Top 10 Literary Travel Books of 2010

One of the pleasures of travel is reading a good book set in the country you are visiting. A well-written book adds context to the things that you are seeing everyday and allows you to understand more of the culture. David Bennett at Quillcards, left a comment on this blog when talking about how learning about a country enhances your experience of it. He used the phrase “knowledge puts depth into a flat landscape,” which I think is a great way to sum it up. In that vein, I present our family’s top 10 Literary Travel books of 2010, books that most enhanced our travel experience. (present day country in parentheses)

#1: Birds Without Wings, by Louis de Bernieres (Turkey): I can think of few fictional books that combine a great story with a complete history lesson, the lesson in this case, the Ottoman Empire's collapse and Turkey’s entry into the modern world just after World War I. There are twists, turns, paradoxes, dilemmas, contradictions and all of them set amongst story that won't allow you to put the book down.

#2: Midaq Alley by Naguib Mafouz (Egypt): A story of intersecting lives amongst the impoverished class in the heart of Islamic Cairo, Nobel Prize winner Mafouz tells a great story and made us feel like another dimension was added to the people we met while in Egypt. We were inspred to visit the eponymous alley while in Cairo.

#3: The Last Days of The Incas, by Kim MacQuarrie (Peru): A complete story of the Spanish conquest of the Incas. The initial battle scene of Pizarro and Atuhualpa in Cajamarca and the siege on Cusco are fascinating.  Almost nothing remains in Cajamarca, so reading this book was essential to understanding this northern Peru city.

#4: The Agony and the Ecstasy, by Irving Stone (Italy): The fictional biography of Michelangelo’s life, Stone does a solid job of giving the reader insight into the mind of a master sculptor. We read this prior to spending a month in Florence.

#5: Pompeii, by Robert Harris (Italy): Harris gives the reader a sense of the chaos, confusion and politics that accompanied the eruption of Vesuvius, told from the point of view of the engineer responsible for the aqueducts. As we walked through the Pompeii ruins, we thought about the widespread panic portrayed in the book.

#6: The Camel Bookmobile, by Masha Hamilton (Kenya): The story of a New York woman who helps bring books to a remote Kenyan village on the Sudanese border. As we drove through the remote Kenyan countryside, we had a better idea of what went on in each of the villages. This book raised a question that our kids had not thought about before: Is literacy always a good thing?

#7: Death In The Andes, by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru): A story about some killings in a remote Andean community. The police are sure it was the work of the Sendero Luminoso but the locals suspect pishtacos (mythological boogeyman). A great introduction to the two main sides of the Peruvian character.

#8: Voyage Of The Beagle, by Charles Darwin (South America, the Galapagos): Darwin’s account of his South American voyage, where many of his ideas about evolution and natural selection were formed. I found it interesting how he relentlessly compared and categorized the things that he saw.

#9: Incantation, by Alice Hoffman (Spain): A story about a young teenage girl who slowly finds out that she is Jewish during the time of the Inquisition. The book gave our kids a good idea of what that would be like.

#10: Julius Caesar, by Phillip Freeman (Italy): A solid biography of Julius Caesar that highlights his military prowess and his ability to motivate his soldiers.

Homeschooling: Reading While On The Road

In addition to all the homework material that our kids have while on the road, we ask that they read a lot. I keep a record of what all of us are reading in an Excel spreadsheet (see photo) which calculates our progress; number of books, pages, words read, etc. Yeah, this is a bit nerdy but the competition has given the kids incentive to read more. In addition to the classics that they should be reading like 1984, Huck Finn, The Great Gatsby, Treasure Island, The Old Man and the Sea, etc., we are sending the books that we are reading their way – books that are set in the countries we are visiting.

There is nothing quite like reading a book while you are in the country that it’s set in. In northern Peru, Kim MacQuarie's The Last Days of The Incas brought Cajamarca to life when pretty much everything from the time of the conquest had disappeared. In southwestern Turkey, whenever we saw Lycian tombs or tortoises plodding across our path or spike-collared shephard dogs, I thought of Louis de Bernières’ Birds Without Wings. In Cairo, we sat in the café in Midaq Alley, absorbing the atmosphere made real in the eponymous book by Naguib Mahfouz.

The books we’ve read have ignited some interesting discussions within our family. In Masha Hamilton’s The Camel Bookmobile, a New York woman volunteers and brings books to remote Kenyan villages on the backs of camels in an effort to improve their literacy. Many of those villages were similar to ones we’d seen while driving across Kenya. What the protagonist learns along the way is that many of the villagers have some very good reasons to not want to learn to read and this intrigued our kids. “Why wouldn’t they want to learn to read?” asked our daughter, which started a discussion on western values. After we all finished another of Mahfouz’ novels, The Thief and the Dogs, our kids tried to understand the motivation of Said, the thief. Was he good? Are bad deeds good if they are done for the right political reasons? My son and I said “no” and my wife and daughter said “yes.” From a parent’s perspective, it’s a win just to be having this conversation with your kids.

