Ellen's Dancing

INTRODUCTION

Joe likes to say we traveled on our innocence; it kept us safe even while we embraced experience. Our trust in humanity was met by trustworthiness, and our capacity to accept different ways of life let us adapt our life style to fit the surroundings.

In 1970, I was no more politically involved than I am now, just your basic overly tall, 5 foot 9 inch bookworm English major at Boston University, interested in current events, civil rights, feminism especially, but unwilling to join a group.

My roommate Claudia, even taller than me and much more active, went on a tour of Europe in the summer of 1970 and fell in with a Canadian man who took her from Amsterdam to the Canary Islands. In September, she returned home to finish her degree in Special Education.

Then, in the “most romantic” way, he followed her, and came to live in our apartment. Did she even ask me? I'm not sure. Our third roommate was already dropping out; it was December.

So Darwin from Saskatchewan, formerly an LSD dealer, now on the lam from the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), lounged about, draping his long limbs on the furniture, refusing to wash dishes.

Meanwhile, Joey, as he was called then, had dropped out of college after one year and was stuck back in his hometown, Boston, for his own counter-culture-meets-the-law reasons needing to be sorted out with the help of the right lawyer. Joey visited us, and Darwin, who had been feeling a lack of male companionship, was thrilled.

When Joey and I had met at the cottage on Cape Cod, I thought he was terribly old, at least 30, since he had a full beard, owned a house, and was done with college. Darwin invited Joey back, and I kept listening to their talk until I knew he was my age, tall enough, had a good mind and a sound character as well as beautiful eyes.

The Far East was on all our minds. Young Americans chanted “Hare Krishna” with shaved heads, orange robes and bells in the center of Boston University every day. The Beatles had made India closer by embracing the Maharishi, (Sexy Sadie). Darwin was ready for a spiritual quest, especially since he couldn't go home for seven years. Claudia would go with him once she graduated.

Talking about travel with Darwin got Joey going. He had been on his way to Mexico before Christmas, but cutting a tree in the median of highway Rte 28 had gotten him arrested. That winter with me, he was happy enough in Boston, but he suggested we escape the next winter by going to Spain. From there, we could go on to India if we wanted.

Meanwhile, I wondered about the value of my expensive stay at Boston University. Career goals were beginning to force me to attend boring lectures. After seven years of French, I couldn't speak the language. In Spain, I could learn with immersion. Learning in my own way for a while with various types of education seemed like a good idea. I could return to university at any time. This was an opportunity to study the world and free myself from old habits and dependence on the soft American life, wrapped in plastic.

My decision, taken in innocence and trust, would be hard on my parents. I was going in spite of my worries about what the trip would be like. Quick-tempered Joe usually plays an active role immediately, and a sense of humor carries him through. I tend to stay quiet in new situations, taking everything in before reacting. Surprised by his quick response to a tough situation, I am often unable to do anything more than go along. A quick decision can be as right or wrong as a slow one, and he is often the first to see the faults, although once embarked, the course taken may not be easily changed. Many decisions are not ultimately important, so the time I spend deciding can seem to him to have been wasted. In 1971, I took months.

By the time we left, I had known Joey for almost a year and lived him with him for five months. The intermediary stage before marriage turned quickly, for my generation, from being engaged to living together. Society's rules changed so quickly with the contraceptive pill (The Pill) that our parents were shocked and concerned, but we weren't listening to them. Old joke: “When your kids are fit to live with, they're living with somebody else.” The kicker, now forgotten, is the titillation of “living with” as Sex outside Marriage.

I accepted the new mores easily as a natural and honest way of conducting a relationship. I had never seen Joey without his beard, but I trusted his judgment, and I thought he would trust mine too. The people we met abroad were to tell us we were a good-looking couple, tall and healthy, he in blue jeans, a full beard and black curls tied back; my skirt as short as any other and loose, long hair. We didn't think of ourselves as hippies. Counter-culture has many layers of involvement and we never espoused any particular way. Europeans saw us as American students.

Europe did not look as distant as it had when I had considered the university option of Junior year abroad, not when we were contemplating the Far East where we could find something, perhaps “Nirvana.” Even if we only got as far as the Near East, Turkey was the home of Meher Baba, whose smiling face proclaimed his profound doctrine, “Don't Worry, Be Happy,” on posters on college campuses.

Making plans to free ourselves from the shackles of our habits and dependence on things Americans take for granted, we chose small dark-green backpacks with an outside pocket but no frame, easy to carry or to throw in a car. My pack held two changes of clothes, waterproof poncho, small set of nesting cookout pans, tiny Svea gas stove, tiny tin of gasoline, toothbrush, toothpaste, herbal shampoo, coconut oil soap, my flute, Moby Dick, and a macrame project. I tied the sleeping bag and thin foam mat to the outside of the pack and carried a purse. Joey took even less, making do with one change of clothes. His sleeping bag fit inside. Since a basic tenet of many Eastern religions is that one should be rid of possessions, we felt virtuous as we played at poverty and traveled light.

We were also vegetarian, Joey's principle, based on his inability to kill an animal. I thought more about the ecological possibilities of the human race moving down the food chain and possible changes in myself. People had begun to say, “You are what you eat.”

Hitchhiking required no money or advance planning. I had often made my way to and from classes in Boston using my thumb. I had been propositioned once, but I opened the car door in the middle of traffic, and the driver backed off immediately, pulling over to let me out. In Europe, the relative lack of automobiles made travel by thumb even more prevalent and allowed us to meet ordinary people who were disposed to be friendly. As a couple, we kept each other safe. Some thought us holy idiots, traveling along blithely oblivious to the usual concerns.

We really had no idea of how long we would be gone or where we could get to. The money, $1,500 each, came from summer jobs. I wrote my family, “You needn't worry. The cheapest way to go is round trip, $165 Icelandic to Luxembourg, youth fare. So I won't be stranded.”

Chapter I: STARTING OUT

Finally, after getting passports, collecting addresses and saying good-byes, we took the long flight. At a stop in Iceland, we could have bought a snack, but the money was too confusing and the choices too odd. Our destination, Luxembourg, was a city to leave quickly before we had to spend any more money. We changed American Express traveler's checks at a French bank, getting francs in bank notes, each denomination a different color, with distinctive watermarks to foil forgers.

In October, 1971, Joe and I set out hitchhiking through France in the rain. We must have had a number of rides those first few days, but I remember just one, a middle-aged man who asked questions in rapid French and was unwilling to wait while I sorted out a reply. Joe was able to speak, an asset picked up on his previous jaunt through France, though the driver felt it necessary to correct him often. Considering how the French feel about their language, our years of study were far from adequate, and they made sure we knew it, something my teachers had not prepared me for. My dream conversations in high school French were never to be - stage fright took over with that hostile audience.

On a Friday, we found ourselves in Neufchateau, 200 miles down the road from Luxembourg in Alsace-Lorraine, about halfway down the eastern half of France, bordering Germany. Already dusk, it looked like it might rain again. Joe said we should look for a bridge to sleep under like the old French bums, but first, we stepped into an inn for some coffee.

In the next room, a group of young men in suit jackets sat around a table with a bottle of wine. After three days of cold stares throughout France, we were surprised when Remy came over and asked us to join them, first in English with a thick accent, and then in French which was easier to understand. These schoolteachers (Remy taught English) had started celebrating the weekend early. They would be teaching the next half day, as school in France was held on Monday, Tuesday, half a day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and half a day Saturday. The wine was good, costing less than milk, the source perhaps of a French obsession with liver problems.

Without any food in our stomachs, we felt giddy right away. Finally welcomed, I was ready to try to speak French, but instead, our new friends began singing. Three lines I couldn't understand and then “Comme les autres. ” Going around the table, at the end of each verse, the next person in turn was required to empty his glass. I went along to be friendly until, soon, I couldn't drink any more. I couldn't talk either.

I was still awake for a ride in the cheapest car in France. The “Deux-Cheveaux” was a two cylinder car with few safety standards. It struck me as charmingly primitive as we rattled along with one layer of thin metal between us and the rain. Latch door handles were simplicity itself, but difficult to operate. At the cement block dormitory for the teachers, Joe fell asleep on a bare mattress. I pulled out my sleeping bag for cover from the bare bulb and turned down a pass. One of the men wanted to know if Joe was the jealous type. Honest as I am, my reply was that I didn't know about Joe, but I was, so he left me alone. In the morning, they all went to work while I threw up in the dismal toilet stalls, vowed my first drinking game was my last, and wondered how I could have been so stupid. We left around noon, when I could walk.

That afternoon, Volkswagens passed us by the dozens. The bug, the car of my generation in the USA, here belonged to older middle-class people distrustful of young long-haired foreigners. Finally, after one ride took us 30 miles away from the shelter we had found the night before, we gave up trying to hitch in the rain.

I wrote a letter in the train station, talking about the rainy weather, the drinking game, French bread and cheese, and of my continual endeavor: “The change of traveling is that I must keep it all together. I like the pack as a general thing instead of a suitcase. But the thing is to never leave my glasses somewhere.” I closed with, “ Sorry I couldn't write a really cheerful letter, but I wanted to do it as soon as possible since Mom asked me to telephone.”

Our train to Perpignan arrived in the evening. At the platform exit, a man in uniform asked us to present our tickets in order to leave the station. I looked at Joe, now officially better at French. “What did he say? He couldn't have said that.” The man repeated himself. His job was to collect the punched tickets that we had left on the train. The train had already departed.

Then the man said, “Passporte?”

Joe gave the man his passport, knowing it was all in order. Mine was more difficult to get out of a special case I had made to wear under my clothes, but I was working on it. Then the man put Joe's passport in his pocket, said we would have to pay again, and turned away ignoring us. We seemed to be beneath his notice. Angry, Joe made one of his instant decisions. “Here,” he said, handing me his money. “You take this, and I'll take care of those bastards. Go off somewhere and wait. ”

“What! Where?”

“Anywhere. Go on. I can handle these jerks. ”

Joe went with the station master and someone else to argue in an office the size of a subway token booth. They ignored me, so I stepped over a yellow and black striped sawhorse barrier and walked down a white cement hallway to sit on a bench and worry under a naked light bulb. It seemed like a long time, but was probably only ten minutes later when Joe appeared, still mad, but free and unaccompanied.

“They let you go!”

“What else could they do? They couldn't keep my passport and I didn't have any money.”

I had been thinking of a number of things they could have done. In fact, I had been making plans to call home, but I held my peace, and we left the station for the now dark city.

Outside, I ventured to ask what they had been doing all that time. “They just made me fill out a million stupid forms. As if that would get them anything! You'd think they wanted to make an international incident over their stupid train tickets.”

We planned to avoid French hotels as an unnecessary expense, but it was really too late to try to leave the city. We found the pleasantly cobble-stoned old quarter and a cheap, clean room in a pension. Behind the curtain in the corner, our room had a sink and a bathroom fixture I had never seen before. It looked like a toilet, sort of, a squatting bowl of white porcelain on a pedestal. The drain was too small for a toilet, but it could have been a urinal. It wasn't attached to a tank of water, but instead, had faucets to make water come out of a screened opening in the center of the bowl. The bidet may be a useful piece of equipment, but I didn't trust it on my private parts, not in a strange hotel in a foreign country.

In the morning, we realized we were sick of France and almost to Spain. I reminded Joe that he had wanted to get a cholera shot because that summer there had been a few cases of cholera in Spain, probably brought in from Morocco. I had got the shot in Boston, but, for Joe, we went to a stone-clad hospital, probably once a convent, with courtyards full of flowers. The French doctor wore a dark blue uniform with brass buttons and a short cape. We sat in the sunshine while he sent a Sister for the vaccine from the refrigerator. Did we plan to go to Morocco? Indeed one should be careful traveling there. The shot would cost five dollars and we should pay the Sister, he said.

Leaving Perpignan, we found hitchhiking still difficult, so Joe walked up to a young, bearded Englishman who had passed us but stopped for gas. He was driving to Barcelona with his American friends and said he had plenty of room. This seemed like a piece of luck, but the far back of the van had only one little window and a chemical toilet. The two sitting in back with us knew nothing. They were just along for the ride on vacation from some minor London college. The American girlfriend, sitting in front, turned away from us, her head held up straight and tense while the driver kept up the conversation, telling us his huge hulk of a vehicle was called “Victoria Regina” or, for short, “Vagina.”

The driver decided to take the scenic route along the coast by the Pyrenees. We sat, unable to see out of the window, while the road wound back and forth. Occasional glimpses out of the windshield now and then showed cliffs above the Mediterranean Sea. On our right side, the barren uninhabited land rose to the mountain range separating France from Spain. Somewhere in those mountains are the Basques, an independent people with their own language and traditions, and the strange city state of Andorra, with an economy based on smuggling cigarettes between France and Spain.

In the middle of nowhere, we got a break for tea, our Englishman punctuating his cooking with a lecture about how the water must truly boil, or the tea will be ruined. You can tell, he said, because otherwise, the tea leaves will float. We gratefully accepted a cup.

Then the girlfriend bustled into the back and began frying eggs for her friends, her plain face unpleasant with her resentment of our presence. I watched her in her men's clothes and dirty hair and wondered if we were supposed to offer to pay for a fried egg. I decided not to bother. I was feeling carsick. Joe was nonplussed, but he too was feeling ill.

After another hour riding in the swaying van, we stopped for customs at a small seaside town, a tiny niche between the mountains. The shops were filled with olives, green and black, stuffed with everything from anchovies to zucchini. This town was a trading point between the two countries, otherwise subsisting on what the sea could provide. I wanted to stay there, but Joe said the ride was too good to miss. I should remember how long we had waited and how much money we had been spending. He held out doubts that the villagers would accept camping.

It was a cool October evening when we reached Barcelona. Relieved to leave the “Vagina”, we found El Pension des Angeles where Joe came down with a fever. Had we missed a French warning about a possible reaction to a cholera shot? Joe decided to treat the symptoms as a flu. Suddenly, I was in charge. Joe sent me out for a nasal spray, claiming he would be fine if only he could breathe. I found a modern drugstore with a sign that English was spoken. By means of gestures, I got Rhino, as it was called. As I walked back, I read the directions and warnings in Spanish, German and English. “Do not use for more than three days.” I tried to talk Joe out of it, but he retreated into a cocoon of ill temper.

With almost no Spanish, I was feeling lost, but a little Egyptian lady, Aligata, spoke English and befriended me, telling me where to buy bread, cheese and fruit. In return, I listened to her troubles, minor fights with her neighbor, blown up by their proximity and empty lives. The room's only window let into the hall, so we sat with the door open to the windowed hall. The Spanish neighbor walked by distrustfully eyeing our foreign jabber.

Aligata's baby crawled over her until her husband came home to complain about his difficulties at his Spanish office job. I tried to get tales of travel, but all he would say was, “Egypt is very nice. You would like it.”

Moving on by train was not restful, the weather continued chilly, and Joe was no better when we reached Madrid. Outside the train station, walking along a parkway, we passed El Prado, a famous museum with collections of Goya and El Greco. Surely, I thought, we should stop and look at these masterpieces of European art. “Go ahead,” said Joe. I did not, not with Joe in that state. This was no place to begin a study of art history.

We went on our way to the friend of a friend who kindly lent a room in a high-rise apartment overlooking other high-rise apartments. Twenty stories below, in a barren field, boys played soccer, entertainment for the convalescent sports fan. I was surprised at his interest since I had no experience with watching sports. In my family home, we watched an ancient television on the third floor: Secret Agent or Star Trek from dusty couches in an unheated room. Our student apartment had no television, and Joey's cottage would have needed a serious antenna.

Chapter II MIJAS

By the time Joe felt able to walk, I had finished a macrame project, a purse of dyed sisal, charmingly rustic, but the rough material chafed my skin, and I discarded it quickly. An overnight train was cheap, and Joe felt sure he would feel better in warmer weather. The Costa del Sol on Spain's southern coast has tourist beaches and artists colonies in the mountains above the coast. In Malaga, a friend of a friend sent us to Mijas, a tourist village on a hill with narrow winding stone streets and houses whitewashed every year by decree.

At a small cafe with a singing canary, an American writer from New York took it on himself to sell us this village, telling us of a free Yoga class taught by Americans, followed by a potluck vegetarian dinner. We were allowed to admire his apartment, and he convinced Joe to try the best possible cure for a cold, sworn to by Spaniards, chewing a clove of garlic. He provided a huge clove, or tooth, as the Spaniards call it. Joe managed a bite, and, lying, said he thought he would try to eat the rest later, but we had to be moving on to find a place to stay.

If Mijas really was so great, we figured we could camp for a few days in a field outside town, but it was miserably windy and Joe wasn't well yet. I had brought some tea bags and filled my little pot with water at the tap at the edge of town, but it was too windy to light that little stove I had been carrying for hundreds of miles, even when Joe got up to help, and ended up cursing. So far, Europe was interesting, but not fun.

In the early morning, we headed to the first bar-restaurant for tea. Cafe-leche, espresso mixed with hot milk, is the usual breakfast order in Spain, and Joe's favorite beverage, but this morning, he was recovering from a flu. Tea was more appropriate, but didn't improve his foul mood. I felt helpless.

We sat staring at the enormous hams hanging from the ceiling while at the bar, a thin gray-haired man with a beret and a scarf was talking to the owner in halting Spanish. After a bit, the foreigner came over. “You know, I was just talking to Juan there, and we thought you looked a bit lost. Are you feeling all right?” he asked, leaning over the table and blinking his eyes. By the accent, this was an Englishman.

“Well,” I said as I looked at Joe's tired face, “Joe has quite a cold.” The fellow looked at Joe quizzically, so I went on, “He tried chewing garlic yesterday to cure it, but it didn't seem to work.”

“Garlic! No, no, no!” He raised his gray eyebrows and pulled his head back in horror, but recovered to say, “That was yesterday. He's not offensive now.”

“No,” I smiled. “He didn't finish it. The Spaniards are supposed to swear by it. Did you ever hear of it?”

“I shall ask Juan.” He made his way to the bar where they had a short discussion, and he returned. “Juan has heard of it.”

That seemed to be all, so I changed the subject. “We should be looking for a pension,” I said. “Can you suggest any? We tried camping out on the mountainside last night. That was too cold.”

“Perhaps you could come to my place. You could have a hot shower.” This seemed a tremendously good idea to him. “The pensions don't have hot showers, you know.”

“Do you have an apartment here?”

“Quite close. I just popped out for a morning cafe-cognac with my friend Juan, much the best way to start the day. I think we should take Joe up right now. He looks as if he could use a bit of a lie down.”

“I'm all right,” Joe said glumly. “I just have a headache. ”

“No, no, no, no, no! You should have a hot shower and some aspirin and a nap. And remember, don't ever swallow that poisonous stuff in your nose. I'll show Flossie here my puppets.”

So we followed him, beguiled by the promise of a hot shower and puppets. There hadn't been any hot showers yet in Europe. Outside the cafe, our new friend introduced himself. “My name is Rory O'Neil. Irish, of course. All the best drunks are Irish. That's Joe, and I will call you Flossie.”

I realized I didn't hadn’t told him my name, so I said, “My name's Ellen,” but he seemed uninterested.

Across the street and up the stairs, we arrived in the hall of a two room apartment with an efficiency kitchen and a bathroom. In the living room, Joe was hustled into the only chair, next to a work bench holding two handmade puppets with paper-mâché heads.

While Rory O'Neill turned on the electric water heater, I examined the grotesque witch with a wrinkled face, black yarn hair and paper-mâché hands attached to a simple purple robe. A clown puppet was also finished with a red robe and red yarn hair. Two dry paper-mâché heads seemed to be awaiting paint.

“This will take an hour or so,” said Rory, coming into the living room. “We mustn't waste money keeping the hot water on all the time, you know.”

“All right. That's fine. Joe can rest here,” I said. “I love your puppets. Do you put on shows?”

“Ah, yes, the puppets,” said Rory O'Neill, turning to the work bench to fuss over his creations. “I like this one best.” He picked up the grotesque witch and settled it on his hand.

“Do you sell the puppets?” I asked, since my previous question had gone unanswered.

“No, no, no, no, no!” Rory's eyes widened with horror as he lifted his chin high and raised the hand clothed with the surprised witch, making her fling back her head and hands. “I couldn't part with my creations for mere lucre!”

I put the clown onto my hand and practiced with it, making it bow to the witch on Rory's hand. He had the witch jerk about looking at things for a while, and then returned her to the stand to admire her. Finally he said, “I thought of joining a caravan. There's a fellow planning to take his daughters to India in a horse-drawn caravan. I thought I should go with them. We could pay for ourselves with puppet shows along the way.”

“When would you leave?”

“I haven't finished the puppets yet.”

“What kind of show will it be?”

“Oh, Punch and Judy type. Boff on the head, you know. Classic puppet theater. But I need time to perfect the moves. Now, Flossie, do you know how to make tea?” I wasn't sure, after all I'd heard about English tea, but tea bags were all he had, so that was easy enough.

Joe and Rory got into a discussion about the caravan to India. Joe loved it and wanted to see if we could go along. I thought we had a lot to learn about horses. Finally, when the shower was ready, Rory left us, going out to his bar. Joe showered and napped while I worked on another macrame project and planned a simple dinner of potatoes and eggs with the food we had bought for camping. When I tried the shower, I found it disappointingly low on heat and pressure. Often, in Europe, water pressure is low, the force behind the taps being simply gravity working from a tank on the root of the building. If air gets trapped in the pipes, bubbles working their way up can slow the flow of water considerably.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” came up the stairs in a descending crescendo at about 5:00. The offending article was apparently the door.

Conversation was not as coherent now, and Rory's eyes were bloodshot. A long story about a woman he had been talking to that afternoon culminated in what struck me as an offensive expression, evidently British slang. “I don't know what was wrong with her. I wasn't trying to poke her. I didn't want to poke her.” Joe thought the expression was cute.

I retreated to the kitchen to cook, and Rory confessed his true name to Joe: Alexander Worstely.

Tuesday we met the man going to India with his daughters. He was still in the planning stages, drawing up a fiberglass trailer. We heard the story of his hike with his daughters from Torremolinos to Lisbon. Rory decided our way was best. He said he envied us, traveling with our houses on our backs like snails.

Wednesday arrived, the day of the Yoga class. Joe was better and wanted to buy a Spanish guitar and learn how to play. Since I had brought my flute, we could practice together. Joe found a French guitar player who took him all the way to Malaga and back for naught while I looked at Mijas shops filled with tourist goods. Toledo steel letter openers were worked to look like miniature swords. Horseshoe nail jewelry crosses were popular, evoking an image of the nails were used to attach bodies to the crucifix in ancient times. By the afternoon, Joe and Andre were back and settled in the little hole in the wall shop trying out all the guitars, finally choosing one.

After siesta, we went back to Rory's place to find him contemplating a chicken's foot from the butcher's shop. He had set it up on a display stand next to the puppets. “Odd, isn't it?” asked Rory. “But look!” He made the claws open and close by moving the skin on the legs up and down. “I love it! If only my puppets could move this way! Or if I could attach it to some strings and just hop it across the stage.”

“Interesting,” I managed to say, nodding my head. I was struck most by the impossibility of ever actually using the item. I expect the butcher enjoyed the crazy Englishman's fascination with the chicken foot. Joe was quite disgusted with its almost alive shiny yellow skin and claws.

We were glad to leave it for the Wednesday night Yoga class. An American lady was hosting, opening her house to members of this community of foreigners. We had brought our thin foam rubber mats and some fruit to add to the potluck dinner. The teachers, American students of Swami Satchedananda and his course of Integral Yoga, had stories of his healing through the asana stretch postures they demonstrated while their tape recorder played Indian music.

After class, the potluck buffet held casseroles attesting to the possibilities for delicious meatless meals. Joe talked to the teachers and got us an invitation to stay at their farm. After dinner, we said good-bye to a surprised Rory O'Neil before meeting our new friends and driving out of town.

Actually, these Americans rented a farmhouse, and the owner, who preferred to live in town, worked the land. We were escorted by lantern to the tiny low ceilinged spare bedroom and given a candle by which we read the only decoration on the wall, “Desiderata”, the short sermon of plain advice found in St. Paul's Church, Baltimore. It begins, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.” My favorite sentence is, “If you compare yourself with others you may become vain and bitter; for there will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” Years later, when we wrote of our marriage, they sent us that now yellowed copy which I have placed in a “floating” frame.

In the morning we woke to the brilliant sunshine of southern Spain. There were no windows, but the doorway opening to a private courtyard could illuminate the small white room. We did the Yoga we had learned, including the “Salute to the Sun” with back and forward stretches of the spine and legs, for me still an essential part of any health or exercise program.

After the asanas, we closed our eyes to the orchard of ripening oranges beyond the cabbage patch and tried to meditate, wondering if levitation was in our powers. For me, meditation is thinking through my problems, at this time: Joe's sickness, washing clothes, and repaying hospitality. Meditation lightens their effect, and I move back from the realm of thought. By centering on deep breathing, I continued for a few more minutes, then opened my eyes and watched the butterflies until Joe seemed to be done.

Around the other side of the house, under the grape arbor still covered with leaves, we found our Yoga teachers having granola, discussing the class, deciding it had been a success. Their other discussions were about diet. They took turns cooking vegetarian feasts, the only bone of contention being whether or not eggs were permitted. The one couple inclined to the Indian philosophy which allows milk but no eggs, while the other couple felt the egg was the perfect food, packaging and all, recommended for the woman with a tendency to diabetes. She had her egg for lunch and the communal meal at night had none.

Studying their library, I found books about diet and exercise. Dr. Ehret's mucous-free diet was limited to fruits and nuts in order to clean out the system from all the gluey products clogging our bodies. This diet would make our minds light and clear, but was a commitment in both time and money.

They recommended Living on the Earth by Alicia Bay Laurel, with pen and ink illustrations of happy naked people and Californian directions for food, clothing, shelter and medicine. Our friends had arranged a toilet called a “proper shit hole” on instructions from the book. Toilet paper in a plastic bag was hung up on a stick next to a ditch with a shovel in a pile of dirt. The book had everything!

Years later, I bought the book and found the instructions simplistic and incomplete. Since it is written in longhand and organized by whim, information is particularly difficult to retrieve as well as unsubstantiated. When I thought I would at least try the recipes after ten years, I opened a page at random. “Winter Heat” suggested a wood stove made from two 55 gallon drums seemingly suspended by a flue pipe, resting on braces on two bricks over a fringed rug. Inspiration faded, and I closed the book and put it in the box for the Salvation Army.

We spent a week on this idyllic farm in the mountains squeezing juice from bursting pomegranates, watching cabbage butterflies, whitewashing our little room with “cal”, and taking our turn to cook.

At the next week's Yoga class, we witnessed the teacher taking away the pain of a scorpion sting by holding a student's hand and meditating. The macrobiotic feast included an Indian Raj Kumar who invited us to visit in Madras should we actually get there.

November weather in Mijas began to be chilly, so we set out again. We would use our travel leisure time to work on Yoga and to study the effects of diet on the body and mind. Since the summer before our plan had been to winter in the Canary Islands. Nominally European, but off the coast of Africa and south of Morocco, the Canaries are hospitable and cheap as well as close enough to the equator to have a pleasant winter. Ferry passage goes out of the port of Cadiz on the south-west corner of Spain, the oldest city in Europe, we were told.

CHAPTER III: GALDAR

In Cadiz, next to the waterfront, we stopped in the square to buy fried squid rings, fried in batter like onion rings, but much bigger and tougher. They had no ketchup.

Away from the port, the water's edge formed a narrow and littered beach, bordered by a short, stone embankment. As the beach is communal property, we thought we might spend the night sleeping there. We sat on the sand with our backs resting against the wall and watched the ocean as dusk fell. Rats came out of the stone wall to forage, so Joe put the food a few feet away from us. The rat went straight for the plastic bags and had found our cheese and was ripping open the bag before Joe could take aim and hit it with a rock.

We were gathering up our things to leave this dreary scene when someone addressed us from the embankment. The Guardia Civil, a policeman in a shiny black three-cornered hat, wished to inform us the beach would be covered with water overnight.

Back in the square by the waterfront, Joe asked a couple of young Spanish men where a good place to stay was. They said they knew the best place, and it was free. These fellow wanderers traveled with no luggage, just the permapress clothes on their backs. We, on the other hand, were planning on camping out and carried, as Rory O'Neill had said, houses on our backs. After walking for a half hour, Joe cursed the weight of his guitar and wished he hadn't listened. We could have found a pension for whatever small fee. Tired myself, I said nothing; the time for decision was past. Having followed them for so long, we were out of any hotel district and had invested too much effort to give up, going on and on until a building under construction appeared, a shelter of sorts.

The next day, on a boat to Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, I discovered what I should have known. Unlike the heroines in books, I get seasick. Of course, an active heroine serves the needs of the story. Nothing happens when you're seasick. Books taught me a lot of things, but my hopefulness and mental balance did not protect me at sea.

As the ferry pitched and rolled in the Atlantic, I sat in the lounge watching the other passengers. The ones who had brought enormous packs were Canadians, identified by the maple leaf flag sewn onto the pack. Anyone with green pants would be American. Young American men might wear army green. The middle-aged tourist sported bright green polyester knit slacks.

I made friends with a fellow sufferer, a single woman traveling with a bicycle, and shared my honey and lemon for tea. She said we could find a health food store in Las Palmas.

Joe, meanwhile, pursued a different course. He claimed the best way to avoid getting seasick was to run around the ship drinking cognac with Spanish sailors on leave. They even gave him a guitar lesson.

We disembarked at the first stop, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. We thought we might make connections to one of the other islands: Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Columbus' last stop before his famous voyage, barren Lanzarote, actively volcanic La Palma, Fuerteventura, Hierro, or green Gomera where the islanders sometimes use a whistling language. However, Gran Canaria, a round island fifty miles in diameter, elevation to 1,949 meters, was big enough to satisfy our interest in exploration.

The capital city, Las Palmas, is set up to handle English speaking tourists. The beach, Playa de las Cantaneras, featured eateries with German wurst, Swedish meatballs, hamburgers, hot dogs, French pastry and Italian ices. Next to the beach, duty free shops held goods from around the world: furs, jewelry and gifts. Before leaving town, we checked out the health food store, run by an ascetic Swede and filled with expensive vitamins and tonics. We could return for a few staples once settled, brown rice and whole wheat flour. With a free map from Tourist Information, we hit the road.

The straight road south along the eastern shore was, in fact, a highway to the island's tourist beaches. The mountainous island has distinct climates, and that side has the dry, warm weather. Our first ride came from a Spanish man and his little daughter headed for a picnic. He left the highway for his favorite cafe where he bought a fantastic baked omelet studded with potatoes, peas, onions, carrots and cheese, and a liter of Coca-Cola, name brand but sweeter than the American version. Chatting with this gentleman in our broken Spanish was fun. In contrast to the French, the Spanish seemed to think we were charming, trying to learn their language.

At the first little rocky wash, just outside Maspalomas, he stopped the car and proceeded to set up a huge yellow and white striped tent, big enough to invite us in to share the food. After lunch came nap, so we left him to the privacy of his portable home and walked down to a hut built on the edge of the next bit of rocky beach.

A wild-looking hairy young German was cooking over an open fire. In a heavy accent, he extolled the virtues of the fisher folk who let him work with them and stay in their hut. They paid him with fish and lessons in machismo. He called out his woman, Greta, but she couldn't speak English and soon disappeared. We were pleased to see this type of camping permitted, though there was no room for us here. We waited for our host with the tent to wake up so that we could say good-bye and moved on.

Maspalomas seemed to be little more than sandy beaches and high-rise hotels with expensive shops and restaurants on the ground floor. A little shanty town across a dry river bed next to a rocky shore completed the picture. A bamboo forest was under guard. We camped out by that rocky beach, but we knew we wouldn't stay.

We returned north, back past Las Palmas on the island's north-east corner and stuck out our thumbs on the road going west along the north shore. An empty banana truck stopped and the good-natured driver made conversation with Joe, giving us lessons in Spanish. Out of the front window of the truck, we watched the cliffs going in and out, up and down, rising along the sea. We passed buses stopped at the little places on the inside of curves in the road, the combination general store/post office/cafe serving as connection to the world for people living in the narrow valleys. Our driver called the rocky dry river beds “barrancos” and I wondered what the valleys looked like when it rained.

We rounded a cliff, wondering if we would meet a truck going in the opposite direction, and in the distance, a perfect volcano cone rose up by the sea. It disappeared as we headed to the next little stop in a rocky culvert, but appeared again and again, ever closer, seeming to watch us as we backed 100 yards into a narrow space to be passed, until we reached Galdar, the town named for the mountain, where we were glad to come down from the cab and set our feet on the earth again.

We bid the driver adios at his cafe and walked past hedges of leggy, unpruned poinsettia, the red blooms high over our heads. Here was a real Spanish town with an economy based on bananas and tomatoes. We saw shipping warehouses, a cement factory and every necessary shop. Signs above the shops were word puzzles: Cafeteria = coffee shop, drogueria = drug store, churroria = churro shop, zapateria = shoe store, comestibles = food store, banque, bank, and so on. The shopping area looked like just the right size; we could get anything we wanted and not get lost. Before heading downhill for the seashore, we stopped to buy a Spanish-English dictionary. We had gone a month in Spain without one, simply in order to travel light. Now in Galdar, we were ready to stay and study the language.

Bananas as a cash crop began in 1910, and the town had grown around the banana plantations' high cement block walls lining the road down to the beach. A metal gate gave us glimpses of the small trees in a damp forest, utterly unlike the dry rocky soil outside. We didn't see the other cash crop, tomatoes, until later since they are farmed outside town in drier conditions.

We walked downhill until we came to a rocky shore with a bit of sandy beach, a few houses and, right on the water, the bar-restaurant “Agujero”.

Near the shore, we found what seemed to be old foundations cut into the soft volcanic rock, littered with old shoes and sardine tins. We set up in one, and Joe went to the Agujero tienda, for bread, sardines and tomatoes while I cleaned up.

A young woman from the next house came out to talk to me. “Ingles?” she asked.

I knew that meant English so I said, “America,” pronouncing it in the Spanish way.

“Tiene hermanas?” she asked.

I scrambled through my dictionary but couldn't find “ermanas.” She found it for me. “Sister.” Then I could reply. “Si.” I held up two fingers. “Dos.”

“Tiene hermanos?” She wanted to know.

I started looking in the dictionary again, and I found it, right next to sister - brother. Of course. “Si.” I nodded my head. “Dos. Two hermanos and dos hermanas. ”

“Donde es su familia?”

I looked up donde – where. “America. ”

“Estados Unidos,” she said. I had heard that phrase before.

When black bearded Joe reappeared, she left quickly.

The next day, Joe tried setting up a roof made of wild bamboo and our waterproof ponchos. Even though rain was not expected for some months, we might want a little privacy, camping out so close to town. However, the Guardia Civil came by to tell us the site was a national monument, carved out of the rock by the Guanches, blond stone-age men who had been here when the Romans had discovered the islands.

I wondered what had happened to the Guanches, but Spaniards never had much information about them or even interest in them. Their lot must have been to be enslaved and assimilated into the Roman Empire, leaving little behind but their caves and their names.

We were packing up to move on when the owner of the Agujero came out. Emiliano Gomez Santana wanted to offer us the flat roof of his building. I wondered what the catch was, but Joe accepted. Emiliano took us under his wing. He and his son, Emiliano Chico, helped make a shelter on the roof out of bamboo and plastic next to the short wall forming the edge of the roof.

Meanwhile, the wife, Conchita Moreno Mendosa, and daughter, Julia Gomez Moreno, took me into the kitchen. When the men were done, we joined them for a meal. Joe warmed Conchita's heart by eating three bowls of vegetable stew. We offered to pay, but they happily assured us there could be no question of money. We figured we could renegotiate later.

Here we were, without elaborate arrangements, in a Spanish family ready to take us in. Emiliano was probably more open to new ideas than the average Spaniard, but otherwise typical: short, dark, energetic and polite. Conchita was sweet, like a fat pretty girl dressed in bright colors instead of black like most married Spanish women. Her smooth skin showed no lines after four children, her face unscarred by worry. If things weren't just like always, if she were out of onions or the beans were too big, her voice would get shrill, sounding very dramatic as she declared the soup “ruin”. For an education in the Spanish language and character, we had hit on the real thing.

Learning Spanish with the family provided some surprises. A long sigh, “Hey Sue”, from Conchita as she began peeling a pile of potatoes was an invocation of our savior, Jesus. Whereas, a common exclamation we picked up right away, “Conyo”, turned out to mean something quite out of my usual vocabulary, “cunt.”

In general, the language was easy once I tuned my ears in for similarities with French and English within the pronunciation framework and the Spanish turn of phrase. Our lack of verb tenses didn't bother anyone.

We liked the phrase “Par piso” which reflected on the architecture as well as mentality of the people. “Par piso” means literally, “for the floor”. A number of things were consigned to the floor automatically, peanut shells, cigarette butts and candy wrappers. This trash disposal was possible with the ubiquitous cement or tiled floors. Of course, this meant the daughter of the house had to sweep and wash the floor every day. Here came in another use of the word “manana” that we know in the South American sense as putting everything off. As Conchita used it, it meant, “Oh, well, we don't have to do a careful job today since we'll just be doing it over again and again.”

Conchita had a weekly cooking pattern. Monday's potaje was followed by Tuesday's sopa de fideos, chicken bouillon with chickpeas and noodles. Wednesday's paella was made with chicken stock and bright yellow from the Spanish food coloring labeled “asafran” though it wasn't saffron. Thursday was potaje again and Friday, fish. Saturday and Sunday were restaurant days with leftovers from whatever was served in the dining room.

If anyone was sick, Conchita fixed eggs. She called this dish for invalids “Arroz Cubano”: white rice, fried potatoes and deep fried eggs. The other egg dish, maybe whipped up to fatten “Hoesie”, was “tortilla espanol,” a fried potato omelet. The omelet is about three inches thick, studded with home fried potatoes. Conchita would also fry green bananas - they came out almost exactly like potatoes. During the war, she said, (it turned out to be the Spanish civil war) they had lived on fried bananas.

I was really happy this Spanish family didn't eat meat. Conchita was cheerful when we explained about our diet and said, “Oh, we don't eat meat either.” She must have thought it a good joke that we were concerned with avoiding the meat that they couldn't afford. I also noticed she cut onions with the grain - up and down rather than slices of rings as my mother did. The macrobiotic we had met in Mijas had told us this was the Right Way. She was pleased that this was the Right Way. I realized once I started helping that cutting is a lot easier that way, particularly as the knives weren't sharp.

If Joe didn't eat two bowls of paella, Conchita would act offended. “Eat! Eat more! Hoesie! What's the matter? Don't you like my cooking?” In fact, he did tire of the exact same recipe for lunch and supper twice a week.

