Book Review-Travels with Herodotus By Ryszard Kapuściński

I bought this book many years ago, it was one of those impulse buys where I indulged my aspiration in polymathy and thought it might be interesting while also giving me a chance to explore a world that was heretofore unknown to me. As with all aspirational things, I tossed it on my teetering tower of To Be Read books on my bedside table, where it languished for years.

I picked it up again this year one evening as I settled in for the night, looking for something different, and the book reeled me in.

Ryszard Kapuściński was a Polish journalist. He had written a number of other books prior to this one, on various subjects. This was his memoir, of sorts. He passed away in 2007, the year the book was published. There are two main threads with this collection of essays. I say they are collection of essays because each chapter can be read individually but they are linked to one another through his recounting of the stories from Herodotus’ The Histories. I was unaware of what the book was, but as the author explained it, The Histories served as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various ancient western cultures. The exceptional thing was that while Herodotus did not witness the histories of which he wrote, he did travel to those regions that he wrote about —Greece, Western Asia and Northern Africa — and took oral histories from the people who lived there. It was a written account of his impressions, a pretty dodgy practice of history writing to be sure, but it is the earliest and only history that we have of that time in that place.

Kapuściński took The Histories with him as he traveled to some of the same locales that were in the book, as well as many others. He made it his companion to keep him occupied during the down times. This was traveling in the era before mass media communications, so he had a lot of down time. The second thread of the book is as a rambling history of the authors own recollections of his travels, woven loosely with The Histories. The author’s stories were interesting enough, but the intermingling of the two threads were fascinating to follow. Kapuściński recounted how his wanderlust were sated through serendipity, how he was assigned to go to a “friendly” fellow communist country: China, in the 1960’s and how that experience led to travels around the world as a reporter for the Polish media. He focused on the small details, partly because those were the most interesting stories and partly because the then big stories have now receded into the past, its one-time importance fading with age and the context which drove its importance losing its force in driving narrative. The author’s interweaving of the classical text with his own reminiscence wove a very attractive landscape for the reader. His rhythm and range of tones were very comfortable. The book was just short of hypnotic but well into the realm of comfortable reading. It served my purposes well: I needed something to read which I can pick up for a short mount of time and then be able to put down comfortably, all the while knowing that I can pick up the narrative easily. It did not encourage my propensity to read as if I was in a race to the end, it was a gentle and comfortable read. The stories however were intense and kept my interest. I am sure I will read The Histories in its original translation during my lifetime, Kapuściński was able to tell Herodotus’ tale very well, well enough to pique my interest in the original form, but for now, the author’s interpretations are enough. The tales of the ancient Greek and Persian wars and the bloody accounts of those battles ring loudly in my brain, as fresh and evocative as if I had read the original story. The intensity of the tales was modulated by the author’s own stories.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone. Although it does take a certain kind of mental state to sit and read this book, a state that I have come to appreciate as I age. It is a state that allows me to filter out the realities of modern life so that I can indulge in the realities of ancient life. It is a difficult state of mind to contemplate and accept, but I found comfort in this book.

Ruminations-A Memorable Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. All of it. From the food to the time of the season. The change of season from Fall to Winter is especially poignant as the weather becomes colder and the land takes a deserved rest. The spectacular foliage color spectacle signals the end of the time for growth and the beginning of the time for the earth to rest and rejuvenate. It also signals the time for people  to stay indoors and appreciate the warmth of home and hearth. It is a time of respite and recovery.

One of the most memorable Thanksgiving I had ever spent was, ironically, not with family or close friends, but with some strangers in the basement of a sterile institutional building.

Thanksgiving is an awkward time for gradual students, they are in the midst of the push towards the end of classes, ongoing research, performing never ending experiments, or writing interminably. It is a slight four days off, but really just one day off as most gradual students assiduously put their noses to the grindstone on the other three days, trying to make up for lost time that aren’t really lost and only take Thanksgiving Day off. Some take Thanksgiving Day  off because everything in town is closed and they are having to fend for themselves. It was during this situation that my friends Rick and Joy came up with a grand plan. Rick was a doctoral candidate at Georgia Tech, as was I, and Joy is married to Rick. They both matriculated at University of Illinois for undergrad, so we had something in common which created an instant bond. They lived in the married student housing buildings just north of the Georgia Tech main campus.

