; she smells of chocolate from so many years of making bonbons. While language keeps their communication at bay for forty years, his reticence for speaking is broken when a countryman is able to translate his words for the first time. “Will you marry me?” he asks his long time dance partner and she says “Don’t you think this is a little sudden?” As they dance the celebratory acceptance dance, with each twirl she becomes a bit younger. In the magic of the scene, she twirls out of existence. Her disappearance seems to reflect the dreamscape nature of the scene. Perhaps El Capitán simply imagined asking her and when the music stops, she is no longer there because she had entered his dreams years earlier. We don’t know if her disappearance is her lesson to not wait so long to reveal our true feelings or a magical journey that is unexplained.

Revenge and justice are topics that Allende also explores. In “Revenge” a woman dedicates her whole life to avenging her father’s death. Upon the moment of truth when she must cut down the man she has hunted her whole life, she cannot. Love takes away her ability to carry out revenge. This leaves her unwhole. Her only solution is to take her own life. And the man? He suffers fate worse than the revenge that was long planned for. “. . . he knew he would live to be ninety and pay for his guilt with the memory of the only woman who had ever touched his heart.”

The final story “And of Clay We are Created” is perhaps my favorite for its poignancy and mysticism. It elegantly details the transformation of two people, as well the narrator who vicariously injects herself into the story, in a mingling of spiritual comfort, facing the past, and accepting the present.

This book is one to read, savor, and reread. You will forget the details of a story, and as you go back to reread it, new details will emerge that make the story sweeter, more ironic, and more satisfying.

Air Temp: Perfect; Water Temp: Trunkable

June Gloom has given way to early summer sun. The Surf Conditions sign at Stone Steps says it all.

Air Temp: Perfect; Water Temp: Trunkable

This translates to 75 degrees F and 68 degrees F, respectively.
The beach day accuterments: chair, towel, fins, body board, and book bag containing this month's Book Club Selection: Isabel Allende's Stories of Eva Luna.

Mystical Transformation; or, Life Begins at Ninety

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.

And so begins our Book Club selection for this month. I must admit, as a product of a more egalitarian society than that described by Gabriel Garci­a Marquez in his novella Memories of My Melancholy Whores, I was a bit put off by this opening sentence. Is this a tale of child abuse couched within the fantasy of literature? Perhaps. However, we are privileged to witness the lyrically orchestrated self-discovery of the narrator ("the Scholar"), a ninety-year-old newspaper columnist. Whatever you think of old age, this story tells us that people of any age have the ability to find love, even those whose previous intimacies are paid for liaisons. Here is a man with no family and whose only friends seem to be women whose love he has bought. He is certainly loveless. He has squandered his life. Somehow, in spite of himself, in his ninety-first year he finds love. The fact that physical love in this new-found relationship remains unconsummated makes his adoration not unlike a religious veneration. It is with religious zeal of his new love that he transforms his life:

The house rose from its ashes and I sailed on my love of Delgadina with an intensity and happiness I had never known in my former life. Thanks to her I confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by. (p. 64-65)

Besides his own transformation, the Scholar offers up pearls of wisdom on aging, such as

. . . you go on seeing yourself as you always were, from the inside, but others observe you from the outside (p. 7)

And,

On the other hand, it is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things, though memory does not often fail with regard to things that are of real interest to us. (p. 10)

Although a translation (by Edith Grossman), the words flow, the prose is rhythmic, and the language is uncomplicated.

We think that this will be about the many women the narrator has known. Yet, really, the story is about the narrator himself: his transformation from loveless to one who loves and is loved, from one who begins life at ninety. He must deal with and overcome adversity. He triumphs. This transformation is his own deflowering. At the end, he leaves us with this forward-looking farewell:

It was, at last, real life, with my heart safe and condemned to die of happy love in the joyful agony of any day after my hundredth birthday. (p. 115)

And Delgadina, the child? We never know what she thinks. Indeed, she is always asleep. She never loses her purity. In the fantasy world of fiction, she loves her Scholar in return. After he and Rosa Carbacas, his loyal procuress, make lasting financial arrangements with each other to secure Delgadina's future, Rosa tells him

"Ah, my sad scholar, . . . That poor creature's head over heels in love with you." (p. 114-115)

Next Entry: Trolley Dodgers at PetCo Park

Yielding Up to the Dark Impulse

My most recent selection for Book Club was Close Range, Wyoming Stories, by E. Annie Proulx. This collection of short stories is brutal and intense, with characters that are a product of the harshness of a Wyoming winter--a long Wyoming winter. Proulx (pronounced "Proo") uses elegant language to describe the forlorn landscape and haunting lives, where few find happiness. Here's a few choice examples

"The house trailer I rented was old. It was more of a camper you'd tow behind a car, so small you couldn't cuss the cat without getting fur in your mouth." (A Lonely Coast, p. 189)

". . . until you pull off the road to close your eyes or look up at sky punched with bullet holes." (A Lonely Coast, p. 189)

"There were times when I thought the Buckle [a bar] was the best place in the world, but it could shift on you and then the whole dump seemed a mess of twist-face losers, the women with eyebrows like crowbars, the men covered with bristly red hair, knuckles the size of new potatoes, showing the gene pool was small and the rivulets that once fed it had dried up." (A Lonely Coast, p. 200)

Yet the stories don't just apply to Wyoming, but show us what can happen to people in an isolated society where civilized rules of behavior--morals--are replaced by the anarchy of too few social interactions, too few group support networks. It's every ranch, every family, every soul for himself or herself. Indeed in the story "Pair a Spurs" we learn that the state's unwritten motto is "take care a your own damn self" (p. 151).

