I have my heart in my throat as I scurry around doing my last minute planning for a trip to Istanbul next week. Along with travel guides and language dictionaries, I stumbled upon a lovely epistolary novel by artist and librarian Katherine Branning. She created an imaginary correspondence with Lady Mary Montagu (1689-1762), a British woman of letters who wrote home extensively about Turkey. It's a bridge to telling Branning's own story about contemporary life and her experiences there over 30 years.
The book shares snippets of Lady Motagu's letters, which are detailed and delightful, but I find that the passage I most needed to read was the one explaining her goal of the book. It consists of a kind of scold: p. 4 "I do not wish to bore the reader with travelogue stories of the petty absurdities and pesky frustrations of travel: the gippy tummy, the missed planes and buses, the lost money or camera...I do not wish to relate lengthy and boring stories that lead the reader down a circuitous route to make a mocking point about how odd the customs of the land are, nor do I want to skewer Turkish pride by telling contemptuous or comical stories. I just wan to relate some of the stories that have happened to me and what they mean to me...
p. 5 "My years of travel and my entire professional career in cross-cultural relations have taught me much, the biggest lesson being that one must tread very lightly when walking in or talking about foreign lands and people. I have learned that your viewpoint on the world is always tainted by the perspectives that you carry inside of you, inherited from your native land and from your upbringing. When you are confronted by an unexplainable situation, you must take a deep breath and stand back from it, and then remove your Western hegemonic eyeglasses. Then, and only then, can you start to analyze what is theirs, yours, and the truth."
That first bit stings a little because much as I try to evolve past being the person on her social network complaining about being stuck in traffic, I have been guilty of boring the reader with my trials and tribulations on the road. Likewise, I am quick to bite when I perceive a cultural joke. I hope my readers and friends will be patient with me since I'm learning as I go. This passage, from a chapter in which the author contemplates Islam, is another favorite of mine:
p. 225 "We all search for a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives, and finding that truth can take many paths, religion being one of them. Everyone on earth - the atheist, the pious , or the agnostic - possesses some form of spiritual impulse. Everyone seeks answers to the same questions relative to the reason of our human existence, what is important in life and the afterlife, the role of love, service, and moral law. Most of us are taught to seek these meanings in the traditions, spokespersons, sacred texts, saints, clergy and prophets of established religions. Yet the truth is more layered than one religion can provide answers for, so the more a human being learns from traditions other than those of his own upbringing or culture, the more he will be able to carve his own meaning and truth. These meanings can indeed be found in religion, but also in art, philosophy, nature, in work, in private and intimate self-dialog, in science, or in service to others. There is not one path, one voice, one text. The world is too big for that."
