We took the bus to Machu Picchu. We climbed the fifteen hundred steps slowly, both of us sapped of energy. At the top the sun was bright and strong, while all around us, on every other peak, clouds darkened the trees and patches of bare rock, moving in a great wheel. It seemed like this was the reason the Incas had chosen this spot on which to build their city of stone. I couldn’t feel the Incas’ presence, but I could feel their strength, and their desire to be left alone.
We went back down to Aguas Calientes to wait for the afternoon train. The mountains seemed to be rising. I began to panic that this train, the last train of the day, wouldn’t come. But it did, and the same German woman got on with us.
The train rattled loudly as it turned around the mountains. The German woman talked to Tyler about love, but I couldn’t hear all her words. Then it quieted down and she said she liked to travel because everyone was a stranger, which felt right to her because we were all strangers on Mother Earth.
The couple facing us on the train were Peruvians from Arequipa. They were in their early forties, and tender with each other. He stroked her fingers, one by one, and the two of them seemed to fit together like pieces carved for that purpose. To sit together on a train.
A moon rose over the mountains, just past full. We flew by chipped stucco houses, squat windows, small, ribbed dogs. People stood in doorways and windows and watched the train pass. Tyler was writing. I was writing. The train seemed to speed up in the growing dark. We looked up at the moon, at each other. We were separate. We did not fit together then like carved pieces of wood. But we were sharing the same exhilaration, and it was exactly what we’d come for.
And then that connection slipped away. From Cusco we went to Paracas, a fishing town on the coast. After a few days we met up with Marcy and Leo and their colleague Barbara and flew northwest to Iquitos.
We checked in at Hotel Safari on Calle Napo, then walked down some steps at the end of the street. Beneath another, smaller moon we found the Amazon. I couldn’t see it well in the dark but I could hear voices coming up from the shacks down at its edge, and long croaks and gasps of animals I didn’t know. The river was just a streak of light. I barely knew what I was seeing or hearing. After a while everyone else went back up to the bar for a beer, but I stayed there, just above the smell of the water and the raised shacks and the noises that made no sense.
In the daylight the river was narrower than I had imagined; the jungle closed in on either side. We took taxis to explore the city: Belén market, Casa de Fierro, Plaza de Armas. The taxis were two-seater open carriages pulled by motorcycles. Marcy and Leo always went together. Tyler would sometimes go with me, sometimes with Barbara, and sometimes alone so that Barbara and I went together. He didn’t want her to feel like a fifth wheel. Each time he chose to go with Barbara or alone, I was absurdly devastated.
But much later, after we have been married sixteen years, this will be one of my strongest memories of Peru, and one of the stories I tell our children, how kind Tyler was to Barbara, how sensitive he was to her situation and how at the time I could not see it through my own insecurity and selfishness.
We found a guide, Guido, which in hindsight probably wasn’t his real name, who took us in a small motorboat four hours up one of the many tributaries of the Amazon. His camp, he said, had showers and three bedrooms.
Away from Iquitos the river thinned, the air thickened. When we got there, it was impossibly hot. Irrationally hot, like it was a joke, a machine that someone would soon shut off. But it didn’t shut off. It was hard to breathe. We were slathered in sweat. And Guido had lied. There were no showers, and the ‘bedrooms’ were five narrow mats tented with mosquito netting on a screened-in porch. So much for sex, private conversation, reconnection.
In the back of this shack there was a kitchen where people were making dinner. Being a server, I was always aware of service, of being served, and it shamed me. It was a cheap tiny rickety camp with a lying guide, but I felt I had come all this way and paid the last of my savings to feel like a lazy, rich American.
There was a baby inside crying and chickens chortling out back, and insects sawing with what sounded like slivers of steel. Further out, there were birds cawing and whooping, hundreds of them, loud and garrulous, with none of the reserve of the New England birds I was used to.