To get me to eat more, she would scold me for being too skinny. She said I would waste away to nothing and die, and Joe would get someone else. I didn't think I was underweight, but I guess to look like a married woman, a Spanish housewife, I would have had to gain at least twenty pounds.

After muerza, the midday meal, there was siesta. I never got used to that nap in the middle of the day, but was glad to retire to the roof where I could meditate on the perfect volcano cone of Mt. Galdar, write home, or read Moby Dick with the waves pounding on the cliffs below.

Joe stuck around the bar to talk to the guys who worked in the gravel pit just past the banana plantation. Their siesta time was spent drinking beer and talking to the American. Emiliano must have been pleased with the extra business. Joe even took up smoking because it was embarrassing to keep refusing cigarettes, buying a milder brand than the foul ones made locally. He picked up the skill of drinking without touching his lips to the bottle, usually learned on a “bota” or leather water flask.

Sunday, the big day for the bar, Emiliano served “tapas”, little dishes of savory, oily food: paella, squid or octopus simmered in tomato sauce, or “Ropa Vieja” made of chickpeas and potatoes fried with a bit of canned corned beef. The squid was very good even though it still had little suckers on the tentacles. Emiliano Chico hated his job of cleaning them. Maybe because they had been frozen and were still cold, or that the thin skin was too difficult to peel off. Maybe he just didn't want to be in the kitchen, but everyone helped on Sundays. I washed dishes.

In the mornings, Joe would fish off the low cliffs into the sea. Bamboo for poles grew wild, and Emiliano sold tackle in the tienda. Bait was old bread, soaked in a bucket of sea water. After removing the crusts, you squeeze and work the cooked dough until it sticks to the hook. The method involves a lot of re-baiting, especially when the seas are rough, but they caught fish. Santiago “El Macho” caught La Vrancha which was very big, and Joe got some tasty little Foola. They were deep-fried whole without batter, a method I see in this country only in Chinese restaurants. It's a great way to cook scup (also known as porgy), a small sport fish caught in Massachusetts. It was in Spain I lost my fear of using plenty of oil for cooking.

One day, after watching Mt. Galdar for weeks, we decided to climb the volcano, to make it our own by walking on it as well as by studying its perfect slope. Emiliano had climbed it once, he said. It wasn't too hard. Not too high. Conchita thought mine a strange ambition. She had seen its smooth sides for 40 years and never had felt the urge to climb it. The weather was perfect, as always, pleasantly cool. I was having my monthly period, but that doesn't usually slow me down, and Joe offered to carry a backpack with some lunch.

We set out to travel in a straight line, walking through tomato fields and people's yards, the mountain ahead of us. People stuck their heads out of windows to yell, “Donde van?” Joe would yell, “ La Montana!”, and they would nod vigorously, satisfied.

We walked for half an hour slightly uphill until we reached the base of the cone. Here an empty tomato packing plant nestled into the side of the hill, waiting for the tomato export season to get underway. The rock underfoot changed to light chunks of porous lava, the whole mountain seeming to be made of crunchy rocks moving underfoot. The packing plant began to look as if it would get buried in pumice. However, we were the only climbers setting out from here, pushing down rocks. A road spiraled around the cone for sightseers. We crossed it several times before we came to a huge cave about three quarters of the way up the mountain. We stopped to rest, noting the rocks were wearing away our marvelous Spanish espadrilles (that don't last) made with real rope soles and crude canvas tops with no right or left foot.

We had a snack while looking into the cave that disappeared into a tunnel far above our heads. We were considering exploring it when some Spanish boys showed up, dressed, we thought, most inappropriately for hiking, in their usual tight pants and polyester knit shirts. They explained the cave had once belonged to the Guanches, but now was sacred to The Holy Virgin. The tunnel, they said, didn't go anywhere and anyway you couldn't climb in it. I wondered how they could climb at all in their tight pants and slippery shoes, but they scrambled about for a while on the big rocks at the entrance to the cave.

We didn't want to climb to the top with them, so we waited until they got bored and set off again. I rested while Joe went as far as he could into the cave. He reported the tunnel seemed inaccessible and, if it were made of the same crunchy rock, it wouldn't be safe for climbing. Also, from the droppings on the floor, Joe deduced it probably had bats. So we set off again uphill, finding another smaller cave, and then reached the top.

The view revealed the entire north side of the island from Las Palmas, the north-east corner with a jag sticking into the ocean, to Agaete barely visible as a few buildings in the west. We spotted “our house”, the restaurant Agujero, down by the seaside and south into the mountains of the interior, green with banana plantations and disappearing into the mist like the enchanted kingdoms of a fairy tale.

A Fiat drove up, a couple of men got out and looked around for a minute. They offered us a ride down, but we refused, so they climbed back in and drove away.

Descending Mt. Galdar was harder than climbing up with that insecure footing, and we were tired now. After spilling numerous stones on the factory, we came into a part of town we had never seen. We stuck to the road now with a stop for cafe-leche and a sweet before going back down to Agujero.

For electricity, Emiliano would run a diesel generator at night and on Sunday. Most evenings we spent watching Spanish TV. I remember “Notacias de Hoy”, the news, and “Perdido en Espacio”, Lost in Space, a show I had always avoided in spite of my addiction to science fiction. The dubbing and the ads added a little interest and helped my language skills. SOS soap pads made a little pun on “Eso es” which translates as “This is”. Brillo, which translates as “Shine”, is pronounced “Breeyo”.

By early December, we were definitely picking up the language. When the two young Canadian couples (huge backpacks) arrived, I was sent to the tienda to handle the transaction. They had rented rooms down by the “piscina”, a huge ocean water swimming pool washed by the waves. We had been swimming at the sheltered beach a couple of times in November, and Conchita had been worried. “Hoesie! HOESIE! Come back! “It's deep!” she had yelled from the roof, but of course we couldn't hear her. Later, she gave us a dramatic show of how she tried to save us. The piscina was pronounced safe by all, but by then it was December and getting cold in Galdar.

We visited the Canadians to exchange reading material and they let me cook tempura vegetables in their kitchen.

I really wanted to reciprocate for all the cooking Conchita did, so when I went to Las Palmas to check for mail, I bought a beautiful cauliflower at the vegetable market, my favorite shopping place. I also bought white gasoline for the little Svea stove I had been carrying. I made a slightly different potage for a surprise for dinner. I am still embarrassed to say some gasoline spilled on the cauliflower and, although I threw away half the beautiful head, the part marked with the clear stain, the stew was spoiled. Sopa de Gasolina, Emiliano called it. Conchita didn't mind: she had refused to even try the stew. I could only reciprocate for her cooking by washing the dishes.

We tried once again. Joe decided these potato lovers would like lefse, Norwegian potato flat bread we labored hours over, but only the father, Emiliano, would taste it.

The only successful cooking venture was a cake from a mix Joe made to surprise me with on my twenty-first birthday. I was banished upstairs to our little camp on the roof. Joe told me later Emiliano had to light the oven as Conchita never used it and didn't know how. As the heat came up, cockroaches came pouring out of their ancestral home. The finished product was a delicious lemon sponge cake.

The fourteen-year-old daughter, Julia Gomez Moreno, claimed to love American music. Joe tried singing her some of our favorite Beatles tunes, accompanied by the guitar, but Julia wasn't interested. She wanted to hear her favorite American song, “Mamy Blue”, a big hit that year in Spain. We hadn't heard of it, nor did her singing help. Eventually, we saw it performed on Spanish TV. Written by a Frenchman, this version featured a black Spaniard lip syncing, accompanied by violins. It went like this: “The little house upon the hill, (oh Mamy) Is empty but it's standing still, (oh Mamy) Oh Mamy, Oh Mamy Mamy blue, oh Mamy blue. ”

Saturday was Paseo, Julia's big event. Fridays she would nag her mother to get the wash done so her new blue jeans would be perfect. I helped with the wash as much as I could, a learning experience. Hand washing can be harder on clothes, especially with Conchita's vigorous rubbing and inspection, but they couldn't have been cleaner. Conchita complained the blue jeans were harder to wash because they were thicker material than most clothes.

When the time came, Emiliano Chico would leave first. Then the neighbor girl would pick Julia up so they could go together to the town square to walk around. We never went. To me, it sounded excruciating to dress for inspection and prepare for chit-chat with the whole town, especially the teen-agers. Our rule at the time was, if you needed new clothes, we didn't go.

Our expeditions to town were usually made in the morning to do shopping and mail letters. Shops, of course, were closed in the afternoons until 4:00 for siesta. Anyway, morning was the time to buy churros. Not a breakfast for a delicate stomach, churros there were fried popover dough.

The churroria we particularly liked had a machine to make a huge spiral of churro. Our “churrorero” would spin the pan of hot oil slowly while moving a long metal tube over the surface allowing a thin line of eggy dough to run out. The finished tube of dough would fill the pan and puff up to many times its size. Flipping the spiral would brown the other side before its removal to be cut into six inch pieces.

I preferred donuts, as good as any but slightly flavored with anise and pronounced differently. One day when there were no donuts in sight, I couldn't just point, as I usually did. “Donut?” I asked. They looked doubtful, so I tried “Donuet?”and “Donoot?” Finally I saw an empty box. “Oh! Donoo!” they said. “Manana.”

One day, in the shop that carried Quaker Oats, I found plastic bags of gofio, in a range of color from light yellow to brown. With the help of my dictionary, I discovered it was corn flour. I said to the friendly shopkeeper. “What's the difference here?” I asked the friendly shopkeeper. “This one is yellow, and this one is brown.”

“This yellow is for babies. The brown, that's for men.”

Certainly I wasn't cooking for a baby, so I bought the dark gofio.

Next to our sleeping shelter on the roof, we had a little setup with the Svea stove. My plan was to make tortillas from the corn flour to vary our diet a bit with the readily available beans for a Mexican style meal. Unfortunately, gofio is ground from toasted corn kernels and the darker stuff had been toasted longer. The “macho” gofio I had bought tasted slightly burnt. It was ground finer than masa harina, and, because of the toasting, would not stick together at all. I threw in an egg as glue, but the result was total failure as tortilla.

Joe entertained our Spanish family with a recital of my cooking attempt. Conchita just shook her head at the idea of gofio flat bread. Emiliano offered to take the gofio off my hands. He claimed to love it mixed with Sopa de Fideos, even though Conchita didn't keep it in the kitchen. I brought it down, and Emiliano demonstrated how a man eats gofio.

A letter I wrote home tells the story of an attempt to make jelly. “Julia and I went for a walk to pick cactus pears and left Conchita by herself, so she cheered herself up by lighting a big fire with lots of smoky plastic. Coming back, Julia saw the smoke and was scared for the house. I was sure it was just a rubbish fire. A cement block house wouldn't make that much smoke. On the road was a parked car, and Julia was scared it was two men. I looked and told her it was a man and a woman, but she called the dogs and picked up some big rocks. Spanish women do not go off by themselves.” All that, and the “tuno” cactus fruit weren't even good, sort of slimy and not sweet, with tiny prickers to work their way into the skin.

The family kept three dogs: an ancient mutt, Dicke (we called it Decay), a German shepherd, Mopey, that finally bit Emiliano, and another more docile shepherd, Linda. There are dogs indigenous to the islands; in fact “Canary” is derived from the Latin “canus”. The Canary dog looks like a small beige whippet, cringing at an outstretched hand. Dogs have a small place in that society. These restaurant dogs actually had a soft life, living off scraps. They never had any trouble eating fishbones. They just had to know their place. Mopey, who didn't, ended up chained as somebody's watchdog.

Meanwhile, as December came in, Emiliano was working on a new scheme: a third floor with rooms to let. The work went slowly since cement was mixed with wheelbarrow loads of sand and gravel from the beach. That's the kind of work you couldn't pay Joe to do, but he did it for free because he was glad to help. He would also help carry cement blocks upstairs, but was only allowed to carry one at a time while all the other macho men took three.

There were a lot of problems Joe encountered and used to lump under the label “Spanish construction”. Joe particularly disliked Emiliano's habit of saving nails: removing them from boards and straightening them out. It seemed like a nice idea to me, but since the wood was also all old and iron hard, the nails would bend more often than not. Finally Joe convinced the old man to go and buy some nails. Emiliano bought used nails.

By mid December, Conchita had a lot more laundry to do. “Look, Elli! Tsk! The cement dust on these pillowcases!” she said as we stripped the beds. Their rooms were tiny with a dressed doll on the bedspread.

The layout for the third floor surprised me; the rooms were to be the same size as the old ones, about as big as a full bathroom. I had expected them to want bigger rooms for the family. I was happy to be living outside instead of in such a room.

In the warmer climate, December went by before we realized the shopping hype was missing. We expected this Catholic country to celebrate with a holier air than our American materialism, but Christmas in Spain was a disappointment. Our Spanish family didn't even go to church. Conchita didn't have any olive oil, and Emiliano said he couldn't afford it because of the construction, so she pronounced her special sweet potato pastries “ruin”.

We practiced with the flute and guitar and played some Christmas carols. The men at the bar contributed an odd Spanish carol I had never heard, “Pero mire como beben”, “But look how they drink”. I translate loosely:

The Virgin is combing her hair

Between curtain and curtain.

Her hair is of gold,

The comb is silver.

But look how they are drinking,

The fishes in the river.

But look how they are drinking

To see God who is born.

Drinking and drinking and coming back to drink,

But look how they are drinking

To see God who is born.

The Virgin goes walking

Goes walking by herself

And takes no companion

But the infant in her hand.

(Chorus)

The Virgin is washing diapers

And hanging them up to dry

The birds are singing

And the water laughs.

(Chorus)

For New Year's Eve, everyone pitched in for a clean up. The older son appeared on his motor scooter to help repaint the huge restaurant dining room with birthday cake colors, pink, yellow, blue and green. The sixth of January, day of the Three Kings would be when presents are exchanged in Spain, so we had heard. We made a few things, but the family didn't have the tradition of presents.

In January, I'd been living with construction for a month - no place to do Yoga alone. They were going to put the roof on. Emiliano had a load of special gravel dumped from the pit on the other side of the beach. We had eaten enough of their food. Joe was sick of drinking every afternoon, especially since he could now understand the conversation. It was time to go.

Conchita thought we should settle in town. She wondered why we had to travel so much. She herself had only been as far as Las Palmas to the west and, to the east to the town of Agaete to see the “Finger of God” pointing up forty feet to the heavens. I didn't even try to explain. I wrote home with rumors of a jaunt in Africa, and we went to check out passage at the port of Las Palmas.

Chapter IV: CAVE DWELLINGS ON GRAN CANARIA

We left Galdar looking for a warmer location for January. Africa was a possibility, but passage on a ship to Senegal was neither cheap nor easy. We spent over a week in Las Palmas on research. Regular channels were not helpful, so we turned to fellow travelers for advice.

A young woman from New Zealand who had been on the road for a year was especially knowledgeable. We went to visit her for advice one afternoon before she went to work.

Without working papers, the only job Colleen could get was in a nightclub, drinking for a living. The “clip-joint” hired her to keep the guys company, and she got a percentage on the “champagne” they bought for her. Colleen said when she went home, she would be toddling along with a bellyful of water sloshing around. A customer could also buy a bottle of “champagne” for an exorbitant price and take her out for the evening. The job sounded awful to me, but she said Spanish men were very polite, so I figured a real traveler could accept such a job as part of the trip. I wondered if her hair cut as short as a boy's helped establish her identity and offset the image set up by her large breasts.

Colleen had never been to Mauritania and Senegal, and agreed they sounded likely, although in Africa you never knew how your white skin would affect people. She had not been able to visit northern Africa because she had worked on a kibbutz in Israel; the Israeli visa stamp in her passport meant Egypt and many Arab countries would not let her in. Then, after all that, kibbutz life was too regimented, nationalistic and against non-Jews. I asked about Morocco, and she said of course many people liked it there, and the country wasn't actively anti-Jewish. However, we might like a place much closer, Presa Soria, a lake in the mountains of Gran Canaria where she had been camping until she had had a fight with her boyfriend. We decided to check it out.

We took the highway south, and just before the main hotel district, in Arguinigin, we headed inland, north up a dusty unpaved road. A cement truck stopped to pick us up, and the driver gave us a little history of the place we were heading toward. Presa Soria was built two years before with American money. The Canary Island people mostly depend on a rainy season for the year's water. For the tourist zones, there is actually a de-salinization plant, but farmers can't afford that water. When the Soria dam was built, the locals were bought out of the land that would be underwater or inaccessible. The Spanish town of Soria was thriving on the near side of the lake, serving the men working to finish the reservoir.

On the opposite side of the lake, a camping community of young foreigners had sprung up in the deserted houses. Our driver stopped at one cafe and sent us to the other one where they spoke English and we might find friends. Several people pointed us the right way without even being asked, and we found the entrance under veranda shaded with grape vines letting into a cool room, Isabel's tienda, a general store and bar where we joined two young Americans with surprisingly short hair drinking beer, warm six-ounce “Cerveza Mas”.

“What a name for a beer. More,” said Tim. “Uno mas, Isabel, por favor.” Quiet, pretty Isabel understood English from a correspondence course. She wouldn't speak that day, even to me, but she understood and smiled as she waited on us. “Isabel, Isabel! Isn't she beautiful,” said Tim. “She's engaged, of course. She's just playing with my heart. They 're keeping her here to make money as a translator.” He turned toward her, “Novio, Isabel, where's your novio?” Tim abandoned his fruitless courtship and turned back to us. “You're new here. How did you hear of this place?”

“We met Colleen in Las Palmas and she thought we would like it here.”

“You should. You should. How is old Colleen?”

“Working in a bar, drinking for a living. ”

“I hope she isn't sending all her customers here. If it gets too crowded, the Guardia will kick us all out,” said Tim.

Dave was silent. We found out later he was the boyfriend Colleen had left. After one more beer and buying a few supplies, Tim and Dave conducted us down to the raft.

Some one of our fellow travelers had made this raft and strung a rope all the way across the reservoir so we could pull ourselves across. Tim said the Spaniards were afraid of the water and wouldn't ride the raft. We balanced ourselves and our packs on the low platform. “First ride's free,” said Dave, and took up the rope to do the work.

Tim showed us his tiny little shelter in an enlarged cave and took us up to see some other Americans who had an extra room. We thankfully dropped our packs to set up for the night. After the extended stay in Spanish culture, we were ready for a more familiar community, what the I Ching calls “like-minded people.”

I had become quite tense, staying in Las Palmas without a plan or destination, so tense my menstrual period was two weeks late. I was not really worried about pregnancy because I trusted my IUD, but each month had been painful ever since I had gotten the thing in Boston. I relaxed profoundly, and, in the morning, felt the relief of the return of my monthly cycle.

The empty room where we had spent the night was part of a set of cement block boxes built in a row like a motel, doors opening on a courtyard overlooking the lake. A young couple and their friend had two rooms and shared the cooking, but we found the setting bare and lacking in privacy. The most likely spot for us, they thought, was back down the path in a large house next to a eucalyptus tree. Other travelers had lived there, but had left saying they might be back for Christmas. Now the end of January, we could take over with a clear conscience.

Our new home had been underwater and now had only half a roof, but since it hadn't rained all the time anyone had been there, we decided to go with what was left, a spacious cool space. We camped within its walls, setting up a waterproof poncho as a canopy over the bed, separating ourselves from the cement floor with a layer of bamboo and our thin foam mats, our tree visible through the broken roof. The path to the raft went right by our front door, so I would have preferred a place on the mountainside.

On our next trip to Isabel's store, we met an older Englishman, Toyvo, who had been in Soria all season, fishing. He was pleased at our conversational Spanish. So many of the young people coming here had no knowledge at all, he said. His little shelter close to the lake, as befitted a fisherman's abode, consisted of a small room built out from the side of an overhanging rock. Although it had been underwater after the previous year's rain, it had suffered no damage.

Toyvo thought we might enjoy another American couple and sent us up a path, a fifteen minute walk up to what looked like a homestead. The young man from the Midwest had started a garden. We were amazed at the work he had put in, but especially at his purchase of shovels, hoes, rakes, saws and hammers, items usually thought of as investments in the future. Inside, the dwelling itself was large enough for a barn by Canary Islands standards, built out from a high cave in the side of the mountain. He had made a table and bench out of scrap wood. Oddly enough, they chose to cook indoors, a smoky fire that drove us out after a short look. As we prepared to leave, Joe asked him if he wouldn't feel upset if the Guardia came, after all this work, but he was philosophical. Even if he didn't get to harvest his crops, he said, he felt sure someone would benefit.

To round off the community, a large square block of a house held a harmless gang of hippies, involved in the peaceful consumption of LSD. A young American who had worked in Detroit for two years on union wages was supporting a number of his Irish friends there.

I liked the cave homes; they had a natural touch lacking in the square stone block house, but ours had the eucalyptus tree and an air of quiet privacy. All the houses with their tiny windows seemed much like caves, providing a cool shelter from the sun, retaining heat for the cooler nights. Once, the Spanish housewives had filled their courtyards with plants in containers, usually olive oil cans, but now the houses were surrounded by bare empty space. Taking the lead from our neighbor up the hill, I got seeds from Isabel and planted a garden of lettuce, radishes, and Swiss chard, hoping these fast growing crops would have time to mature.

Most of our socializing was quiet. Joe taught me cards, cribbage, which I like, and honeymoon whist, interesting because you could lose every hand and still win the game – that way, the card shark (Joe) avoided dealing. We had nights of cards with the American trio. Usually, I lost.

For party food, we had pasta guayaba, guava jam made into a brick, served in slices with the local goat's milk cheese, white, delicate, and full of small holes.

For music, Joe and I were learning to harmonize his guitar and my flute. He and the others could sing.

Colleen came up from Las Palmas to visit Dave and invited us and Tim for dessert, New Zealand steamed pudding. It was fun until Dave complained about how many containers she used for mixing and cooking. They were only tin cans, but still had to be washed. She left the next day.

The full moon was an occasion for a game of hide and seek. Rather than run around, I sat quietly in a cave. When no one seemed to be looking for me, I came out to find the party was over. The rich American boy on LSD had fallen off a cliff where he had been staring at the moon. His teeth and his glasses were broken, and he had to be taken off to Las Palmas at once.

We avoided drugs in Spain. Enough else was going on, and laws were strict in that military dictatorship. Soria was certainly isolated, but we were not completely cut off from authority. We figured it would be stupid to risk it. We accepted an occasional smoke of Moroccan hashish, but carried no contraband. I felt safer when those boys left, all accompanying their friend with the money. My letters home discussed worries about overcrowding and whether the Guardia Civil would kick us out.

With nothing pressing on the agenda, we decided to try a brown rice diet. Ten days of nothing but brown rice, soy sauce and tea would probably take off the weight gained in Galdar as well as giving us a chance at macrobiotic enlightenment. Instead of the LSD route, we wanted to try a natural high, health promoting rather than dangerous.

We traveled to the Las Palmas health food store and bought 15 pounds of arroz distributed in one pound plastic bags and soy sauce from a Chinese restaurant. We ended up carrying it all up the mountain on our backs. The trucks gave no rides that day.

At the top of the road, we saw what we thought must be the “other tienda ”that we had heard described as “the bad one”. We wondered if our Spanish might serve us here, whether the owner simply couldn't relate to English speaking foreigners. Fernando “The Crook” had the only truck and transported goods for Isabel's shop, so he too was profiting from our stay. We went in to try our charm and buy a beer. He overcharged us.

The picture remains in my mind of flies buzzing around in a circle in the middle of the room and some noisy men, workers on the dam, turning to look at us. Sunlight from through the door pierces clouds of cigarette smoke and dust. A skinny dog hanging around puts its nose in to be yelled at by the bartender, whose unpleasant voice shatters the quiet afternoon. “Saleepaya, conyo!”

We went on our way, past Isabel's shop, down to the raft across the lake, to our spacious house under the eucalyptus tree to begin our experiment in diet.

We took life easy, spending most of the day with music rather than hiking. As you might imagine, brown rice for ten days is a boring diet. The most interesting way of eating our meal was to “parch” or toast the rice grains in a frying pan until they began to pop slightly (never spectacularly like popcorn). This crunchy meal could last a long time and tasted good with soy sauce. We were hungry, but no closer to enlightenment.

Seven days into our stint, it began to rain. Our roof was not adequate, not even with the poncho canopy over the bed raised up a few inches over a bamboo and grass base. We packed up to seek shelter with the three Americans, figuring to play cards for the extent of the rainstorm.

When the Guardia Civil arrived, it was pouring. Two men in uniforms with their regulation three-cornered hats and rain capes came walking from the dam. Tim said the Guardia comes in the rain to be sure to catch everyone at home. We were politely kicked out. The man who had put in all the work at “his” place was upset. Some said Fernando the Crook must have called the authorities. I disagreed, thinking of how he had been making money off of us too.

In the pouring rain, we packed everything onto the raft while the Guardia watched. When everyone was gone, they cut the rope and went back the way they had come, walking back around the dam in the downpour.

We all went to the store to ask Isabel what to do. For the night, her father offered us a large cave, their goat barn, already half full of hay with room for all twenty of us and for a small fire near the front of its huge opening.

Toyvo had just caught a large fish. The poor man didn't really want to share it, but I admired it and offered to cook it for him, since it wouldn't keep. That was too much. I had forced him to share it, but he would cook it for us himself. He said he knew the best way to cook fish. Joe and I broke our brown rice fast early, though it was only a taste of fish, symbolic of brotherhood in adversity, bony and not as flavorful as the ocean fish Joe had caught in Galdar.

In the morning, the sun shone and waterfalls appeared over every cliff. Our little company began to disperse. Some went to join a group of young foreigners at the beach of Mogan. Others spoke of Mauritania and Senegal on the west coast of Africa. Toyvo would rent a room in the village of Soria.

We decided, with an American student named John and an athletic English brick mason named Rod, to explore by hiking to the west coast of the island where the paved roads ended. Joe and I left the rest of our brown rice and the guitar with Isabel, had her cook us a two-egg tortilla espanol studded with potatoes, and set off with light packs and light hearts, happy to be walking again in the bright, washed, empty country on top of the island.

Twenty minutes walk up the mountain from Soria is another reservoir, Presa de las Cuevas des Ninas with several caves we noted for future camping. In the cool breezy weather, we hiked past little streams running between groves of pine trees, their needles shining with the rain water, following a dirt road west until it ended at a small empty house with a beautiful view by a cliff.

Backtracking to a ravine, we found a way down the mountain at an angle of about forty-five degrees with occasional cliffs. We all agreed to chance it and followed the stream. Only a little water was left in this “barranco”. At one waterfall, we threw our packs down and descended a pine tree, feeling lucky to suffer only a broken mirror.

We hit the dirt road in the afternoon with no coastline in sight, looking up at the mountain, amazed we had actually been able to come down that way. Consulting our small tourist map, we decided to go north on this road and turn off for the closest town on the shore, Tasarte. After another half hour of walking, a truck came by and offered a ride to Tasarte's tomato packing warehouse. Our athletic Englishman felt this was poor sport, but came along to keep the company together.

The truck stopped in the upper village. We walked down halfway to shore and camped. In the morning, we went on down the narrow valley past a small banana plantation in a narrow pass served by a noisy pump. As the valley opened out again, bananas gave way to tomatoes. Near to the shore, piles of tomatoes too ripe for shipping lay by the side of the road. This seemed luxurious to me, though uncharacteristic of the frugal Spaniards not to make tomato sauce, but it was not their tradition here. Tomatoes are a recently introduced cash crop. Joe took one to munch on and the workers smiled and waved to him. I took a couple for later.

“Playa Tasarte” held a tienda, indicated by an advertisement for soap in the window. The senora served us cafe-leche and bread. As usual, Joe took the lead, asking her about the town and its beach. The beach was all rocks, nothing for tourists, she said.

On the rocky beach, we found a bar, usually open only Sundays and feast days, but the owner, there on the beach repairing his boats, was happy to serve us warm Cervesa Mas and peanuts for even less than Isabel had charged. The building was cold, so we took the beer outside and sat in the sun on the rocky shore, surrounded by bits of tar, fishing nets, and old shoes. Eleven o'clock was too early for beer for me, no matter how cheap it was, but I rested with our friends and ate peanuts while Joe went exploring.

He came back with the news of a cave in a cliff down the shore. The fisherman mending nets in front of his house said it belonged to no one. The bar owner agreed - an empty, unused, unclaimed cave. Joe and I decided to stay overnight. John, ready for civilization again, took a ride to Las Palmas with the beer delivery truck. The athletic type took off up the road to do some serious hiking.

In the morning, we stopped again at the store for cafe-leche. Most of the village found an excuse to drop in and look at the strangers. We bought the most flavorful muscatel raisins ever, well worth the trouble of spitting out the seeds. We told everybody we would be back and headed out, hiking up to the road that circumnavigates the island. We turned south this time and hiked for an hour. The next village, Veneguera, didn't seem to have a shop; no one would even offer to sell us a soda.

Going up over another pass took us to Mogan where the roads are paved and the highway to Las Palmas begins, tunneling through seaside cliffs. The card playing trio from Soria were at the beach of Mogan. Instead of staying with them, we looked up my acquaintance from the boat, fellow frequenter of the Las Palmas health food store. She had rented a small place in a bamboo grove deep in the valley, or, should I say, in the ditch formed by volcanic ridges on either side. She served us endless cups of tea and told us of Spanish men harassing her on her bicycle. That night, all was quiet. Though I believed, in principle, that single women should be able to travel alone, she had dealt with more trouble then I might have withstood.

In the morning, we hiked back to Soria. Our map showed a dirt road into the mountains, a route to the Presa de las Cuevas des Ninas zigzagging back and forth in hairpin turns. We followed goat paths at the edges of the turns to go straight up the mountain.

Back in Soria, there still wasn't any mail. While we looked forward to hearing from home, the family didn't think their lives were worth recording. Our parents also complained of writing into a void. Because we kept moving around, they worried the mail would get lost or never be claimed.

We had promised to stay at Soria for another month at least, so we decided to wait for the mail and eat up the brown rice we had carried from Las Palmas on our backs. Across the lake, a few newcomers had moved in already, but the Guardia had made it clear we weren't wanted there. Instead, we went up the mountain and camped in a tiny cave next to a stream leading into the Presa de las Ninas. We couldn't stand up, but we felt sheltered.

This time, with just the two of us, we saw little green and yellow finches, wild canaries, the forebears to the caged birds in cafes in Spain, though we hadn't seen any caged birds on the island.

Almond trees around in the nearby hills were covered with nuts, so we played squirrel. A small percentage of the trees bore bitter almonds, as we found out the hard way. Such trees, saved for almond extract flavoring, always had a rock stuck in the principal crotch or the first branching off. The nuts have much harder shells than the California varieties, but also seemed tastier. We spent hours cracking them between two rocks. We had delicious meals based on brown rice and almonds, sometimes flavored with wild watercress. Wild mint provided tea. I wrote home I had splurged a dollar on honey.

When mushrooms sprang up after another rain, we remembered a lecture on mushrooms from Toyvo who was still in Soria. We brought some to ask him it they were safe. He wouldn't commit himself, but he said they appeared to be good and smelled safe. What he would do would be to take a tiny taste, and if he felt good after a couple of hours, he would make a meal of them.

The almonds were another story. He told us every almond tree had an owner. The island had no squirrels, so the owners left them to pick at their leisure. I felt guilty, but we had already picked and eaten so many; too late to give them back.

As far as the mushrooms went, Joe convinced me to let him do the tasting first, so we wouldn't both be ill. After an hour, I tried my piece, and in the evening we had a meal of brown rice, mushrooms and the almonds we had already picked.

When another bunch of mushrooms appeared, we shared our discovery with another couple, Ron and Martine. Ron was one of the penniless Irishmen whose French-American girlfriend had come to join him. Toyvo sent them to us, and they moved into another cave across the Presa. We ate a large mushroom meal together. The next day, we all felt a bit groggy from an extra long sleep. What had passed before when we had eaten the mushrooms as simply fatigue, now was shown to affect us all. Ron and Martine were pleased with this effect, but I was finished with that experiment and ate no more mushrooms.

There was a dirty old goatherd who tended his animals up in the mountains. We met him several times and tried to talk, though he was hard to understand. One day, on my hike back from Soria with the mail, he surprised me. “Hey! Hey, you! Tst Tst Tst!” he called, so I waited. “Bente duro! Bente duro!” he said with hand gestures to indicate his intentions. A duro is the quarter sized twenty-five peseta piece worth twenty cents, so he was offering me four dollars. Alarmed, I left quickly, glancing back angrily, but he didn't follow me. We had gotten the mail, sent our new address, and it was cold in the mountains in February. We moved to sea level, the shores of Tasarte.

CHAPTER VI

TASARTE AND THE WEST COAST OF GRAN CANARIA

As we walked to the shores of Tasarte, workers in the tomato fields called greetings. Piles of ripe tomatoes still lay by the side of the road. On the rocky beach, the fisherman mending his nets remembered us. Our cave by the water was still empty, waiting for us.

At the tienda, an invitation from Don Luis and Senora Perez came with an escort, a troop of small boys, to conduct us to a courtyard paradise of tropical plants. Don Luis Perez, a slow-moving, fat, white-haired man of about sixty years, was ready to greet us and shook our hands gravely. Josepha, who was much younger, introduced us to their boy and girl, and to the parrot before bustling away to make us a potato and egg “Tortilla Espanol.”

When siesta time came, Don Luis disappeared. Josepha wanted us to watch a dubbed American cops and robbers show, “The Mod Squad,” since the generator would be on all day. She seemed mesmerized immediately in the hot afternoon.

We thanked her and left for our cool cave by the ocean. In the Canaries, tradition dictates welcoming strangers as a way to measure virtue. Somehow, we seemed to be the perfect recipients for their idea of “It is better to give than to receive.” We enjoyed it, but got tired of being unable to strike a balance.

Josepha was proud of her work. She ran around in an old mended black dress with her long dark hair pinned up, flashing her gold teeth as she smiled. She managed two children, a parrot, guinea fowl, turkeys, setting hens, a pig, goat, bananas, avocados, potatoes, coffee tree, the school, the poor, and foreigners.

I recorded in my journal with irony, “Went to see Josepha and “bought” milk.” Fifty cents for the milk and a goat stew (that I didn't want) thrown in. I preferred meals I made with tomatoes left by the side of the road; however, the piles were never renewed. Was the season over, or did people dump them elsewhere just so they could stop me and present a handful?

For two months we sheltered the cave under the cliffs of Tasarte's shore, around a rocky point from the fisherman's houses. Someone had built a wall on the seaward side of the high-ceiling space overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. To the west, Tiede, the island of Tenerife's classic volcanic cone, rose above the sunset clouds. The floor of the cave was only just a bit bigger than our sleeping bags, but we were not cramped because we were really outside, simply hidden from the sky and around a bend from anyone else on shore.

I hung a bright scarf on the wall, anchoring it with rocks in crevices. In the day, I folded the bedding up with my turquoise sleeping bag on top for a couch. Stepping out from the cave, we had a semi-patio of rock going out into the sea with anemones in tide pools, visited by birds at high tide. The weather continued calm and sunny, so we were never bothered by incoming seas. As usual, we expected the climate to stay the same and were justified. We were not in New England. For the rest of our time there, it never rained again.

The fisherman living on the shore, Juan Medina Alonzo, was called Juan Capote. He presented a ragged appearance with wild gray hair and, usually, a week's growth of beard. His bare feet were amazingly swollen by the sea water and agile on the rocky shore or holding the line as he sat on the beach repairing his nets. At the bar, they told Joe the story of how he had moved to Tasarte as a young man with a wife but no coat or blankets, only a cape or “capote”. He and his wife had lived in our cave on the shore until they could afford to build a house.

His little girls would come to rest their black eyes on us. Joe said the age eleven was the most beautiful in Spanish girls. By thirteen, they acquire fashion and brittle charm. By eighteen, they are married and pregnant. By twenty-one, they cease to care for their looks. These girls were bold, for Spaniards. They sat for an hour a day just watching. After we had exhausted their conversational powers, Joe would practice his guitar. I worked on a macrame project.

When the day got hot, we would swim. We were surprised the locals couldn't swim. Even the fisherman who had lived by the sea all his life was alarmed to see Joe go into the ocean on those hot days in March. He told Joe we would be safer swimming over by the rocky beach; the water was deep next to our stone patio. Joe reassured him, “Don't worry. I only swim on the top.”

Joe went back to the fishing he learned in Galdar, with a bamboo pole and hooks baited with bread. Off our patio he caught, as in Galdar, parrot fish and La Foola. On Sundays with a low tide, people would gather the only local shellfish, limpets, from the rocks. A half dozen were attached to rocks right by our cave, but they were quite impossible to pry loose. I didn't care since once cooked, they were tough.

Mornings, after yoga exercises, were the best time for a walk to the tienda. We posted letters making plans to meet my father in Spain in May. On our way back with little loaves of bread, we went by a tall walled enclosure, Don Luis' water pumping station, the source of his wealth. Often, a man would be getting a haircut in the shade of its walls. The barber, who doubled as pump caretaker, would call out to us. Obviously Joe needed a haircut. Joe pretended fear of the scissors.

One day when business was slow, he called us over to talk and offered to cut Joe's hair for free. Finally convinced Joe would not get his hair cut, our new friend opened the gates to show us the beautiful garden within, especially pleasing in contrast to the dry rocky ground along the road. The papaya tree, visible above the walls, shaped like a palm tree with huge indented leaves in place of fronds, looked as exotic as the avocado tree looked ordinary. Ripe loquats, a fruit I knew from my childhood in California, were a treat.

The next week, as a reward for our interest, the barber presented us two melon sized papayas, green on the outside and orange under the skin. We ate the smaller one, and Joe tied the larger with string and hung it from a projecting rock in the ceiling of the cave. Knowing we had mice, we took precautions, cleaning thoroughly after every meal and putting any food in a net onion bag hung from the ceiling. We went out that afternoon and returned to a partly gnawed papaya. Astonishment mixed with outrage.

A couple of days later, I was dabbling my feet in the ocean off our patio, making a birthday card for my sister. Joe woke from his nap to see a large rat nonchalantly walking along the wall of the cave to disappear into a small crevice. “Ellie, come here! Hurry!” I folded up my papers and ran to see. “Gasoline!” Joe said, reaching for the small squirt can of gasoline we kept for our little stove. “That should get him!” Joe squirted the poisonous substance into the hole, and we waited.

“Matches, Ellie, where's the matches!” I found them. He lit a match and threw it at the hole. FOOM! The fire burned, but no rat appeared. Joe squirted gasoline into the fire. The fire tried to follow the gasoline path back to the can in Joe's hand, so he stopped squirting. Several explosions sounded, FOOM FOOM FOOM and suddenly a ball of fire flew out at the explosions, landed on my foot and scurried away. We had turned the rat out of its home and claimed the cave as ours alone.

