byChrisWhite – 2014

I delayed the telling of this story for reasons both honest and small. The world is loud with brag and curated elegance and hollow praise for sunsets seen from balconies no working man could afford. I never wanted to be one more voice echoing in the marble halls of pretense, boasting about breakfast in Istanbul or the color of the Adriatic at dawn. And yet. There are truths in travel not drawn from postcards, but from people. There are moments worth remembering that no camera could catch. What I write now, I write not for applause but because it happened, and because something in me won’t rest until it’s remembered properly.

I turned fifty this year. And with it came the dull ache in my knees, the quiet suspicion that I have less time ahead than behind, and the old Methodist fire in my wife Emily, who decided that if our bones were to wear out, they would do so on foreign soil, and not in front of the television. We packed with purpose. Not for comfort, but for meaning.

And it was the people. Always the people.

You can see a thousand ruins and not remember a single one. But the man who shared his wine with you in the hills above Sarajevo, or the nun who slipped you contraband liquor from a bottle labeled Holy Water while the balloons lifted over Cappadocia—those you remember.

We traveled with strangers. Americans from every direction. Each of them carrying stories, some told, some folded tightly like handkerchiefs in coat pockets. Some loud, some quiet. Some beautiful. Some not. And God help me, I liked them all in their way. Even the ones I would never see again.

One man, loud and red-faced, declared to me that America should become France. And then, with no pause, announced that Southerners, particularly white ones, were engaged in black genocide and sweat shops. I looked at him and saw a man not cruel but lost. Someone who had fed too long on outrage and needed, above all, silence. I told him gently that politics had no place nor business on a tour bus through ancient lands where people pay to have fun. And that was that. He nodded. We sat in peace.

Then there was Darlene. A nun, or something close to it. Her age was seventy-six. Her drink was holy. She traveled with Ruth, who may or may not have been a real person but was certainly devoted to her. Darlene called her bottle Holy Spirit and cackled when we asked if it was blessed. She floated through ruins with the ease of someone who had already made peace with God and now sought only the joy of His world.

Eileen from Boston could command a crowd with her smile. Don, her husband, spoke in bricks and vowels thick as chowder. He traded jokes with Angel from Mount Airy, who carried the accent of her Carolina like a hymn and who could make the dullest dinner table crackle with laughter. Our dear friend Gary owned a Western store in Virginia and had the look of a man who could mend a fence or a broken heart with equal confidence. If we were ever to be stranded in a country that outlawed toilet paper, I’d want Gary at my side.

And we were reminded, often, of toilets. And of what counts as luxury.

In places older than the gospel, one does not always find porcelain seats. Sometimes you find only a hole in the earth and a handle for balance. Grace and squatting. That’s the art of a squatty-potty. And bring a good sense of humor. And clean shoes. It is good to remember that not all the world is built for your convenience.

We have wandered far. From the Dalmatian coast to the old kingdoms of the Balkans. From the ruins of Ephesus to the ice of the Baltic Sea, and to Istanbul where cats rule like soft despots. In Turkey we found not danger but kindness. Not anger but laughter. They loved us. We loved them. That is not an exaggeration. It is fact.

And for those with Christian blood, and Christian doubt, Turkey is not just geography. It is scripture. The cave churches of Cappadocia, hewn by hand in the name of Christ, where frescoes still speak in ochre and blue. The Seven Churches, not metaphor, but real, planted in soil still warm with old prayers. You can walk where Paul walked. Stand where John spoke. Touch the stones that held their voices.

There were three moments that I cannot shake.

The balloon, lifting above the canyons of Cappadocia, where dawn breaks not in light but in color. The old city of Prague, where every street is a palimpsest of empire and ash and rebirth. And the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro, where the mountains stoop to drink from the sea.

But still. It is the people.

It is Emily, standing barefoot in a room built a thousand years ago. It is the way Angel sang quietly when the bus turned silent. It is Darlene’s drunken benediction and the way Gary always knew when to make us laugh. It is Don’s gruff Boston wisdom and Eileen’s sweet care. It is the strangers who became kin.

And it is me. Changed.

Travel, if it is done right, will wound you. It will break the neatness of your life. It will remind you that the world is older, stranger, and more beautiful than you deserve. It will humble you. It will show you the smallness of your complaints and the grandeur of a world that owes you nothing. And in that realization is joy.

If Israel frightens you, go to Turkey. If politics divide you, talk about history. If you meet someone who offends you, listen longer. If your back aches and your feet swell and you’re tired of the bus, look out the window. The world is still there. Waiting.

And when you go, remember this: the map is only paper. The journey is people.

And people are holy.