Guido and his partner, Enrique, took us through the jungle, informing us of the medicinal value of every plant and tree, and of the poison in certain ants, snakes, and spiders. They led us on a paddle down the river in dugout canoes to a tiny village on stilts. It was the dry season so their houses were two stories high until the rain came and the river rose. A few women were out in their yards combing the dirt with homemade brooms. There was a volleyball net in the center of town and Guido arranged a bet between us and some of the village women. Marcy was an excellent player. Tyler and Leo were strong, too, and they poached every ball that came in my direction, but we still lost.
Guido took us the next day to a larger village, with an infirmary and a school. We looked up at the school from the ground. Long blackboards hung on one wall and wooden desk-chair units stood in rows. Maybe I could teach here. I wanted to climb up and see what was written on the board, on scraps of paper, but we moved on.
The next night we went back to Puerto Miguel for their Saturday night dance. It was in the bodega, the only hut with a generator. They had cold beer and a disco ball. They were playing Latin pop music. We bought beers and sat at a long table. Marcy and I made friends with the teenage girls sitting on a bench nearby. With them were a few younger girls. The tiniest of them was bawling. When I asked why she was crying, a girl told me that she was scared. Scared of what? I asked. Scared of you all. I told them not to be scared of us, and two of them asked Tyler to dance. The three took to the dance floor, smiling madly the whole time. An eleven-year-old boy named Johnny asked me to dance and, after a while, even the way cool older boys, in their button-down shirts and high tops in the corner, shuffled out onto the floor under the disco ball.
On the way back, Guido drove the boat full throttle. The only light was a flashlight Enrique held, indicating with quick jerks the place Guido should go, making sure the path was free of caimans, then shutting it off so we could see by natural light. The stars exploded above us, every inch of sky lit.
On our last morning on the Amazon, alone in my little tent, I wrote in my journal. I wrote about how much I missed writing. I made pledges to send out parts of the novel to literary magazines, to start volunteering, to start saving for more travel. ‘It has been a good trip,’ I concluded, ‘if only for making me want what I already have.’
We packed up and got back in Guido’s motorboat. We would fly to Lima the next day. But in a basement hotel room in Iquitos that afternoon, alone with Tyler for the first time in six days, I broke down sobbing as hard as the little girl at the bodega, and we finally said so many of the things we’d been feeling but not saying for so long. It was an imperfect conversation, unskilled as we both were at really expressing our emotions. But it was a beginning.
From Lima, Tyler and I continued on to Boston, where the condor took us up in his talons and carried us swiftly into our future.
LILY KING is the author of four novels, The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, and, most recently, Euphoria, a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Kirkus Award. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, and Glimmer Train. She lives with her husband, Tyler Clements, and their two children in Maine – when they are not traveling.
In a Caucasian Wonderland
SUZANNE JOINSON
‘A man is hiding out at the Swiss Embassy at the moment. He was tipped off that he is “next for assassination”, so if you see men in black coats eating sunflower seeds they are security police waiting in case he runs for it.’
My friend Al
ice speaks in her soft English voice as she pours Azerbaijani tea. It is minty, medicinal, delicious.
‘Okay,’ I say, as if this is perfectly normal.
Our maps are spread across the table in Alice’s flat in old town Baku. The minaret outside the window is a thousand years old and beyond it fog folds over the Caspian Sea. Steamboats from Turkmenistan come in and out of sight. I run my finger along the blue thread of road we are about to drive along, officially the M4, known locally as Sheki Road. It runs from Baku to Mingacevir, following the course of the Southern Caucasus Mountains. We are leaving in ten minutes, but I am having an internal crisis: I am not sure I want to go, but I don’t know how to confess this to Alice.
My visit to Azerbaijan has coincided with Novruz, the celebration of New Year and spring. Outside, flutes play and children run around in traditional hats, but I am far from festive as I do my final bag check: phone, iPad, charger, camera. What is it I am feeling? I know: fear.
Everything in Alice’s flat is beautiful. The carpets are antiques from Kashgar and Kazakhstan. The books on the shelves are in seven different languages and yet, despite this luxurious comfort, there is an odd atmosphere. The Azerbaijanis like to know what she is doing. Her phone is tapped, emails read, surveillance maintained. I keep checking corners of her rooms for cameras.