Joe really had a story to tell, so we went up to the tienda bar in the evening. After the general siesta, everyone has plenty of energy for socializing at night though the women mostly stay home. The boys played the table foosball game. I drank a sweet muscatel wine while Joe talked to the guys.

Living outdoors as we had been, we saw a lot of the moon. Knowing just what phase the moon was in let us plan around its inconstant presence. In Isak Dineson's Out of Africa. I recognized a feeling I got for the moon. She writes of her use of its light in the cool of the African night, concluding, “It is strange, when back on a visit to Europe, to find your friends of the towns living out of touch with the moves of the moon and almost ignorance of them.”

Here next to the sea, we also saw the moon's effect on the tides. On full moon nights, we would wake at midnight as the moon came over the hill top of our cave to find the tide lapping at our doorstep. The new moon's tide was just as high, but the dark night hid the water's advance. With the quiet splash of nearby waves, I woke one dark night to look out at the sea within reach under the eerie gray starlight.

When Ron and Martine from the other cave at Presa de las Ninas followed our lead into Tasarte, they took some of the pressure off us as the only foreigners. These two were a bit needy and presented a tentative appearance, as if they weren't all there, both being rather short and Ron's beard having grown in thin. Martine didn't wear her glasses most of the time, though she was almost myopic, giving her face a dreamy appearance, dreaming with wide open eyes.

Juan Capote lent Ron and Martine his fishing shed built out from the cliff, a windowless cement block box very close to the Capotes. Josepha told us we must bring the new people up to see her, so we did. She found their helplessness charming. I did too, though I was surprised the next day when Martine's bathing suit turned out to be a matching leopard-print bra and panties set. She asked me didn't I think it was okay. So I said sure, after all, why not, off on this tiny beach where the only ones who would see would be the fisherman and his family. She was their guest.

One day in March, a singing Australian named Raymond hiked in to stay overnight on the beach. Ray played Joe's guitar and got me accompany him on the flute, though his strong voice worked well alone. We took him up to see Josepha, and he made the occasion into a party. I don't remember whose idea it was to give a concert the next day, certainly not mine, but Josepha was thrilled. In return, she whipped up a wonderful eggy pancake, fried in hot oil and served with Lyle's Golden Syrup out of a can. After a farewell song, the Australian left to continue his walk around the island. Josepha wept as he shouldered his pack. She would never see Raymundo again!

In March, letters from home made it clear we had missed picking up Christmas cards and presents, so we took a few days to re-visit both Soria and Galdar. Isabel's tienda was too quiet. She said we should move back; the Guardia wouldn't bother us anymore. We thanked her for saving our five letters.

In Galdar, Emiliano proudly showed us construction was nearly complete. Soon he would have rooms to rent. The Christmas package was huge. My mother had sent too many clothes. I took a few and asked Conchita to keep the rest. Instead of a “Mamy Blue” single, my brother had sent a Crosby Stills and Nash album. Julia didn't keep it, but neither did I. My sister sent a line-a-day diary. My father sent a detailed German map of Gran Canaria. The people in Galdar weren't interested in the rest of the island, so we saved our questions until we got back to Tasarte.

We were fascinated by the detail on the map. Studying the coastline, we saw a stream in a valley north of Tasarte. Our neighbors, the Capotes, were puzzled by our questions. Joe drew a picture in the dust. “Look. Here's Mogan, next Veneguera. Tasarte, Tasartico and here's this, Giugui. “

“Oh! Woowooey.” said Capote's wife.

“No,” said Capote, “Ow-wooey,” swallowing the first syllable, and explaining this Guanche name, derived from the language of ancient peoples required especially difficult pronunciation.

As for Guigui, water indeed ran into the sea there. Capote spoke of it as a great miracle. You could only get to the uninhabited valley by a three hour walk over the mountain, or by boat.

Surely we had heard the big news? A Swiss lady, Maria-Luisa, had bought land there and was having a stairway of 500 steps built into the cliff. Juan Capote was making a lot of money bringing in the cement in his boat.

A number of men from Tasarte were working in Guigui, building the stairway, including Capote's son-in-law, Gico, the sweetest Spanish man ever. Capote's daughter lived there with her parents and their five year old daughter who had tagged along with her cousin/aunt to visit us. Gico was living in Guigui and came home on weekends, hiking over the mountain to Tasartico and then riding his moped.

We decided to see if we could get to Guigui by walking along the shore. We had to wait for a day when the tide was right, a half moon giving a low tide in the middle of the day. Finally, we set out northward, climbing around rocky ledges, past inlets and over sea caves for a couple of hours. We saw beautiful rocky beaches and many of the little limpets, grown much bigger here. The crabs scurried away at our approach, clattering on the rocks. We couldn't catch any, even when Joe threw his new espadrille. He watched his shoe go under water and waited for the wave to bring it back. I saw it twice and then no more. Finally, he dove for it, too late.

We limped home to be told, “No, no, far away, too far away!” Juan Capote waved his arms in grand gestures. “Muy lejos! You can't get there by walking the shore. It's after Tasartico!”

We would be leaving the island soon, having made plans to meet my father in Spain April 24. We had explored most of the west coast of Gran Canaria from Agaete to Mogan. We had walked the dirt road connecting the towns of Tasarte, Tasartico, and Veneguera where the cliffs of soft volcanic rock are in stripes carved by the wind. We knew when the mini-bus took people to the shopping town, San Nicolas de Tolentino. We had met the old man who fixes dirt roads by hand using the wide Spanish hoe, the “satcho.” The Guanches survive only in the names they left behind like Tasarte, the Guanche chief, and his son, Tasartico. To complete the tour, we had to find the lost valley of Guigui.

April 7, we packed up early and said farewell to our friends in Tasarte, planning to see Gui-gui on our way to Las Palmas. At the tienda, a minor discussion ensued on the best way to get to Gui-gui. Juan Capote's boat would be too full of cement to carry us. Someone said there was a path over the mountains from Tasarte. Everyone agreed the safest way was a path from Tasartico. At our last stop, Josepha protested - why did we have to leave? and refused to discuss Gui-gui.

We went all the way up the valley of Tasarte, along the road to the crossroads and down into the valley of Tasartico. Not far down the Tasartico road, we asked at the tomato packing house. “Si,” they said, “The path is down the road, almost to the shore. Here, he's going that way; he'll take you in his car. Have some tomatoes. It's a three hour walk.”

“Oh, no, only an hour and a half,” said the man with the car.

“I could do it in forty-five minutes,” said someone else.

“No, you couldn't.”

“Maria-Luisa's husband does, so I could too. ”

“He says he does.”

The hike took two hours up a steep, rocky path with hairpin turns around giant candelabra cactus. Barren rocks reflected the heat from the April sun, so we rested in the shade of bushes with leaves like soft pine needles. We had once tried picking the soft spines for bedding, eventually naming it stink plant. By early afternoon, we reached the pass, with a view of the same dry, rocky landscape, not paradise lost. There was a faint bloom of green from recent rains, but the abandoned banana plantations were just dry terracing. The location of the spring showed itself with a thick growth of bamboo, and we could see the path snaking down to what looked like a swimming pool. We could barely make out three houses, their square outlines showing the straight edge of the local stone.

Walking downhill is no easier than up, especially in those cheap espadrilles. We followed the path to what wasn't a swimming pool, but a lovely, small square cistern surrounded by bamboo and trees. The stone house just downhill from it was evidently inhabited by the workers on the Swiss lady's steps, including our friend Gico, so we dropped our packs outside the door and followed the stream past two more stone houses down to where it sank into the black volcanic sand. The little stream undoubtedly helped make the sandy beach, not always a given on the steep rocky coast, Cliffs formed the edges of the beach, jutting out into the high tide. We saw no one.

After an afternoon on the beach, we walked back up to meet the men who worked on the steps: Gico; his father, Domingo Dias Sosa; and his brother-in-law, Pepe Segura. Pepe told Joe something he hadn't realized: they had the same name. Pepe as a nickname for Joseph must be related to the Italian, Giuseppe. Three others Joe had seen around Tasarte, were, as usual, not over five feet six inches. They welcomed us into the small house, a ten by fifteen foot room with plastered walls and a cement floor. A sheltered hearth was built onto the outside of the house, but they used a small gas burner in a corner. Someone whose turn it was to cook had made potage for all and offered to make us a Tortilla Espanol as well, but we declined and shared our tomatoes, bread and cheese as a meal extender.

We had planned to sleep outside, but our hosts pressed us to sleep indoors, offering a nice foam mattress behind a curtained partition. The mattress was wonderful, but I did not sleep well, suddenly indoors with six men. Someone got up every hour to smoke and cough.

The men were up at 5:00 to work half a day Saturday, so they were gone when a plump woman with curly black hair arrived, singing to her children, “Ay, ay, ay ay! Canta y no llores!” She had hiked three hours with her five children aged 12, 10, 7, 5 and 2. The youngest boy, Juan, whom she called “la flor d'Espana”, was fussy and had to be carried most of the way. Surprised and pleased to see us, she introduced herself as Carmella Diaz Sanchez, Gico's sister, Pepe's wife. She had brought the family for a weekend in the country.

Carmella was a wonderful communicator. While the children went exploring, she told us about our friend Josefa. She had been engaged to Gico before the old man with money stepped in. She also said her father's mother had not been married, a surprising detail to hear.

In spite of his revealed status as a bastard, I saw Gico and Carmella's father, Domingo Dias Soaza, as wonderful old man with a weathered, wrinkled and cheerful face. I wonder if his birth as a love child gave him a philosophical outlook, passed on to his children, a bit outside of society, but feet firmly on the ground. Even talking about the weather, I found his remarks significant. Yes, the sun was shining and this was “good” weather, but really it was “buena para turistes” and I realized I, too, could be classed as a tourist. Real people need rain. However, in this valley, the old man didn't lack water. It flowed freely into the soil he plowed with an ox he had brought over the mountain on a longer, easier path than the one we had taken.

Since I hadn't enjoyed staying with the fellows and thought it would be even more crowded that night, Joe and I decided to check out another of the empty houses. Carmella went too.

The next one down only had a dirt floor, and was infested with fleas. Carmella said fleas live on long after a place is deserted, and we must stay with the family. Everyone was leaving anyway except for Pepe and her father. We accepted and returned with her.

To begin supper, she quieted the children with a typical gesture. The hand, held horizontally palm up, moves back and forth looking for a bottom to spank while the voice moves slowly and threateningly through its range, starting low and ending, as the children quiet, in the next octave. She set the girls to peeling potatoes. Carmella cooked the Tortilla Espanol, and we all sat around talking about how things used to be, how Gui-gui had supplied an English fruit company with bananas for years until the war (the Spanish Civil War). After the war, everyone decided to move to the city, leaving the water to run into the sea. After dinner, we played music and sang Spanish songs. The children fell asleep where they were, exhausted.

More comfortable with the family, I slept well. On Sunday we went down to the beach with the children and back up for the big meal, cooked by the grandfather, and siesta. In the afternoon Carmella found “yerba buena”, an herb to be used as a hair rinse. She and I tried it out, boiling some, washing our hair and rinsing it, ignoring Pepe's quizzical looks. He brought out a typical husband's remark, Spanish for “old wives’ tales.” I didn't actually notice any benefit from the hair rinse. A trip over the cliffs showed us the fabled stairway being built into the cliff, 500 steps and a landing by the sea.

Monday morning at 5:00 AM, Carmella got a ride for herself and the children in Juan Capote's boat after the first load of cement came in. We walked out the long path to San Nicolas, arriving in the afternoon.

We found Carmella at home and again were greeted, as had happened so many times on this island, as honored guests. She began looking through her things to give me a keepsake, finally settling on a pair of earrings as portable enough. I didn't like her choice, elaborately worked posts, so she pressed me to tell her what I liked. I loved the ones she wore, a simple dot and hanging heart and wondered if this was a common choice and if she had another pair, but she took them out of her ears. The heavy hook is hard to put through the ear, but comfortable to wear. I promised to remember her always and wore the earrings around the world and back again, having them mended twice.

Years later, I brought her a replacement pair, under her protest. I felt they should really have been for her daughter and quieted her by explaining that her old ones were very dear to me.

When we left for Las Palmas, Carmella gave us her sister's address as a place to stay in the city. The street was in a section we had not had occasion to visit before, a middle-class Spanish neighborhood. The sister, Fela Diaz Sanchez, was wide with thick black hair and a touch of a mustache, married to a gentle older man, Jose Navarro Demy, and they had one child, Fabiola, although he had another family of grown children. Jose and Fela gave us a terrific picture of Fabiola's birthday. The 8x10 black and white, taken by a photographer for the occasion shows the parents, the little girl with big round eyes, a big cake, lots of bottles of Cervesa Mas, and several bottles of rum.

Fabiola was the only Spanish girl we met to have a fiesta de compleanos. Most children celebrate their name day, a custom set up by the church. Children are named for saints and every day of the year is a saint's day. Since Fabiola isn't the name of any saint, the traditional solution would have been to celebrate her day on Mary's Day. However, Mary's Day is also “La Dia de la Madre”, Mother's Day, so Fabiola's parents were creative in setting up a special day for their only child.

The Canary Islands had been wonderful. We had even put off our departure by a couple of weeks, but now we were well into April, and we had planned to meet my father in southern Spain at the end of the month. As our plans looked then, we would never touch Africa at all if we took the ferry back. A truck caravan to Morocco from the Spanish Sahara was known to be cheap and adventurous, and we wanted to try it even though timing was tight.

Chapter VI: ON THE ROAD IN MOROCCO

Although the Canary Islands are off the coast of Africa, we had only heard a few tales of travel on the Dark Continent. We worried a bit, but a truck caravan to Morocco was the cheapest and most exotic route back to Europe. A short boat ride took us the capital of the Spanish Sahara, El Aaiun. The Spanish Sahara is no more. At the time, Franco was holding onto this barren country where he had gotten his start, using it as a military training post. In 1975 as Franco was dying, Spain ceded the territory to Morocco, so the town is now called Layoun. In our time, El Aaiun was a Moroccan town filled with Spanish soldiers where we had to stay four days to make connections with the truck caravan going to Tan-Tan, Morocco.

The military presence in the small town overwhelmed our friends from Soria. These young Americans had spent their time on the Canaries exclusively with their own kind and never got to know the Spanish character. As a statement against military dictatorship and to avoid its threats, these young people took the first bus to the Arab trading post in the desert where we would meet the truck caravan days later.

Before dismissing El Aaiun, we looked around. We saw Spaniards in uniform simply doing their required stint with no feelings against us as hippie drop outs or Yippies dedicated to anarchy. Some soldiers are aggressive to young women, the anonymity of the uniform providing freedom from personal rejection, but I was hardly bothered. Except for two wolf whistles, these soldiers were quiet and helpful, answering any of our questions. Unlike the USA, still mired in Vietnam, the country was at peace, as they would boast to us, “Mucho tranquillo”. Since Franco, no wars at all.

Or maybe, the soldiers were quiet because there were no bars at all. Instead of the restaurant/bar/cafes we were used to, available refreshment was to be had in Moroccan style Berber tearooms. I thought tea would be nice and dragged Joe up the stone steps to a small, round, domed stone structure that seemed, from the sign out front, to be a restaurant. We sat on cushions next to a low table under the distrustful black eyes of robed and turbaned unshaven Arabs. We didn't fit in, and nobody wanted to be friends. I didn't care. I didn't want to be friends with any of them anyway. I liked the tearoom's decor with a blue domed ceiling and carved latticework screens between the two rooms. We sat in the outer room and drank terribly sugary mint tea. No food was being served. Under Joe's protest, I tried to find out when they served food and if it was all meat, but our waiter just shook his head. Finally, Joe hustled me out.

The town of El Aaiun didn't offer much in the way of pensions, so we headed out of town to look for a camping place. Just outside of town was a little settlement of poor people in tin shacks, so we moved on to spread our sleeping bags in the desert under the stars and were awakened by a goat with a bell nibbling hungrily on our bags while the small child following it hid behind a dead palm tree, a desolate picture in the cold early dawn.

Back in town, a Spaniard in a candy kiosk directed us to a lovely park, a clean place, well protected by a friendly Spanish guard who invited us to enjoy it but advised we could not spend the night camping there. For the afternoon, Joe's guitar attracted musicians to help us pass the time, local men, very dark skinned, with a different musical style from the Spaniards.

I wrote a letter home assuring my father we would meet him in Spain in ten days. “Lots of little flies. The locals don't mind them at all, let them land on their faces.

“The swallows are all around, catching flies, I guess, zoom, flit, flit, zoom, zoom.

“I am wearing a shirt of African material that Mom sent, so I fit in with the little girls who wear dresses of similar material, beautiful with their black skin.

Oh Lord! An alcoholic Muslim just showed up. He tried to get us to drink last night. Joe has a cold and doesn't want to drink. Irish friend John 'isn't a drinking man.' The keeper of this parkish place just threw him out.”

Moving from the sheltering trees of the park in the evening, we found a small building of unknown purpose in what seemed a dry river bed. It was quiet and not precisely dirty except for some broken glass. We were all right except when the alcoholic Muslim showed up. Perhaps the little building was his haunt. He finally went away, and I slept, but Joe stayed up all night, worrying we might miss our 6:30 AM bus and be stuck there another week until the next caravan.

At the bus stop at dawn, we boarded the green and white military transport bus. In contrast to the clean and well kept up vehicle, a small crowd of dirty men in robes and turbans crowded around. One was waving at me with an up and down motion I had not seen in Spain. The Spanish wave is palm up and from side to side. I waved back, puzzled to be singled out for a good-bye from a stranger. He became frantic and the downward motion of his hand became stronger as he shouted something in Arabic. I pointed it out to Joe, and we decided he wasn't waving at all, but motioning me to “come here”, the sign rendered with a crooked finger in my language. I turned away from the window until the bus began to move.

The bus took us past three military checkpoints, each requiring a passport check, to the little desert settlement, a trading post formed for this weekly exchange. The shacks were made of tin and cardboard and papered inside with newspaper. Here we met again the friends from the boat, the Americans who had spent several days there. The Moroccan truck caravan hadn't arrived yet, so our friends invited us in for tea. We followed them into one of the miserable shacks, thinking how glad we were to have spent our days in the park under green trees. Flies were everywhere, even more numerous than in Spain. I suppose in the desert you don't have to be as careful about germs since the dry air tends to keep them down, but we weren't inclined to accept anything, especially sugary mint tea served in cracked cups. The situation was ambiguous. Were we expected to pay for this? We felt this was the poorest inn we had ever entered. The Americans had apparently shared hashish with these people and felt they were friends, but we were simply passing through. Luckily the trucks started to arrive, so we could leave without explanation.

Outside the tiny claustrophobic shacks, a huge fenced-in parking lot was filling up with old one-ton trucks. Camel herds were tied up outside the fence. We wandered a little while, talking to the traders in Spanish about their various deals. We saw our friends from the boat dropping their bags, so we went to see how they were doing. Halfway there, a shifty-eyed little man ran up to us saying, “Here! You come! This is best deal! See? Friends have already joined us. Very nice. Camel stew. You like camel stew. Very nice. Good. Come.”

“What's your price?” asked Joe.

“Very good price. You come.” We went up to our friends and asked what they were paying. They said it was the best deal. We wouldn't get any lower than this. “You see?” The little man broke in, “Best deal. I give you for one hundred pesetas.” Our friends nodded, one hundred pesetas, a dollar fifty.

“We'll see,” Joe said, and we walked off. The little man followed us past a few other trucks, talking. We ignored him, Joe saying to me, “This isn't a caravan, it's a bunch of teamsters hustling us.” When we approached another truck, the little man faded away. This trucker wanted 150 pesetas. The next didn't want passengers. We went back to a young man we had seen before who spoke English for a quiet, dignified, white-haired driver sitting quietly in the front seat. Joe offered the young man the hundred peseta price without any mention of the camel stew. The deal was closed.

After making our bargains, we still had to wait for the caravan to trade cargo with the Spanish army. Moroccan oranges, packed loosely, took time to be unloaded. The Spanish bundles, wrapped in brown paper, loaded up quickly. With nothing to do, the young interpreter from our truck decided to tease our cute, baby-faced Irish friend John, a fellow traveler who had attached himself to us in the park and had now followed us to this truck. Taps on the shoulder and pats on the head were followed by dancing away and laughter at John's futile attempts to stop him. We were in stitches until John asked us to please stop laughing. I felt bad I hadn't even noticed John's discomfort at the slapstick.

Finally, at about noon, we were given the go-ahead to climb on. There were four passengers, we three and a handsome tribesman in a sky-blue caftan, loaded on top of the cargo in the back of the truck. Sure enough, there was the camel stew. I ate a carrot out of it to be polite, though Joe wouldn't touch it. Across the way, we saw the Americans going into the truck that had promised everything. There were eight Americans, ten Moroccans and a goat on top of the load.

An hour later, the race across the desert began. All the trucks took off at the same time, roaring out a gate in the chain-link fence, going in different directions. Fifteen minutes later, we were alone in the desert. Half an hour later, there was nothing in sight but a pair of children, dressed in rags, waving at us. In another half hour, salt flats shimmered in the distance, forming the mirage of a lake. Contrary to our expectations, the desert in April wasn't hot even in mid-day. Even when we got a flat tire and stopped, a stiff breeze kept us cool. To fix the flat tire, two men came out of the front seat. The driver sat quietly while the mechanics jacked up the truck, pulled the wheel, mended the inner tube, inflated the tire, and remounted it in about fifteen minutes.

An hour after our second flat tire, we rejoined the other trucks forming a single line to ford a treacherous river of sand. In the middle of the desert with sunset approaching, the line moved slowly forward. Our truck would get stuck and two men, one hanging off each side of the truck at this point, would jump off and take a huge steel grid from the side of the truck and jam it under the wheels. The truck would find purchase on the rough surface and move ahead as quickly and as far as it could while the helpers picked up the grids and ran as fast as they could to catch up. When the line stopped, we were inevitably stuck again. The beginning of the line held one truck at a time with all the men from three trucks behind working together to help ford the sand trap.

At sunset, up behind us roared a crew transporting some Danes and their Volkswagen bus that had run into a camel. Unfortunately the Danes had brought some liquor. Since alcohol is forbidden by a religion ordering the entire life of a tribesman, the release of restraint resulted in men aggressively unfit to drive. After roaring at the end of the lane for a while, they took off over the hills of sand around us and really got stuck. All the other men ignored them, righteously contemptuous. Our truck forded the river of sand at twilight. The men with the grids really ran hard to catch up. I wondered how the last truck in the line would do it without extra helpers, and more especially if the Danes would ever get out.

After the sand traps, the trucks all dispersed again, and we drove for hours through the empty desert. Night fell and Joe slept deeply, making up for the night before. Our interpreter seemed to be sitting too close to me, and Joe wouldn't wake up. I tried appealing to John. “Hey, John, I think this guy is after me.”

“Well, what do you expect me to do?” He probably felt more helpless than me. Just as I began to deal with wandering hands, the truck stopped. Suppertime in the desert meant the men gathered twigs to heat rocks with a fire, then placed their pots of water on the rocks, avoiding the soot of the open fire. We ate simply, spaghetti with lots of cayenne pepper and mint tea with lots of sugar.

Joe slept on, but when our interpreter kept bothering me, the driver told him to leave me alone - I was a virtuous woman. Relieved, I enjoyed the black velvet ceiling studded with stars, the red fire and silver teapot, our gentle driver with white whiskers trying out Joe's guitar next to the glowing coals, and the tribesman in his sky blue caftan standing beyond him.

We reached Tan-tan before morning and were allowed to finish the night on top of the truck. At dawn we woke to find the tribesman gone as was Joe's thin foam sleeping mat. Our interpreter now in a clean suit, advised us not to try for a truck from here but to bus out of this oasis town for $3.00 each, twice as much as the fourteen hour ride across the desert.

First, we had to change travelers' checks for Moroccan money. Keeping our pesetas for re-entry into Spain would save on bank fees. I went to accomplish this bureaucratic chore, leaving Joe sitting on the packs where the bus was supposed to come in, a square near the edge of town. Our interpreter showed me where the bank was, and on the way, a shop selling the cargo we had slept on, ugly cheap blankets in muddy colored squares, not what I would have chosen to sell in this country of intricate decoration and precise colors.

Back at the bus stop with Moroccan dinars, I found Joe had made friends with a Moroccan. I got Joe to ask him where a toilet was. For an answer the man looked spread his arms at the dry hilly outskirts of town. Some answer. I took off to find a broken wall to pee behind. I got back, and Joe told me the friend had followed. He had not meant the answer for me and had become worried, Joe said. I was put off by his solicitous behavior and would not meet his eye. If a cultural rule of Islam is that a woman can never be alone, I was not accepting it. I was glad when the bus arrived and I could sit by the window and not look at anybody.

We all rode to Agadir, Joe chatting with his friend, now identified as Achmed Ben Mohammed, learned to count to ten in Moroccan Arabic (waheed, jorj, loball, chemse . . . ) In Agadir, it seemed we must stay with Achmed ben Mohammed in a clean tin shack in the midst of other tin shacks with his two brothers, one of whom spoke good English. They were not surprised by their brother's guests. Perhaps he did this often, befriending people in a simple-minded way. They seemed to love Achmed, and were hospitable to us. We ate with our fingers, vegetable stew from a common bowl, scooping out chunks on top of wonderful French bread. The mint tea was sweetened with a large chunk of sugar broken from a tall cone by hitting it on the table, dissolved by pouring the tea into a glass and back again from a distance of two feet, a process to cool the tea, dissolve the sugar, and provide entertainment as well. The next day, Achmed said we must see his beautiful city.

We couldn't stay. We were to be meeting my father in Spain in a few days. Agadir has a magnificent location for tourists. Hotels were rising at the edge of the long white sandy beaches. Achmed bought us tea in a beachside cafe while we worried about the cost and the snooty waiter. After tea, it was time to go. “Why go? Where?” Achmed asked, following us to the road.

Not sure of where we would get to, Joe named the next town north. “Tiznit.”

“And tomorrow? ”he asked.

“Tomorrow, Casablanca.”

“Tomorrow and tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow and tomorrow, Tangiers,” said Joe.

“And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?” Achmed wanted to know.

“Espana. Italy, Greece.”

“And tomorrow?”

“And tomorrow. India.” Joe thought Achmed would be satisfied with that. Surely India was too far for him to grasp. Achmed wanted to know more.

“And tomorrow?” he asked. Our plan didn't go beyond India. Even that was stretching it. Joe looked at me. “Australia?” I shrugged my shoulders.

We left him waving good-bye and hiked to the other end of town to try to hitch a ride. I asked Joe what he thought Achmed did. “He's just a chemeux.”

“What's a chemeux?”

“French for bum.” That seemed to explain somewhat. A French Moroccan bum.

We had no trouble hitching. Two businessmen took us all the way to Casablanca in a new car and let us off in the middle of the international business district. Pillars and glass store fronts were not our speed at all, so we went to another section of town for a two dollar hotel with a shower across the courtyard, a chance to clean up after the desert.

I remember the huge bathroom with a shower head coming out of the side of the wall on the lower level, near the door. There was no curtain. I can almost picture myself in it, as the manager and his assistant saw me through the key hole. When I was done, Joe told me he had caught them peeking at me and shooed them away. It gave me the creeps to hear such things, but Joe said I should forget it. It was normal around here. Islamic women have to stay in their places and Western women are viewed as fair game.

The manager seemed not at all embarrassed when we appeared to go out for supper, even offering to tell us of a nice little cafe. I didn't want any advice from the man, but Joe said we should try the place. It was okay, considering we were in the middle of a city, not terribly overpriced.

In the morning, we couldn't find the end of town. Casablanca went on forever, so we took a bus to the next city, the capital of Morocco, Rabat, figuring to look in on the American Embassy there for helpful hints. The gleaming white porcelain bathrooms were impressive, but for helpful hints, I found only a few glossy flyers and a map of the Imperial Cities. “Fascinating ruins as well as fine hotels of international standing make Rabat, the white city, and Marrakesh, the red city, two pure jewels among the big cities of Morocco,” we read. We had no time for sightseeing. We had promised to be in Spain in three days.

After lunch, we took a city bus as far as we could and then set out to try to walk and hitch out of town. The suburbs seemed to go on forever. Perhaps this was government-built single family housing. A group of boys gathered to follow us and threw stones. I was horrified and frightened, but Joe assured me we would be all right. We would get a ride. I didn't argue, but was surprised when a blue Citroen stopped. Once we were in and the doors closed, the boys began to stone the car. The driver started the car up again, and the strange Citroen suspension system lifted the back up. As I was wondering what was going on, the middle-aged Moroccan in a business suit, seeming unconcerned, turned around to ask where we were going. We went as far as he could take us.

The same night another ride left a dark spot in my mind. We didn't usually hitch at night, but we were in a rush. By evening, we arrived at some kind of a truck stop. Joe asked around for rides and got one, but it seemed the cab would be cramped, so Joe would ride in back. After we got aboard, an American girl ran up and told Joe to get off. It wasn't a good ride, she said, the guy was a wing-ding. But it was too late, the truck was already moving and I was in front, unaware. The cab of the truck was not full. There was plenty of room between me and the driver, but perhaps he didn't like to be crowded. I had missed the warning and was ready to be friendly.

“Hey, darling, where are you from?” asked the fat, gray-haired man. He needed a shave.

“I'm American.” I said. He nodded as it he knew that. I went on. “Do you know the States? Massachusetts?”

“No, I don't know America. Where is your state?”

“In the north.” After a long pause, I asked. “And you, is this your home town?”

“No, I am from south, driving from Marrakesh.”

“Marrakesh.” I had been thinking about Marrakesh after reading the tourist guide, remembering a popular sang called The Marrakesh Express. “Is it nice?” He didn't answer, so I went on lamely, “It sounds nice. We have a song about it.”

“You can sing me song. I don't like Marrakesh, so I drive away from. To Tetuan.”

“How far is Tetuan?”

“Very far. You come here now. Come over here. Come closer.”

“Why?”

“Come on, darling. Come here,”

“What do you want?”

“I want you closer.” He was reaching for me now with his arm.

“Stop it.”

“Come on, darling.”

I began to cry. The situation was impossible. “Let me out! I don't want to be here any more.”

“Come on, darling.” He wouldn't stop the truck and went on reaching for me while I cringed in the corner.

“No!” I cried harder and started trying to open the door.

“Don't do that!” he said, and I realized I couldn't jump out with Joe and the stuff in the back, but I had at least scared him.

He stopped bothering me then for a while. He spoke of his history, claiming to be Jewish, David Ben-something, leading a persecuted life. When I stopped crying, he started in again, and I yelled at him through tears. I guess there's not much a driver can actually do if the girl is not willing and her boyfriend is in the back. Stopping won't get him anything. Or maybe my tears were what he really wanted. I spent the dark ride huddled in comer crying all the way to Tetuan. I recall no more from that traumatic night. The journal says “When we got here at 1:00 AM, the police took us under their wing. $1.50 pension.”

Tetuan is the last Moroccan town before re-entering Spanish territory, so in the morning we visited the medina (marketplace) to look at the Moroccan crafts and buy a few presents to send home with my father. For myself, I got a strong and comfortable straw hat, nicely woven with different colors that lasted through my travels and, slightly battered, came home with me. I'm sure I looked at every hat in the market. I thought I paid too much, but the hat salesman was adamant, and now I think he was right. Joe went through six hats to my one. Then we were too tired to do more than buy a few trinkets. Sometimes, you have to let the professional buyers from import shops find and transport the beautiful things.

On the north coast of Africa, the Spanish port of Ceuta borders Tetuan, and we crossed over in the afternoon. The guards were upset we had no stamp of entry into Morocco. We explained about the truck caravan, and they ended up reluctantly accepting the stamps from the Spanish Sahara as proof of our port of entry. On the bus ride to the boat for the peninsula of Spain, I saw again beaches full of old shoes. The Moroccan beaches had been bare, but here in Spain again, litter covered the beach.

We caught the boat, just barely, and arrived in Algeciras relieved to feel we were back in civilization, ready to camp out on the hillside overlooking the ocean near a billboard for EL TORRES rum with a cut out silhouette of a bull black against the sunset sky.

Chapter VII: SOUTHERN EUROPE

Having rushed through Morocco to meet my father in Spain, we were disappointed when we telephoned and found he had put off his departure for a week. Our recent letters had been full of Gui-gui and Morocco, rather than concentrating on making contact, so he had been understandably worried. He had taken time off from his job as director of a psychiatric clinic, and couldn't afford to wait for us, should we not have made it on time. In fact, knowing our family, he would have rather expected me to be late. Only because Joe took charge of making the deadline were we there as promised.

We were both looking forward to the visit, to seeing someone from home. I was happy to meet my dad after six months of so much change and letters once a month for communication. My family has always been supportive and close, though reserved in expression. We are respectful of each other and give ourselves plenty of space. My father needed to make sure I was all right, but also made sure to share other interests, specifically in architecture, so we would get a more cultured tour of Spain.

With a week to kill, we went back to visit friends in the hills above Torremolinos. In Mijas, Rory O'Neill was in great shape. The puppets were getting dusty on a shelf while he amused himself with a French girlfriend. The wrinkles on her face showed through heavy make-up, but I thought she deserved better than he treated her. While he went to his bar for the afternoon, he detailed her to drive us out to the farm where the Yoga teachers lived.

The two couples had begun their own brown rice fast. Before trying it ourselves three months earlier, we had written to them from the Canary Islands asking for advice. Unfortunately, our fast had been interrupted before we could take it the full ten days, and we reached no conclusion as to its merit. We volunteered our recipe consisting of crunchy parched grains, cooked like popcorn for a little interest in the texture.

The evening meal was plain, boiled brown rice. I asked if they had kept any soy sauce anywhere, thinking I was on safe ground because salt is a basic ingredient in macrobiotics, the discipline advocating the brown rice diet. Salt is thought of as being “yang”, a desirable quality to help balance the “yin” qualities of the vegetarian diet macrobiotics follow. Meat is eliminated because it is too “yang” to be easily balanced. However, they had given up salt since our last visit, and no soy sauce lurked on a top shelf for guests.

The only salt they had was for use in a nasal douche. It being suppertime, I didn't pursue the topic of the nasal douche. Essentially, this method of combating mucous involves taking salt water in the nostrils and spitting it out through the mouth. I tried the procedure years later in the shower when I had a cold, finding it painful and not apparently helpful.

After spending the night, we were invited to stay with their macrobiotic friend for the rest of the week, time enough to grind wheat berries and make bread. His library included The I Ching, Alan Watts' Cosmology and the newly published Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass, formerly Richard Alpert, Boston professor who had studied LSD with Timothy Leary at Harvard in 1962. This appealing book tells the story of his deep despair, walking around India for weeks, following a “very extraordinary guy from California who KNEW” and finding an old man in a blanket. The story of his search for meaning, culminating in India, brought me around to the idea Joe had been advocating for months.

Once the brown rice fast was over, two of the Yoga teachers drove us to visit a Spanish farmer who had expressed an interest in Yoga. His valley featured grafted California navel oranges. Past the ancient olive trees, down to his new orchard we walked, talking about diets and fruit. These oranges were “fantasticos”, marvelously juicy and sweet. Perhaps the next fast to try would be Dr. Ehret's fruit and nut mucous-free diet.

On May first, we met my father in the Torremolinos airport. I was moved by his physical presence after the long and distant separation. He greeted Joe cordially, shaking hands heartily, excited to be taking this unusual trip. After renting a car, we drove up to Mijas to introduce our friends. Though exhausted from the journey, he was receptive to the magical beauty at the farm. The semi-tropical climate of southern Spain had blossomed into summer already. New leaves already covered the grape arbor. Under its shade, the white chalices of calla lilies were too perfect to touch, though I remember, as a child in California, crumbling the long, protruding yellow pistil. In the sun, a huge marguerite bush was covered with daisies.

The Yoga teachers and my father enjoyed a discussion on architecture, specifically the tile work of Antonio Gaudi. Our tour would take us from the southern coast of Spain to the Alhambra and then to the north-east corner of the country, Barcelona, where Gaudi was responsible for a number of truly fantastic buildings. Seeing our interest, the Yoga teachers decided to lend us a house rented that month for visiting parents where beautiful antique tiles covered all the walls and floors, surrounding us with a classic style.

In the morning, we drove north to Granada, unfortunately over narrow winding mountain roads. When it began to snow, Joe and I were horrified, but my father, though surprised, simply took it as an opportunity to test the skid ratio of the little Spanish Fiat. He pronounced it not as good as his Volkswagen bug.

Arriving in Grenada at dusk, we ate at the Parador National, a special tourist hotel run by the government, a regally decorated dining room, delicious, reasonably priced food, the dining room almost empty and no dress code for backpacking travelers. We retired to a nearby pension which cost less for beds.

In the morning, we toured the Alhambra, Moorish architecture left over from when Morocco ruled Spain. Tiles cover every inch of wall and ceiling. We saw the room where Washington Irving worked. I wrote in my journal, “Was the Alhambra worth the drive through the mountains in the snow?”

The road east was much faster than the road from Mijas. One day's drive took us to the date forests of Elche, another reminder of the time when the Moors ruled Spain. The miles of date forests held a tourist campground for us and a nearby motel for my father. Stores connected to the orchard sold marvelous dried fruits of every kind. We could have enjoyed a tour of the orchard, but my father made inquiries and realized the drive to Barcelona was a full eight hours, even on the modern coastal highway. My father had only four nights and was leaving early the fifth day. We drove all day and reached the outskirts of Barcelona late. We were lucky to find anywhere to stay; in fact we all shared a room.

In Barcelona by 9:00, we began our informal tour of Gaudi's buildings. Anthony Burgess calls Gaudi “the great mad sane genius.“ We took in three of Gaudi's spectacular works, starting with the Casa Battlo, whose eccentric Gothic arches ”seem to grow from the street like concrete roots, .... its balconies like carnival masks, its little ogre's tower,” all decorative and fun, though I wondered about the cold in a concrete building, if Barcelona had winter.

We moved on to the Parque Guell, once the property of one family. The entrance to the park is a gingerbread cottage. A pathway of undulant pebblework moved us into a fairy-tale where blue and gold stairways to nowhere are guarded by drooling dragons. My father has always maintained, with Bruno Bettelheim, that fairytales hold deep psychological truths, so Gaudi had welded together in a dreamlike way, my father's interests in psychology and architecture. In my practical way, I marveled at the beautiful mosaics made of trash, bits of broken tile and glass.

