I’m fairly indifferent to my home state of Texas when my quotidian days are lived out among its traffic and concrete sprawl, but I pine for her live oaks and cicada-singing evenings when they’re nowhere to be found in central Oregon winters. Or tonight, in urban Morocco. I never feel more Texan than when I leave Texas, and I never feel more American than when I’m abroad.
I am years past and miles apart from my childhood, and yet those roots cling for life to me, no matter how hard I try to shake them free. I can be in my Turkish neighborhood, minding my own business, and a smell will waft through that transports me instantly to the swing set at the park next to my elementary school. Without warning, my heart will ache for five minutes on the merry-go-round. Or I can be in Morocco, swapping memories of late-night college shenanigans, and I’ll crave a midnight run for chips and queso more than I can stand it.
As I fall asleep in Nick and Erin’s bed, bags packed in the corner for an early-morning run to the train station back to Casablanca and onward to Europe, I connect dots between places and people. When my heart pangs for Austin, it isn’t the salsa or the flip-flops weather, the live music or the hipster culture. It’s the people. When I hear Austin I picture faces and names, Thanksgiving in my aunt’s backyard, being poolside with my cousin while we watch our kids swim.
Africa has been Joy and Dave, Asher and Dru, Abubeker, Atkelt, Tigist, Clive, Pamela, John, and a million kids. It’s their love for neighbors, their families, their guests. It’s drums and flaming torches for tenth birthdays. Africa is old friends like Nick and Erin.
Morocco has been a surprising balm in the middle of our journey, a slight taste of home. For months, we’ve surveyed the most majestic creatures on earth, the oldest civilizations still in existence, some of the planet’s most extreme low and high elevations. We’ve walked through fields of purple lupine in New Zealand and dusty desert mountains of Ethiopia. We’ve sampled the questionable pizza preferences of Thailand, Uganda, Kenya, and Morocco. I’ve lost track of various local interpretations of all the tea we’ve sipped.
But I am drawn to these countries’ couches and stovetops. I keep scrutinizing their different types of light switches and windowsills. My fondest memories, so far, have been sunset conversations with my friend Joy about parenting, listening to John’s childhood stories, learning about Atkelt’s life in Addis Ababa married to an American, and watching my old friend Nick haggle prices in Arabic in the medina.
North Africa is completely different from its eastern continental counterpart. It’s much more similar to our Turkey than to Joy’s Uganda or Clive’s Zimbabwe, and it’s whetted our taste for what lies ahead, farther on in our journey, back home. Or at least, what we used to call home.
Africa is red dirt, camels hugging highway shoulders, blushing skies, waterfall drizzle, intricate glass tiles on the wall. But really, it’s people. It’s hosts serving postmeal popcorn, kids laughing in the grass, grown men laughing at terrible kid jokes, neighbors loving neighbors. Africa is shared community. It’s one billion people on the planet. It is the welcoming family of humanity.
Cradle of civilization, indeed.
Early-Dawn Expotition
It’s just you and me, boys,
An expotition of the finest.
Banded mongoose scatter beneath our breakfast,
Ringtailed, spry as both of you.
Let’s gather our provisions,
White noses and pink cheeks
Let’s witness beasts of the field.
Thundering zebras, sharp-serrated crocs,
The cape buffalo, droll and brown-wigged,
Wandering warthog, a jackal with caught rabbit.
Let’s find the lion ogling his thoughts,
Juvenile mane frisking gold-tipped grass.
We will forget our camera. How about that?
And so, this early-dawn expotition,
This morning, just us,
Stays with us, in cameras inside.
We really saw the lion.
Just us.
PART V
To live is to be slowly born.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
15
FRANCE
Outside of the United States, there is nowhere else I feel more at home than Europe. In fact, I often feel more at home in Europe. My favorite day’s agenda anywhere mimics a life in tucked-away European villages—walking to the market for the day’s groceries, sipping coffee that isn’t in a to-go cup, drinking wine with lunch without judgment. Where, for some mystifying reason, food is much kinder to my innards. I can digest Italian pasta with nary a flinch, and the gelato keeps me headache-free, although I cannot say the same for its American ice cream counterpart.
Europe has always, always been my favorite. It’s marked my heart, soul, and the pages of my passport. From food to art to history to cobblestone roads that trip me every time, I love it all. I met my husband in Europe. I spent my most meaningful, postcollege, still-young, fresh-faced-traveler days in Europe. I swoon over French and British and Italian and Irish accents. I love Europe’s multiculturalism and influx of African and Middle Eastern immigrants. I’m glad Ingvar Kamprad thought up IKEA and Michelangelo said yes to painting that ceiling for the pope. I’m a fan of the Beatles, Sigur Rós, Mozart, and Daft Punk. I even appreciate the vague cigarette smell wafting through cold morning air in eastern Europe.
Europe is, on the whole, my happy place. If I could afford to, if I had legitimate permission stamped in my passport, and if the people I’d miss most were willing to come along, I would live here. This small slice of land has my heart six ways to Sunday.
It’s not perfect here. Nor is there one homogeneous, oversize culture called European. If I could, I’d take the food and art of Italy, for example, couple it with the quiet, understated personality of France and the orderliness of Germany, the cinematic and literary wit of Britain, and blend it into one utopian, and ultimately dystopian, probably, civilization. Expat friends who live throughout Europe have regaled me with stories about their daily life that, were it my home, would indeed cause me to question my loyalty to the continent. Europe isn’t perfect. But she sure is lovely.
We cross the Mediterranean on a short flight from Morocco to the South of France, where we’ll live this month. Vagabonding through Africa was scraping across hallowed ground, and it accomplished its main task: we hanker for more. Its resonance continues to shake me. The past month has left us ragged and road-weary, however—irresponsibly behind on work deadlines and clamoring for a kinder routine. It’s time for another slow break—as in Chiang Mai and Sydney—to catch up on work and school. What better place than in a plebeian village in the French region of Provence?