‘Are you ready?’
I zip up my rucksack. It’s now or never: tell her that I don’t feel safe. But she is at the door, patting her pockets, checking that she has keys, ready to go.
Alice, I say. Although I don’t; I pick up my bag, walk behind her.
It was a confusion of geography. I thought I knew where Azerbaijan was, but I only looked it up on Google Maps the day before flying and it showed me something different. It wasn’t nestled against Kazakhstan as I’d thought, but instead was this side of the Caspian. It had a border with Russia and a contested war zone with Armenia, both of which I knew about, but also two other significant borders: Iran and Iraq. As if telepathic, my dad texted at that exact moment.
Do you realise where you are going a few hours drive miles from Mosul in Iraq?
I examined the distances; he was right. I was heading straight towards the strip of the globe regularly shown in the media as full of lootings, war, fighting, kidnaps, beheadings, uprisings, jihadi brides, and death cults. In short: terror. On the other hand, I was thinking, Azerbaijan: isn’t this the land of glamour, oil, songs, and Eurovision? My head awash with stereotypes and nerves, I looked again at those borders. Close to Kirkuk. To Baghdad.
I considered pulling out, but as is the way with trips, the momentum was stronger than me. To bail on Alice the day before would be mortifying, but more than that, what I couldn’t shake was the feeling that forces told me I should not go to this part of the world, and the question was: did I believe them? Before I knew it, I was buying supplies of water from a tiny shop and walking down the cobbled steps of Baku’s old town towards Alice’s dust-covered 4X4.
‘The thing about a road trip,’ Alice says, as she swerves to avoid an oncoming Mercedes on the wrong side of the road, ‘is that we are free. We can do what we like.’
‘That’s true,’ I say without conviction. Alice’s car has diplomatic plates so she can park anywhere. This is handy, but it also means people peer in to see who we are. Alice insists on smiling and speaking to everyone, whereas my instinct is to shuffle down in the seat and be as invisible as possible.
I take out my camera and video the passing blurred world to calm my tension. The oil-slicked glitz of Baku city quickly transforms into ramshackle bungalows squatting at the feet of electricity pylons. The sky clears, the sun is with us. We turn on some music. Soon there are no more houses, no trees, instead a moonscape, desert swells of land with speckles of green.
‘In a few months, it’ll be parched and barren,’ Alice says.
I write down the names of the places we drive through: Mushvugabad, Gobustan, Jangi, Sabir. We cross the river Agsu, a trickle in the middle of a dry bed of stones. Along the roadside people wave, trying to get us to pull up and purchase things. Sheep are penned in cages with carcasses hanging next to them. There are violets for sale, spring hyacinths. We stop and buy a bunch and the powerful hyacinth smell overpowers the car. I smile at one teenage boy holding up a bag of anonymous green herbs but, as we drive on, he throws a stone and it hits the rear of the car.
In the dip of a valley, a deserted amusement park sprawls along the edge of the road. The unmoving Ferris wheel and shuttered-down cafes remind me of my home and I have a pang, missing my kids, who might be walking along the seafront now.
‘So is it very Islamic where we are going? Should I have brought an abaya?’
‘It’s practising Muslim, of course. In Baku it’s a fairly relaxed version; in the mountains, it’s more Caucasian.’
I have no idea what this means. Alice looks at the clock. We are meeting one of her friends for lunch in the town of Shamakhi, which is, I am told, famous for divine carpets and tin roofs and carpentry.
‘Perfect timing,’ she says as we roll into the car park of an unassuming cafe that has the pit-stop look shared by roadside diners the world over: dodgy toilets, tired-looking families, adequate food, smokers smoking.
Alice’s friend is a writer named Ayten Caravanshaz and we three chat about books, life, travel. We eat eggs scrambled with tomatoes and drink chai. We are the only women in the cafe aside from a couple of babushkas with tiny children on their knees opposite. Men sit in small groups talking quietly. Our conversation turns to Iraq, Syria.