Finally, we visited Gaudi's Gothic cathedral, still under construction though he died in 1926. Burgess wrote, “Gaudi's masterpiece is the still unfinished church of the Sagrada Familia or Holy Family. There is nothing in the world like it. Some have called it Disney whimsicality raised to the height of soaring nobility.” I saw it as a sand castle made of drips and decorations. We took an elevator to the top of a spire and looked out at another spire being built, the fifth out of a planned twelve. The decorative globes were attached by being wrapped in chicken wire which was then embedded in concrete. Joe complained about Spanish construction. My father took it all as part of the experience, a fluid construction, part of the great architect's plan.

That night, we ate dinner at the historic restaurant, Los Caracoles, founded in 1835, famous for seafood. Then, Joe thought we should see a Flamenco show as a send-off for my father who would be leaving the next day. We found a little nightclub and sat around a table drinking “Sangria”, red wine mixed with orange juice. While the dancers were good, the guitar player was excellent. On the dancers' break, he continued, sitting alone on the stage in a straight-backed chair. Meanwhile, the women came down from the stage to ask for money, gypsy fashion. They were sure my tall, dark, handsome father was the one to approach. Probably, as an older man, he even had money, but he just smiled, brushed them off and sat back, exhausted.

The next day, my father's plane left at ten in the morning, his mission accomplished. He felt much better about how we took care of ourselves. The bandits from Don Quixote no longer lingered at the edge of how he imagined we were living. He and Joe were friends. I was homesick when he left, but remembered some vivid dreams of being home and not wanting to be.

When we had been in Barcelona before, Joe had been sick and I had made a friend, so we went to look her up. At the pension, they gave me Aligata's new address. She was in charge of a building, a concierge, which was just as well because her husband was out of work and gambling. We all went to the park, an outing with the little boy who could now walk. Then she seemed to feel, like the women of the Canaries, a necessity to feed us. She roasted peppers and peeled them while they were still hot. The thin blackened skin separated easily from the soft flesh of the pepper. She had made a fresh pimento. I made a note about this new cooking skill. But we felt bad about accepting a meal knowing we had more money than the family, so we didn't visit again.

My mind was not truly engaged for the next few days. On the road again, I was homesick and became depressed at continuing what was looking like aimless wandering. I wrote little notes. “Left Barcelona. Slept by a river. Bought most expensive ice cream in Spain to use up coins before leaving. A ride to Marseille in a van. Film fest on in Cannes. Crowded. Slept on a hillside outside the city. Train to Nice.”

With my spirit not in the journey, I have no memory of those days. Nice was interesting. Joe had been to Nice the year before, sleeping under bridges with a young man who carried two passports, French and English. Joe figured one at least had to be illegal, but he didn't know which. The young man knew all the ins and outs of the city. They had visited the soup kitchen for free food, and now, a year later, Joe took me there. In the old city, up a steep narrow cobble-stoned street, the nuns opened up a basement to serve free lunch to anyone (notably the old drunken bums), the starchiest stuff I ever ate. For a change, we didn't have to worry about eating meat. Charity food does not include meat, but plain boiled beans and white rice does not qualify as good food. I wondered what the nuns thought about vitamins. Sitting on the bare benches, I lowered my opinion of Joe's friend, whom I had not met.

French pastry shops were tempting, but outrageously expensive, and the one piece I bought was not good enough to be worth all the fat and sugar, much less the money.

I was not disappointed in one thing Joe had told me about. Socca, served from stands on the wharf, was wonderful. Made from chick-pea meal, it is as yellow and delicate as corn. The French, of course, deny ever eating corn (for pigs only), but since Nice is next to the Italian border, one might think polenta could cross the border. My version boils cornmeal for polenta which I spread thin and bake in a hot oven with plenty of olive oil and pepper. Years later, I found Julia Child's recipe using chick-pea meal, but we prefer the corn version, like baked grits.

We slept in a seaside cave Joe's friend had shown him. Right in town, it had a cement floor and a door in the wall connecting to some kind of a boating club. After three nights, the sea rose right up into the cave, driving us and a few other street people up against the back wall. Enough of Nice. Hitchhiking out of town, the only friendly French woman we ever met picked us up to combat her boredom and drove us through Monte Carlo and right into Italy, leaving us at the entrance to the Italian highway.

No one seemed to ever use the stretch of road we were on, so we spent the afternoon waiting and watching a man with a bulldozer who seemed to be trying to change the course of the river below. Joe felt sure the force of the river would defeat him, carrying away every bite the bulldozer offered it. But perhaps some engineer had calculated it all. The Italians have been famous from the time of the Romans for aqueducts and water engineering.

After two cars passed us by in as many hours, we hiked into town and took a train to Genoa. We planned to spend little time in Italy, to avoid its high prices by hitchhiking across the north on our way to Greece. We didn't get a dictionary for Italian - supposedly our knowledge of French and Spanish would get us through this short stay. The signs on the train window said “pellicoloso”, surely the same word our Spanish friends had used to warn us about swimming, “peligroso”. Pension still meant small hotel. We figured “pizza” would be the same word, but there seemed to be no pizza parlors in industrial Genoa. Finally we saw a small place. Microwave, the latest technology, produced soggy slices, nothing to compare to the Greek pizza we got in Boston.

Going out of Genoa, roads were suddenly superhighways full of trucks and speeding little cars. Hitchhiking got us into a car going an alarming 100 kilometers an hour. Of course, this translates to 65 miles per hour, still fast compared to the slow pace we had been moving. We were in Milan before we knew it, early enough to look around at the factories and decide to leave.

A truck took us through hail and thunderstorms to Vicenza at dusk. One hotel was too expensive, one was too full, and we were looking for the third and last when the thunderstorms struck again. We took refuge under the overhang of a gas station. In the glass-fronted office a German shepherd guard dog went wild. I eyed him miserably as he barked and jumped at the window. Joe cursed.

Suddenly, like magic, a little green car drove up with a man in the driver's seat speaking English, offering to rescue us. He said he and his wife had seen us walking by, and decided we would be in trouble if it started to rain again. Their lovely apartment had all the comforts of home: hot water, music, a baby, eggs for breakfast, and English conversation. He translated English for a small firm and welcomed the opportunity to practice on Americans.

In the morning, our host drove us to the highway where we had no trouble hitchhiking to Venice, a city sinking into its canals, thinking we might otherwise never get to see it. Canals for streets struck me as pleasant as well as a romantic way to run a city. Unfortunately, the problem of litter seemed worse, with candy wrappers and condoms floating in the dirty water. Certainly, the buildings were all beautifully antique, without a high-rise to spoil the line. The ambiance was there, a quiet feeling of being outside the mainstream of modern Italian hustle-bustle, a place to rest and vacation.

The huge square of St. Mark's Place did not affect me as it did the characters in Henry James novels. I didn't have enough background to appreciate the way European history was on display. Meanwhile, Joe scoffed at cathedrals and museums, disdaining religion and art history. I wrote, “Venice is nice but expensive. $6 pension.” Twice what we had been paying.

Somehow Joe decided a nice meal in a good restaurant wouldn't break us, so we picked something unpretentious, without a dress code. During the meal, Joe decided to try to figure out exactly how much things were going to be, whether we could afford dessert. Even if we didn't have the Italian money, an American traveler's check would certainly have done, so I tried not to bother with his muttering. The American at the next table noticed, and, at the end, the waiter informed us that our check had been taken care of, and that the gentleman had left.

Walking back to the pension, we wondered how we should spend the money we had saved. Storefronts showed Venetian glass and stunning designer clothing I might have bought in another life. We couldn't afford or use the best the city had to offer, so we decided to leave and find somewhere we could.

Hitchhiking took us to Yugoslavia. Rain again in Rijeka, where we, as foreigners, were not allowed to stay in a small pension. We were sent to a state-run hotel costing $5 a night. We were doubly disappointed because we had hoped to see more of the native people in this Communist country, an isolated backwater run by the same man since World War II, Tito. I felt ill at ease, surrounded by heavy, ugly furniture in our Communist hotel while Joe went out to buy some food. He was startled when a fellow in the elevator suddenly asked in a deep Slavic voice straight out of a spy movie, “How do you like my country?” It was misplaced anxiety. Although not welcoming, neither was Yugoslavia threatening.

The next day, as we stopped for lunch on a beach, a Russian writer on vacation introduced himself and, in broken English, tried to explain his latest epic, The Brick. His friends stayed at a safe distance while this artist exposed himself to our dangerous influence.

Back on the road, an educated businessman drove us for hours and told us enough history to make us appreciate his country, a land overrun many times by conquering armies: Greeks, Romans, Turks, Germans, and Italians. In Dubrovnik, he let us off and said we must tour this medieval walled city, still much the same as five hundred years ago when enormous stones were placed to form the huge sea wall overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Once, crowds gathered watching for trading ships from around the world. We walked along ramparts wide enough for four soldiers to march abreast in full battle dress. The popular twenty-first century series “Game of Thrones” was filmed there. The stones had been soaking up the hot June sun all day, and now gave it back with a vengeance.

Having done our touristic duty, we bought some bread, cheese, and cherry jam in the old market and retired to a government approved tourist campground where we paid the minimum fee, having neither a vehicle nor a tent. We were the only ones to bother to pay for a bit of ground to sleep on, but we were still uneasy about regulations. From Dubrovnik, an Australian lady took us a short way down the coast to a beach resort on the Adriatic Sea. At the restaurant in the evening, an American expatriate offered to buy us wine in exchange for our company.

In a bored and affected way, he told us a story concerning a certain wise man of the East. Once an unhappy rich man undertook a pilgrimage to visit a wise man in the mountains. The long and arduous journey through snow-filled passes and around steep cliffs took weeks of difficult travel, until the unhappy man reached his destination. “Oh wise man,” asked the pilgrim, “What is the meaning of Life?”

After a moment and the wise man said, “Life is a River.”

The pilgrim left his gifts at the guru's feet and went home to contemplate the statement. Months later, still unhappy, he again undertook the laborious journey to the mountain to reach the cave of the wise man. “Oh wise man!” he exclaimed, “I have thought and thought, but I can see no meaning to your statement, 'Life is a River.”

The wise man looked at his supplicant and asked, “You mean it isn't?”

The story didn't bear analysis, so I said nothing. Joe countered with similar stories and jokes, but our host seemed to grow more morose as the evening went on. We finished our wine and left. Having arrived in town early enough, we had picked out an empty field to camp in outside the resort area.

To go overland to Greece from Yugoslavia, we had to forsake the Adriatic Sea and head inland to go around Albania, a country paranoid in its political insularity. At the time, Albania maintained diplomatic relations with only one country, Communist China. After the Nixon trip to China, Albania cut off that connection. Without an Albanian visa, we had to go one hundred miles inland to Macedonia, the kingdom of Alexander the Great, now a province of Yugoslavia.

Leaving the resort, we got a ride with a rock music band. We climbed in the back of their van amid the equipment and sat on loudspeakers. One young man spoke a little English loudly. We gathered they were traveling to a job in Titograd. The next day would be Tito's birthday. I was surprised to hear a rock band would be playing on such an official state occasion. Wasn't rock music a deplorable capitalistic influence? The musician's English was not up to explanations, even if we had thought it polite to open a discussion of communist repression. We spent a couple of hours riding, allowing their Slavic language to wash over us, not understanding a word.

Just after Titograd, a Volkswagen bug stopped to pick us up. The driver, thirty year old Ruti, introduced himself as a German professor and seemed to have an endless store of conversation along with a small store of hashish. Ruti was driving from Berlin to Greece to escape an overwhelming personal life: ex-wife, child, and lover on heroin. I loved sitting in the back seat list ening to the men talk. Ruti would glance my way occasionally in the rear-view mirror and eventually asked me why I was smiling. His friends in Berlin never smiled unless they were high on drugs.

After a day of driving between wooded hills, Ruti pulled off the road so we could camp by a river, cook a simple meal over a fire and sleep well. In the morning, Ruti swam in the river, though we were not impressed enough with the warmth of the day to do more than wash. After our breakfast of tea and biscuits, we were in no rush to leave. A herd of thirsty cattle arrived to drink at the river followed by a peasant girl in a beautiful traditional costume, loose paisley pants gathered at the ankle. Ruti said she would fit right in at a Berlin coffeehouse. She watched us with shy interest until her parents arrived with the rest of the herd of cattle, calling her away.

Riding south to Greece with Ruti, our destination was within our sights, a Greek island, the exact one as yet unchosen. Our long winter stay on a hospitable island had worked out well in the Canary Islands. Money lasts a lot longer staying in one place. From all reports, the Greek islands had a friendly tradition like the Canaries, dating from before the time of Odysseus, who was assured of a welcome when he was shipwrecked in the Aegean Sea. We planned to rent a small house for some cheap rate and live a normal life again.

Chapter VIII: GREECE

Ruti was carrying his supply of hashish from Germany to Greece, but he assured us we needn't worry - never any trouble at this border, he said, and anyway, we could cross separately. We got out of the car at the border and watched. The officials showed some interest in the unique starting system Ruti had worked out for his Volkswagen. The battery behind the seat had to be manually connected before ignition. After a brief conversation, the border guards waved us through.

In northern Greece, Ruti didn't want to stop even for coffee. He wanted to get to Athens right away, except that he took the scenic route (hairpin turns) around Mount Olympus for the magnificent view, torture for me in the back seat on the winding mountain road. We stopped once at a scenic point where fields of thyme rolled away into the distance, the low herbal plants covering the hills, recalling to me a particular Greek honey sold in health food stores, thyme honey called Hymettus after those fragrant mountains.

By late afternoon, we were driving on flat plains, well on our way to Athens. We camped on the rocky shore of the Aegean Sea, sorry our second day with Ruti had not been as nice as the first. In Athens, we ended up taking rooms in an ugly pension near the walls of the Acropolis. From outside the surrounding wall, the ancient monument looked dirty, hot, graffiti-laden and expensive. We could have gone that full moon night - tourist agencies had special tours, but someone in the pension said to be extra careful for thieves if you took the tour then. Ruti went and came back feeling depressed and discouraged, so I gave up any idea of visiting the monument.

Athens, the capital of modern Greece, is a huge, dusty international crossroads, filled with more hustle and bustle than we could stand. We spent a few days taking care of traveling business, such as passport photos, shots, and visas for countries farther east. We enjoyed local fast food, spanokopita, spinach and feta cheese pie made with filo dough, now popular but an exotic food then. At corner cafes, we sat with tea and honeyed baklava, watching the old men working worry beads around their fingers. Sets of worry beads were a common souvenir item, some beautiful, but not the right size to use as anything else, being too big for a bracelet and too small for a necklace. Meanwhile, Ruti came down with hepatitus and would have to go back to Germany to recover. His visa was revoked.

I too felt something was wrong. My head was itchy and a shower didn't clear out all the little black bits of dirt on my scalp. Finally, brushing my hair, I dislodged a louse. I had been suspecting something since Yugoslavia. I blamed the flower-filled fields, but human contact is more likely, perhaps the state-run hotel. An insecticide powder on our scalps for a week made our hair look stylish, Ruti commented as we said good-bye, as if we had coated it extensively with hair spray.

At a bookstore where we bought a small phrase-book/Greek dictionary, Joe found something we had been looking for from the beginning of the trip, a pocket-sized hard-bound atlas. Published in England, it carried more about the British Isles than we would have chosen, but at least it didn't devote a page to every state in the USA. Studying the maps to choose a summer resting place, we decided the island of Chios looked promising, fairly large and listed as agricultural, so the local vegetables would be plentiful and cheap. Closest of the islands to Turkey, Chios would have connections for the east when we wanted to move on in September.

From Athens' port of Piraeus, ferries left every day. The cheapest passage on an overnight ride did not include use of the swimming pool, nor a berth. Instead of resting in a cabin, we set up sleeping bags on the wide, clean white deck. I stayed with our packs under the stars while Joe went off with the first of many Georges. Joe called this one “fat George”, and they drank coffee and ate baklava while exchanging traveling adventures. Many Greeks go to America, learn to speak English, and delight in showing off their knowledge.

Early in the morning on June first, we arrived in Chios, capital and port city of the island of Chios. A mildly interesting wharf featured a row of little cafes, so we stopped at a taverna with red and white checked tablecloths. None of the restaurants here carried tea. I had a choice of coffee or soda to drink. The coffee was the Turkish variety, brewed and served with a thick layer of muddy grounds on the bottom, impossible to drink with cream. I had to stir a spoon of sugar into it, feeling guilty for actually choosing to take sugar, the substance described by our yogi friends as refined white poison. I carried a little jar of honey, but the taste does not blend well with coffee. Our waiter was not friendly and the town was quite large, so we left quickly.

Just a short bus ride south of the city of Chios on the east coast of the island of Chios, our map showed a beach at Karfas, a resort area with a long sandy beach surrounded by restaurants and beach houses. Sunning himself on the beach was an obvious foreigner, someone to ask about the accommodations. He was one of fifteen living in George the Fisherman's house. The others were still sleeping. Dormitory life was not for us, so we continued down the road, walking and thinking.

When the sun got hot, we stopped under a large tree with thick green leaves. The ground under it was littered with its fruit, carob pods, also known as “St. John's bread”. We had been introduced to them in the hills of Gran Canaria, so I cut one open, saw no bugs, and chewed on its sweet fibrous meat while Joe talked about a new plan he had just cooked up. He had been inspired by all the little boats and thought we could rent one for the summer and spend our time sailing from port to port. To me, this sounded like more of an undertaking than we were ready to handle. With our boating experience, even a houseboat could be difficult to handle, but I was idealistic enough not to veto the plan out of hand.

Joe said I should decide, so I suggested consulting the I Ching, the ancient Chinese oracle book I use to help me read my own mind. My father had brought a pocket translation. Psychoanalyst C.G. Jung wrote, “It is a dubious task indeed to try to introduce to a critical modern public a collection of archaic 'magic spells' with the idea of making it more or less acceptable.” He went on to say, “Probably in no other field (than psychology) do we have to reckon with so many unknown quantities and nowhere else do we become more accustomed to adopting methods that work even though for a long time we may not know why they work.” His theory is based on what he calls “synchronicity”, that “whatever happens in a given moment possesses inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment.” By throwing three coins in the manner designated, we can use the book to read an interpretation of the pattern of the moment. Jung ends up by noting, “Even to the most biased eye, it is obvious that this book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one's own character, attitude, and motives.” I like Jung's explanation and enjoy reading the allegories and advice.

I often find insights in the I Ching, more than I could have brought to the question, and the coincidences of particular details are significant. As for setting it tasks of prophecy, I have gotten an answer that seemingly reprimands the questioner, hexagram number four out of the sixty-four, Youthful Folly. The judgment is: “It is not I who seek the young fool. The young fool seeks me. At the first oracle I inform him. If he asks two or three times, it is importunity. If he importunes, I give him no information.”

Sitting under a large carob tree by the side of a dusty road on the island of Chios, I threw three coins six times, recording the pattern of heads and tails each time to come up with a reading of hexagram number five, “Calculated Inaction”. To describe our situation as best handled by calculated inaction seemed to denote that a rented house would be wiser than a boat. I had twice thrown sets of three of the same, so I was entitled to read two changing lines. One spoke of being stuck in the mud, seeming a reference to staying in one place, and the other, of spending time with food and drink. The changing lines, being overbalanced in their quality of yin or yang, change to their opposite. The result is another hexagram; this time, hexagram nineteen, “Approach”. This reading specifically mentioned September as a time to move on, as we had planned. Joe does not enjoy the sedate advice of the I Ching as I do. He suggested that the reading just reflected my state of mind, that Calculated Inaction was indeed stuck-in-the-mud.

However, he had asked me to decide this time and accepted this reading as advice to go with a house, so when a bus came along, we took it to the first town, Nenita. We bought some food and headed downhill to the beach. The winding dirt road led past fig trees and a small church to a wide, empty, rocky beach and the beautiful blue Aegean Sea. A few fishing boats and huts lined the deserted shore, and a cement pier extended some fifty yards into the Aegean with a view of Turkey in the distance, 8 kilometers away. Amenities included both a tap for fresh water and a shower. We had the beach to ourselves.

The next day, we discovered that 3:00 in the afternoon Saturday was “beach time” for the town. The peasant tradition keeps the community together. It's funny how Americans live with our land in the suburbs and commute to work, and these people live together in a town and commute to their farms. Our pioneer tradition splits us apart, and their city-state tradition keeps people together. I am accustomed to and enjoy the relative privacy of American life, even though it has resulted in dependence on the automobile.

We camped on the beach, Vocaria, for a couple of days. When wind came up, we asked the English-speaking vegetable grocer about renting. He suggested a group of summer houses owned by the church, five miles walk along a dirt road to the next beach, Gridia. We set out along the shore early one morning, but the people we passed told us we had to go by the main road. Up in town, we bought ice cream and were given coffee and it got too hot for walking. Motivated by the thought of a house for a change, I went by myself in the afternoon and met Gridia's inhabitants, a strange couple, Grigori and Marioga.

The next morning, Joe accompanied me. In the little house in Gridia, we accepted glasses of cold water and candied orange peel in syrup and tried to work out Greek from our phrase-book/dictionary. Joe wanted to know how they pronounced his name, but he was having trouble getting through to the old man. Finally, I drew a picture of Mary and Joseph and the Christ Child, and asked what Grigori would call Joseph. He said Yiannis. We didn't find out for months that this was the translation of John, the second most popular name, after George, in those parts.

The next town on the main road, Kalamoti, offered a house for $30 a month, so we talked to George the vegetable grocer again. If we didn't need to live on the shore, he knew a great house. For $6.00 a month, we could have a three-room stone house in town with an outside tap for water, an indoor fireplace for cooking, and an outhouse that had not been used for some time. We loved it. As word spread of our plans, the whole town seemed pleased that we had chosen them for a summer vacation. The neighbors came by to offer to lend us a table, two chairs, and a bed. From all over town, people came visiting, bringing gifts of food. They took us in and pampered us like long lost children. I wrote home with news of the arrangement.

“Dear Family,” I wrote. “You just can't imagine how nice it is here in a small Greek town where everyone is friendly! I'm a real social being here, much more so than anywhere else so far except for Soria which was friendliness with people like ourselves. I'm pleased with my progress in the language.

“Greek TV at the cafe is okay so far. We've seen “Family Affair” with Greek subtitles. In contrast, every program in Spain was dubbed. People here can all read! I have an old list of programs, written in Greek, The American shows were “LAZH”, “XA'I 'ZA7APAL”, “MIZTEP NOBAK”, “EDO LOYEY,” DE'Y'TON 7LAHZ”. “HANNIK”, “M7ONANTZA”, and “XABAH 5-0”. In order, that's “Lassie”, “HIgh ChapperalI”, “MIster Novak”. “Here's Lucy”, “Peyton Place”, “Mannix”, “Bonanza”, and “Hawaii 5-0”. The last one was easy, and “M7ONANTZA” is my favorite, but “Here's Lucy” I needed translated by my neighbor, Limonia, who is seventeen and knows these things. “The horoscope book Ann sent says, “Say as little as possible unless it is to express praise or a compliment.” That's good because that's about all we can say in Greek.”

In the first weeks in Nenita, we were showered with housewarming gifts. Eggs were plentiful in June, so we got about twenty. Everyone said, “Here, these eggs are really fresh,” but of course they weren't by the time we got around to eating them. When Joe's birthday arrived, I enlisted my neighbors' help to bake a pie from some of the local cherries. They sent me to the local baker who waived the charge for baking the pie in her oven with the bread. Once I had mentioned about Joe's birthday, presents started arriving all over again. I listed their variety in my letter home. ”1) Potatoes, 2) A bowl of apricots, 3) Two liters of olive oil, 4) A plate of homemade bread toasted dry, 5) Some liqueur we haven't tried yet, 6) A bottle of horrid sweet orange syrup for drinks, 7) A box of jelly candy, and 8) Six bouquets of flowers.”

I complained to my family about the difficulty in following the diet we had set ourselves. We had given up sugar, but were constantly being asked in for coffee and a sweet: orange peel, rose petals, or pistachio nuts preserved in syrup.

Our house was near the main road and the tree-filled walled central square. On Saturday, the Greek Orthodox Sabbath, we witnessed a weekly get-together similar to the one in Spain, called “Paseo” by Julia Gomez Moreno. After church, everyone would walk around the square and up and down the street dressed in their best. It was called “Volta”. With only two changes of clothes, I was happy to skip this communal gathering as we had in Spain.

Visits to the vegetable shop now took us past the square where the shopkeeper sat opposite his store in the shade of the park's trees, ready to greet us loudly. “Kalostes, Pedia! Te kanetes? Katse ligaiki!” (Hello, children! How are you? Sit a little!) He would pat his extra chairs and we would practice Greek. We tried to divide our patronage as best we could, buying feta cheese from him while still getting vegetables from George. The worst was when he tried to get us to buy our bread from him. Just up the street from our house, we could visit the baker whose light brown loaf was one of the best in the world, moist and heavy with olive oil. I was offended when the shopkeeper said, “The bread you're getting can't be any good: it's baked by a woman!” The town had two bakeries, and his brother-in-law owned the one across town offering a dry white loaf.

The communal use of ovens of Nenita impressed me. One day, the neighborhood women fired one up in someone's yard. I had wondered how such age-old ovens would be heated ever since seeing them in the villages of Spain. The cavity in the huge pile of stone was filled with grape prunings. After the fire dies down, the heated stone cooks the food without blackening it from smoke. The butter cookies from this oven were perfect.

We were virtually adopted by an unhappy woman with a house next to the square. Whenever we came into town, Aspasia would come up and offer us something, in order to talk to us. Aspasia had two mentally retarded daughters, Katina and Papi, aged seventeen and fifteen. Like her daughters, we were unable to talk, needing to be taken care of. As time went on, we learned the language, showing the progress her daughters never would. I tried to help her with the older girl, being friendly and finding her simple projects, until Joe protested that I couldn't babysit any more at the house. I had to gently try to turn away Aspasia's troubled, friendly face, smiling through her tears. I began to be busy mornings, unable to stop on my way to the square.

One day, Katina's face appeared at our window, looking in, her short curly black hair above a now sullen face. I was surprised since I had never seen her without her mother, but said “Good day.” She could talk, but wandered off without saying anything. When her mother arrived, harassed, looking for her, I found out what was wrong. The father, always out on a boat, had arrived home for a visit. Aspasia invited us over to meet him in the afternoon, insisting so strongly that I accepted in spite of Joe's reluctance. When we all sat uncomfortably around the living room, it was obvious he couldn't stand being in his house.

My next letter home spoke to my father about this problem. I wrote, “It seems to me that this town of 1,600 people has an abnormal amount of abnormal people. Our friend Aspasia has two idiot daughters and is consequently slightly crazy, but very nice to them. She wants to know if you have any suggestions from America.

“There are many more strange people than we saw in Spain or at home. There's the voiceless man, the bearded cripple, the lady with one eye that doesn't open, cross-eyed babies, and strangest of all, the ten year old girl with 60 year old skin, very ugly. Does this seem like a lot to us because in the USA the duds are sent someplace and we don't see them, or is it island inbreeding?” His answer: “Probably both. Explain to your friend that I really have no American Magic and I can't help her from this far away.”

My journal entries fell off except to record events of small-town society. My usual diary writing tends to be of how things went wrong so I can work things out on paper. My journal records the times we were invited to dinner and arrived to find we had been forgotten. The first time it happened, the wife of George the vegetable man quickly served spaghetti. Our host made no moves to help. We felt uncomfortable and left as soon as we could. As we walked home, Joe told me he had heard our host called Turko. As he had always before been perfectly pleasant to us, Joe had not understood how George had earned the insulting name.

The second time we were invited to a dinner and forgotten was to the house of a well-respected fisherman. It may just be something Greek men might do casually, but not informing the wife, perhaps not expecting us to take them up on the invitation. The date is written on the end paper of the little Greek phrase book that I still have, “Dinner Saturday, Peter Minotes”. They tried to cover up, figuring we might not know what was going on, and instead of the boasted-of fish dinner, once again we had spaghetti. At this spaghetti dinner, the hostess learned I was interested in sewing and offered to let me use her sewing machine.

I accepted the invitation since I had made a muslin dress to replace the marimekko I had been wearing for six months. The hand sewn seams could be reinforced. I wrote to my sister, “I made a muslin dress with an embroidered yoke (I can add embroidery whenever I'm bored, traveling) and hemmed it to a conservative length, 3½ inches above the knee, but they all say it's a mini, so I'm still a style setter.” Also, for our neighbor Limonia's wedding, I was making a long skirt. My appointment to use the machine seemed easy enough; I had the fabric all cut. What I didn't foresee was my hostess and her friend grilling me as to how and why I didn't have any children. Trying to explain an IUD in Greek to women who didn't approve of birth control was exhausting.

Another memorable dinner was at the house of a single woman. Maria Bitakis was the shopkeeper who taught me the Greek gesture for “no”, pronounced “nay”. In Greece, “no” is shown by a lifting of the chin and eyebrows and a click of the tongue,“tsk.” Maria liked to be subtle and sometimes simply lifted her eyebrows and clicked her tongue to indicate she didn't carry the item requested, thereby confusing me. I interpreted her expression as disapproval of my request. I thought she didn't like me until she invited us to dinner.

At our dinner party, Maria served fried eggplant and offered to pour more olive oil on if we wanted. I didn't believe it at first, but she was serious, offering to enrich the dish as people in America will by adding butter. After dinner she told us a joke and then repeated it. I knew something was going on because her friend was protesting, but I failed the test. Jokes are not my forte. I hadn't thought the joke was funny the first time - often they lose in translation - so I stopped listening, figuring it was a variation on a joke I didn't like. Joe played the game, going through the joke step by step, and gave her the punch line. Maria Bitakis pronounced Joe better than me at speaking Greek.

A more enjoyable social experience was going to an American movie in the community hall. “Where Eagles Dare” was shown with Greek subtitles, thankfully, not dubbed. During intermission, we noticed a sign on a pillar and asked an English-speaking man what the sign said. He translated, “Do not eat pumpkin seeds here,“ which was just what I had been doing, throwing the shells on the floor as if I were in Spain where trash is automatically consigned to the floor. I told Joe we should move so I could pretend it hadn't been me. Nevertheless, we thoroughly enjoyed the spy thriller with Richard Burton as the brains and Clint Eastwood as a cold blooded killer, all the more because we hadn't seen a movie in almost a year.

Our usual social activity centered on the cafe nearest to the square. Joe particularly liked sitting with the old men and their cups of Turkish coffee in the afternoon, chatting with those who had spent time in America and spoke English, checking out old American shows on the TV. I would join them for a while before retiring to my usual pursuits, reading English novels picked up in the capital and writing letters.

One man in particular, George Leotsarkas, had spent a number of years in Baltimore before marrying the boss's Greek-American daughter. His fortune made, they had retired to his old home town. Now he was a rich man in the frugal society, a respected landowner who could afford to sit at the cafe and spout his philosophy, punctuating each thought with, “You know what I mean? I hope you understand me now!” or if he was talking to a fellow countryman, “Elpiso katalavenis moo tora,” which means the same thing in Greek. The other men in Nenita were not such philosophers and mostly listened in silence, clicking their worry beads to the rhythm of their thoughts.

I believe our landlady, Despina Bitakis, never regretted renting to us although she was somewhat retiring and would never have come forward with the house. She did her best to make us welcome and invited me to her house to share a bit of the plentiful onion harvest she had drying on her roof. The onion, as a vegetable that enjoys a moist soil, is grown in the winter there. I admired her crop, took a few onions, and we sat down to chat for a bit, until she realized I was not good at chatting in Greek. All she could think of to do with me then was to offer me something else. She offered me “trahanas”, a food stuff not listed in our little phrase book/dictionary. It looked like wheat germ cereal, so I tasted it. She looked worried and explained that it wasn't supposed to be eaten raw. I should cook it in soup.

I took my leave happily clutching my onions and little bit of cereal, just the thing to eat with the plentiful yogurt. We finished it off in a couple of days, and I asked for more at the shop. The shopkeeper offered me noodles to put in my soup, so I explained about eating it with yogurt. He was shocked, and the story spread about town. Trahanas was a local specialty, made by the women for winter soups. Late in August, when all the tomatoes were ripe, one of the women invited me to see it made. In a huge kettle, she had cooked the tomatoes with other vegetables to render their juice. She strained the juice into a huge bowl and mixed it with whole wheat flour. With her hands, she rubbed the dough into small pieces and laid it in the sun to dry.

The farms of Chios produced all the fresh vegetables we wanted and all the fruits in turn, starting with cherries and progressing through peaches to plums and melons, ending with grapes. Our friend George the vegetable man took us for a ride to visit the farmer who grew “American” (round and striped) watermelons in the next valley. As we drove along in the cab of his little pick-up truck bouncing on the dusty dirt road, George told us he knew how to say water in English as well as in American. From his time in Worcester, Massachusetts, he had learned to say “Oowada” like an American, but on-board ship, he learned “water” from an Englishman. The farmer must not have been impressed with us Americans, for he gave our friend no deal on the American watermelons from his pile.

Fig and almond trees seemed to grow wild, at least we and some of the boys treated them as such, picking treats from their limbs. I loved the almonds before they were ripe, watery, crisp and light. From a weed in our back yard, those same boys gathered flower buds to make capers. I never did see the pistachio nuts as I had hoped, though one bush was pointed out to me when it was in flower, the bright red blossoms the color of the dye often added to roasted pistachio nuts. Perhaps pistachios ripened after we left. Olives most certainly ripened after we left. We couldn't have missed that harvest. The most plentiful crop of Nenita came from the surrounding hills cowered with carefully tended olive trees, hundreds of years old in their terraced orchards.

Greek history details the cutting of the olive trees around Athens as the final act of barbarism when the Spartan War became fierce and bitter. Olives are a staple of Greek life, and the slow-growing olive tree is a treasure to be respected when civilized war was conducted. By June, most of the Chios olives had been eaten or sold, so we only tasted a few home-cured samples, richer and sweeter than the olives sold in the stores. Our friend from the cafe, George Leotsarkas, claimed to have been brought up almost exclusively on bread and olives, the rich, oily fruit a meat substitute for the poor people of the island.

Besides our ordinary excellent food, we could get specialties from the capital. About twice a week, a truck came by with an amazingly loud speaker on top of its roof broadcasting “YAWORTI MITLINI!” it yelled, “TIROPITA ZESTI! YAWORTI PROVIDA! DEN THELIS ZESTI TIROPITA?” Eventually the repetition of TIROPITA rang a bell. They were selling the feta cheese pastry made from buttered filo dough wrapped in the shape of a triangle. Joe ran to investigate and found the town-to-town salesman sold tiropitas packed in a steel-lined trunk so they stayed hot. But what did the rest of the announcement mean? YAWORTI PROVIDA was rich creamy sheep's yogurt from the neighboring island of Mitlini, otherwise known as Lesbos. Once we figured out what was going on with the announcement, we never missed a chance for a hot cheese pastry and often bought the special yogurt.

As summer progressed, the invitation to come in for a sweet was augmented by an offer of “Nero Vrohino” rather than the Turkish coffee. As usual, we accepted before we really knew what the words meant: perfectly pure cold water, rain water saved in a special well from the winter's wet season. After a few rains had cleared summer dust from the tile roof, a special run-off directed the rain water to underground storage. I felt honored by the ceremony of perfect water in a clear glass on a hot and dusty day. When the sweet offered was a home-preserved cherry in a light syrup, I saw the true charm of the short visit, which had not impressed me when we had been offered a spoon of gummy mastika in the glass.

Mastika merits a paragraph of its own. Chios is listed as the principal producer of mastika, a high grade gum gathered from a bush and prized in Turkey for gum and as an ingredient in the sticky “Turkish delight” candy. We were offered a spoon of gluey white mastika mixed with sugar, placed in a glass of water so that we couldn't even enjoy the water. The other use for mastika was even more disgusting. In early September when the birds begin to migrate, people in town would get together and chew up the gum until it reached the right sticky consistency. When they had spit out great wads of the stuff, they would coat small branches with it and place them so little birds would get stuck. They served up a stew of tiny whole birds. I thought of this as I walked up from the beach, reaching the corner where I sometimes sat watching the swallows playing with the wind.

One day at the beach, a tugboat towed in a crane on a barge and anchored it to the short pier. The next day, the tugboat brought a barge full of rocks to be picked off and splashed into the water. By the end of the summer, the pier had doubled in length. Strangely enough, we never heard the plans for this project, even when the philosopher from the cafe, George Leotsarkas, came down. George loved explaining things to us at great length, but he must have been too busy gathering and eating raw sea urchins. We spent most of July down at the beach, swimming or reading. I did embroidery, and Joe went fishing. In weather too windy for fishing, Joe became morose. Wind is good for sailing, and he regretted the decision to sit still.

Once again, the time for decision had passed. This time there was an unexpected benefit. Taking advantage of our immobility, Joe's mother wrote us she would visit in August if we could make plans. We welcomed this visit, glad the families were interested in our adventures.

In July, we prepared for the social event of the season. For a month, we had been hearing about our neighbor Limonia's wedding. I had sat with her by the side of the road, chatting while she waited for her fiance to take her for a ride on his motorcycle. Of course we were to come to the wedding, she said. I made a long skirt to wear to the wedding and a macrame bag as a gift. On the eighteenth of July, we walked with our neighbors, the family of the bride. The rest of town was already there, so we had to stand in back, next to George Leotsarkos who knew the bride by sight and had come, dressed as always, to see the show. Unfortunately, he knew little of what was going on, not being a church-goer, and the service was conducted in Latin.

Down at the altar, a canopy had been erected. Four Greek priests, “Papas”, with robes, beards and sideburn curls like Orthodox Jews were chanting in competition to the noise of the crowd. After half an hour, the newlyweds emerged to a crowd throwing rice. The boys had been waiting for this, to throw rice as hard as they could, as I realized when some stray kernels hit me. The wedding party made its way to the waiting cars. Then we all dispersed, back to our ordinary lives, the lazy summer days at the beach.

In August, Joe's family came. Unfortunately, Joe's father had to mind the business, but his mother brought his brother and sister to Greece. In preparation, we arranged for the rental of two rooms from a widow lady and read up on the island's sightseeing. Would the far side of this island be as different as the far side of Gran Canaria? When the family arrived, Joe's mother rented a little car for a few days. We visited the little towns and found a homogeneous culture. The towns are not isolated by difficult volcanic ridges as in the Canaries, and the Aegean is a gentler sea than the Atlantic Ocean. Also, even in small villages, Greek people have inquiring minds. For all their donkeys and old ways, the people of Chios have a sophistication far above the tourist-oriented Spaniards of Gran Canaria. In fact, as a shipping capital, Chios provides many of the officers for the Greek freighters going around the world.