We are now in Turkey and both kids are ready to start Birds Without Wings, a sweeping historical novel that follows the lives of the people from a typical Turkish village before, during and after WWI. From that book, we’re sure that the kids will understand why a picture of that Ataturk guy with the moustache still adorns the back wall of almost every business establishment in Turkey. Soon we’ll be on to Greece where we’ll all start on the book we found today at a paperback book exchange. We acquired Captain’s Corelli’s Mandolin, de Bernières WWII book about the Italian occupation of a Greek Island, in exchange for Midaq Alley, which my daughter just finished reading. Time to update my Excel spreadsheet.

Finding "Midaq Alley"

We’d been here once before, but this time I wanted to get a better look. We walked through Cairo’s Khan il-Khalili’s labyrinthine market alleys and passageways, while touts and vendors, sensing that we weren’t completely sure where we were going, kept saying, “Here it is,” or “Hey, you’re back,” anything to get us to stop and look at their wares. We turned left past the spice merchant and the smell of cumin, saffron and dried hibiscus flowers filled the air. We were walking in Egypt's most famous market bazaar, searching for the eponymous location of Naguib Mahfouz’ literary masterpiece Midaq Alley.

Written by the Egyptian Nobel laureate, Midaq Alley follows the intertwining lives of impoverished people living and working in an old, narrow alley in the heart of Islamic Cairo. Although I’d heard of Mahfouz at the time of his winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988, I had until recently not read anything by him. My wife had read the Cairo Trilogy with her book club (most of whom, surprisingly, didn’t care for it) and had raved about his writing for years. At a bookstore in Luxor she bought a copy of Midaq Alley for our 19 hour bus ride from Luxor to Dahab on the Red Sea and it was there that I started the book.

In the first twenty to thirty pages of the book the characters of the alley are introduced. Kirsha is the café owner with an eye for young boys and Abbas is the barber who wants to get married. Hamida is the beautiful young woman who dreams of a better life and Um-Hamida is her adoptive mother who is a matchmaker and bath attendant. Zaita is the cripple maker, Ibrahim Faraj is the pimp and Dr. Booshy is the dentist who fits dentures at “too good to be true” prices. Husniya is the bakeress who regularly beats her husband and if anyone has problems they usually go to Radwan Husseiny for a reasonable solution. While the sum of these parts add up to an entertaining book, it is the way that Mahfouz weaves them all together that makes the story so satisfying.

When we walked by the alley previously we could not believe that this dirty, non-descript place was worthy of the attention of a great writer. We’d been on our way to shop in the famous bazaar and our guidebook mentioned its approximate location. This time, after having read the book, my son and I came back to sit at Kirsha’s café and soak up the ambience. My wife and daughter went shopping, looking for alabaster votive candle holders. (They went away to buy three but would end up buying twelve) By my reckoning, we were sitting at Ibrahim Faraj’s table, where he sat and wooed Hamida by blowing kisses upward towards her window as he exhaled hubble-bubble smoke. To our right a spice seller displayed his neat pyramidal piles of dried spices in front of his shop and to our left a dry goods vender unloaded large boxes of matches near the beginning of the alley. In front of us was a boarded-up business and I wondered if this was Abbas’ barbershop. We’d been in Egypt for over a month and had met many Egyptians but had not seen any of their private moments. After reading Midaq Alley and absorbing the details of how they seduce, fight, aspire, cheat, fret, desire and worry, it added some depth to the impressions I got from the Egyptians we encountered every day.

The Last Days Of The Incas

It’s safe to say that if our family had not all read Kim MacQuarrie’s “The Last Days of the Incas” we might not have visited Cajamarca. The Peruvian mountain town was out of our way and many of the structures that existed on that fateful day of November 16, 1532, when Francisco Pizarro and the Spaniards routed Emperor Atahualpa and the Incas, are no longer standing. MacQuarrie’s book was so good and so compelling that it brought the town to life for us and we just had to go there to experience it. It’s an example of how a good book can enhance the travel experience and influence an itinerary.

Our family is in the middle of a year-long reading contest and each month we give ourselves prizes for reading above a certain number of pages. Both our kids are being home-schooled this year so there are a lot of recognizable titles: “The Great Gatsby,” “1984,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” etc., but we also try to read good historical books set in the country that we’re visiting. We keep the results in a spreadsheet and update it immediately upon finishing a book. My son holds the record for most pages read in a month but my wife looks like she will beat that this month. My daughter has read the most total pages thus far and I have read the most books.