The final story in the collection is "Brokeback Mountain", a heart-wrenching love story, a modern-day tale of star-crossed lovers. But besides not figuring out how to live happily ever after, Jack and Ennis must hide their love. After all, this is Matthew Shepard country. And Matthew Shepard is no award-winning short story, he is real. (Proulx originally published Brokeback Mountain in the New Yorker in 1997, a year before the Shepard murder.) Like Matthew Shepard, Jack meets a brutal death. Tire accident or tire iron? Ennis is convinced it was death by tire iron murder: "So now he knew it had been the tire iron." (p. 282) In the end, Ennis accepts Jack's death, remembering their love as best he can. "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it." (p. 285)

Consider some other stories in this collection:

• The heartless castration of poor Ras in "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water". The story ends with "We are in a new millennium and such desperate things no longer happen. If you believe that you'll believe anything." (p. 117)
• The shooting melee in "A Lonely Coast". What was accident, what was dark impulse? "Friend, it's easier than you think to yield up to the dark impulse." (p. 207)

Lest you think Wyoming is its own isolated evil, we are reminded in a recent LA Times article entitled "Right, wrong? In a group, it's harder to tell" by Shari Roan (July 17, 2006). The article's premise is that, depending on the social dynamics (or lack thereof), people have a hard time acting morally. One of her key examples, which we discussed in Book Club, occurred in Iraq, where five American soldiers are accused of raping and killing a teenage Iraqi girl and also killing three members of her family. There is no definition of liberation I can think of that comes close to describing these actions. Where was the moral compass for these young men? What sort of social network are we building over there that even allows these brutal actions? Yeah, I know, it's a war!

Here's another example. A two-part series in the LA Times "The Enclave: Blind Eye to Culture of Abuse", May 12, 2006, Part I and "The Enclave: Where Few Dare to Disobey", May 13, 2006 Part II by David Kelly and Gary Cohn, details the polygamous culture of Colorado City, Arizona. While polygamy itself is not inherently evil, the culture, yes, the people, in this community abuse children, abandon boys, encourage and indeed, force, very young girls to marry, and offer little relief to any who would protest. Individuals who want to act morally by protecting the children must buck the system and risk complete ostracism.

So Proulx's stories might take place in Wyoming, but they reflect a hidden darkness that humans share. Lest you despair that we're all doomed to be evil, look to your own village and look to your own God for love and support and moral guidance.
Next Entry: Have You Scene It?

Most Important Rule of Book Club

I belong to a Book Club and we meet the second Saturday of the month. The club membership has evolved over the years. Although it began in 1998, I've only been a member since 2003. We have two married couples, various unattached singles, and a couple that has been dating since meeting each other in book club. I am married, but am in book club solo. I have brought in one of my long-time friends who also participates without her significant other. We all like the fact that our club is co-ed, since it helps cultivate the book selection variety.

As far as I have been able to figure out, there are several rules of book club.

1. You have to have already read the book before selecting it. We don't want anyone to judge the book by its cover.
2. Don't select a book that's on the best seller list. Best sellers are easy to pick up and read on your own. Part of the joy of book club is your exposure to books you might not otherwise read.
3. The book should be readily available, preferably in paperback, or at least available from the local library.

In my experience with book club, all of the above rules have been broken at one time or another. And that is the first rule of book club: that although there are rules, they sometimes get broken!

However, there is another rule, a rule that apparently is so in-grained with our group that it has never been articulated: an unspoken, yet firmly adhered-to rule.

Thou shalt not peak into any participant's book bag, since it may contain the next month's selection.

The selection is unveiled with a dramatic buildup at the end of our meeting. Early exposure of a book selection can rob the selector of his or her highly anticipated offering, a selection that has been incubating in the Book Club Possibility Bin for perhaps many months.

Well, unspoken rules like this one exist solely in our common psyche until a newcomer, who hasn't quite assimilated into the group, breaks the rule. The raucous! The affront! And yes, my poor, unsuspecting book club guest, who bravely attended on her own since I was sick at the last moment, innocently peaked into Chad's curious-looking brown paper bag. Taken by surprise, Chad quickly reacted to the faux pas, grabbing the bag away from her before any damage was done. Relief! My startled invitee could only ask "What? What did I do?" And thus, the Most Important Rule of Book Club was finally, clearly, and unambiguously verbalized for all.
Next Entry: Yielding Up to the Dark Impulse