Architecturally, the buildings were plain ugly, but they served their purpose well for the families that lived there. The institute own the buildings and the rent was reasonable. They were probably built in the 1970’s as the lack of character suggested a utilitarian intent; that is, no thought was given to the aesthetics, both interior and exterior. This was as close to a building in a Soviet Gulag as I could have imagined.

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Rick came to me and asked if I was doing anything for Thanksgiving. I frankly had not thought that far ahead. My parents were overseas and I was maybe planning on going out to a restaurant that was open and just grab a meal there. Having spent my first Atlanta Thanksgiving eating a chili dog, onion rings, and a Frozen Orange in the TV room of The Varsity, any hot meal is a good Thanksgiving meal. Rick said that he and Joy were going to host a potluck Thanksgiving feast with their neighbors in married student housing, and would I like to join them. I leapt at the chance.

The ground rules were that they were going to make the turkey and everyone else brought a dish from their country. The vast majority of the married American student couples had plans to go home, so the people who said yes were foreign gradual students. There were a few other single electrical engineering gradual students that joined in the festivities. I had no idea what to expect, and I suspect, neither did they.

That Thursday came and I schlepped my single guy contribution to the feast. I don’t remember what I brought, it might be alcohol, or it might be store bought goodies, this was way before I cooked for real, and had discovered food programming on cable. As I entered the basement of the common area in the married student housing, the smells wafting from the room guided me to the right place. I was a bit early but there were a few dishes already sitting on the large tables in the center of the room. A few of the neighbors were there, politely nodding hello and perhaps wondering what they had gotten themselves into. I set my meager contributions on the table and went into the kitchen. Rick and Joy had hedged their bets and made a few traditional Thanksgiving side dishes, just in case. They shouldn’t have worried. As time wore on, more people appeared, until the tables were groaning under the weight of the accumulated goodies. The conversations became livelier as the time for indulging drew closer, the kids became used to the strangers and all shyness went away as they worked hard at their playing.

I don’t remember all that was served, but there were dishes from all around the globe: Chinese, Korean, Indian, Icelandic, French, Lebanese, Greek, etc. It was a global smorgasbord. When the time came to partake, no one was a stranger, everyone jumped at the chance to serve some of their dishes to their new friends. The sound of conversation grew louder as everyone was describing their dishes as well as articulating the traditions behind their dishes. It was obvious that everyone took seriously their mission of introducing their cultural heritage to their friends and took great care in thinking about this strange American tradition of Thanksgiving and relating it back to their cultures.

I remember that not much food was left after the crowd was done. Everyone had that fat and happy warm after glow that can only result from great gluttony. Even the children were slowed to a mere trot by that meal. The conversations continued to flow, some were about our research work, much of it was about making it all work here in a foreign country, and the challenges of living in a completely different culture and social norms. The few Americans tried to explain American football and why the Detroit Lions always played on Thanksgiving Day, neither one of those topics went anywhere as everyone tried to draw analogies with sports from their own countries in an effort to make heads or tails out of watching large steroid filled men bash each other, continually falling, and getting back up just to have the same things happen again.

The party broke up in the early evening if I remember correctly. I have since colored that memory in the soft sepia tones as one of the best experiences of my life, so the memories are fuzzy, besides it has been decades since I was in gradual school.

I do remember making my way home with an enhanced appreciation for my fellow humans, regardless of our differences in cultures, loving our commonalities in our humanity, and the beauty of the experience of sharing food, conversation, and amity.

That was perhaps the perfect exemplification of the spirit of Thanksgiving. That afternoon in the basement of the Georgia Tech married student housing showed me a glimpse of what could be if we saw one another as individuals with significant differences which we can easily bridge on a one-on-one basis. It is the memories of those times that gives me hope for today.