The most interesting sight on the island was an old monastery set on the highest mountain in the middle of the island, used as a fort in the old wars with Turkey. The shrine to the dead slain in this age-old conflict contains a pile of neatly arranged human skulls and bones. Odd and gruesome as this Greek custom seemed to us, the bones of the dead are cleaned and moved all the time. I thought the display would keep the antagonism between countries alive and tried not to be impressed since we planned to visit Turkey.

We enjoyed the family vacation, lying on the sandy beach on the other side of the island and trying the seaside restaurant's specialty, fried kaseri cheese. Joe's fourteen-year-old brother didn't absorb much. Re-reading The Lord of the Rings, he was more interested in Frodo's journey than his own. Joe's sister took beautiful pictures. The Greek island people seem to be made for black and white portraits. I hoped we set Joe's mother's mind at ease about us for a while.

When September came, the fig trees along the road to the beach stopped bearing our snacks. The almonds in our back yard were acquiring substance. The man who had been giving us grape wood for cooking gave us huge bunches of grapes. Autumn had arrived. As we made plans to go, some of our Greek friends protested. George Leotsarkos told Joe he could get a job driving a truck. The ladies told me I should settle down and have some babies, never mind that I thought I wasn't ready. We went on with our travel plans.

We had been gone for almost a year without encountering any serious problems. The countries we stayed in were not too rich for our budgets nor too poor to be uncomfortable. After listening to the Greeks, we had our doubts about whether the barbarian Turks could make the journey difficult, so we planned to take a freighter along the Black Sea, skirting Turkey's length by water instead of hitchhiking.

At departure, we stripped down our possessions. Some ripe almonds joined chamomile tea in my backpack. Sage tea was pressed on me as “Even better than chamomile.” The neighbors took back their furniture and went back to talking about each other.

From the Greek village life in Nenita, we moved into an international atmosphere without actually leaving the island. At the resort beach of Karfas, an American friend's parents had rented an apartment and left it empty after a week. Now the eighth of September, the wide sandy beach was almost deserted, the restaurants' wide roofed verandas empty. The weather continued perfect for our friend and a few others who had stayed on until the university's fall term started in October.

After three months with Greek country folk, we were starved for conversation. We discussed the route East and the books we had read. Michener's Caravans detailed some of the exotic life to expect in Afghanistan. Gurdieff's mystical traveling saga of the Near East, recommended by spiritualists, Meetings with Remarkable Men, well thought of in some circles, proved to be unbelievable and therefore boring.

Our friends had a newsletter circulated from London called Bit Information, put together from the gossip of the road. The overland route to India constantly changed as a bus line folded, tribal unrest broke out, or an epidemic of disease festered in some corner. Bit Information advised travelers about these problems and rated the hangouts in Istanbul along with the restaurants in Kabul, Afghanistan, that served hamburgers. Our friends envied our planned trip the freedom and excitement of the road.

Joe's letter home detailed an afternoon's entertainment. “Went to see a football (soccer) game in which Nenita tied Chios 5-5. It was a very exciting game with the lead changing hands many times and the last goal was in the last minute. Fred's cousin and a friend (Did you meet Petro?) played for Xios. The sudden death overtime was canceled when someone kicked the ball out of bounds and it smashed the bowl with holy water which had been used by the Papas to bless the field!”

Before we left, we got more immunizations in Chios' capital city. The gamma globulin shot against hepatitis would have had to be ordered, cost twenty dollars, and was only good for three months. We decided to get it later. We wouldn't reach India, where hepatitis was a possibility, for three months. We hoped to savor our journey, perhaps staying in Afghanistan for a month as many travelers recommended.

Chapter 9: TURKEY

From the port of Chios, a Greek trader's boat left for Turkey every week, Sundays. Although we couldn't book passage, if we simply were there at 10:00 AM, we could board. So on Sunday, September 10, 1972, we bought passage on a cramped and dirty 100 foot vessel, stinking as usual of diesel fuel, the Greeks on board upbraiding us: “Why would we ever want to leave Greece to go to Turkey?” After two hours on rough seas, we arrived at Cesme.

Customs was non-existent for passengers. A policeman simply waved us on and went to check the cargo. Joe went back to ask him where we could get our stamp of entry. The Greeks on the boat translated and directed us to the police station.

The town seemed friendly with signs in English for restaurants and souvenirs. In fact, this west coast of Turkey with good beaches and large hotels was more like another Mediterranean resort than part of Turkish culture.

Of course, all of Turkey was somewhat westernized by Ataturk who decreed in the 1920s that Turkish be rendered in Roman characters and that women were forbidden to wear the veil that can shroud half the population in Muslim countries. Instead, many women in Turkey wrapped large shawls around their heads and upper bodies.

The town seemed pleasant, if overpriced, as you might expect from a Mediterranean resort. At the bus station, we were deciding where to go when a swarthy, heavy-set young Turk approached wanting to practice his English. He introduced himself as Seyet, part owner of a discotheque. Unfortunately, he said, the disco was only open Friday and Saturday, so we would not be able to attend unless we wanted to stick around. Seyet treated us to a coffee at his favorite cafe, and then, perhaps to show us how hip he was, produced some hashish. We went to a corner of the beach to smoke and got pretty silly.

Now, it seemed, we were fast friends, and he insisted we stay the night in the extra room in the disco. We all walked down the road to see, and it looked comfortable and clean. Seyet explained that this “office” was really his cousin's “backroom” and laughed significantly. He had to go on to explain his use of American slang. The “back room” is a place to take girls, he explained. It was plain and empty, but perhaps the music added to the atmosphere on weekends.

In the morning, Joe returned the key to Seyet, and we took a two hour ride east along an inlet of the coast to Izmir, where we could turn north and be on our way to Istanbul for the boat on the Black Sea. In Izmir, I discovered I didn't have my passport - not stolen, forgotten. The night before, feeling strange from Turkish hashish, and nervous about this much maligned country, I had put my passport under the pillow for safe keeping, and it was still there.

Joe was angry, feeling I should settle down and be sensible about the dangers of this part of the world, so I took the bus back alone to get the thing while Joe waited. Two hours on the bus, and then I found Seyet at his favorite cafe. I explained my stupidity. He gave me the key, and I walked out of town the half mile to the empty discoteque. In the “back room”, my passport was still under the pillow, so I put it under my jeans, in the pouch I kept tied to the belt loops, and set out for town again. I gave Seyet back the key and thanked him again. We had nothing to say to each other. I had my round trip ticket, and went back to Izmir.

My six hour tour took the day. Joe, of course, was impatient after waiting all day. Talking to other travelers, he found an all night bus to deposit us in Istanbul at six in the morning. We could sleep on the bus and save a night's hotel fee. Turkish buses are good, and this bus was almost as comfortable as an American Greyhound. Still feeling guilty at my stupidity, I went along with the plan.

In the morning, when I found out the going price for rooms in Istanbul was more than Izmir - 42 cents apiece – I let my irritation show. I told Joe I didn't want to be a “real traveler” if I had to go all day and night.

Arriving in a capital city, the first thing to do was to set out on official business, getting visas for the trip east. But of course, the capital of Turkey is not Istanbul, but Ankara. Ataturk had moved his capital to the middle of the country years before. We could take buses through this desert country, or we could take the boat on the Black Sea and get the visas at the next capital, Tehran. We already had our Iranian visa.

Realizing Istanbul couldn't help us, Joe lay on the bed in our dimly lit room, looking at his passport, checking out the visas and stamps. “Christ! Ellie! This visa for Iran has expired! Look at this!” He showed me the stamp filled out in Athens “validite 3 mois,” the date we had gotten our visas at the Iranian embassy, written, with the day of the month first, 30/5/72. We looked at my passport. Of course it was the same; we had gone together.

“You mean we have to go to Ankara after all?” I asked.

“We could go there,” said Joe, “but suppose they refuse us? I'm pretty sure you can't get another visa for Iran for a year.”

“What! Why not? What does that mean?”

“It's just a stupid rule. It means that we can't go through Iran. Unless ...” Joe studied the visa. “I could change this 5 into an 8.”

“They wouldn't like that.”

“But they would never know.” And he did it with an ordinary blue ball point pen. “Here.” He handed me the pen. “Do yours.”

“What will they do to if they find out?”

“They won't find out.”

“But what would they do to us if they found out?”

“Refuse to let us enter their country.” That was what they were going to do if I didn't change it. I wondered if I were committing an international crime as I added a quarter inch of blue ink to the Iranian visa.

Istanbul, once Byzantium, still called Constantinople by the Greeks, is on the great crossroad between the East and the West, captured by Darius of Persia and by Alexander the Great, once capital of the Roman Empire, a Christian holy city until 1453 when the Turks made it the capital of the Ottoman Empire. With little thought to history, in the here and now, we walked next to the water that the city straddles, the straits of Bosporus, wondering where we would find the port for the Black Sea.

Vendors on the sidewalk sold sesame-coated over-sized pretzels. Turning in from the water, we found a huge park where several men with pushcarts sold the corn on the cob from a huge pot of hot water. Unsanitary perhaps, but we had to try it. The corn was over-ripe and over-cooked, tasteless and starchy. We threw it away.

A tourist guide approached us. Would we like to visit the mosque at the end of the park? This was the first mosque anyone had offered to show us, and I remembered Istanbul is the site of beautiful mosaics, so we went. At the door, when we had to remove our shoes, I was afraid they might be stolen, but the guide brushed my fears aside. Inside, we were in a huge circular stone room, light because of the windows circling the dome. Worshipers knelt on mats on the dusty floor, praying. That was all there was to that mosque. No mosaics after all, so Joe paid our guide with a coin worth a dime and told him we were tired. No, we didn't want to see any more.

The hippies hung out in the tea shops in Calangute Square, buying and selling hashish, an activity officially against the law, tolerated within limits. We walked through the square and saw the famous “Pudding Shop” considered by many hippies to be The Place. The small, smoky rooms were crowded: you needed an insider to give you a seat. These ex-pats were most interested in making an impression, in being part of the In-Crowd. Our interest was in meeting fellow travelers who would know about the route East, but we could hear enough at the pension.

We never met anyone as foolish as the boy “Midnight Express” who tried to smuggle hashish out of Turkey. People often talked about the official rules and harsh prisons. Anyone going East would be able to find drugs even more easily than in Turkey.

From Calengute Square, we moved on to the great outdoor marketplace, the biggest we had seen yet. Here, under a striped awning, we sold the radio Joe's mother had brought and bought two silver puzzle rings, all the rage that year. Joe was advised to try exporting the rings to sell for profit in India, but he decided it was too risky. Besides the worry about theft, he knew nothing about a possible market for silver puzzle rings in India.

A couple of days in Istanbul showed us the city was not to our taste. The third day in Istanbul, we devoted to getting ready to move on. We went to the American Hospital to get any shots we might have missed. Typhoid, the only immunization we didn't already have, cost 60 cents. The stifling smells of disinfectant made me feel nauseous.

In the same section of town, north of the Bosporous, we went to buy tickets for a freighter to take us the length of the Black Sea. The old-fashioned office was closed from 2:00 to 4:00, another scheduled siesta that we couldn't foresee or plan for, but at least we could wait in a pleasant deserted brick courtyard. Just outside, huge ships towered over the alley, but the usual hustle-bustle of a Mediterranean waterfront was lacking. Finally, the ticket office opened. With my student ID, my ticket cost three dollars. Joe was miffed at having to pay six dollars for three days travel to the eastern end of the Black Sea, but he hadn't been a student for years, and a black market ID was too much trouble.

The next day, we passengers were loaded on the freighter last, so we left mid-morning. There were about ten of us sharing the dormitory life, men separated from women. I spent the day sleeping while Joe, who is not bothered by the insistent rocking of the boat and vibration of the engines, got to know his fellow passengers. Joe called me up to see the sunset, the western sky full of the colorful pollutants of the city we had left behind, magnificently red, orange and purple. The seagulls following the boat provided black accents to the rich color.

The other foreigners on board were like ourselves, on their way to India and the East. Some were Australians on their way home from England. Pilgrims included Fred, a young Englishman who gave a birthday feast for his god, Krishna, on the deck of the ship the next day, a perfect Saturday, the sixteenth of September. Everyone went up on deck to watch Fred chanting to Krishna, to whom he had set up a small altar. The Turks watched scowling as usual, and we smiled. With our fellow travelers to India, we talked about things spiritual. A Dutchman, John, told us of his “most holy guru” in India who prepared special pipes of ganga (marijuana) and scented woods. His girlfriend Greta, traveling for the first time, spoke no English. After chanting for a half an hour, Fred smilingly gave away sweets he had bought for this purpose in Istanbul. The untrusting Turks wouldn't accept anything, but we foreigners appreciated his transparent innocence.

In the afternoon, we stopped in port and were allowed off the ship to buy food. The others all took off for restaurants, but we had heard the restaurants served only meals based on meat, so Joe and I looked for groceries. Along the straight road bordering the water, giant cranes dominated the skyline. This port had no harbor at all, no encircling land to protect ships and machinery from storms. We found honey, raisins and dried roasted chickpeas at the tiny shop with the only open door in the block fronting the “harbor”. Around the corner, a fruit store sold yellow watermelon, not as good as red, and sweet grapes. By following our noses, we found the bakery and got the wholewheat flatbread of the region. Turkey seemed peaceful, not at all as bad as it had been painted.

To travel hopefully is better than to arrive, as the saying goes. We arrived on Sunday in Trabzoum, the end of the line. My journal was written in a book that included a daily line of advice which I read to Joe if I thought it had any significance. For instance “Visit scenes of old enjoyment” was impossible. “Family annoyance possible” was improbable, and “Buy something you've wanted” could only apply to food. General advice like “Strength overcomes troubles” or “Words have double meanings” I enjoy thinking about for a brief inner council. On Sunday September 17, I saw “Troublesome travel possible.”

Trabzoum featured a hustling bus driver who wanted $2.50 for his mini-bus ride south over the mountain into the plains where Turkey borders Iran. “Hurry,” he said. “I have to leave right away and mine is the only bus for three days. In three days, I come back to meet the boat once again.” We wanted to look around and see if any other means of transport was possible, something more in line with the prices we had been paying. Joe ignored him and sat me with the luggage while he scouted around the other transportation, trucks. One friendly truck driver seemed ready to give us a ride until the bus driver, seeing the loss of his passengers, yelled something in Turkish. The truck driver shook his head at Joe. Joe was furious, and I certainly felt cheated.

We ended up joining the Dutch people and the Hare Krishna devotee in that same bus going to Erzeroum. We rode gloomily past mountain villages made of wooden houses. We hadn't seen a wooden house since northern France, and these were of a unique half-timbered construction. I hoped we would we stop for tea. The winding roads were starting to get to me, but we sped along, our driver seeming to be a demon hell-bent.

Erzeroum that evening, a dirty colorless city, was not worth the ride. Another traveler on the road, Phillip Glazebrook, spoke of Erzeroum thus: “The town by these glimpses was one of the ugliest I have ever seen. Dirty modern concrete masked any old streets it may have contained and tower blocks of the same repellent grey overtopped any domes or minarets or fortress walls that still remain.” (Journey to Kars) All flavor of Armenia's ancient capital was gone.

All I expected was a cheap pension and some groceries. We found neither. The dusty gritty hotel cost $3.00, and the only food to be had was meat in a restaurant. As we sat with our glass of tea, fellow travelers from the boat walked in. Alberto and Mari-Jeanne had been able to get a ride from the truck driver Joe had talked to in Trabzoum. The truck had driven much more slowly and had stopped in one of the mountain villages. Mari-Jeanne said that unfortunately, the mountain people had seemed suspicious and unfriendly.

One night in Erzeroum was enough for all of us travelers. Together we took another $2.50 mini-bus for the border of Iran. This route involved plenty of local stops and took most of the day while we watched Mt. Ararat grow closer, its snowy peaks a reminder this land had been settled since the time of Noah. Two towns before the border, our Dutchmen, John and Greta, realized they had forgotten their backpacks at the hotel and left the bus to wait for a ride back. We went on, looking forward to leaving this dirty, unfriendly country, wondering if Iran had the flavor of old Persia.

We were disappointed when our driver stopped in Degubayzit, refusing to go on until six in the morning. We thought 6:00 AM. sounded like an early call, and we didn't want to hire another dirty hotel for another three dollars, so, with Alberto and Mari-Jeanne, we decided to camp out by the bus in a fenced enclosure. Joe told the bus-driver our plans, daring him to object rather than actually asking if it was all right. The bus driver's response was typically short. “Do whatever you want, but leave my bus alone.” To make sure, he locked the doors.

Joe and I offered to go look for food while Alberto and Mari-Jeanne stayed with the packs. Once again we were able to find the bakery, this time a huge room with men at long tables flattening the whole wheat dough, readying it for the ovens in the back. “Loaves” were much larger here in Eastern Turkey, the size of a cookie sheets instead of the smaller “pockets” we had seen in western Turkey. We were able to return with fresh bread, fruit and some cheese to feast under a waxing moon. Nearby, Mount Ararat's snow-capped peak shone with the reflected light of the moon.

Chapter XI IRAN

At 7:00 in the morning of September 19, 1972, the border crossing into Iran looked like a military outpost. As we approached the cement block building surrounded by fences, Joe said to me in an undertone, “Now we'll see how our trick with the visas works.” I was silent. The uniformed Iranian border guards escorted all of us into a large room, and everyone in turn had to empty any bags onto a large table. They looked at everything, opening my bottle of honey and tin packet of aspirin, and then took the passports to another room.

One by one, the other foreigners were called and given their passports, free to go. We were last, cooling our heels for what felt like an hour. On top of worrying about the altered date, I felt guilty, not at fooling with their visa, but at being nervous enough for these men to know that something was wrong. Joe assured me that they couldn't tell, but they were just being mean and giving us a hard time. I said he shouldn't have reminded me because I had forgotten. I told myself that if they could really read character, they would know that we weren't doing anything. Finally, for whatever reason, we were permitted entry for the three months now specified on the visa as starting 30/8/72.

Outside the building on the Iranian side of the border, the same dusty road greeted us. The Hare Krishna pilgrim had bought an eleven o'clock bus ticket. Alberto and Mari-Jeanne waited by the road to see if they could hitchhike saying, so far, the guards hadn't seemed to mind the outstretched thumbs, and a truck had passed them by. We joined them, figuring we would be second in line. Perhaps we would end up taking the bus.

As the sun began to get hot, a new car came through the border, a middle-class Iranian businessman who stopped to pick us all up. I was in front and the other three were in the back. Our driver spoke little English and seemed most interested in driving fast. I read 120 KPH on his speedometer and translated the speed to myself as 80 MPH, which was only a little better. The wind blew in at my hair, filling it with dust as we passed the trucks.

The driver turned on his record player, a tiny thing on springs in the front of the dashboard. He pulled out a stack of 45's and leafed through them with one hand, never letting up on the accelerator. He shoved one into the slot in the dash. Surprisingly, the thing seemed to work, though I could hear little over the wind, even if I could have recognized a tune. I flipped through the stack to see if he might have something like a Beatles record. They were all scratched, and nothing I recognized. Suddenly, he ripped out the record he had chosen, surely adding another scratch, and threw it out the window. He ended up throwing half his records out the window before we stopped for lunch.

Our quiet roadside restaurant under the shade of a huge tree was a good place for this businessman to practice his English, conversing with Joe. The menu featured fresh yogurt, made there. Alberto was pleased, explaining to us that he had given up all milk products, but he didn't consider yogurt a milk product. Yogurt was milk transformed, he said, as smoke from a fire is no longer wood. I wondered how the macrobiotics would view the theory. The Iranian had lost the thread of conversation.

After a glass of tea, we were rushed back into the car, Joe in front this time as the best conversationalist if not the most decorative person. By two o'clock, we were in Tabriz where our driver left us at a beautiful campsite. Alberto and Mari-Jeanne went on, anxious to reach Afghanistan and its famous hashish. This country was fairly drug free in spite of its long history of opium and cannabis. We figured that the US had insisted on drug control in return for their military support of the Shah. We were in no hurry, and I wasn't feeling myself. My stomach was not adjusting well, and I wanted a quiet afternoon.

The state-run campsite inside a stone wall on a terraced hillside overlooked a summer palace of the old kings of Persia. The northwest region of Iran has a temperate climate, so we were again surrounded by greenery. The friendly official in the guard house by the entrance assured us that it wouldn't rain, so we put our things under a fruit tree, and I stayed while Joe went out for food. In the morning, I didn't want to leave and made Joe wait while I did Yoga exercises for two hours. Before I felt ready to face the road again it was ten o'clock, eleven before we found the way out of town.

We got a ride right away, on a truck that didn't stop once all the way to Tehran. I studied the picture of the handsome crown prince stuck on the windshield. All the trucks had at least one picture of the crown prince somewhere. The young man was about ten, but we saw photos of him from every age. At the time I thought he was well loved, but reflection leads me to wonder if these were tax or inspection stickers. The Shah's picture adorned the coins, stamps and even the watermark pressed into the paper of all the bills, his hawk-like profile showing up if you held a rial note up to the light.

We arrived in Tehran very late. The roads in the city were terrible. A bus to the hotel section of town had no springs. The hotel had no beds - a room with a rug would be two dollars. I was not feeling strong. Joe was not feeling tolerant of overbearing hotel keepers. We turned to the streets feeling, once again, lost in a big city and very tired. We asked a policeman for advice to tourists, but he had none. We went back to the hotel, and the man said the room with the rug was gone.

As we were wondering what to do, a student came up to us to offer a place on his terrace for the night. He introduced himself as Darius, and we all went to the police station so he could get a permit to have foreigners stay with him. The police refused him a permit. Darius took us back to the hotel, but the man insisted there was no room. At that point, Darius decided to take us home in spite of the lack of permit. It didn't matter, he said. It was just a stupid rule. We would only be staying for one night anyway.

I hated to do it, but it was that or asking the policeman for a taxi to the American Hotel for twenty dollars a night. Darius had a nice little place half-way up a high-rise building nearby. The elevator worked and so did the bathroom. He had a living room/kitchen/bedroom, a terrace, a hall and a bathroom adorned with a poster of Raquel Welch in a red bikini. As has been the way of students in Iran for centuries, he pulled out a hashish pipe and offered a smoke. We slept very well on the terrace. For breakfast, Darius went out for fresh bread and milk, the fresh milk being such a rarity in this part of the world that I considered it a luxury. He must have heard that Americans like to drink milk. Darius had classes to attend, so we set out on our way.

It took hours to find our way out of the city. Finally, at one o'clock, we put out our thumbs on the road leading east. Thankfully, a car stopped instead of a truck. A Baha'i pharmaceutical salesman who spoke English was driving with his four-year-old daughter to the family home in Babel-sar on the Caspian Sea. He gave us a business card showing he worked for “Teheran Pharma” and had a very long name. He said to call him Shoodan, and invited us to be his guests in Babel-Sar, a resort town to the north-east of Tehran on the Caspian Sea. We would be going a little out of our way, but the Caspian Sea sounded inviting after traveling through deserts. Shoodan drove for an hour until we reached the beach. We walked on the sand by the vast inland sea. “That way to Russia,” said our host.

“Let's not go.” I said. “Can we swim?”

“Of course. This is where you can change.” We turned to the deserted stalls lining the beach to change into bathing suits. Two women were the only others on the shore and they went in fully dressed, including shadri, the semi-transparent black veils covering them and their other clothes from head to feet. I may have been the first woman in a two-piece suit Shoodan had seen in the flesh, but my suit had been quite modest on the tourist beach in Greece. Anyway, our host's manner graciously allowed me to feel at home. The water was warm and refreshingly half-salty. We went to dinner in a seaside restaurant and then to the family home.

The grandmother was obviously pleased to have visitors from a foreign land, though she spoke no English. By now it was dark. She took out a kerosene lantern to lead us down a walk to the guest bedroom, part of what seemed to be an unused wing of the sprawling one-story structure. Unlocking the door, she opened a crowded treasure room full of chests and rugs. She motioned to a bed with four mattresses. I felt amazed and unworthy of such attention. In the morning, the old grandmother served breakfast, meeting us at our door with hand-to-mouth motions of eating. She, of course, had been up for hours, and fetched us tea and wholewheat flat bread. When her city-oriented son got up, he took us and his daughter to the beach again.

For lunch, we went to Shoodan's sister's house. He explained we were not meat eaters, so she cooked us eggplant. Afterwards we talked a bit about her profession as a hairdresser and the Ba'hal faith. Our friend explained their hospitality was an expression of their religion: the whole world was to become one people, no more fighting, all peace and brotherhood. I fear the fanatic Ayatollah Khomeni may have wiped this family out along with everything progressive in Iran.

We decided to move on and not prevail on this hospitality too long. Shoodan drove us 20 kilometers to the intersection with the main road. As we waved good-bye, I hoped to return to Babel-Sar someday.

The journal mentions a Mercedes truck through mountains, a strange free mini-bus, and a man transporting honey-bees to a fertile plain. As we rode in his '56 Chevy pick-up truck, he explained in English about this common practice, new to me. He stopped in irrigated farmland with ditches full of stagnant water. The bees went within a walled garden. We set up camp in the field only to be eaten alive by mosquitoes, a plague we had not been bothered by since leaving America. The flies had been much worse in Spain and in the near-east, but the “mosca”, Spanish for fly, had not been joined by the little fly, “mosqu-ito” in the dry places we had stayed.

After the night with the mosquitoes, eight rides took us some two hundred miles. Somewhere, as we stopped for lunch, the restaurant was even hotter than outside. I took off my long-sleeved shirt and found myself carefully avoiding the eyes of men most of whom seemed to be trying not to look. There were no other women in the restaurant. I felt rude, but the choice was physical or social discomfort. I appealed to Joe. “I'm not supposed to have taken off my long sleeves. Everyone's looking. But it's so hot.”

Joe looked around. “It's safe. You don't have to put it back on if you don't want to.” I kept a modicum of comfort in my sleeveless blouse, and waited until it was time to leave before covering my upper limbs again.

Meshad was the last big city before the Afghani border. Here we could get visas for Afghanistan, but we would need photos, and I was all out. We were directed to a street photographer near the park. I liked the idea of a no frills, no studio photograph. I didn't realize we would become the subjects for a crowd of curious onlookers. Since eastern Turkey, we had been fair game for any idle stare on the street, an exotic sight for people with little variety in their lives and less sense of privacy than we cultivate in the West. This time, quite a crowd gathered for an unveiled woman having her picture taken. The photographer tried unsuccessfully to chase them away. Luckily the operation didn't take long. We left to find a carrot juice stand and returned in a few hours for the developed pictures.

Waiting in the park, we met a man who immediately wrote his name in Joe's address book. Hasan Zamani followed us to pick up the pictures and then back to the hotel, talking all the way while Joe made token responses. He claimed to have a brother who was the chief of police, connections for hashish and to want to send us a Persian rug when we returned to America. Sitting on a bed in our hotel room, he began relating the various high positions his numerous brothers held, and I began to feel quite ill, so I asked Joe to shoo him out.

Lying down didn't make me feel better. I was sure something was seriously wrong. I had had trouble all along with my IUD, though the doctor had given me the latest kind, touted as 90% effective, the Dalkon Shield. For almost a year I had been suffering irregular and painful menstruation.

When I consulted a doctor in Spain the year before, he knew little of this method of birth control. He had been able only to tell me I had not been pregnant in spite of having missed a month's period. Now I had skipped two months and felt sore and feverish.

Not sure what to do, I threw the I Ching. When my three coins came up each time as the same two tails, one head, something seemed to be more drastically wrong than I had thought. I had never received this hexagram symbolizing the passive principle, a generally favorable but unbalanced hexagram, being completely yin, or “feminine.” I received the only unfavorable line, “A willful dragon has cause to regret,” with commentary saying, “It suggests the approach of overpowering calamities.” Definitely wrong. We decided I should consult a doctor in this relatively civilized country before moving on wild Afghanistan.

As a border town in a country with many ties with the USA, Meshad had an American consulate, so Joe consulted them as to a good English-speaking doctor. and took me to a clean, modern, suburban clinic. After my examination, I joined Joe sitting in the glassed-in hall that served as waiting room and reception area. By the time the doctor came out with the results of the tests he had taken, I was lying down on the cushioned bench.

“Congratulations.” said the doctor as I sat myself up. “You are pregnant. Unfortunately, you also have an infection from the IUD. This is common and should not worry you, but you will have to take penicillin. There is no reason to believe it will harm the baby.” We were speechless, so he went on. “I can give you a penicillin shot, or you can take it by the mouth. It might upset your stomach.” I still had nothing to say to the doctor. I had too much to think about, and felt feverish. “Why don't I give you a shot now, and you can come back tomorrow when you feel better. If you intend to go on traveling as you said, you will need to take a ten days supply of penicillin.” After the shot and a rest, I felt able to move again, and we went back to the hotel.

“Congratulations, he said,” I said to Joe. “He knew I didn't want a baby. That's what the IUD was for.”

“What else could he say? There's no abortion In Muslim countries,”

“Well, where is there abortion? Sweden.”

“India.”

“They don't even kill bugs. What about their non-violence?”

“Be serious, Ellie. Some religions don't let you kill bugs, but India has a population problem. Of course there's abortion, the last-ditch birth control.”

We were in agreement right away that abortion was the best solution. I did not feel ready for a baby. I did not want an unplanned-for baby, a baby that shared an infected womb with an IUD. This was one reason I had accepted the newest IUD, touted as more effective for women who had never had children. By now, we know that the Dalkon Shield may have been the worst IUD ever marketed. All my planning and care had gone by the board as Nature exerted her sway over my body. I didn't accept it.

Even if I were to force myself to accept this fate, I would be unwise to try to plan something with this man who had not even committed himself to marriage. We would have to abandon this trip just as we were getting started around the world, and who knew if we could ever travel again, tied down with a baby. Certainly we wouldn't want to take a baby to a country where it could get those diseases we had been inoculated against. Finally, if I had gone so far as to think of keeping the baby, I would have run up on the trauma of loss of my independence. My self-image as a modern woman is not to be dependent on a man, and I found this the most difficult thing to accept when, years later, we finally decided to have children.

I hated the hotel room, so we sat in the park, figuring how far along I might be. In my journal, I recorded the menstrual periods, so the last real period had started July 2. I figured the three month cut off might be mid-October. It was September 25. I also had some blood in the beginning of August, but I wasn't sure how significant it was. We could not linger en route to India. As we sat in the park, we came across our old acquaintances, Alberto and Mari-Jeanne. They had found a pleasant official campsite just outside town. I preferred open air to the small hotel room, so they helped us move.

Alberto knew about abortions, He said they were free in India, if you had been using birth control. I qualified and had proof. As I lay on the sleeping bag waiting for the antibiotic to help, I wondered about a young American woman I had met in Nenita. She and her friends had been walking around the island and stayed with us for a night in early July. She had stories at her recent trip to Jamaica where the men smoke clouds of marijuana, but the women are more civilized: they drink it as tea. Then, since I was getting my period, we talked about birth control. She said she didn't use any. She believed pregnancy wouldn't happen until the time was right, I had liked that romantic idea as I had liked her tale of the young guru she had just met, the thirteen year old “perfect master”, Guru Maharaji, who had made her “see light” just before her trip to Europe. Now I wondered if she was just infertile. Maybe she really wanted to get pregnant; she undoubtedly had money enough to support a child. She had the look of old money, the preppie look. Her connection with that guru might have indicated the same. Guru Maharaji, I heard later, could convince people that they didn't need their money and should donate it to the most holy of causes, himself.

Remembering my reaction to this woman's tales, I was ready to blame my romantic notions, a belief that “it wouldn't happen until the time was right.” Joe blamed the olive oil. Nature, acting through my body, obviously thought the life we were living on a Greek island was right to add another person to. As for our trip, a cloud hung over our heads for many miles. Knowing we were not ready for children, I closed my mind to the thought of burdening the world with something I could not care for as I should. In gloom, we bought penicillin against my infection and moved on towards the border. Our passports were processed under a huge tent in Iran, and we moved through a gate to the next country, Afghanistan.

Chapter XI: AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN

As we entered the country of Afghanistan, I was still in a daze. The antibiotic had not yet fully taken away the infection brought on by the combination of an IUD and pregnancy. My world was not right, and it couldn't be until I could plan my life logically again, until I wasn't pregnant anymore. My usual style of accepting the changes as I slowly try to understand them became even slower and more accepting as hormones began dictating what I could and could not do. In fact, I gave up trying to make decisions.

At the border crossing, Joe let an energetic English-speaking hotel owner organize a room and a ride to Herat for $1.50, hashish thrown in for free. I was leery of the man's hustling manner and unshaven visage, but Joe decided it was a good deal. The enterprising businessman drove us to his brand-new, as yet unfinished cement-block building and left us with his quiet young assistant. Our clean, empty room held only two string cots. We would provide our own bedding with our sleeping bags.

As we were wondering what to do with ourselves in Afghanistan, the dreamy assistant appeared, speaking good English, to offer us tea and hashish. Taking out a giant cookie of pressed hashish, he apologized: this year's crop was not yet harvested - not for another month would we be able to get the good stuff.

He rolled an enormous cigarette and sat down with us, cupping his hands to draw the smoke through them instead of placing his mouth on the cigarette. We took turns, copying the sanitary way of sharing a cigarette. We had seen the same method in Boston, brought back by traveling hippies, a way to avoid spreading colds there. Here in Afghanistan, we wanted to avoid more serious disease. After a couple of puffs, we were gone. The young man finished the cigarette of “inferior hashish”, ambled off and made the tea, but we couldn't even sit up to drink it.

In the daylight, we ventured into the second largest city in Afghanistan. Apparently, the main industry was hippie tourism. Because of the availability and excellent quality of hashish, many young people had chosen Afghanistan. Taking the cheapest route overland through Iran, Herat was the first place most of them would land. Even in the morning, the hashish salesmen would come up to us, but we had had enough already. Planning to spend less than a week in the country, we could never use the smallest quantity they sold, and we wouldn't try to carry it across a border.

On every street corner, unshaven men with turbans called out to us, exhorting us in English to buy their goods. Some acted upset when we walked past ignoring their calls, but Afghani clothes would be too heavy to wear in India. Between clothes stalls, tiny tea shops were frying potatoes and eggs for the foreign trade. We stopped for breakfast at one, and then had to ignore the other insistent calls, “Tssst, fried potatoes. Eggs here!”

In the bazaar, craftsmen displayed their trades. Business owners would simply remove a wall, cheaper and safer than a door, exposing the small shop to the marketplace. Elevated somewhat above the filthy street, the men would ply their trades: cobblers with an anvil and a hammer, tinsmiths with charcoal brazier fires, and strangest of all, a woodworker using his feet to power a bow drill, a tool dating back to the 5^th millennium BC.

After a morning of Herat, we took the afternoon bus south, skirting the edge of the mountains before turning east to Khandahar, halfway through Afghanistan. This city held few tourists, but did have a nice quiet hotel.

Sitting in a tea shop the next morning, I had time to write home, not mentioning the major problem, but simply describing the scene. “As I look out on the street I see two roads: the paved road built by the Americans is for cars, and the dirt road alongside is for donkeys, people, and horse-drawn taxis. The dirt road is full. Donkey team follows donkey team. A herd of fat-tailed sheep are led by more energetic goats. A beautifully painted horse-drawn taxi clatters by. The people are mostly poor and dirty. The women almost all cover their faces, some to the extent of “full shadri”, a tent over their whole bodies with some netting in front of the eyes. A woman with an uncovered face is an unusual sight. I am very glad the cars have a paved road to use. If a car drives on the dirt road, it raises a cloud of dust. The boy is watering the ground around the tea shop to keep down the dust. I spend a lot of time wishing for the pure water of Greece.”

Joe wrote. “ One advantage to be noted about the type of water in Afghanistan, the same water you see running in all the gutters in which you see people shitting. spitting. peeing, brushing teeth, washing dishes, sheep or themselves- well, if a child lives to 7 years old, he will be immune to every disease known to science. They don't always live to 7 though.”

Afghanistan continues to be troubled. This fiercely independent warrior culture has great resistance to change. In the nineteenth century, the British tried to civilize it, and old soldiers would tell tales like Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. When we visited, Americans had built roads and a dam, written books, and visited in droves, but few natives even went so far as to copy the Western clothing style. In 1972, men wore their baggy trousers with the crotch at the knees, a large untucked shirt and a turban or a close fitting cap. The women stayed hidden in the Islamic way, in full shadri.

I liked the Afghani people. An old man climbed aboard the bus in the middle of the desert with a World War I rifle slung over his shoulder, ready for use on any of us. In Herat, three girls walked by totally shrouded in pleated black shadri, close fitting caps holding the garment in place, eyes behind netting made from pulled threads. One said, “You are very beautiful.” How could she even see us? I liked the patient men sitting by a pile of melons a cubic yard high who would cut a piece for a taste before we bought. I appreciated the relative lack of crowds too. A stop for tea in Iran or Turkey had been an occasion for a crowd of onlookers to stop and stare. Perhaps we weren't the novelty here: so many young Europeans came and stayed, or maybe the proud attitude of the Afghanis held them back.

Sanitation was a problem. We drank tea only from our own cups. Most Europeans ate the meat. Broiling destroyed the germs. The grapes are famous, but swarming with flies. If only the water had been safe for washing them, I might have avoided one particularly bad bout with dysentery.

Bread is safe to eat. In Khandahar, bakers on a side street used a narrow pit lined with stone. After the camel dung fire has burned down to hot coals, the flat bread is baked directly on the stone walls of the pit. Men use a heavy piece of wood similar to the pizza peel to press the sticky dough to the walls where it sags toward the fire. This stone-age flat bread was delicious with roasted chickpeas and peeled tomatoes.

After two nights, we left Khandahar on a bus. Other vehicles were trucks painted like circus wagons, all full, and a few cars that didn't pick up hitchhikers. About an hour into the desert, we got a flat tire. Our bus driver and his assistant took two and a half hours to patch it. We waited next to the bus, brushing away flies in the shade, eating roasted chickpeas and raisins, wishing the mechanics from the Moroccan truck caravan would take over the route.

In Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, we had to get visas for Pakistan and India. The Pakistani visa took all morning, which we thought difficult, until we went on to the Indian embassy, only open for applications until 11:00 AM. At 8:00 AM the next morning, we put in two and a half hours waiting and filling out forms. Three days later we would be able to pick up the finished document, almost a week of our precious time.

With time to kill, we looked at the marketplace and saw Skippy peanut butter and Nivea hand cream. We checked recommended restaurants where Americans ate the hamburgers they could get nowhere else, smoked hashish and played chess with each other. Joe was disgusted at their shallow existence, and I was tired. So we bought more wholewheat flatbread and retired to our hotel room. There was a scorpion on the ceiling. I shrieked. Joe called the manager who killed it with his shoe and assured us it was nothing, not dangerous. Too tired to move and having already paid, we stayed the night.