‘You realise,’ Ayten says, lighting a cigarette, ‘that many here think that Isis and terrorism are created by the British to make trouble.’
‘Really?’ I say. ‘Is that how you see it?’
She nods. ‘How do you see it?’
Alice looks carefully at me.
‘Somehow the world feels hysterical. More unstable than ever.’ I want to articulate how strange it is to be overwhelmed with fear like this. I’ve crossed borders between the Palestinian Territories and Israel, I’ve travelled through Mongolia and Northwest China, across the whole Middle East. I don’t know why I am nervous here. Is the world more hostile than it previously was? Or have I changed, become fearful?
‘If I listened to the UK Foreign Office advice, I wouldn’t go anywhere now. I ignore it because I want to travel, but I’m not a brave foreign correspondent or one of those camera guys taking pictures with bombs flying around their heads.’
Alice scoffs. ‘You certainly are not.’
‘What am I, then?’
‘You are a writer,’ Ayten says. ‘You travel in a different way.’
In my head I picture a real travel writer, not an imposter like me: a person endlessly drawing maps on napkins, catching buses instead of taxis, hitchhiking, speaking obscure languages, unaffected by borders or politics. Not sliding down the seat of the car to avoid eye contact with men on the streets. Alice and Aytan begin to discuss a trip they are planning in the summer to cross the Iranian border.
‘Really?’ I say. ‘Iran?’
Alice looks at me with surprise. ‘Yes. I believe that people are friendly, if you just speak to them. It helps if you have the language of course and my Farsi isn’t great, but you do your best. Doors open. They really do.’
I listen to their plan to visit Lankaran, the Azerbaijani region that borders Iran and the excursions they will make across what sounds like a final frontier, the very definition of inaccessible other-land. I excuse myself and go in search of toilets. As I navigate my way through a scrub-land behind the cafe occupied by chickens, I try to work out my anxiety: it is true that the logistics I need to put into place before I go anywhere these days are complicated, with kids and the pausing of life. Neither Alice nor Aytan has children, does that give them additional courage? I’m not sure. I can imagine both of them packing a child into a rucksack and heading off into remote hills.
When I emerge from the toilets it is as if a switch has
been flipped. The weather has changed into sleeting rain, the sky a despondent grey, a low cloud trying to snow.
Aytan bangs her fist on the bonnet of the car and then waves.
‘Enjoy Mabrouk Novruz! Jump over the fires!’
‘Are you really going into Iran?’ I say as we trundle along the road towards worsening weather.
‘Definitely.’
I can’t decide if she is the sane one or me.
I have brought only one book with me on this trip: Knut Hamsun’s In Wonderland, a description of a journey he took through Russia and the Caucasus. I read passages out to Alice as we drive. An almost sleepless night on account of the Caucasian fever and Caucasian bedbugs… I like the way he writes about travel. He describes a powerful need to be in fantastical strange places but, once there, he is full of an unwanted homesickness and the journey itself triggers memories of the past. When in Baku he yearns to reach Iran, Persia generally, but he never gets there.
‘By the end,’ I tell Alice, ‘it is not the Caucasus he calls Wonderland, but his home, Nordland. He went in a big circle and ended up home.’
The sleet is now real snow.
‘How annoying,’ Alice says, as the road climbs and twists. ‘It had to start snowing just as we get to the higher, thinner bits of the road.’
Up on a higher plateau, our visibility is now perhaps two metres. We are inside the cloud and on Alice’s side there is a steep drop into a ravine. We stop talking to concentrate; she is hunched over the wheel, both hands gripped. Cars creep towards us with hazard lights flashing and I remember something I read once by WG Sebald: If you are travelling along the road and things come in from the sides to offer themselves, then you are going in the right direction. If nothing comes you are barking up the wrong tree. What, then, does it mean if you can’t even see the sides of the road due to terrible weather? We edge along and then, in that mountain way, everything lifts. The flurry is behind us. We turn off the Sheki Road, into an unsigned mountain road which heads upwards into the Ismaili region of the Caucasus range.
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