Where the West Ends is a travelogue of the world's most troubled corners. Iraq? Check. The former Yugoslavia? Check. Georgia? The Ukraine? Crimea? Check, check, check. The Sarajevo Haggadah even makes a cameo appearance. And, although it's hard to imagine why one might not only wish to visit such places with remarkable regularity but also, somewhat inexplicably, in a rental car, the result is a collection of insightful and wonderful travel writing. (The dispatches from the Middle East also confirm what I first truly understood after reading Hero, which is that the situation in that region is simply FUBAR, the R here being "repair.")
It's fair, I think, to question Michael J. Totten's sanity, or at a minimum whether he has some kind of unfulfilled death wish. One should not, however, question his grasp of world affairs. With remarkable prescience (Where the West Ends was published in 2012), Totten essentially predicts the rise of ISIS. Quoting a Kosovar - no stranger to internecine war - "[The Americans] cannot leave. Shias and Sunnis hate each other more than they hate Americans." Likewise, he reports that Russia has not - and likely will not ever - accept the fact of Ukrainian independence, particularly insofar as the Crimean is concerned.
Aside from the political context, Where the West End provides an eye-opening look at the day-to-day struggles of life in these troubled spots, particularly in the small towns and villages that dot the countrysides. Totten's recollection of driving through Ukraine is remarkable, as much for the condition of the road he describes as for the the fact that he does not know a letter of Cyrilic and is rather hopelessly lost as a result. More than once, his descriptions brought to mind those from The Orientalist - the backdrop of which is the Caucasus...circa 1920. (And the Azerbaijan-Georgia train - oh my! - it seems Paul Theroux rode the same one in the 1980s!)
Where the West Ends is not perfect. It is necessary to look past certain flaws: Totten's obsession with taking (and talking about) pictures, for example, often without ever actually seeing anything. I was very sad that he wanted to "see" Dubrovnik only because he "want[ed] some pictures." What?! In fact, it often feels like Totten is on the move for the purpose of collecting places as opposed to trying to understand any particular area.
As he says himself, right about the time he tells the story of bocking like a chicken in order to order food in a restaurant "you wouldn't be wrong to say that someone who travels as much as I do should have known better." He does at least recognize - as in, in the very next sentence - that he should have known better. As a person, Totten seems maddening. As a journalist, his skill at synthesizing the major events in some very troubled regions is outstanding.
I'm torn between wishing I had the chutzpah (and time!) to follow in his literal footsteps and between being very, very glad that I'm facing down the Azeri/Serb/Russian/Chechen/Turkish/Kurdish border guard from the far side of a book rather than the passenger side of a car.
No comments:
Post a Comment