The next day, Joe went out and found a hotel with a room-sharing situation for only 15 cents a night. In the courtyard, a black American had parked his van. That evening, we were all invited to sit around a fire he had commissioned. Our host passed around the chillum, a pipe perched on top of a stick, smoked through closely cupped hands as the cigarette had been in Herat. Joe and I provided some guitar music and singing, and then listened to our neighbors' concerns. The black American spoke of how nobody could get him with his van and his dog and his gun. His beautiful blond German woman talked to her friend about the relative merits of the opium dens. No one mentioned spiritual concerns.

In the morning, I did Yoga exercises in the courtyard, feeling almost as out of place as in Spain. Once the visas came through, we were on our way. Rather than hunting up the bus, we just headed out of town on foot, figuring we would try hitching while we hiked. When a bus came by, we could catch it. We were not surprised when a crowd of boys began to surround us, coming out of the shacks that formed the edge of the city, but they were rougher than usual. This time, the boys began grabbing at us. Joe yelled and brandished a stick, but the boys began throwing rocks. Suddenly, a man who appeared to be crazy ran up taunting the boys, dancing and drawing their fire. Was he a holy man, the protector of the helpless? Or was he the village idiot, used to the attention of the boys?

We hurried up the road and got a ride in a car 50 kilometers to Jalalabad, a beautiful city with palm trees where our bus to the border cost 10 afghanis (10 cents). At this point, I wouldn't have minded wearing a shadri. I placed a shawl over my head and looked out the window listening as Joe talked with a man about the festival of Ramadan, the odd Islamic fast proscribing food during the day for a month, celebrated by eating all night. The man invited us to join his family for that night's Ramadan feast. I was glad when Joe turned down the invitation. I didn't want anything to do with Muslim customs, and he doubted the people would understand our refusal to eat meat. They might even be offended.

We reached the entrance to the Khyber Pass in the evening and were forced to halt for the night. At the Pakistani Tourist Bureau, a landscaped one-story building providing service at the border, we asked for advice. The Director of Tourist Information warned us not to camp out. This border region was dangerous territory inhabited by tribesmen who acknowledge no government. We remembered his warning when, two years later, a young man who was walking around the world for peace was shot down in the Khyber Pass.

The Director of Tourist Information could not recommend any lodging in the little settlement that served the truckers. Most truckers would sleep in their vehicles while they waited for the road to be opened in the morning. No one went through the Khyber Pass at night. Desperate bandits would have seized any unwary trucker his vehicle and cargo. After explaining the dangers to us, the Director offered us as tourists, the use of his Tourist Bureau as shelter and water. We camped out in the little conference room. In the morning, we thankfully washed in the modern bathroom and went out to look for breakfast. Several tearooms were serving white rice and dahl, a heavily spiced lentil stew cooked over an open fire in a blackened pot, not at all what I wanted for breakfast. I had tea and the dried fruit we had brought along. After eating, we moved on up the road to see about a ride. A huge line of trucks had gathered and more were rolling in.

Worthy of a photographic essay, these decorated trucks were resplendent with curlicues, brasswork and bells. We especially liked the back of a truck painted as the scene of a winding road seen through the windshield of a truck. Walking up the line, Joe soon found a friendly bunch of caravan tribesmen who were going all the way to Lahore. We were offered seats in the front, better for my equilibrium on a winding mountain road. The Khyber Pass is full of amazing scenery and engineering feats, bridges and tunnels constructed by the Americans.

The pass through the Hindu Kush was much higher than I had anticipated. Our driver said anyone driving at night would be forced off the road, and the bandits would plunder the wreckage.

After hours of climbing, descending and turns, difficult even with the modern road, we reached the fertile plains of Pakistan. I asked to rest in the back on top of the cargo. Joe stayed with the friendly men, teaching them English and smoking hashish. He found them to be more independent than the Muslim city dwellers and consequently easier with our strange ways. Also, large quantities of hashish made the long ride seem more like a party.

At sunset, we stopped at a roadside cafe for a meal in the open air. Our hosts ordered a dish of curdled cream. Without being sweet, it was rich like a dessert, fresh, thick curds unlike anything I had before or since. I wanted to go on eating forever, but all too soon it was time to be moving again.

The city of Lahore at 4:00 AM was poor, dirty, crowded and huge. Baksheesh, a word we had heard since Turkey, became a constant refrain. Anything for free is baksheesh: a deal like a baker's dozen, or a bribe, or a tip. Now, beggars and hustlers descended on us immediately, hissing baksheesh. I can be softhearted, but I could not feed them all. Any small coin offered would bring the whole horde down, each crying and pawing for his fair share. The lepers, at least, did not touch their victims, but simply crouched by the side of the street wrapped in dirty rags holding out a tin can in a deformed claw. By refusing to even look at the beggars, I gained a certain measure of peace.

Because India and Pakistan were at war, the border was open only one day a week, Thursdays. We had two days in Pakistan. We figured the countryside would be more pleasant than the big city, and there were no stories of actual fighting to avoid. Leaving Lahore proved to be as difficult as everything else. Walking down the street, we were constantly accosted by rickshaw men dragging their carts who would call to us, resenting our refusal to hire them, unable to understand that we were trying to use our time and legs by walking out of town.

Young men followed us offering their services as guide to the sights of Lahore and translator for a block at a time, waiting for any sign of recognition of their presence from Joe. Finally, Joe asked one if we were going the right direction to leave this godawful city. He took this as a sign that we needed his services. “Yes, yes,” he said. “This is the way. If you will follow me, I will show you the right way.” And he walked along with us chattering about the sights of the city that we were missing. Joe never addressed another word to him, so when we reached the road out of town, Joe felt the young man had overreached his expectations in expecting a tip. As a major route, it was full of wheels, and Joe decided to lose the fellow and avoid the traffic by hailing a rickshaw. We left him cursing us by the side of the road.

Joe told the rickshaw driver to take us towards the border to India, and we were soon out of the major traffic. Not until the border was open would this road have more than an occasional car. Joe stopped the rickshaw, and we got down to walk again, sharing the packed dirt with other pedestrians and one or two bullock carts. We never reached open countryside, just the suburbs of the biggest city in Pakistan, every inch of land claimed in this part of the Indian sub-continent.

We walked up to the border in Waheed, only to be turned back and told we should not try to stay close to the border. As we walked back, looking for some kind of a hotel, a group of men, schoolteachers, hailed us, ready to speak English with those native to the tongue. After a pleasant chat, they offered us a room in the school house to stay in. The nearest hotel would be quite a distance, they said.

Having noticed Joe's guitar, they asked for a song, and he complied. An audience grew, as crowds will in that part of the world, but with the schoolteachers there, the children were well behaved. Joe played a few songs. After each selection, the people would clap politely for a minute, and then silently wait for the next song. Joe told me I had to help, so we sang together all the songs we knew. Then we declared the concert over. The schoolmaster politely urged us to do an encore, but to my relief, Joe declined.

Ramadan still ruled this Muslim land, so when the sun set, it was time for dinner. Too tired to go out, I offered to stay with the things. For privacy, I shuttered the windows and locked the door of the little room in an outbuilding away from the courtyard where we had given our concert. Joe took a meal at a tea house with the friendly men and brought me a chapati, the wholewheat flatbread of the region. In the morning, we were up early to give the classrooms back to the schoolchildren who started their lessons soon after dawn.

Eating that day was a problem since restaurants were closed for Ramadan. We were able to get some milky tea, the national drink of India and Pakistan, a nourishing beverage made half from tea and half from milk, always with sugar, prepared at every street corner by a man with a tin pot over a tiny fire. The schoolteachers had delegated a young man to guide us through the day, not really something we would have chosen since I had no desire to chat and even the more sociable Joe felt the need for a bit of time to think. At his insistence, we followed the young man to his house, a tiny stone hut in the midst of other dwellings, its bare yard and one tree fenced in. His mother had gone out and locked the door, so we went on, asking the young man to show us just some place where we could rest and write home.

We ignored the gaping crowds as much as we could, our guide acting as guard for the day. In the evening, back at the school house, some other Europeans had arrived, but were not all favored with rooms. They were allowed to stay in the courtyard camping out. One woman was obviously pregnant, so I stopped briefly to talk with her about the troubles of being pregnant and traveling. I retired, pleading exhaustion while Joe was invited to spend the evening with the schoolteachers. Thoroughly worn out, I lay down until disturbed by a great deal of noise. I went out to investigate. A crowd gathered around the travelers was getting wild. I asked what was wrong, and one of the men said that the Pakistanis were sex-mad. The pregnant woman had been hit on her belly, so I took her away to the safety of our locked room.

Meanwhile, Joe had not heard a thing. In another of the closed rooms, the schoolteachers had decided to teach him the Koran. The basic precepts are simple: pray every day, journey to Mecca: and death to the infidel. Death to the Infidel was the subject they decided to address. Specifically, a heated discussion arose about how good it was that the Israeli athletes had just been killed in Munich. Joe kept quiet about his Jewish heritage. In the little locked room, I lit a candle, only to have the shutters banged upon. I blew it out, and they went away. My guest was anything but calm. Finally, Joe returned, and I sent him out again to check on the situation in the courtyard. All was quiet. The pregnant woman went back to her friends. I tried to tell Joe how horrible it had been, but he was not impressed with my fears, having had his own experience of violent threats from people he had thought of as civilized.

We got up with the dawn to leave Pakistan for what some of our fellow travelers had described as the holiest of lands, India. At the border, the Indian and Pakistani soldiers stood all day beside each other with rifles on their shoulders. Joe wondered, if the order came, would they turn on each other and fire?

Chapter XIl: DELHI

We had hopes for India. We wanted to be realistic, but we did hope the country, though at war, would be more peaceful than Pakistan had shown itself to be. We knew disease was rampant in India, but we hoped the sanitary conditions would be better than Afghanistan. We hadn't done our homework. Relying on hearsay from travelers, many of them pilgrims with religious rose-colored glasses on, we hadn't imagined the overwhelming life on the teeming sub-continent. The Hindus believe the material world is illusion; perhaps this makes it easier to endure.

After the border, we moved right along. In a war zone, these Indians could erupt into violence at night as the Pakistanis had done. We took a bus for the holy city of Amritsar where everyone said to visit the Golden Temple of the Sikhs, but I was in no state for sightseeing or anything.

We found a tea shop where Joe struck up a conversation with a Brazilian who had traveled in India many times and knew all the ropes. He was going to Delhi and offered to take us to the right train and help us aboard and into the best seats in the very cheap third class. We thought Delhi, as the capital, was likely to have the best medical care, so we set off immediately, following him. Moving at his speed was difficult, but I went along without protesting.

Sharing a rickshaw, Marcos got us to the train with plenty of time to spare. He helped us push our way into the compartment ahead of the crowd and showed us what he meant by the best seats. Above the wooden benches, metal bars formed the luggage racks, a space where we would be safe from crowding and thieves. We climbed up, each taking a rack and arranging our packs as a cushions. The ride took six hours and what breeze came in the tiny train windows didn't penetrate up to the luggage racks. I gazed on the people below who were eyeing me balefully back. I felt I had no right to be there, taking up their luggage rack, but no official told me to get down.

Disembarking in Delhi, Marcos told us to go to the Old City for the cheapest hotel - any rickshaw could take us there for less than a dollar. He had some business to transact in Connaught Circus, but he'd see us around. He walked off quickly, and we followed the path he had taken through throngs of travelers and beggars to the street. Outside the train station, traffic boiled. Every variation on the car and bicycle filled the streets. The three-wheeled bicycle rickshaw, three-wheeled Sikh-driven motorcycle taxi, horse and cart, as well as cars, bicycles and people all madly fought their way down boulevards, past cows, through intersections and around rotaries like Connaught Circus.

Joe hailed a bicycle rickshaw and we went to Old Delhi, the narrow streets here completely jammed. The rickshaw stopped, unable to move, so we climbed off in spite of the protests of the driver that he was taking us to the best hotel. Any nearby hotel was good enough. We collapsed on a mattress in a room on the roof.

In the morning, I realized the room had no windows and would stay dark unless the door was open. The air vents letting in the noise of the streets had woken me. Joe slept on. I did Yoga exercises on the roof and thought about breakfast. I wanted to follow a healthful regime our Yoga teachers in Spain had suggested, eating live yeast alone for breakfast, dissolved in water, to provide D vitamins and a tonic to keep favorable stomach bacteria in the ascendancy. I had been carrying yeast since Afghanistan. Of course, the water wasn't safe, so I went out to get some tea to bring back and dissolve the yeast in.

The old city of Delhi is set up like a bazaar, except that the buildings rise up above the small shops lining the narrow streets. I passed vendors selling flowers, fruit, fried snacks, jewelry, soap, books, painted plaster Hindu gods, sandals, and every other necessity of Hindu life, crowding the sidewalks in front of the sari shops. I stopped on the street corner where the “chai wallah” sat with a fire of dried cow dung and a pot of “chai”, half milk and half strong tea. I had him fill my little bottle that had once held honey, and went back.

Joe slept on, the troubled sleep of dysentery. I offered him a bit of tea to wet his lips, but he wanted nothing. Our friends in Spain had recommended fasting as the best cure for any disease. Certainly fasting is the easiest course to follow with dysentery.

I dissolved my live yeast in the tea, wondering if all the benefits were available in conjunction with tea. Since I was experimenting with this technique, I noted in my journal each time I managed to take the time for yeast. I also noted sometimes if I got gas as a result of what I thought might be too much yeast: however, gas often accompanies pregnancy. The yeast might have helped me avoid dysentery, or perhaps being pregnant gave me extra immunity. As with most diets, changes in mood or health can be attributed to so many variables that I now only believe in moderation.

Out on the roof, I found a place to wash. A cold water shower seemed like heaven after days of travel, washing clothes a joy to accomplish. I congratulated myself on accomplishing karma yoga (useful work). Joe was awake but unable to do anything. After the hour for the yeast to work, I went out and found a fruit and yogurt shop. Here they mixed up bananas, yogurt and ice in a blender and served it as a drink called “Lahsi”, lunch. For dessert I had a milkshake. I brought a Fanta back for Joe, but wound up drinking it myself before it got warm.

Next, I set out to find a hospital and find out if abortion was actually free in India, as everyone had said. Tourist Information provided the names of the hospitals and suggested that the Ladies' Hospital would be the best, for women only and specializing in family planning. A rickshaw got me to the hospital at 5:00 PM, but, of course, the family planning clinic was held from 8:00 AM to noon.

The next morning, I was up at 7:30 in spite of the lack of windows in the room and at the Ladies Hospital at 8:30 to join the roomful of waiting women in saris. The only other westerner there had a problem quite unlike mine. She was infertile, never had menstrual periods and was unable to get pregnant. I listened to her troubles, but felt it would be tactless to speak of mine.

I waited two hours before meeting Dr. Walla, a brusque woman wearing a white coat and a red caste mark. Examining me, she felt the string from the IUD and confirmed that I could get an abortion. All medical care would be free because I obviously had birth control that had failed. The pregnancy could be treated as a disease. Dr. Walla estimated I was about 8 weeks along - a bit of bleeding that I had experienced in the beginning of August would have been my last period. We could do nothing without the confirmation of pregnancy from a rabbit test taking ten days. I should come back in ten days. I accepted this bureaucratic red tape with good grace. It seemed I had plenty of time, and I didn't want to argue and make trouble for a system that was going to give me what I wanted.

By the next day, Joe had recovered and found us a new place to stay, a tourist campground right in the middle of the city. On the modern avenue connecting the old city with the new, a wide median strip separated the two lines of traffic. The land on the median was dry and packed, bare except for eucalyptus trees. The tourist campground had been fenced off and landscaped with tenting sites on one side and a parking area for camping vehicles on the other. There were platforms built for big tents, but we just constructed a shelter from peering eyes with our waterproof ponchos. We were safe from any rains until the monsoon season in six months, and beggars could only come up to the chain link fence and hiss for baksheesh. To the rear of the area, a modern bathroom complex was clean, white and well plumbed. For sixty-five cents a day, we felt we had the bargain of the city. Sleeping with our own bedding in the open air suited us much better than the windowless room on the roof for a dollar. Very few people were taking advantage of the campground, so we were welcomed. A few travelers had vans in the parking area, but we were the only guests in the tenting area.

Across the street from the entrance to our tourist campground, on the side of the street leading towards the old city, a large hospital was fronted with a wide sidewalk. A vendor of fried foods in an open air shelter managed to keep going all day selling fried white bread dipped in batter made from half flour and half powdered chilis. The Indians would buy one to eat with a raw chili pepper. I went over for tea, and Joe would invariably succumb to the smell of fried food. He would take tiny bites of the fiery fried dough, conditioning his taste buds.

The rotary of Connaught Circus held most of the foreign businesses including American Express, the safest place to pick up mail. To get there, we took a motorcycle-taxi, riding in a cart behind a turbaned Sikh, beard in a hairnet, sitting in the saddle, cursing in Punjabi at the traffic jam. We looked up at a poster stating “COCA-COLA: one kilometer in any direction.” With refreshment stands running two to a block, the poster's boast was an understatement.

After picking up mail, we changed money in the Bank of India there and were appalled at the forms we were required to fill out, as well as the rate of exchange. Behind Connaught Circus, a huge bazaar thrived where changing money on the black market was commonplace, uncomplicated, and offered 35% more rupees than the bank. We felt we would be cheated if we changed money legally, paying the oppressive banks for their unnecessary, pretentious institutions.

Rather than staying in the city, we decided to use the week's wait for a side trip. We would check out a lake we saw on the map and then visit the Taj Mahal. Joe went for mail and to exchange money. At the campground, I wrote home promising my family I would be here for their letters. The plan was to leave at noon, so when Joe wasn't back by 3:00, I began to worry. I threw the I Ching, asking what had happened to Joe, and was given a bit more shape for my worries. I read number 56, The Traveler, with lines saying, “Trifling with unimportant matters, the traveler brings upon himself calamity. The traveler reaches an inn with his valuables still resting safely in his bosom. Owing to the traveler's lack of caution, the inn is burned down.” The commentary notes the traveler is “a stranger in a strange land.” I was not surprised when Joe came back at dusk looking wild and exhausted.

Outside American Express, Joe had met a westerner who said he was Canadian and knew of a good deal for changing money. An Indian who wanted to leave the country would buy all of the checks for 40% more than the official rate. Joe was tired and accepted a cup of coffee and listened to the scheme. First, the Indian had to ascertain that the checks were all right, so they took a taxi to a big hotel where the Indian would have them checked at the front desk. Joe knew his checks were all right, so he wasn't worried and sat back in the taxi chatting. Then the Canadian disappeared “to make a telephone call.” Joe was left alone to realize that the Indian was long gone out the back door of the hotel with Joe's seven hundred dollars in traveler's checks. The rest of the time had been spent reporting the theft and obtaining a notarized seal. Hearing the story, I was glad I never tried to be clever. Surely my slow questioning would have turned the con man away.

This disaster did not endear the city to us. Now the plan of leaving for a few days and getting away from it all seemed like an even better idea. Finding the southbound bus and waiting two hours was worth it to leave Delhi. But it seemed the city never ended. Everything was fully populated. The lake we had seen on the map was a reservoir surrounded by a chain link fence and signs “No swimming. No camping”. When we sat down in a small grove of trees, we were immediately surrounded by curious Indians trying out their schoolroom English. We had not managed to get away from anything. We got up to leave, and the crowd followed us.

One especially persistent young man said he was English, not like these ignorant Indians. He lived close by and would be honored if we would be his guests. He looked exactly like the others, with a dark complexion and western clothes, but he claimed his name was Princeton Gardner and pulled out his wallet to show us the coat of arms of the Gardner family. Joe was intrigued. Since we were both interested in any shelter from the curious crowd, we followed him to a nearby housing project.

Princeton Gardner brought us up to see his sister, Mary Starr, who looked even more Indian than her brother, dressed in a sari with a red caste mark on her forehead. Mary welcomed us and insisted we stay to meet her husband, Hubert, and the children who would be home soon. She made tea.

Hubert Starr was delighted to see Westerners, people he could really talk to. Princeton, Hubert and Mary called themselves Eurasians, descendants of mixed marriages, people who didn't really fit in with Indian society and felt themselves to be a cut above their neighbors. We didn't ask what fraction of English blood they boasted. Hubert Starr's genealogy book on the history of the Starr family had come all the way from England. We looked it over and gravely nodded our heads, remembering the slick, colorful fliers our families had received in the mail offering such books written by pseudo-historians, mass-produced for the gullible. Here was the perfect market for the genealogy book. These people could never check up on the research and would pay exorbitant prices for the impressive looking volume.

Mary offered to make enough curry for all, vegetarian and only mildly spiced, so we stayed for dinner and tried to entertain them with news of life in the West. The Beatles were a successful topic of conversation. Hubert and Mary had named their son Ringo after the famous drummer, Ringo Starr. We didn't tell them Ringo Starr's real name, Richard Starkey. We slept in our sleeping bags on their living room floor, waking to a breakfast of leftovers, washing at the dripping communal water faucet, and said good-bye.

Hitchhiking worked out. A long truck ride took us to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal. Tourist information was centrally located and directed us to a private home set up as a pension where seventy cents bought us shelter in a converted stable with a lovely yard to ourselves. We had bought fruit and yogurt for supper and all was idyllic until, over our heads, we heard someone walking on the roof. From the yard we could see nothing, but the owner pointed out monkeys in the trees saying they had smelled our fruit. We had nothing left to feed them, so they left.

We thought we had planned things just right when we realized the moon was nearly full. The Tai Mahal by moonlight – what could be better? We were prepared to be bowled over by the beauty and symmetry of this small building, built in 1653 as the tomb for Shah Jahan's beloved wife Mumtaz-i-mahal. By moonlight, the white marble was supposed to be especially impressive, unearthly, floating above the gardens and the reflecting pool. What impressed me that night was the hustling of the would-be guides, rickshaw drivers and beggars surrounding the entrance, a maze of alleys both dark and threatening.

We paid our entrance fee and went in with the crowd. For the purpose of contemplating such timeless and static beauty as architecture, I need relative silence, a commodity lacking in the jostling night crowd at the Taj Mahal. The reflecting pool was empty, the building small. Children ran and shouted. Graffiti scratched the marble. We walked back in the moonlight, still wishing for peace and quiet as a rickshaw driver followed us, wheedling to be hired.

In the morning, I felt ill and spent the hot day doing nothing. As it cooled in the evening, we went out for tea and met old friends from the road, Alberto and Mari-Jeanne. He had just bought a sitar and brought us to the shop that would be shipping it home for him. Music is one of the attractions of India, but Indian salesmen were so persistent, we had avoided stopping where we knew we wouldn't buy. Having a friend who had just bought was a passport into this interesting shop full of exotic instruments. I was able to get a note out of the Indian flutes, and Joe was intrigued with a little, primitive, one-stringed instrument called the Gobi Krishna. An arrangement with bent wood altered the tone and produced a peculiar twanging effect. However, we couldn't take on any more weight of possessions, so once again we left empty handed.

The memorable purchase that day was mosquito repellent. Joe found “Odomos”, a tube of menthol smelling just like Vicks Vap-o-rub, complete with directions written in eight Indian languages as well as English.

The next day was the true full moon standing high in the October sky, so the tourist town of Agra filled up. Before leaving, we went to take another look at the Taj by daylight. The faults of the surrounding environment were even more glaring by day. I wondered which was the worst omission: the empty reflecting pool and dry lake behind the building, the lack of peace in the surrounding town, or the lack of space around the tiny building which originally been planned to include a matching tomb of black marble facing it across the lake. We left Agra and set out to hitchhike again back to Delhi.

A truck with a huge cab picked us up. The driver already had three card playing friends with him. Joe joined in, gambling for a rupee a hand, not minding that every time he thought he had won, they pulled out another rule and he had to pay up. He figured he would make friends and sort of pay for the ride. Unfortunately, when he got to the driver's village and all piled out of the cab, Joe's wallet was gone. I was stunned, but Joe, acting quickly, took the keys to the truck, and we went to the police station.

What a scene we created! Our mere presence was a spectacle in that eternal circus mentality, as we termed Indian public conduct, and here were, asking for attention. The policeman's English was not up to such an occurrence, so he took us to the doctor. The doctor said we should go to the Magistrate. So we all walked, the truck driver, the policeman, the doctor, us, and the crowd to the official building where, thankfully the crowd was not allowed.

Upstairs in the magistrate's office, court was held. The truck driver got down on his knees, pleading that he hadn't taken the money, begging that he not be made to pay, calling for mercy on his wife and children. Joe insisted that he get his money back, some two hundred eighty rupees or twenty-eight dollars, before he would return the keys. In fact, Joe said to me, the truck driver was the only one who couldn't have taken the wallet because he had been driving, but he could handle whoever had actually stolen it. The magistrate ruled in our favor and the truck driver came up with, not the wallet, but two hundred eighty rupees. The doctor offered to put us up for the night, but the policeman decided to send us out of town right away, for fear of reprisals. He personally conducted us to the night train to Delhi and put us on an empty second class car furnished with wooden benches.

We rode through the dark, warm Indian night completely exhausted, unable to take any more sensation, silently meditating on an overwhelming reality. “Go on with life day by day.” “All is illusion.” “Be here now.” In fact, we wished to be anywhere else than India.

Our fellow travelers had agreed that Delhi was a likely place for good medical attention. I have no way of judging the quality of medical care, except that I did fine. I expect I would not choose the capital again simply because of the bureaucracy, a formidable presence in India and, in Delhi, “a monstrous behemoth of authority slumped movable among its files and tea-trays.” (Jan Morris, Destinations).

I returned to the Ladies Hospital October 23 for the results of the required rabbit test, a diagnosis already given by two obstetricians. However, while we were waiting for the results of the rabbit test, the infection caused by the IUD had flared up again. I couldn't have the operation until that was cleared up again, another seven days on penicillin. The hospital provided daily shots of penicillin. I had to show up every day. This gave the medical students some practice in giving injections. One day, it seemed the needle was too blunt to pierce the skin. I could have complained perhaps, but the easiest course seemed the best: wait and endure, like the Indian women around me.

Another problem was that the cord to the IUD had disappeared. Dr. Walla asked me if it had come out. It didn't seem possible that I wouldn't have noticed, though I was unsure of myself. Could I have missed that strange piece of plastic? After considering the pain the thing had caused going in, I told the doctor it couldn't have. My proof of birth control had disappeared. However, the doctor had seen the cord herself in her first examination, so I was scheduled for November 1.

On October 31, I was admitted to the hospital. The operation would be first thing in the morning, and they wanted to have me ready. My bed was in a large, dark room with about twenty other women, none of the whom spoke English. The attendant communicated by signs. For visiting hour at four, everyone else had visitors, but since Joe had just left me at noon, he didn't come. I could at least eat their food: it was bland enough and there was no meat. Most of the women gave me their hard-boiled eggs because they were strict vegetarians. I didn't like to refuse, but I really didn't want more than one hard-boiled egg without even a salt-shaker nearby. For reading material, I had Dickens Hard Times, suitably depressing.

I slept badly and was woken up at 6:00 AM for an enema and to be shaved, but Joe was supposed to be there and he didn't know it. The telephone didn't work, so nothing happened. At visiting hour, he found out the operation was rescheduled for the next day when he would attend. The good news was that he had thrown the I Ching and received a favorable hexagram. He had brought Koestler's book on India, The Lotus and the Robot, an improvement over Hard Times, though I would have preferred something lighter. He wouldn't take five hard-boiled eggs I had saved for him and left at five o'clock, At dinner time, I had to refuse the offerings of my fellow patients. No more hard-boiled eggs.

At 6:00 am the next morning, I got another enema. Adjoining our large, dark room, a small hall held two windows lighting the walls with the morning sun. I had to run to one of two cubicles, wet and smelling of disinfectant, each with a hole in the floor and imprints for feet to mark the proper place to squat. The attendant mopping the floor must have been of the untouchable caste, therefore without the caste mark on her forehead.

The abortion scheduled for 10:30 was the simplest kind, vulgarly called a scrape, medically called a D and C, dilation and curettage. Joe arrived on time, and they began injections and the intravenous. Each time, I hoped the shot would be an anesthetic. Just as I began to feel really strange, a medical student came to take more blood. My veins are not prominent, and, after jabbing me several times, she decided to take the blood from a vein in the back of my hand. I began to cry. She couldn't stop. Joe felt awful. Finally, something took effect, and I was out.

I woke to find Joe by my side in the recovery room. He told me the operation was over. Yes, the IUD had been there, but Dr. Walla had been angry, Apparently, the fetus had been developed more than three months. I had lied to her, she had said. Joe had rejoined with anger that I had asked her, and that she was the doctor and supposed to help me. I don't know how unsafe it really was because I had no complications. Dr. Walla never said anything to me. I felt they had put me off with their red tape just to see if I would go away, and could have done it almost three weeks earlier. However, I was delivered of my burden safely.

At the 4:00 PM visiting hour, we were back in the dormitory. The husband of the woman next to me struck up a conversation with Joe about how his wife had just had her tubes tied. They had decided she would have the operation because he had to do a lot of walking for his work. She was in pain and could hardly talk, so he chatted with Joe. I thought his reasoning spurious. Either way, the operation was free. In fact, any man electing to have a vasectomy was offered a transistor radio. Family planning posters plastered the city exhorting the people to “Take care of the ones you have.” In the morning, I felt fine. Dr. Walla said I could leave at 4:00 PM and get penicillin injections for the infection at any hospital.

I went to the hospital right across the street from the campground, first at 6:00 in the evening and then at midnight, following the pattern set in the Ladies Hospital. At 6:00 am, I went again for the shot and was told I had overdosed on penicillin. For outpatient shots, the dose was set at one shot per day. I went to the Ladies Hospital to check it out. Sure enough, I had taken three times too much penicillin, and, just to prove it, when I got back, I came down with a rash and a fever.

I recovered overnight. Joe, however, was in bad shape. He had just gotten word that the American Express Company considered what he had reported as a theft was a black market deal, and he wasn't entitled to get his checks back. He decided to see if anyone at the American Embassy could help. I went along, always interested in such a place, officially belonging to the United States and its citizens.

The embassy section of town had large gardens and green lawns around old buildings built for the British Raj, as clean and empty as a suburb of Washington DC. I wondered at a country watering the embassy lawns twice daily and yet letting the Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, go dry. Here was the unreal vision of life as lived by the upper class of India, totally removed from the crowds. I hadn't brought the wardrobe to dress for the occasion, but considered that, as a citizen of the United States, I had every right to go there and be treated well. I checked the tourist pamphlets and used the incredible bathrooms. No one could help Joe, so we didn't stay long, but even a short visit brought culture shock at reentering Indian street life.

November 5th was ushered in by fireworks, The Hindu festival of Diwali, celebrating the inner light protecting us from spiritual darkness, had already started. For a week, we had been hearing intermittent fireworks and by Sunday night, they were constant. I went to sleep anyway, but Joe stayed up playing chess with Australians until midnight when smoke filled the air until you couldn't see the neon lights across the street. Some festival of light.

The campground had filled up during these three weeks of our stay. Perhaps the mountains of Nepal had become cool. The officials at the Tourist Campground were no longer as friendly. I was ready to travel. We threw the I Ching, and it said southwest was a favorable direction. Fellow foreigners recommended Goa, the former Portuguese colony on the west coast, saying it was different from the rest of India. I wrote home, asking them to write me there, saying, “We definitely expect India to improve. I wouldn't recommend New Delhi to anyone.”

CHAPTER XIII: HINDU RELIGION IN VRINDABAN

We had been a month in India, mostly in and around the capital city, and it was the worst place we had ever stayed. However, we figured the more rural states would be nicer; we never really enjoy cities. Finally able to leave Delhi, we were ready to look into Hindu religion, the great drawing card for many travelers.

Not far south of Dehli, the holy city of Vrindaban held a very intriguing ashram. We could visit the guru from Be Here Now, a mysterious and powerful guru who demonstrated his siddhis (telepathy, imperviousness to LSD) and helped the seeker to find himself. Baba Ram Dass never mentions the guru's name and discourages the reader from trying to find him. Joe and I were therefore surprised to hear that there was no mystery: Nim Kiroli Baba was widely known and easy to find.

November 6, 1972, we left New Delhi hitchhiking south. Thinking back on it now, I am surprised that we went on hitching after Joe's wallet had been stolen in the cab of a truck. I guess Joe was feeling really strapped for money, living off my traveler's checks, hoping for the $700 refund. I had changed money more freely and only had five hundred left. Though worried, I comforted myself that we still had enough to fly home, and, if all else failed, could ask our parents for a loan.

Hitchhiking took us to within eight kilometers of Vrindaban, and then we were content to walk, as true pilgrims might. The wide dirt road was lined with regularly spaced trees and, beyond them, a dry ditch. After we had walked half the distance, darkness fell, and we went to sleep away from the road, under a tree.

We woke with the sun and the sound of Indian cattle bells from the ox carts on the road. We walked the rest of the way to town for our tea. At the edge of town, a tearoom had tables on a small raised porch. Looking down at the packed dirt yard, sipping my tea, I saw a middle-aged woman in a bright sari squat to the ground and raise herself from a puddle of pee. I had never seen it in Delhi. Was this country manners? Was this a good reason for wearing an otherwise inconvenient garment, the long skirt, for an acceptable way to pee in public as men can do simply by turning their backs? For my peace of mind, I always had to find the stinking outhouse. Was she a crude character, or innocent? I never saw the performance repeated.

The streets held many Westerners, some in the saffron robes of Hare Krishna, some in blue jeans like Joe. I had modified my dress to loose pants, an overblouse, and a scarf, acceptable dress for a modern young woman in India. We asked directions of a young American in blue jeans, and he sent us on the right road, three kilometers to Nim Kiroli Baba's ashram; we should ask again on our way. Eventually, someone pointed to a large square of buildings surrounding a packed earth courtyard.

Morning breakfast was over, but people were still sitting around chatting. These young Westerners dressed colorfully, some in traditional Indian dress, some in jeans and t-shirts, others in combinations to emphasize their taste. One talkative young woman's head was strangely bound up with mud in a style similar to Jamaican dreadlocks. I wondered if this were a religious style or simply a cure for lice, but I didn't dare ask. I should already know, and didn't care to display my ignorance before this homogeneous group. I retreated to the kitchen, but they needed no help. The woman in charge said we should get ourselves settled and come back for lunch. She appointed a guide to conduct us, as fellow pilgrims, to the best accommodations.

Our young American guide was happy to take on a little karma yoga (Hindi for useful work) and show off his knowledge. If we could afford 30 cents a day, he said, a lovely hotel nearby was being run as “duram sala” for holy merit by a disciple of Nim Kiroli Baba. A five minute walk down a dusty road took us to a large white building. The owner of the airy stone structure welcomed us as pilgrims come to pay our respects to the Baba (father), and gave us a key to a room on the second floor. The stairwell walls used concrete blocks with holes in them that form a flower shape. Halfway up, next to the landing, a large open space was framed with monkeys swarming out as we came near. “Are they friendly?” I asked, looking out at the opening into the courtyard to see which way the monkeys had gone.

“Those pests! They're thieves. Be sure to lock everything up or the monkeys will steal it.” exclaimed our guide. “Of course, the Indians think they are holy and feed then, so they're bold enough. That's what makes them so dangerous. They bite, too.”

At the top of the stairs and down a long open walkway we found our two large, cool rooms. There were no beds, but we had our own bedding. We unpacked a few things and went back to the ashram for lunch. After an enormous vegetarian feast, we were favored by the guru's presence as he appeared to give us dessert, fried dough dripping with sugar syrup, just the sort of Indian sweetmeat I loathe. I tried to refuse, but the helpers pressed it on me. The Baba, they said, liked to give his followers little sweets. The man was a kindly father figure, and we were as his little children. I tasted the gift, and hid it in my bag so I wouldn't have to eat it. The guru blessed us all and left on the arm of a beautiful Western girl in a sari. The disciples said he wouldn't appear again that day, so we went back to the hotel for an afternoon nap.

In our cool, dark room, we sat by the open window and talked about Yoga and plans for a serious fast, eating nothing at all for perhaps three days. Some observance seemed proper since we were in the seat of Hindu religion, accepted at a well-run ashram with friendly Westerners. Perhaps the magical powers ascribed to this guru would help show us our potential. For supper, we ate up what fruit we had left.

In the morning, I woke up from a bad dream in which we were home in the West, a place changed, overrun with illegalities, confusion and lack of privacy. I decided against the Eastern discipline of fasting. Since I had just had an operation, I wanted to find my balance within normal life. I was healthy, but not ready for another change. Joe began his fast, but I went to the ashram for some chanting and to break the fast of the night, eating breakfast with them.

Instead of fasting, I did karma yoga. The year before, in Massachusetts, I had made Joe a shirt of strong chambray that had survived the year. We went out to the bazaar for material. Naturally, I couldn't find anything like that chambray, so we chose a thinner blue stuff. After our purchase had been wrapped in newspaper, we walked around town, noticing the shrines lining the walls of the streets, deep shelves decorated with flowers and containing a bowl for offerings. Attendants sat in the street in front of the holy places, but they were not pushy, as the religious beggars in Delhi had been, demanding offerings. The cries for “baksheesh” were gentler here.

As Joe talked to one such attendant, finding out the attributes of the monkey god, Hanuman, a saffron-robed Englishman with a shaven head greeted me - Fred from the Turkish boat on the Black Sea. His pilgrimage had taken him to his guru, the leader of the Hare Krishna movement, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta, Swami Prabhupada. Fred invited us to the Fogel Ashram for Krishna Consciousness. We hadn't realized Vrindaban held such status as a seat of Hindu religion.

That evening, we found the Hare Krishna ashram without much trouble. Any saffron-robed devotee was going that way. We entered a courtyard and were shown where to sit in the section for visitors, women separate from men, crosslegged on the ground. Chanting started the service, the chants we had heard in Boston, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Rama.”

After a long time, the guru appeared. He sat down on his throne in a small pavilion covered with flowers. The chanting stopped. Then, while two disciples fanned him gently with peacock feather fans, he began to speak. From his sour, heavy, sagging face and scornful mouth issued a long sermon. Hare Krishna was the only true religion. Hare Krisha followers were the only pure devotees. Every other ashram was full of those who would attend and then go off and drink liquor, eat meat and have illicit sex. He repeated this message, discoursed briefly on earthly life as illusion, and then read from his book, The Only True Translation of the Bhagva-Ghita.

Chanting ended the long service. The guru left. When we all stood up, Fred came over to ask us to join them for a light repast. I wanted to see what they would serve, but when I looked at Joe, he refused politely. He was, of course, still fasting. I didn't want to stay alone.