It is a good thing that we all read “Last Days,” because the Plaza de Armas at Cajamarca today looks nothing like it did in 1532. The battle of Cajamarca was a surprise attack by 160 Spaniards on the Incas that claimed 7,000 Inca lives and captured their leader Atahualpa (on the litter in the picture). The Spanish had some clear advantages in this battle. They relied on a surprise attack, soldiers on horseback with steel swords and cannon. It was a brutal half day of Spaniards slashing Incas from horseback…almost 44 Incas killed for every Spaniard. Over a thousand Incas dying every hour…almost 17 dying each minute. With the size of the great plaza much smaller and virtually none of the original buildings still standing, we had to use our imagination to visualize all that blood. The only original building still standing is the ransom chamber, the 20’x15’ adobe building that held Atahualpa while the ransom – a room full of gold and two rooms full of silver – was being collected. On our visit to the chamber, we tried to imagine Atahualpa pacing back and forth, wondering how it was that he found himself in this predicament. They eventually filled those rooms and then murdered the Inca Ruler.

The next day we went to the Royal Inca baths, the location where Atahualpa, upon learning that the Spaniards had arrived, decide to stay an extra day to relax, apparently not sufficiently worried about the funny looking visitors to interrupt his spa session. The original baths are still there but on this cold November day we bathed in the private, enclosed baths. The baths were extremely soothing and relaxing; perhaps Atahualpa and his generals were not sufficiently alert to fight properly against the Spaniards.

MacQuarrie does infinitely more justice to this story and there are lots of interesting anecdotes to flavor the tale. For example, just before the ambush started, the Friar Vincent de Valverde approached Atahualpa and asked him to accept Catholicism as his faith and Charles V as his sovereign. Atahualpa then asked to see a bible, which Valverde said “spoke to him,” but the Inca leader was unimpressed with it. (The Incas had neither books nor writing). He threw it down and that’s when the fighting began. Had we not read “Last Days,” Cajamarca would have been just another Peruvian mountain town to us.

Stealing Fat: Peruvian Pishtacos

A CNN article recently reported Peruvian police arresting four members of a gang that allegedly murders people and then sells their body fat. Apparently, European laboratories are paying $15,000 per liter for human fat to be used possibly for cosmetics and in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. The four men were arrested in association with the disappearance of at least 60 people in two mountainous states in central Peru. Authorities are calling the suspects "pishtacos," which are Andean mythological creatures. The lead prosecutor Jorge Sanz Quiroz acknowledged the uniqueness of the allegations. "We are not making this up," he said. "They have confessed to this. That's what's coming out now."

In Maria Vargas Llosa’s 1996 book “Death In The Andes” he follows two Lima detectives as they travel to Andean Peru to investigate the murder of three people in a local village. While everyone seems to think that the murders were done by the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), when they talk to the locals in the village they get a different story. The locals place the blame on the pishtacos. Vargas Llosa describes pishtacos in the book: “A stranger. Half gringo. At first glance you didn’t know what he was because he looked just like everybody else in the world. He lived in caves and committed his crimes at night. Lurking along the roads, behind boulders, hiding among haystacks or under bridges, waiting for solitary travelers. He would approach with cunning pretending to be a friend. His powder made from the bones of the dead was all ready, and at the first careless movement he threw it in his victims’ faces. Then he could suck out their fat. Afterward he let them go, emptied, nothing but skin and bone, doomed to waste away in a few hours or days. These were the benign ones. They needed human fat to make church bells sing more sweetly and tractors run more smoothly, and now, lately, to give the government help pay off the foreign debt. The evil ones were worse. They not only slit their victims’ throats but butchered them like cattle, or sheep, or hogs, and ate them. Bled them drop by drop and got drunk on the blood”

A few months ago, as we were driving back from a trip to an orphanage, Señor Alcides, the director who also has 27 years of police experience, pointed to a village on the road about 20 minutes outside of Cusco. He told me of an unsolved crime in that town, which was supposedly full of brujas (witches). The crime involved a murder where some of the victim’s organs were missing. Señor Alcides said that everyone in town suspected pishtacos. After a year of no leads in the case, the police hired some brujas, who “guaranteed” they could help solve the case. The witches held séances with the policemen present and everyone heard eerie voices during these sessions. Despite the voices, no progress was made on the case even though the brujas were continuing to get paid. One day during a séance, one of the policeman, a turned the light on when the voices started and a small boy, who was making the voices from behind a bookshelf, ran out of the room saying that his mother, one of the brujas, made him do it. The brujas voluntarily gave the money back, the case was never solved and no pishtacos were ever caught.