It had grown dark out in the narrow street and was lightly raining, but there were gas lamps to light the shining stones on our way back. We walked the cool streets, and Joe talked about the aversion he felt for A.C. Bhaktivedanta and his teachings.

In the morning, we did Yoga exercises for an hour. Then Joe said he was done with fasting, glad to have tried it after hearing so much about it, but he didn't enjoy being hungry. The meditation he had done instead of eating had opened no new avenues in his mind. Too late for breakfast at the ashram, we went out for tea. When we got back, we had a visitor from down the hall, a thin, pretty, young American woman, one of Nim Kiroli Baba's followers, Saraswati, Sara for short. Saraswati is a minor Hindu goddess whose picture I bought and framed. My print shows a Hindu woman with four arms, a crown, a halo, a sitar, pearls, swans, a peacock, and something that is maybe soap. Sara had a message for us.

“The Baba,” she began breathlessly, “but it's not really the Baba because nothing bothers him; his Hindu followers, really, are bothered by all us Westerners. Especially the high caste Brahmins. They tend to be shocked by pants on women and dirty blue jeans on anyone. So what we all have to do is wear Indian clothes and wash every day.”

I assured Sara that washing every day was no hardship in the heat. I had forgotten Baba Ram Dass writing, “This is clearly not a Western scene. The few people (Westerners) who have figured out from clues in my speech where he was and have gone to see him were thrown out immediately ... ”

Saraswati gave me a sari to wear and showed me one way to wrap it. I had a simplified Indian-style long skirt made from a bedspread my mother had sent to Greece, but I like to try new styles.

Joe wasn't pleased. He would have liked to go back to the ashram for lunch, but he wasn't ready for a dhoti, the Indian man's length of cloth wrapped for free leg movement. He would eat in the bazaar. I wore the new sari to lunch at the ashram just because the food was so good. I didn't see the guru. They announced that he had gone to a town fifty miles away, but was expected to return the next day.

The next day, I wore the sari to the big town, Mathura, to get live yeast for my dietary experiment. The sari gave me trouble. Its gauzy material was supposed to go over a special petticoat that I didn't have and didn't want to own, so I wore it over baggy pants made of embroidered material from Afghanistan, and the sari rode up between my legs making it difficult to board the bus. When I got back from Mathura, Saraswati had given Joe the news that the guru had sent everyone away to Dehli where Krishnamurti, the intellectual Hindu philosopher, was giving a lecture and everyone should go. Really, he just wanted a rest, she had explained, but it would be good for us.

Joe and I weren't going back to Delhi for a lecture, but we felt that we might leave too, and continue our journey. The sight of the guru had not evoked a response. The supercool people sitting around chatting had aroused in us no longing to join the group. And finally, we were being told we were in the way, exhausting an old man.

Before we left, I gave the sari back, “Thank you for the loan, but I won't be needing it anymore. We're leaving.”

“But you'll be coming back? You're going to see Krishnamurti?”

“No, we're not. We couldn't stand Delhi. We were there for a month. We're going on.”

“Well, if you're really going, I'm sure you could get an audience. Just go down and ask.”

“Thank you. Perhaps we will. I can wear what I have on?” She nodded at my long skirt. “But Joe doesn't know how to tie a dhoti.”

“I'm sure it will be all right.”

“Thank you. I'll tell him.” Joe didn't want to go. The ashram scene disappointed him. The pilgrims we had met along the way had been good people, friendly and ready to talk, but here at their destination, as followers, they were not as free. Now they obeyed their guru and worked on what discipline was given. This Hindu holiness began to look like any religion, with politics mixed in. I agreed that I did not want to join any ashram, but still wondered if the old man was as special as he had been described. I thought about going alone, but I decided I had no problems to ask the guru about, that the guru's never speaking to us must be of no importance - or perhaps the best thing.

Wondering if fate would have guided us if the time had been right, I now feel the time will never be right for me to meet such a guru. I am too independent to hand over my life to a leader, too self-reliant to want to depend on another, too solitary to join a communal following, and finally, too stable to need to give up everything for another's vision. Some people need to give more than is reasonable, to experience love as an overwhelming emotion that only a religious leader can accept.

Before setting out again, we used the I Ching as a guide. Throwing three coins six times gave us a reading of Modesty and Good Journey. Modesty certainly applied as a mode for our relations with Nim Kiroli Baba. Our reading before leaving Delhi had indicated the southwest as a favorable direction. Several acquaintances had recommended the small Indian state of Goa, formerly a Portuguese colony on the west coast of India south of Bombay.

Our purpose in traveling was not clear, as was often brought home by the constant question of curious Indians, “What is the purpose of your visit?”, but certainly, we were not on a pilgrimage in order to sequester ourselves from the world. We left, following the promptings of fate, perhaps the Tao, to see more of the world.

Chapter XIV: RAJAHSTAN

On our way out of Vrindaban, we stopped at a teashop, gathering strength for a day on the road. A local man dressed in a dhoti, came in moaning and rocking his head from side to side. The proprietor obviously knew everything about everything, including teeth, and immediately took charge. From his experience, it would have to be pulled, and he was prepared to do it. He reached in and gave it a tug, but it was still firmly attached. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket, wrapped his fingers to get a better grip and tried again. His patient continued to moan while the proprietor of the tea shop forced him down and placed a knee in the patient's chest for greater power. Finally the amateur dentist admitted defeat, and they both sat down for further discussion.

I had had my teeth checked in Delhi. The Ladies' Hospital had a free dental clinic, so one day I had asked directions and found a large empty room. An Indian woman in a white lab coat turned from her reports to ask, “What is it that you want?”

“I think I should have my teeth checked. It's been over a year since I saw a dentist.”

“Is anything bothering you?” She asked irritably.

“No. But you're supposed to see the dentist every six months.” She wasn't impressed. “It might even have been two years.”

“Well, all right then.” She wobbled her head sideways, the characteristic Indian expression for acceptance, usually accompanied by a smile, in this case by a frown. “Sit down.”

I sat in the dentist's chair and opened my mouth. One look was enough for her. She didn't even get out the little mirror on a stick. “These teeth are all filled. There is no room for decay. You have no need for dental help.”

I left vaguely reassured and relieved that she had found nothing, though not impressed with her skill, and certainly not believing there was no room for decay. An Englishman in our Delhi Tourist Campground had work done at a dental school. It seemed every day he came back minus two more teeth. To endure an abortion in India was one thing. Abortions were illegal at the time in the USA. Dental work would be another thing altogether.

Shaking our heads over Indian dentistry, we left Vrindaban for Agra, early enough to get errands done in this city set up for tourists. “Duram sala” got us free lodging this time. Our host, Mustapha Ali, earned holy merit and since he was a rickshaw driver, we hired him to help get around.

Joe was sick of carrying his guitar around. He had brought it from Spain, sometimes cursing its weight, but usually happy to have it to make music, to pass the hours of waiting involved in traveling, and to make and entertain friends along the way. Now in India, the heat made the weight less bearable, and the interest of the locals no longer seemed desirable - they constantly stared at us no matter what we did. Joe wanted to send the guitar home. He and Mustapha Ali went off to have a box made, and then found out that the post office only accepted packages up to a certain size. Joe knew the music store sent instruments to the USA: they had offered to ship purchases when we had visited the shop before. However, when asked, the proprietor refused to bother with anything not purchased there. Joe was stuck with the guitar.

I visited the bazaar and found small exotic gifts to send to our friends in Spain and Greece. We made up little packages, the right size for the post office, and sent them out. To my parents, we sent a box as big as possible, filled with whatever bargains we found plus clothes I couldn't part with, too heavy for that climate.

The next morning we left Agra and the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to move by bus into Rajahstan. We had to change buses at the border and wait next to a pile of rocks with the other travelers, all native Indians. Sitting in the hot sun with nothing to do, Joe struck up a conversation with a group of men who decided to have a smoke. They laughed very hard as they passed the pipe to Joe. I stayed straight, playing the quiet, modest woman. When Joe could hardly talk, I continued quiet, though upset and angry. We missed the bus, but, to my relief, the men left on it. In the afternoon, I got us onto the next bus into town, Bharatpur.

Once there, ten young men appointed themselves as free tourist guides. First, they asked, had we eaten lunch? They knew just the restaurant for us, one that served meat. They used us as an excuse to show off and live dangerously, eating the meat their religion prohibits. To their surprise, we ordered the vegetable dishes, with plenty of rice to dilute the chili.

After lunch, we were taken sightseeing. Bharatpur holds a beautiful bird sanctuary featured in television nature specials. The young men hired a horse-drawn carriage to drive us to the museum in the heart of the sanctuary, a palace reached by a causeway through a lake. Twelve wouldn't fit in the old carriage, and the driver protested against any more than eight as too much for his horse. He wanted more money, so several boys jumped out to run alongside. I tried to look out the window at the beautiful lake, but one of the boys was always trying to capture my attention, asking a question or making a comment on the carriage.

The museum, empty of visitors, held almost no furniture and a few dusty exhibits. The young men knew no history. The caretaker had no knowledge, but simply followed us around with warnings not to break or steal anything. I tried to be polite while enduring the solicitous inquiries and repetitious explanations in sing-song English, but I couldn't enjoy myself or smile. After the tour, I refused to get into the carriage again, disappointing the young men terribly. I insisted on walking the short distance along the beautiful causeway. Joe was still feeling strange, but he agreed. Several of them went off in the carriage, but the rest had to keep us company.

The picture of a huge, peaceful, light blue lake with birds swimming on its surface remains. I am standing looking down the causeway lined with tall trees leading to the museum we have just visited. Unfortunately, instead of a quiet-voiced knowledgeable commentator telling me what type of rare bird I am seeing, there is an impression of an officious person making sure I am not bored, asking me how I liked the museum, and shouldn't the museum be better kept up?

Back in town, we parted ways. We turned down the halfhearted dinner invitation. Some of the young men said they had to get back to their families. I knew we had disappointed them. Saying we had to be on our way, we walked out of town.

Not far down the wide tree-lined dirt avenue, we reached a small temple, and the guardian called to us. We accepted his offer of duram sala in one of the two small stone rooms on either side of a stone courtyard surrounding a well. The ground sloped downward behind the temple into a clearing of packed dirt - no bushes, no sticks, no grass. The white-haired man who lived at the temple had studied in Cambridge, England and spoke excellent English, but he didn't talk too much. We enjoyed his company, sitting around a small fire, sharing the fruit we had brought. He asked us to call him Baba; perhaps he was an undiscovered guru hoping for Western followers.

In the morning, we washed at the well and met the temple peacock strutting around the cleared area behind the temple courtyard. We also met the Baba's Indian followers, or perhaps these were his students of English. The young men asked, as did many Indians, “From which country do you belong?” and “What are your qualifications?” Joe's reply, “Cultural Anthropologist,” had a nice ring. We had met one in Yugoslavia. The title seemed to describe some of our occupation in traveling and observing different societies.

As we were chatting with the young men, the Baba gave Joe the keys to the temple, put him in charge, and left. Joe, completely taken by surprise, was flattered, and accepted the responsibility, but it didn't take long before we wanted to leave too. Rather than fielding questions all day, I retreated to a laudable occupation, writing home to my family. I wrote, “Right now time is dragging a bit due to the irritation of the constant presence of many flies and 7 (oops-8) Hindu followers. Joe says he feels a bit like the holy man we were visiting (Nim Kiroli Baba). They wish to wait on us, i.e. buy me soap, wash my pots, make us tea. and draw water from the well for any purpose we may have. They just doused Joe with water for the heat, and Joe says, 'That wasn't so great, but they seem to think it was.' They also can't believe he doesn't speak Hindi. Mostly they use broken English, but occasionally slip into Hindi and expect an answer. They just came out with it. “You are a holy man, Sir.” Now an attempt to involve me. “Indian woman is very bad, Sir. They is not reading.”

Joe points out Indira Gandhi, and they all laugh. “But Indira Gandhi is very high family!” I do not rise to the bait and simply continue writing with a modest demeanor. A good woman, eh? Reads and writes. 15 years of schooling, after all. There is no privacy in India. Many more have shown up to stare and some do wash at the well. Children are being shooed away, but return with gifts of fruit and sweets. Oh no, Joe has acceded to popular request and taken out the guitar. Making me get the flute so I'll have to give a tune. Until Bombay, adios.”

The long day was punctuated by statements from the most forward of the young men, generalizations in the form of “Indian ____ is very _____” I remember clearly his exhibitionism, frequently stripping to the loincloth to douse his well-muscled brown body, explaining, “Indian weather is very hot,” and “Indian man is washing very much.” Just to keep the conversation going he would begin another statement, but break off when he couldn't find a suitable adjective. “Indian man is very.....”

We were bored and irritated when the Baba returned late in the afternoon with preparations for dinner. He shooed the boys away and wouldn't let them help. They went home for a while but trickled back after the Baba had made a vegetarian feast, mildly spiced subghee with real butter and chapatis baked on a stone by the fire. A hungry dog hung around waiting for scraps, prompting the comment, “Indian dog is very skinny.” We didn't stay up for more of this conversation and retired to our little stone room on the side of the courtyard.

In the morning, the Baba seemed to expect we would stay, but we really couldn't stand being on display. Besides the tiring young men, we had endured being stared at all day by the other visitors to the well. Later, I was told of a Hindu idea called “Darshan”, a belief that in the process of staring, one can pick up some of the spirit of another person. To me it seems like another enshrinement of a cultural trait like the Muslim tribesman's tendency to war turned to a religious battle cry, “Death to the Infidel.” We left in spite of the Baba's protests.

We tried hitchhiking, but we had to pay for our ride. A 10 rupee truck took us to Jaipur, a Sikh desert region. The Sikhs, the best organized of the Indian religions, are known for their fierce fighting ability, neat turbans, and their use of the same last name, Singh. I thought of the religion as a cross between Hindu and Muslim without the Hindu oppressive caste system or the Muslim ideas of aggressive war. With a majority of Sikhs, Jaipur might have been pleasant except that the garbage men were on strike. We had caught the turn of phrase and said to each other, “Indian city is very dirty.”

Joe waxed philosophic in a letter home. “This guy in Dehli learning new expressions (always says 'far out' and 'groovy') well, he asked me to explain “Bullshit”. Now that is a difficult concept to explain to an Asian. Here, a man's wealth is shown by the size of his dung pile. The women and girls walk around in cities and country with baskets on their heads and their job is to pick up fresh dung off the ground and plunk it on top of their heads. Later it is made into paddies and dried for fuel. It adds to the sacred uses of the cow or water buffalo. Bullshit?”

My birthday was coming up. I had read about a holy lake in the mountains, not too far out of the way, where we could stop for a quiet time, I thought. At the tourist information bureau in Jaipur, the minor official seemed pleased to be able to disappoint us. Many Indians in positions to help prefer to exert a kind of power play. Putting others down raised their status/caste. This man seemed to feel we should have known that the lake was dry until monsoon season. So we went on.

Indian trains go everywhere and are incredibly cheap. Everyone takes them, unlike American trains, so we would see a cross section of all the Indian people. The ride in the luggage rack from Amritsar to Delhi had not been fun, but we decided to give the rail system another try. We left Jaipur by train, going west, third class into the Great Indian Desert. This trip to Ajmer was our last attempt to endure third class. Even this relatively uncrowded line through the desert was packed with incredibly rude and dirty people. To fight for a place on a hard wooden bench pushed against a sweaty laborer while dust billowed in the windows was more than I was willing to endure.

Every stop at a station signaled the swarming of food and drink vendors to the windows of the train. Joe was a pushover for spicy fried noodles, heavily seasoned “chow mein”, served from newspaper cones. I bought tea until I began to long for cool fresh water. I finally threw caution to the winds and tried the water at one station - warm and impure - I spat it out.

Going through the desert as we were, I began to feel my skin and hair were in need of some lotion. All the women here obviously oiled their thick black hair before braiding it down the back, and it suited them. The little girls with shoulder-length hair had it oiled too, though they looked monstrous with that hair and heavy black paint around the eyes. During a lengthy stop for refueling at a desert station, I decided to try hair oil for moisturizing and control. Immediately, I felt dirty and longed to remove the heavy sticky weight. I would have to wait for an opportunity to wash.

In Ajmer, a cattle fair had filled all available accommodation. Tired, dirty and discouraged, we found the road out of town and stuck out our thumbs. Nobody stopped. Luckily, we were hitching next to what turned out to be a schoolyard. In this small agricultural school, the head teacher and gardener experimented with more efficient production of grains. Looking up from his garden as dusk fell, he saw us standing in the road and thought to offer a schoolroom. The next day was a holiday, he explained, so we would not be in the way at all. There would be no lights, he worried, but we assured him we carried a candle. I asked him about the well. Proudly, he showed me the pump with a tap in the courtyard. Unfortunately, there would be no power until the morning when he would be coming to tend the garden. He laughed when we reminded him he would be earning holy merit.

For breakfast, we got something different - the school grew millet and corn which our friend had made into chapatis. Finally able to wash, I had to use detergent to get the oil out of my hair, thereby erasing any good effect it might have had as a conditioner. When I was done, we met some of our host's friends. They only spoke a little English, so Joe and I took out our instruments and played music. We left before lunch. Hitchhiking worked better, though the truckers all seemed to drive slowly. We got to Udaipur late and found a large hotel run by the government as a Tourist Bungalow, reasonably priced. We would stop here for my birthday.

In the morning, we went to see the Maharini's stone palace, now a museum on top of the hill in the middle of the old city. The building was immense, but not full of treasures. In fact, there was little to see, and once again, a few young men decided to be our guides on the tour, though they knew nothing.

The Maharini's toilet was a huge wooden carved throne, a throne with a chamber-pot beneath, like an enormous potty-chair for toilet training. We were roped off at the door, and I couldn't understand what the piece of furniture was, sitting by itself in the middle of an empty room. Our guides explained, and I still didn't understand why anyone would want such a chair; moreover, the thought of filling the chamber-pot for a servant to take away was quite beyond me.

At the exit, the young men were still following, offering to guide us through the narrow stone streets leading down the hill. To escape them, we took a rickshaw to the other tourist sight, a puppet folklore museum set in a tropical garden. Here the people had taken some pride in showing the traditional craft, shadow puppets. The gardens were well kept, and somehow, there were no young men to follow us around. The best restaurant in town, Kwality, was part of a chain. For two dollars, we ate very well. Joe gave me a ring with my birthstone. For dessert, there was only pudding, so we had a chocolate bar instead of cake.

From Udaipur, we hitchhiked to Rickabdeo where we somehow managed to sleep out by a river. Early in the morning, we were discovered. To be surrounded by a staring crowd as you wake up is terribly unnerving. The people in Rickabdeo were especially curious, and our usual protectors, young men who studied English, were absent. We left as soon as possible. I quote the journal, “Harassed by idiot natives into taking a bus for Dungarpur hoping for a train from there.”

The bus over mountainous dirt roads with people riding on the roof was quite enough for one day. The train connection would take seven hours to go 100 miles. We decided to wait another day for the express train.

Dungarpur sits at some altitude among grassy hills. Just downhill from the town is a large lake for swimming and washing. I washed near the washerwomen who had claimed an area with large, flat rocks where they could slap colorful lengths of cloth. Laid out to dry on other rocks, the bright saris were ten feet long. The man's dhoti was shorter, a six foot length of duller color.

When I had finished, Joe had already found the duram sala, a small room kept for pilgrims, where we slept for free, three nights, the limit for the little room. Somehow the people here were able to leave us relatively alone. I made a little blouse and basted it together. The tailor sewed on his machine while I watched. Joe was able to rent bicycles. Sadly, they were so heavy I couldn't pedal up the hills. India was becoming tolerable. We thought things would continue to improve as we moved toward the sea. Ahmedabad, a seaport and Gandhi's birthplace, was to be our next stop.

Chapter XV INDIA'S WEST COAST

Third class railway tickets were out, no matter how cheap and authentically Indian, so we took second class tickets to Ahmedabad, Gandhi's birthplace, a seaport on the Arabian Sea with no beaches. Though hot, overcrowded and dirty, the city had a good marketplace, and we wanted to learn about Gandhi, so we took a room for overnight. Gandhi's birthplace was open to visitors. We entered a plain, empty hallway made of bare wood and walked down to a room with a roped off display of the great man's things. Naturally there wasn't much to see because Gandhi had renounced earthly possessions. A table holding his glasses and a small book gave little food for thought. Near the rope, a post held up a sign closely covered with some Indian script. I asked the attendant what it said.

“It is a brief history of the Mahatma,” he answered.

“I'm surprised there isn't an English translation,” I commented. “Usually I see an English version alongside.”

“This is because there are too many Indian dialects. English is the language everyone can understand. Everywhere you will see English. But not here. This time, it was felt that it would not be right, to put the Mahatma's life in the language of the oppressor.”

“But surely he's a universal saint now, for Indians and English alike, setting an example for the world,” I protested.

“This may be that Westerners try to claim him for their own, but here he is ours, and we do not write in English.” I had no answer. I felt funny being classed with the oppressor. My generation believed in revolution. I was never an activist, but I thought my sympathy with civil rights and non-violent resistance might count for something. We left Gandhi's birthplace unenlightened.

Over tea, we looked at a map and found the coast road down to Bombay where we could check in with American Express as to the fate of Joe's stolen traveler's checks. If we found a nice beach on the way, we could stop for a while. As usual, to leave a city, we had to take a bus ride before we could hitchhike.

Hitchhiking this time yielded a ride with an English speaking Zoroastrian truck driver, ready to chat with Joe about fire worship. This sounded exciting, but the driver's description of the established religion of the Parsees was staid. Zoroaster (also called Zarathustra) believed in one God, holiness, righteousness and heaven after death. Joe asked about the woman's place within the church, attempting to draw me into the conversation, but it seemed hardly worth talking about to our driver, except as a chance to put women down. In spite of his lecture on Woman's Place, the man was pleasant and helpful, offering to let us off at Balsar, a town he thought we would enjoy.

Balsar was a medium sized town, population 37,586, where a pleasant hotel cost only four rupees (forty cents). In the morning, we walked two miles, farther than we had thought, to an empty, rocky seashore. Swimming looked difficult. The rough shingle dropped off rapidly, and the waves seemed to make a powerful undertow. Since the beach was deserted, there would be no help in case of trouble. We simply enjoyed the solitude and found some rocks that looked like unpolished agates, gray with translucent stripes. The sea breeze made life seem more tolerable.

Back in town in the evening, we met a young Sikh who offered to treat us to dinner. His reason for choosing us became clear when he began talking about drink. Gujarat is a “dry” state where alcohol is forbidden, but he knew a restaurant with boot-leg liquor, Once again, we were thought to be wild westerners always ready to drink, eat meat, and party. We went along to the restaurant, but the liquor was poisonous stuff, “white lightning”. I wouldn't drink, and Joe couldn't; he had just recovered from another stomach upset. The young man drank and was quickly overcome, lolling his head on the table. Disgusted, I insisted we leave. Joe protested. He hadn't quite finished, and the dinner was good. The management didn't mind. The drunken Sikh had prepaid, so they waved us out the door happily.

The next day stands out as the most physically wearing day in all our travels. It started innocently enough with a decision to do some hiking along the shore. The empty beach had been so pleasant that we thought we would hike south following the coast. Packs on our backs, we set out, first the two miles to the Arabian Sea, and turning left, down the rocky beach. After a few hours of difficult walking on the stony beach, our packs were getting heavy. Joe was cursing the weight of his guitar.

Then we hit a fishing village bordered on the south by a muddy river. The boys of the village surrounded us and decided to start a game of tag. We were It. Exhausted already, I began to feel trapped as well. Trying to escape and continue our journey, we took off our shoes and waded into the river, only to find squishy mud covering a layer of sharp rocks. It looked a few inches deep, but actually, only the free-flowing water was shallow. We went hip deep into the ooze. On the shore the boys were laughing and pointing at us as the whole village turned out to see the crazy foreigners. We couldn't turn back. Those boys had been rough.

The young men of the village who spoke English took it upon themselves to help us. Several waded out and tried to persuade us to turn back, telling us not to mind the poor ignorant people. Joe insisted on going on, so the young men offered to help us carry our things across the river. Neither of us wanted anything to do with any of them, but they were insistent.

We wore almost worn into acceptance when one of them said, “Look! Look! Wait! He is coming to help you!” A small sailboat was heading our way. A brown man wearing only a dhoti, his skin leathery from his years in the weather, was steering with his feet as his hands guided the sail. He sailed straight up beside us, and the young men asked him if he would take us across. His assent was clear and the young men put our packs on board.

We climbed onto the small boat and dangled our legs to rinse off the ooze. Only then did we notice that the river was running red, a strange, bright, clear color, not at all like red mud. I thought of blood, except that these Hindus wouldn't have a slaughterhouse upstream. “Why is this water red?” Joe asked the young man who had handed him his guitar. “There is a factory for cloth,” said one. “This is making the river red,” added his friend.

When we turned to the ferryman, his eyes were staring at the sky. At our greeting of “Namaste”, his head turned, but the eyes didn't focus, nor did he speak. “This man cannot see,” said a young man. “But he can sail a boat”, laughed another. “Not to worry,” they added.

We had seen him sail to us with no trouble. There was no doubt in my mind that this ferry ride was the right thing to do. We waved good-bye to the young men with relief. Harassed as we had been, we now felt in an oasis of peace. The blind ferryman handled his boat smoothly, keeping his face turned in the direction he wanted to go. The ride across was quiet, breezy, and all too brief.

Disembarking on the other side, we waded through the mud to shore and were surrounded again. The village on the other side of the river had noticed the hubbub across the way. It was getting late, but we still hoped to escape. We rinsed off our legs and asked the way out of town. We set out, and they followed, the crowd of boys shouting words of English and a few young men shushing them and attempting to hold a conversation when all we wanted was quiet.

We tired out before they did. We had to stop, and the crowd stopped with us. We made camp by the side of the road among the rocks and built a fire. I heated up the food we had brought. Our audience left when we began to eat. Just a couple of boys seemed to be hiding behind some rocks. As it was getting dark, an older man came to plead for the honor of his town. “Please to accept hospitality!” he said fervently. “It is not right strangers should sleep out in cold!”

“We are not cold. Look. We have blankets. We like to sleep outdoors. What we want most is to be left alone. Can you leave us alone?” exclaimed Joe.

“Oh no. It is not right. There are snakes and thieves out here. We cannot allow you to place yourselves in this danger. Please to come with us and accept a bed for night.” They wouldn't give up, so we had to go along with their ideas.

Escorted by a crowd, we made our way back to the village and were taken into a large dirt-floor room with curtains hung to divide the sleeping quarters. The lady of the house motioned us to two charboys, bed frames strung with rope. We sat down, and they all remained standing, watching us. When a young man asked about the guitar, Joe took it out to play. I reluctantly accompanied him on the flute. After three songs received in silence, he quit. Concert over. We were tired. Goodnight all. Nobody left. I decided to lie down. I turned around and pulled my blanket out of my pack. Then I took off my long-sleeved shirt, When I turned back, the crowds had melted silently away. Everyone was gone.

“Good trick, Ellie,” said Joe. “You really scared them off.” I was past caring if I had shocked them, and fell asleep, relieved to be left alone.

In the morning, our hosts, the villagers of Umarsadi, gave us a place to wash, three soft boiled eggs and tea. They insisted we take the bus instead of walking the two and a half miles to Pardi, and bought us tickets and cookies for the ride. They seemed genuinely kind, so I gave them a small remembrance. My mother had sent thin rice paper Japanese napkins, printed with designs of birds. I presented this as a token of thanks and waved good-bye.

In Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Travelers I read of this taking in of the stranger as a common experience for a single woman in India. I am not actually sorry that it happened to us only once. The poverty in India is such that taking charity would be an uncharitable act on our parts. We were the poorest we had been, having lost half our money in Delhi, but, simply by giving up the journey, we could return to the lap of luxury in one of the world's richest countries.

Another consideration in accepting friendly hospitality would be that one should accept a way of life before entering a home as a guest. Human excrement comes very close in Indian daily life. The city toilets usually had a hole in the bathroom floor with two foot impressions on either side for squatting. There was seldom paper, but instead, a can on the sink to fill with water to pour over one's parts. In the country, Indians simply take themselves to the fields early in the morning carrying a can of water by a wire handle. Everyone is expected to wash each time using the left hand only. The right hand is reserved for eating throughout the Arab countries and a thief may have his right hand cut off and be forever banned from the communal rice dish. We tried to live like the Indian people, but we never could accept their lack of sanitation. Instead, we became terribly sick.

As we neared Bombay, my journal records more stomach troubles, dysentery again, this time so bad that I visited the hospital in Bombay. My comment on the hospital was “unhelpful”.

American Express, too, was unhelpful. Back in Delhi, Joe had asked the company to review his refund on the stolen checks, and to send any news to Bombay. In Bombay, they claimed to know nothing. They would find out, but we would have to wait. Waiting involved great difficulty in finding a hotel room. We ended up paying in advance at the only place we could find with a vacancy. The rate was more than twice what we had been paying, and the room was hardly clean.

The only positive aspect of Bombay was the food. The variety and quality was measurably better than what we had been getting. Peanut vendors sold unspiced peanuts hot from the oven. Water chestnuts were roasted on the street, the blackened husk easily peeled off to reveal the white, crispy, sweet meat, Milk flavored with ginger came in bottles. Best of all was a vendor with a selection of fruits and vegetables for squeezing. Oranges, grapefruits, lemons, pineapples, melons, tomatoes, guava piled high at the peak of tropical ripeness. Standing there drinking our juice, we saw an Indian get a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice and cover the top with black pepper.

We went down to the harbor to check out the boat for Goa. It left once a week, on Fridays. Tickets were sold only on the day of departure. This was Tuesday, so we would have to stick around for a few days. American Express would have something by then, Joe felt sure. We weren't sightseeing. We particularly avoided temples. Walking past one by accident, I couldn't bear to look at the hideously deformed people, even lepers who might try to scare us into giving by threatening to touch us.

Down by the port, we couldn't miss the Gateway to India, a monstrously large arch built by the British Raj for ceremonies of considerable pomp when arrivals from England disembarked. Now the massive stone monument overlooking the harbor is nothing more than a resting place for a few beggars, only a few because the pickings are better outside a temple.

The only other Indian near the Gateway was an ear cleaner leaning on his haunches against the inside of the arch. For a rupee, he would take his wire loop tool out of a small glass presumably filled with alcohol, and clean out the ear canal. The man hardly noticed us. Perhaps he knew foreigners looked down on such practice.

Bombay was overcrowded even for India. Whole families live on the street in Bombay: a hundred years ago, Mark Twain wrote that every night in Bombay, bodies lined the sidewalk, each wrapped in a blanket. As Paul Theroux commented in The Great Railway Bazaar, now they don't even have blankets. To escape Bombay, we took a three hour bus ride to Ali Bag, just south across the Bay of Bombay.

In a small hotel in Ali Bag, dysentery struck again. This time, I became terribly ill and spent days lying in bed under mosquito netting. I wrote home, “Hotel is 60 cents for a room with three windows, fan, table, chair and mosquito netting over the beds, A great invention, mosquito netting. I've been in bed with a bad stomach. I went to a hospital, but the doctor just said it was dysentery which I already knew. Wait for it to go away, he said. I've been fasting, a course highly recognized by many health food people. It's easy because I have no appetite. And I've done a lot of sleeping for three days. They are really concerned about TB here. Dysentery is nothing. Everyone at the hospital started their questions with “Do you have a cough?” There were posters everywhere. I bought their TB seals.”

My parents must have been really depressed after getting that letter. My sister probably tried to get my father to go and bring me home. My mother telegraphed the American Embassy in Delhi to try to get some news. Their telegrammed response was, “Bombay advises Joseph Brodsky registered at Amconsul on December 8. Appeared to be in good health and gave local address as Asara Lodge, Ali Bag, Maharastra. Have sent telegram Ellen Northrup care of Poste Ristante, Calangute, Goa requesting she contact parents and notify consulate.”

My letter went on with the news. “It's better today, so we're planning to cook out. It seems to be the only way to get anything we can eat. All the restaurant food here is too full of chili peppers. Even if our mouths could stand the heat, the chilis drown any other taste in the food. We mix the hot curry vegetables with the tasteless white rice (brown rice is totally unavailable) and the taste is still only hot pepper. For the cookout, Joe is frying vegetables in ghee. I must find out how to make ghee. It fries better than oil with less. A bargain at 60 cents a pound.” Ghee, clarified butter, enriches many a curry.

Still sick, I wrote again a few days later. “I remember an anthropology/psychology lesson from Dad. Shame Culture vs. Guilt Culture. The shame culture, like India, keeps its members in line by means of ridicule when they misbehave, instead of internalizing controls as our culture does by means of guilt. Around here, we are definitely different and to be watched. It forces one to conform superficially much more quickly, as witness my change to conservative Indian dress, and Joe's trimming his beard for the first time since I've known him. I drew pictures of me in Proper Town Dress, sari, and in Mod Travel Dress, pants, long sleeves and a scarf. I did not adopt the Maharastra State fisherfolk style of sari, writing “sari is such an impractical garment, these women wrap it as pants, only they wear it so tight it looks even more uncomfortable than the sari.”

While I was sick, Joe went back to Bombay to check on American Express, to no avail. Their story held that he had made a black market deal and wasn't entitled to get his checks back. He could apply to the New York office, they suggested. Joe decided to try the American Consulate in Bombay, just to see what could be done. This was when he checked in as reported to my mother.

On the way to the consulate, Joe spotted a shop selling American canned goods and bought a can of Heinz beans. As usual, the shopkeeper wrapped it in newspaper. When Joe arrived at the Consulate, people looked at him strangely. He was granted an interview quickly. The fellow behind the desk began by asking, “I wonder if you would mind telling me what you have in that package.” Joe felt silly unwrapping the can of beans, but apparently they had feared he was an anarchist with a bomb. Our American representative in Bombay was relieved and pleasant, but could do nothing about American Express.

I was feeling better after Joe got back, so he decided we should rent bicycles and pedal out of town for a picnic. He could heat the can of beans over a little fire. I believe this experience was a turning point in our understanding of India. We discovered there is no getting away from the people. We pedaled to a quiet spot, only to be surrounded by the curious. We went on for miles in the countryside, stopping several times, finally giving up and resigning ourselves to a picnic lunch with an audience.

An old Indian folk tale begins like this. “The poor man walked through many villages and across the countryside, but everywhere there were too many people, and he could not be alone. At last the poor man came to the edge of the jungle where he would find a quiet place to pray. When his prayers were answered, he had a Magic Cooking Pot with an endless supply of rice.” This, of course, would be no solution to India's long-term problem of overpopulation.

I was sick a week, and we missed one ferry to Goa. On Friday, the fifteenth of December at 8 AM, would be another. Determined to catch it, we left Ali Bag Thursday even though we would have to spend a night in the city. Joe decided we should camp out in the bus station as so many Indians did, more than just people staying overnight to catch the 4:00 AM bus. Whole families seemed to live in that urban village, somehow staking out territory as others did on the sidewalks. The bus station was bright and noisy all night, but at least the people ignored us. Country folk would have gathered to stare.

We were up and out early, at the docks at 6:30 in the morning. The ticket office would open at 7:00, only then selling tickets for the scheduled 8:00 sailing. We had been afraid of a long line and the possibility of a sell out, but we were almost the only ones there so early. An Israeli named Avrim waited with us. He lived in Goa and had taken this route many times. He told us that they never sold out and usually left late, but it was good to be early to get the best seats. We could sit together, he suggested. We could take turns standing watch against thieves.

I couldn't picture, from his description, the best seats on the boat, so I was surprised when he led us to the front of the boat where a platform jutted out from the enclosed cabin. There were no seats, but we were ahead of all of the smells of the boat, out of the line of traffic, with a good view and a protective canvas overhead. The boat ride took twenty hours, all day and all night. We shared our food and had a pleasant ride steaming south through a calm ocean with a waxing moon lighting the first part of the night.

The boat arrived in Panjim, Goa, in the early morning. Avrim said most Westerners stayed in Calangute because it had the best beaches, and we could visit him there. We stopped for mail at American Express in Panjim. We hated to patronize American Express at this point, but we had been using their offices as a mail drop. I went out of my way to change money elsewhere, even though I had their checks.

After business, we moved on to Calangute. The one-story thatched hotels next to the beach were, naturally, overpriced, and we were feeling penniless. Also, though we were tourists, we tried our best to live like residents. In a switch of roles, the hippie scene made this beach town a tourist attraction for middle class Indians on vacation.

We went to see Avrim for advice. Asking around, we found his house, a small thatched building with three rooms and an outhouse where he supported himself making and selling leather crafts to his fellow Westerners. I was not surprised to see another fellow traveler from Bombay, a young American girl who had been traveling alone. Our host made Indian spice tea with cardamon seeds, demonstrating the best way to crush them: by chewing them and spitting them into boiling water. I wondered if that would sting the mouth, but the girl assured me Avrim's mouth could take it. He had told her he liked to eat raw garlic sandwiches.

While the spices steeped, and Avrim showed Joe his workshop, I asked the girl why she chose to travel alone. She had no reason. She just liked to. She was happy in India as was the woman I had sheltered in Pakistan, here with her baby. I felt something was missing. Was it in me for not accepting a way of life? Was it in them for ignoring the misery and filth around us? The Westerners in Goa seemed to be mostly the partying kind, in India because it was cheap to live and drugs were readily available. As well, more meat was available. The main difference between this Christian state and the rest of Hindu and Muslim India was that they kept pigs and ate pork.

We left Avrim's house and stayed at the easiest place for a night, the beach. Unfortunately, the next day, Joe woke with a high fever. I got rickshaw taxis and got him to the nearest doctor. Tropical fevers should pass quickly, the doctor reassured us. Joe should rest and drink plenty of liquids. I was in charge of finding a place.

Rather than a hotel room, I looked for a weekly rental at the same price as one hotel night. Joe sat in the shade while I looked at three accommodations offered by locals. The most expensive one was a separate house with a yard and a huge mango tree. Inside, furnishings were included, a wardrobe, bedstead, table and chairs. The high ceilings and shaded yard made the place seem airy and cool, but we were on a strictly limited budget. The other two were half the price, two dollars a week. Joe said to take the closest one, and we moved in.

We took a room in a small, four-roomed wooden house. Our new landlord, an old man named Tony, promised to be helpful. He showed me where the well was and sold me a bucket and a rope. We thought a week would be plenty of time for Joe to recover. The beaches in Goa were nice, but the water of the Arabian Sea was too warm to be refreshing. We were tired of India and wanted to leave soon, perhaps for Australia.

I wrote home. “The hippies all like it here because Indians don't try to impose restrictions on them. Loose and easy. This means these tourists are at ease and friendly which is nice. They do some strange things like loincloths, Lots of men walk around almost naked. Men and a few women swim nude. Public beach with lots of people around. And of course, drugs, but we're staying away from that scene.”

We expected to find friends, but the party atmosphere among our peers was not to our liking, especially with Joe so sick. Discussions of traveling in India were no longer interesting. I wrote home, “I do my best not to give any advice because, as Gandalf says, 'advice is a dangerous thing, even from the wise to the wise,' and Nash in Marrakesh Express, 'Listen not to what's been said to you,' because everyone's trip is different. I have quite stopped passing on any second hand information, and telling my own experience, I try to tag on, 'Of course it may be very different for you....'”

Joe didn't recover after a week, so after a dismal Christmas, he went to a hospital to be given a diagnosis of hepatitis. The treatment was total bed rest for six weeks, I was still somewhat sick with chronic dysentery, but now felt I must get better. I went to another doctor, recommended by Av rim. His diagnosis of amoebic dysentery was based on the length of my illness and cured with Flagyll. Now, I could take care of Joe.

Diet came first. The diseased liver is given a rest and not required to handle oils or alcohol. The doctor recommended a high protein diet, especially liver, and prescribed sugar pills. Our dietary ideas wore in opposition to meat and sugar, but I filled a prescription for glucose and levelose, a waste of money. The pills upset Joe's stomach and he refused to take them. Instead, I did my best to cook nutritious meals with plenty of grains and vegetables. The illness went up and down.

One day, Joe ran a fever again, so I sent to the nearest doctor. The doctor made a house call, driving to our room on his motorcycle with me on the back. He pronounced the fever not important and charged a dollar. We just had to wait.

After we settled in, the interval in Goa turned out to be not so bad. Having the decision to stay taken out of our hands made it possible to relax and enjoy what we could. Every morning, I did Yoga and then went to draw water at a community well not far from the house. I remember the scene vividly. Dressed in a long green skirt and sleeveless yellow blouse I am alone, standing while my bucket fills. The local women have already drawn their water and, in any case, avoid me. The day is hot already though it is mid-winter and early in the morning. The well is just a hole in the ground, lined with rock, surrounded by packed earth and palm trees, and I feel healthy again, doing useful work.

The outhouse arrangement in Goa was bizarre. Here, a privacy fence surrounded a small raised cement platform with steps on one side and a slide on the other for the excrement. The pigs ran free and would eat anything as soon as they found it. To keep the swine away until we were finished, we would carry pebbles. One year, the story went, the pigs all got hepatitis and had to be slaughtered.

Tropical nights were not peaceful. Nocturnal creatures went their rounds, huge cockroaches made clicking noises. If they woke me, I would try to kill them and record my success. A rat lived in the thatching and would come down to check for any improperly stored foodstuffs, He lost his footing one night. I noted in the journal, “Rat fell on Joe's head during the night. Joe didn't sleep well. I did.”

Another night, a wedding nearby was incredibly noisy, so Joe decided to try to make them stop, a mistake for which he paid when some of the young men decided to take some of their aggression out on him. His letter detailing the arc of sickness included a mention of that. “My abdominal pain, mostly due to a beating I got, disappeared after a few days.”

During the day, we worked on macrame projects or read. The large foreign population meant a number of English books were in circulation and could be traded. Speak Memory by Vladimir Nabokov held polished gems of experience, an inspiration.

In a visit from Avrim we discussed money. Joe's trouble with American Express was followed by other tales. Joe wrote home, “You just would not believe the number of thefts and robberies and crimes committed by both Indians and foreigners. Fortunately, I am in the house 24 hours, so I keep watch. New Years Eve there were 22 houses broken into around here!”

We followed Avrim's lead and offered our macrame for sale to our fellow Westerners. My wire hair clips covered with knotted string sold for thirty cents apiece. Joe worked on commission, making a large bag for a young German. He also sold the guitar, having tired of carrying it hundreds of miles before, and with no energy for playing.

Food and lodging were cheap, but medicine was expensive. I decided to get the gamma globulin shot against hepatitis. I had to have it ordered, prepay, and then go to the capital of Goa, Panjim, to have it administered. While there, I took care of visa forms. We had been in India three months already, hardly enjoying any of it.

After three weeks of eating whole grains, vegetables and goats milk (less fat), Joe decided he needed to get moving again. He said he would get better faster by leaving and taking the train, second class, to Madras where we could find a ship for Australia.

Chapter XVI: MADRAS

To leave Goa, we bought mid-range train tickets, no longer trying to live the cheapest way. In Europe, we had loved the solid life of peasants with traditions that keep them healthy and self-sufficient. The way Indians deal with their bodily wastes may be called childlike and innocent, but our psychologically repressive Western ways have set up a healthier way of life. After three and a half months in India, hepatitis and amoebic dysentery, we were longing for the safety of a cleaner society. The train would take us quickly and cheaply to Madras, the southernmost large city in India where we hoped for a connection to Australia.

The only drawback to our second-class seats was half-educated teenaged Indian boys trying out their English on us. At one point, a line formed to speak to Joe. “How are you? From which country do you belong? What is your occupation? What is the purpose of your visit?” The same questions were repeated as a speech with little regard to the answer. Joe lasted longer than I ever could have. I retired to my guise as a modest woman, pulling my scarf over my head, seldom meeting an eye, embroidering a small cotton bag with pictures of the exotic fruit it would carry or looking out the window at the changing scene as we went through hills overlooking jungle and across endless cultivated plains.

About halfway to Madras, in the middle of the lower third of the Indian sub-continent, we stopped in Bangalore to change trains. Instead of taking the noon express to Madras, we would take a sleeper car. Sleeping on a train should be more restful than chatting with silly boys all day, and we could avoid the trouble and expense of a hotel. Since crafts had been occupying much of our time, we visited the bazaar for macrame string, silk rope at a penny a meter, and colored glass beads strung on wire. We drank yogurt shakes, bought fruit, and retired to the train station.

The huge train station, an example of grandiose Victorian architecture dominated the poor, dusty city. The center of the building opened four stories high, with skylights for a roof. Here, a stroke of luck gave me 25% off the regular ticket price, student rate in the state of Mysore. In addition, our second class tickets would entitle us to the use of the upper-class waiting room, a holdover from the British Raj.

The third class waiting room was part of the tumult of Indian life filling the central chamber. Through the open door, a constant stream of beggars and hawkers tried their luck. A businessman stretched out for a nap on a wooden bench was nudged awake by a small boy selling peanuts. We walked past and up the metal staircase to balconied halls and into a room with a door that could be shut against the noise. The upper-class waiting room was empty except for some antique polished wooden wardrobes and comfortable chairs. The Victorian English for whom it was built have departed. When traveling, upper-class Indians surround themselves with servants, cushions, blankets and dinners. Between trains, they must not feel the need we did, to escape the crush of life surrounding them.

Next door to the upper-class waiting room, the upper-class dining room was similarly deserted. The menu was limited, seemingly left over from the British Raj like the rest of the train station. The choice was chicken, canned ham, or eggs. Our waiter understood nothing of our inquiries as to how the eggs would be cooked, so we just ordered them. Our meal arrived - plates of buttered white toast and perfectly soft-boiled eggs in egg cups. I was charmed by the presentation and found it delicious. My family didn't go in for soft boiled eggs, and I never mastered the art. “This is wonderful,” I said to Joe. “Let's get another one.”

“Go ahead.” Joe doesn't much care for soft-boiled eggs.

“Don't you want one too?” I asked.

“No,” he said, cleaning his plate.

“I guess I shouldn't then,” I said, disappointed.

“Go ahead. Have another one.”

“Well, I don't want to be greedy, and it is two and a half rupees. You'd have to wait,” I objected.

“I can wait. If you want it, get it.” He sat and waited while I ate my second perfectly soft-boiled egg on toast. Observing the conventions of the restaurant, he paid.

As we left, he announced, “I'm going downstairs for some fried noodles.”

“Do you think you should?” I asked, referring to the dietary restrictions for hepatitis: fried and oily foods wore forbidden while the liver healed.

“It's fine now,” he said shortly. I didn't argue. If I could have changed his mind, he would have been sulky. He was hungry, he didn't like soft-boiled eggs, and the fried noodles cost less.

We boarded the train at eight o'clock, feeling quite at ease. The sleeper car to Madras was empty except for us. Unfortunately, after we had pulled away from the station, Indian bureaucracy, embodied in the person of the train conductor, reared its head with another rule to plague us. The berths in the empty car were only available at a surcharge of six rupees. When we offered to pay the six rupees, the conductor would not accept our money. He had to have a chit from the ticket office. We were to stay in the upright chairs next to the windows all night. The chairs were uncomfortable, so I slept on the floor. Joe returned to a berth whenever the man left the car on his other duties. I wonder if we could have offered to pay double in order to sleep easy.

At 6:00 AM in Madras, we couldn't appreciate the train station, another monument to Victorian architecture. The ornate metalwork wasn't really out of place - India goes in for lots of decoration, but somehow the heat outside made English architecture look strange, surrounded by palm trees and rickshaws. Joe wasted a few hours filing an official complaint about the sleeper car. By 11:00 AM it was too hot to go far looking for lodging. Nearby, the Palace Hotel was clean and cost 8 rupees (80 cents).

After a rest, we went out to find food. Here in southern India, the milky tea was made with a lot of spices. I could taste the ginger: in fact, the spices were so strong that the tea tasted hot even after it was cold. Ginger ale was similarly overdone, becoming torture to drink instead of cool refreshment. The coconut became my source of cooling beverage. Throughout the city, pushcarts full of coconuts were attended by a man with a machete. One could choose a green coconut and simply drink the rich milk, or, a slightly ripe coconut could hold a thin layer of soft, sweet meat the consistency of pudding.

In the marketplace, we found the more exotic fruits of south India. Described as a fig/strawberry, looking like a kiwi fruit, the chikoo scored high. At first, the vendors would give us free tastes, but they soon came to know Joe as the one who bought chikoos by the dozen. Pomegranates were in season, and another fruit we had met in Spain, the custard apple, made an appearance. Fresh lichee nuts reminded me of sweet grapefruit. For a finale, jackfruit came on stage. The soft, thick yellow petals of fruit must be impossible to transport, as I have never once seen them in North America, where pale, tasteless versions of the rest are sold.

Once settled in Madras, we began at once to look for the best way to leave. Tourist information disclosed, to our surprise, that there were no boats to Australia. We would have to go to Singapore second class for over a hundred dollars to make such a connection. We were done with India, but the tickets to Singapore would take all our money. One more hope for this port would be to find free passage on a freighter. Our Greek friends in Chios had often spoken of their relatives working the ships as officers, so we went down to the harbor to investigate.

A guard at the harbor gate gave us a pass for the day, and we walked up to the towering, massive white freighters. We walked past the Russian freighter with incomprehensible writing on the bow, the longest of all and perfectly silent. From the Polish ship, sailors whistled and yelled and waved their arms to invite us on board. Though we shared no language, they were hospitable and produced black currant juice and chocolate. When they brought out a guitar, Joe played and we all sang along, whiling away the hour on an empty ship in a guarded harbor. By naming all the ports in the world, Joe found out their destination was back in Europe. We wanted to continue east, so we bid them farewell.

At the Greek ships, Joe called out to the men in Greek. “Kalostes! Isthe ine Chios?” On the first ship, the men yelled out that the steward was from Chios, but he was busy cooking and couldn't talk. The next ship, the Eurytan, had two Chios natives, both the first and second mates. The friendly second mate said both Greek freighters were awaiting sailing orders. He offered to see if he could get us a free ride on the Eurytan and said we should come back next week.

We were cheered by this visit to the harbor, feeling quite able to wait for such a possibility. In the meantime, we had an acquaintance to look up. At the home of a Norwegian macrobiotic in Spain, we had met an Indian prince, and Joe had carried the man's card for 2,000 miles, almost a year. When he pulled it out, we read “Raj Kumar Vish ...” and remembered the man who had asked us to call him Vishy. He had made extravagant claims for Indian cheeses, describing them as varied and wonderful. We had actually found almost no cheese at all in India, but perhaps Vishy had his own sources. A telephone call resulted in an invitation to dinner at his home the next day.

In the evening, we dressed in our best and took a rickshaw; otherwise we never would have been able to find our way into that section of town with empty streets and walled compounds. A servant met us at the door and showed us into an empty parlor. After a few minutes, Vishy came in the door and announced we would be eating with his wife and daughters. He seemed uncomfortable, perhaps he thought we would mention the reason he had been visiting Spain, a woman named Maria. He hurried us right in to the table, giving the impression we were late, though we had been on time.

Over a meal of unpolished “red” rice and lightly steamed vegetables, our host lectured didactically as to the correct manner of eating. He inveighed against hot curries, directing his criticism at his wife. He went on to advise strongly that we all chew each bite twenty times. No animal products appeared at all, so our hopes of a good cheese were dashed. The fruits were quite good, of course, but Vishy found no pleasure in them. He praised only the mango, then out of season. I ventured that the papaya was said to be good for the digestion. “In the summer when mangos are ripe, we do not eat the papaya at all,” he said.

My gravest mistake was in asking for a glass of water. I had been thirsting for cold pure water ever since Greece and all through this hot country. I hoped this Raj Kumar, concerned with health, would have good water. Unfortunately, Vishy had decided drinking water with meals was one of the worst things one could do. He informed me in no uncertain manner that it diluted the digestive juices. Perhaps he was covering up for the fact that he had no good water. I tried to recant, but, since I had asked, our host had a servant, equally disdainful of the task, bring me a glass of lukewarm water. It tasted no better than the water anywhere in that country. A small dish of honey ended the meal, and we left as soon as possible.

We walked back to the hotel, letting off the steam that had built up from our frustration at sitting through such a meal. The connection in Spain held a memory of better times, so it was depressing to have it turn out badly.

The next morning, another blow fell. I woke with symptoms of hepatitis. I had been watching for yellow eyes and orange pee ever since Joe had come down with his case six weeks before. I was tired, but not overwhelmed, as Joe had been. I decided against seeing a doctor. All the help Joe had been able to get was advice to rest and to watch the diet. I didn't want to get a prescription for sugar pills or liver pills. I also felt sure the gamma globulin shot I had gotten for twenty dollars would do some good.

All I really needed was reading material, and the American Consulate actually had a lending library. Faced with enforced leisure, I read Thomas Wolfe's The Web and the Rock without getting impatient. The Autobiography of a Yogi was so full of accounts of miracles that I decided it must be considered myth.

Gandhi's Truth by Eric Erikson gave me a psychological explanation of the Indian “baseline of truthfulness” within “a spacetime so filled with visual and auditory occurrences that it is very difficult to lift an episode out of the flux of events, a fact out of the stream of feelings, a circumscribed relationship out of a fusion of multiple reviewers.” Erikson goes on to say, “Westerners believe truth to be the sum of what can be isolated and counted. It is what can be logically accounted for, what can be proved to have happened, or what you really mean at the moment you say it, while keeping it somehow consistent with what you meant earlier or expect to say later. Deviation from such truth makes you a liar, and I have heard it said often enough that Indians, because truth means something different to that, are habitual liars.” Gandhi himself tried for a fusion, “to erect a bulwark based on radical factualness, obsessive punctuality and absolute responsibility, all within a meaningful flux which he called Truth.”

After a week of rest and good food, I felt normal. Of course, “normal” at the time was low. We were short of money and unhappy with the society we had found in India. We had both been seriously ill. I would be prone to stomach ailments for a full year after the amoebic dysentery.

Meanwhile, the Palace Hotel had been getting on our nerves. Our room on the second floor shared a bathroom. Probably because of our proximity to the railway station, the hotel catered to businessmen. In the morning, they would clear their throats and spit for about five minutes altogether. It seemed like a contest they held. Each in his turn in the bathroom would try to go the deepest into his throat, retching in order to bring up the phlegm. Somehow, the acoustics at the Palace Hotel made the noises, unpleasant to wake up to, impossible to ignore.

Of course, we should have been used to spitting by now. Throughout India, gobs of red spit on the ground attested to the betel nut habit. The main attraction in chewing betel nut is a mentholated numbing of the mouth, a counterpoint to the burning sensation of chili pepper, but part of the pleasure must be the production of red saliva. Even men dressed in immaculate white seemed unembarrassed by the stains of red drool.

Joe explored town and found a quieter hotel. As soon as I felt better, we moved to the Shri Pankaja Lodge where we had a fan and more privacy for 5 rupees. Our room opened to a walkway. To the right, the gate went to the street, to the left, the gate to the outdoor bathroom, a stone courtyard with a well, fenced off so the men could bathe in the open dousing themselves with a bucket of cold water. I used a small stone room like a shower stall. Around the corner was the outhouse. A servant for the hotel, a young man named Hyatt Bashar, spoke English and was both friendly and helpful.

Our new neighborhood was like an Indian village with small colorful shops lining the streets. On the corner, a fruit stand held hanging bunches of bananas, red, yellow and green. Next door, open bins displayed wheat berries, two kinds of dried beans and three colors of lentils. The beans and lentils I had seen throughout India, but the wheat berries especially interested me. I bought some to cook like rice, and the shopkeeper pointed out a mill where I could get them ground right across the street. Fresh flour seemed worthwhile. I could make a loaf of bread to eat instead of those everlasting chapatis. I bought a liter of wheat berries for ten cents and took them home to sort out the small stones. Grinding cost a penny and a half. I had the yeast for my dietary experiment. I thought of rigging up a dutch oven, but our young friend, Hyatt Bashar, said the bakery would only charge five cents. I achieved a loaf of delicious bread, all the better for being the first loaf we had eaten for five months.

I wondered about the small stones that always had to be picked out of the foodstuffs, Sometimes, the threshing process can leave stones, even in the United States, especially in beans. In India, stones are added in to boost the weight, memorably a brown sugar adulterated with fine gray gravel. Finding the residue at the bottom of my cup of tea, I gave the sugar away to the next beggar.

Our quiet neighborhood in Madras kept up the southern Indian tradition of chalk designs on the front steps to decorate the early morning hours. Traditionally, the designs were made with lines of flour to feed small insects and birds, but these were made with chalk. I copied some of the designs for my letters home.

At certain hours, the corner lunchroom would serve dosas, a sourdough rice pancake. Once, I brought in a jar of jam. Of course, everyone noticed. We were on display constantly anyway and the wooden benches offered no place to hide my luxury, a jam jar. Joe thought I shouldn't have brought food into a restaurant, though they didn't seem to mind. It was a lesson to me in conformity, managing my sweet tooth, and that jam doesn't go very well with unbuttered dosas.

One Saturday, we set out early to investigate the municipal pool, men only, hours 9 to 3, set in a park next the ocean. Naturally, the ocean was unsafe because of raw sewage. Since we had inadvertently picked a weekend, all of the buses to the park were more than full. We let two go by before a “Women Only” bus came by. There was plenty of room, so I went on without Joe, taking my place among colorful saris and long black hair, all oiled and braided with flowers woven in.

At the park, I waited for Joe's bus to pull in, so overfilled that men were hanging onto the door handles. Joe paid his rupee and went into the pool for a swim. I went down to the beach, but it was filthy and hot. Across the street from the pool, the park was at least shady, but full of people wanting to talk to me. I just wanted to read, but an older man, a teacher, continued to ply me with questions and invitations, always in the politest manner, except that he ignored my only request, to be left alone.

Finally, I gave up on the book and fielded questions while watching Joe swim in the pool across the street. With my glasses on I could distinguish his hairy form among the slighter, darker Indian bodies. Joe seemed to be enjoying himself, but, when he came out, his report wasn't good. The water was warm and the air still, so he didn't feel refreshed. We had worried that the pool wouldn't be clean. He said there was enough chlorine to kill a cat, but there was also a half inch of hair oil floating on the top. He didn't think there was a ladies day, but he also didn't think I would like it, nor would he go back.

After waiting ten days, Joe went back to the port to see if the officers on the Greek ships had received sailing orders yet. The second mate on the Eurytan, Michaelis, was optimistic. Their sailing orders had come in and he expected to know them by the next day. He invited us to join him at a restaurant the next evening, Monday. Our friend in the hotel, Hyatt Bashar, was excited to hear that we would be going out to dinner with a ship's officer. The restaurant, he informed us, was one of the best in town. In honor of the occasion, Joe went to the tailor in the marketplace to have a new shirt made. To be sure it was done in two hours, as the tailor had promised, Joe waited in their extra chair.

When Monday evening came, Michaelis was there already, waiting politely, dressed in his uniform. He agreed with Hyatt Bashar, but went farther: this was the best restaurant in town, he said. And we should not be worried at prices because this was his treat. Joe and I were underdressed, but Michaelis didn't seem to mind. The maitre d' was polite, and no one insisted Joe wear a tie. As Americans of our generation, we were able to pretend everyone else was overdressed.

By Indian standards, the food was expensive, but our vegetarian specialties were the cheaper meals. Michaelis went all out, ordering the sizzling lobster steak for $10.00. As we sat, the first mate arrived with the captain. We looked around to see the handsome young man we had met walking in with a short, fat man with white hair and a red, lined face. “I'm lucky to be only second mate,” said Michaelis. “Yiannis was going to join us, but I guess the captain decided to keep him. Our captain is a bastard. He still hasn't told us where we're going. Maybe he's telling Yiannis now, but I wouldn't bet on it. The old man has been in a bad mood lately. As usual.”

The news was not good, but it didn't seem to matter much in the face of the wonderful food. We spent the rest of the meal talking about Greece. As we left the restaurant, we walked past the captain holding forth while the first mate listened attentively. For dessert, we all walked down the street for the best ice cream sundae in Madras, We said our good-byes, and Michaelis told Joe to drop by the port in a couple of days for the final word.

On Wednesday, Port Authority provided another glitch, a rule that strangers to the port could only visit once a week. Luckily, the guard decided to be nice, and Joe went to visit the Eurytan for one last time. The ship was going to Bangkok, the right direction, but we were not invited to ride. The other Greek ship anchored nearby was going back to Europe.

We were back to two options. The boat to Singapore for one hundred dollars, or try to save money by going the overland route through Calcutta. From Calcutta, the cheapest transport was a plane to Malaya. The eastern border of India, Burma, was closed. South of Burma, Thailand took up a short distance before war-ridden Cambodia and Vietnam. None of this seemed wise or enjoyable, and to cap it all off, just north of Madras, one of the Indian states was fighting for independence and tearing up railway tracks. To leave India as soon as possible, we opted for the boat across the Bay of Bengal.

Money was low, so Joe wired his parents for four hundred dollars. We hoped this would take us to Australia where we had friends working. The money came in record time, the next day, and we bought tickets for the Rajula, sailing on February thirteenth.

The night before we left, we celebrated by going out to the movies, Rampur Ka Lakshman. Glossy posters outside the movie palace showed that no expense had been spared in bringing this epic to the screen. Lakshman was played by a man whose face graced the ubiquitous Indian movie magazines. Inside the huge theater, hawkers brought food to your seat. They must have been limited by having to pay the theater concession. After a suitable time for everyone to have bought, the lights dimmed.

Indian movies wouldn't do as a steady diet. A realistic beginning showed violence on a train erupting to wrench families apart. An immediate cut to the future showed our hero grown to be a plump fellow particularly good at wagging his head from side to side, a common Indian gesture that looks foolish to a Westerner. His head seemed to be on a special joint like a dashboard ornament. The heroine played an undiscovered singer needing to be rescued from Bad Men, easily recognized by their Western origin. Soon enough, our hero found his true origin, heir to a fortune. All in all, a colorful, vivid show, and easily understood, being almost entirely in English with subtitles for the few words of Hindi.

In the morning, we were ready to leave. Saying good-bye to Hyatt Bashar, Joe presented him with a royal tip, ten rupees, more than he made in a month. The young man was thrilled, and immediately ran out to buy us a gift, sugary grape soda. We had to smile and drink while he watched, in spite of personal preference and dietary rules we had set. He had been a pleasant helper, always seeming genuinely happy to be useful.

February 13 (lucky Tuesday) was our last day in India. We didn't know how they would feed us on the boat so we filled our large string bag with food, tinned ghee on the bottom, chikoos on the top. When we saw the accommodations, we knew why we hadn't been allowed, as Westerners, to buy third class tickets. Third class went below with a load of onions, and we never saw them again. We set our belongings in our second class cabins, women separated from men, and sat down to relax on the deck chairs and watch India fall behind.

In fact, we need not have brought any food. The Rajula was set up like a cruise, serving five meals a day for the whole nine day voyage. At 6:00 AM, a waiter brought coffee and dried biscuits to the room. Breakfast was porridge at 9:00 in the dining room. Lunch at noon was served as a cold buffet. Tea and cookies came at 4:00. Supper at 7:00 was on the lines of chicken pie, tinned peas and bread pudding. A chance to gain back the weight we had lost.

The Rajula provided one shuffleboard court for daytime activity. As the cabins were much too small, we did Yoga exercises on deck in the evening. This was accepted as normal by our fellow second class passengers, a California craftsman who had been buying beads, an older Italian woman who had been visiting Sri Aurobindo's ashram south of Madras, and a pleasant young Indian man who had gone to school in England. The first class passengers included an English family with two friendly children. In the afternoons, Joe and I did our crafts. February 14 being Valentine's Day, I cut and painted a few cards for fellow travelers away from home. The English children were interested, and the Californian seemed quite touched and presented me with a large bead. The ship's movie was “The Love Machine”, edited for India, from a trashy book by Jacqueline Susann.

Our destination, Singapore, had laws against long hair on men. Joe hadn't cut his hair for three years and only wanted to visit the city state for as short a time as possible on the way to Australia, so he didn't want to submit.

After talking to a Sikh from first class, Joe decided a turban was the answer. In fact, the man offered to give him one and to show how to wrap it. I was detailed to come along and learn how to help. In the first class stateroom, the man took out a length of thin maroon cloth about two feet wide and six feet long. He and Joe each took two corners and pulled opposite corners to stretch the material along the bias of the fabric. The process seemed to iron the folds out of the thin cloth. When it was smooth, they pulled straight along the length and folded the cloth in half lengthwise, ready to wrap.

Joe stood in front of the mirror with his ponytail tucked up, holding one end at the nape of his neck with six inches hanging down. The Sikh arranged the cloth carefully over his arm and began winding the turban around Joe's head. The first fold crossed the left middle of the forehead diagonally and continued over the right side of the head. The folded cloth was pulled tight around the back of the neck, over the tail, and continued to the left side of the head. The Sikh positioned the second fold to mirror the first, pulling it down over the right middle of the forehead. A neat peak formed in the middle of Joe's forehead, surrounded by successive layers until the cloth was used up, some eight folds on each side. The last layer was tucked in at the nape of the neck while the tail came up the back, over the top of the head and into the folds to form a smooth hat. The process took a full half hour and looked great. The interweaving of the folds made the turban strong enough to keep its form so Joe could take it off, pack it carefully, and use it whenever needed. He kept it for six months until it finally got dirty. Once I washed it, we never rewound it.

After seven days of calm steaming across the Bay of Bengal, the Rajula stopped in the port of Penang to unload some of its cargo of onions. When they opened the hold, the stench was enough to keep us on the other side of the ship. We were looking forward to Singapore, a city described as the cleanest in the Orient.

CHAPTER XVII: SINGAPORE

In order to enforce Singapore's law long hair on men, officials brought a barber on board before the Rajula could dock. Joe had his neat Sikh turban and was ready to swear by Guru Nadak that he was not to cut his hair or beard. The officials looked at our luggage, stamped our passports without comment, and went downstairs to third class.

We disembarked wondering if it would be like a Chinese Bombay. But Singapore had done everything possible to make itself clean and modern. After India, we felt we had advanced a century in time. Dazed from culture shock and dizzy from sea legs, we sat by the harbor and looked around. Joe noticed a number of long haired men walking by, so he took off his turban to show his neat pony-tail. Leaving the harbor, we ended up riding a bus in a tropical downpour. People were not as officiously helpful as in India, but when we asked, English speakers directed us to a cheap hotel, $1.60 per night. We dropped our luggage and went out to the bazaar district to sample the local foodstuffs.

We were as close to the equator as we would get, at two degrees north, and the February day ended quickly. The rain had stopped, and night fell as we wandered through the narrow streets of the busy marketplace, brilliantly lit with bare electric bulbs strung everywhere, over the streets and between the little shops and stalls.

An open room under the corner of a building housed a restaurant selling fried noodles. Out in front, the cook tended a huge wok set over hot coals. The tantalizing odor of frying meat brought in a constant stream of customers. We watched people come, choose their selection of vegetables and meats and wait for their meal to be cooked before their eyes. The cook poured in a generous amount of oil and added the meats to sizzle before adding the cooked spaghetti noodles and vegetables.

We chose a vegetable and noodle dish that was delicious until Joe started to wonder what type of fat the man used. Probably rendered lard, he decided, and suddenly the meal seemed heavy. Was the grease thicker than vegetable oil? We hadn't eaten meat for two years and wondered if the change might affect our systems. These were not spiritual or religious qualms: Joe has more of a physical horror of the thought of eating a fellow mammal, while I took on vegetarianism as a discipline and a healthier way of eating. Without any proof that we had been eating pig fat, we decided to ignore our doubts.

The next day, visiting the post office, we saw the first evidence of Singapore's policy against long haired males. On the wall above the counter where we would be waited on, a huge sign declared, “LONG HAIRED MALES WILL BE SERVED LAST”. Under the statement were drawings of exactly what long hair was. The first drawing showed a young Chinese man with hair over his eyebrows, the second showed a side view with the tops of the ears covered, and the third showed the back of a head with hair coming over the collar. All the hairstyles were very neat. Joe left me to do the mail and went out to look for a map of the city.

Back to our hotel by noon, we found a lunchcart in the little park across the street. As big as a hot dog wagon, it held glass tanks filled with what we thought were soybean products in water lined three sides of the cart: cakes of tofu, soft, medium or firm, and beanstarch noodles in various shapes, but the vendor spoke no English, so we had to guess. In the center of the cart, a mixing area held raw chopped onion and another container of something fried. We reasoned it had to be tofu, so we bought a bowl of noodles with onion and the fried item. The noodles were tasteless, even textureless. The onion was hot, and the fried something tasted just like chicken skin, Joe said. My family never ate the chicken skin, so I couldn't say. Probably it was some sort of thin tofu, fried in chicken fat, eroding our standards of vegetarianism again.

Having gotten the mail, the next order of business concerned plans to move on. Money was running low. Australia was supposed to be a good place to find a job. Our friends had found plenty of work there the year before, so we went to the Australian Embassy for visas. Since Joe was officially in Singapore in a turban, he decided to wear it.

Australia kept a suite of offices in an official building downtown. Our applications for the only visas available, for six weeks, were immediately refused. Americans like us were only allowed in if they had enough money to get home. Our penniless friend had been allowed in Australia because he was Canadian. The first man we spoke to explained that unemployment had just risen to 4%. Joe argued that we were not planning to take the choice white collar jobs or to apply for unemployment, but the policy held. We had to have enough money to support ourselves and to return home.

After we left the embassy, Joe felt we were being discriminated against, so he sent me back in alone to see if they would let just me into Australia. They seemed willing to discuss that possibility. I wasn't really interested, but I listened for a while. Traveling alone, I could have gotten a visa more easily. When I reported back to Joe, he was furious and went in to tell them off. He came out just as angry as he had gone in.

I felt a bit lost at such a momentous change of plans and just wanted to sit in the park opposite the hotel and digest the news, but once we got back, Joe couldn't sit still and left to walk his anger away. After a couple of hours which I spent writing, he was back with a sleek head. The shoulder length hair was gone, only about a half inch remained near the neck. “It's too short, I know,” Joe said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, completely surprised.

“But I couldn't talk to the barber. He didn't speak English. I walked, and I walked, and when I got down by the harbor I saw this old Chinese barber, so I went in.”

“But when did you decide to cut your hair?”

“I've been thinking about it. Are you going to leave me now?”

“No. But it is too short.”

“It was only fifty cents. You know what my last haircut cost?”

“Five years ago, you mean? Didn't they just go up to two fifty?”

“Make that four dollars.”

“But it shouldn't be that short.”

“It lasts longer this way. I'm lucky it's even. The barber's hands were shaking so badly, I almost left halfway through. He gave me Playboy to read so I wouldn't notice how much he needed his opium fix. I just sat very still.”

“Are you going to trim your beard too?”

“Yeah, but I can do that. Where are your scissors?”

So I watched him trim his beard, staring at the newly revealed shape of his head. He didn't want to talk about why he'd done it. I waited until we saw the other Westerners in the hotel and let them ask him. He said that long hair wasn't worth all the bother it had become.

With Australia off the table, our fellow travelers could only suggest Japan. After a $200 flight, we might get jobs teaching English, but Japan was an expensive country. We could go to London for the same price on a charter, and from London, get to New York for only $79. Tired of hassling with money, we bought two tickets for London on the cheap charter in two weeks, March 11.

We had only $100 left, so I telegraphed my parents asking for $200, saying I would be coming home. Meanwhile, Joe was still wondering about the money he had lost in India. American Express owed him a refund of $700. In fact, he even wondered if the $400 he had received at the Bank of India in Madras had been a partial refund. It had come with no cover letter only two days after he had asked his parents to send it.

At the plush offices of American Express in downtown Singapore, Joe was ushered into a private, carpeted room to tell his story and then wait while the agent left the room to make some calls to find out about this refund. The man returned saying American Express, Delhi, said that the refund had been a mistake. Joe should give back the money. This Joe was not going to do. He telegraphed his father, and got an answer right away. “I sent the money. Do not give American Express $400.”

Now we had two weeks left of our grand tour, two weeks in Singapore, duty-free port, buying capital of Indonesia, with no money. Of course, we had found the cheapest hotel possible, in the Indian section of town. Our unpainted wood room had a high ceiling but only one window, above the door to the hall. We didn't spend much time in it. Singapore is clean, by government decree, so the cheap little restaurants in the open air were pleasant. We could make a meal of tropical fruit, sitting in the little park across the street.

As it sank in that we would really be going back, we talked about what to do when we got there, deciding it would be easier all around to get married. The people we had liked best on our travels had been married. We had been living as a couple for two years now and were cautiously confident we wouldn't break up, certain a break-up would hurt. It seemed natural. My mother was to be most disappointed at my lack of romantic notions.

The fellow travelers in the hotel had some advice on how to live in Singapore. The young American woman in the next room, Ursula, advised me to join her at Pang's Escort Service. Ursula got $8.00 to be entertained and taken to dinner, and she said she had no trouble with her dates. Joe asked me if I could handle it, and I felt sure I could. I can easily assume a distant air that, coupled with my height, seems to turn men away. It certainly seemed better than working a clip joint, the job foreign girls could get in the Canary Islands, drinking for a percentage of the bar's profit on overpriced, watered “champagne cocktails”. I had to buy an outfit, but Ursula told me about a place where I spent only $6.00 on a dress. I also needed make-up, she said, which I could get cheaply at the bazaar. She took me to Pang's Monday afternoon. Pang was a very short Chinese man, somewhat misshapen, with dark black hair and a wrinkled frowning face. He said I could come with Ursula, to be there at about 7:00.

Monday evening we all sat in a row of metal and plastic chairs. The Chinese girls sat together quietly. The Malayan girls chatted and giggled. Ursula and an English woman named Edwina told me not to worry. Everything would be fine. They never had any trouble. The men always acted like gentlemen. My first trouble was in getting a date at all. Ursula was gone by 7:15. Edwina went next. The Chinese girls all went out. I was left sitting with a few Malayan girls. At 9:00, I asked Pang if I should go home, but he said to wait. At 10:00 a Malaysian tire company owner came in and chose me to go out for drinks. I hadn't eaten much before coming in, but I was not going to get dinner at that hour. I don't remember the man, I hope he was satisfied with his English lesson and being seen with a tall American woman. Tuesday I went by the agency at noon and collected my $8.00. Tuesday night was really dead. When not even the Chinese girls had gone out at 10:00, Pang gave me $4.00 and sent me home.

Joe and I visited with Ursula Wednesday. Hearing about Pang's consolation prize, she exclaimed about what a sweet guy he was. I had noticed that Pang liked this short, pretty woman. His face softened when he talked to her. She was the perfect date, the right size and personality, loving to meet people and to talk. She told me not to be discouraged. Some nights were just like that. We sat in her room while she went on with stories about dates. A young American she had met at the local opium den came by and listened too. She regaled us with a tale of how she had once gone on a date stoned on opium. She claimed to have been quite aware and to have talked normally, but with her eyes closed the whole time. The date had been with two sweet young American boys, and they had not seemed to mind.

Wednesday night, my journal records a date with an Indonesian government official and his guide. Only the guide spoke English, He took my part to explain to the man what I might be expected to do. As I recall, the date was very short.

Thursday's date was fun. Once again I waited until 10:00 when Mr. Alex Lee brought two young friends, a Chinese and an Australian, to the agency, and they took a Malaysian girl and me. Mr. Lee was efficient. The taxi was waiting, and we all piled in. I was in front with Mr. Lee, and the Malaysian girl was in back with the younger men. At the Shangri-La Hotel nightclub, we took a table not far from the dance floor.

The Australian was extravagantly interested in the pretty Malaysian girl, plying her with a drink and then taking her off to the dance floor. The tall Chinese boy was really only interested in drinking. I asked Mr. Lee where he had learned his very good English and found he had an English grandfather. He called himself Eurasian, a mixed breed, at home with neither culture. He had a company in Kuala Lanpur, the capital of Malaysia, importing art materials. He asked about my travels, and, when I praised Singapore, gave his criticism of its stultifying government.

Mr. Lee must have noticed I was listening to the music and watching the dancers, and he apologized for not dancing. When the Australian took a break from dancing with the Malaysian girl, he suggested the man take me on the floor.

We were neither of us trained dancers, but he took me in dance position and rocked back and forth. His idea of conversation was to try out a few set lines, delivered quickly. “I thought we'd never get together. We 're the two Westerners here. We could really get along. I'm glad I'm tall enough.” I smiled at the mention of the height that had been giving me a few problems getting dates. “Hey, that's good. You're very pretty when you smile. You should do it more often.” I didn't know what to say. I've never been a flirt. I knew he liked the Malaysian girl better.

“The other girl smiles a lot,” I said. He was embarrassed by my forthrightness, but at least he quit feeding me lines. Instead of looking at his red, pitted face, I looked over his shoulder at the band until the song was over and the charade could end. We were both relieved as he escorted me back.

When the dancing was over for the night, the Chinese boy had disappeared and our Australian was sure he had a lady love. He looked lost when his girl hailed her own cab and bid him good-bye, her face serious for the first time that night. Mr. Lee had asked me to join them in his taxi, so I listened as he reasoned with his young friend. “You know I told you so. Remember I told you not to choose a Malay girl. They are just flirts. They will never be serious. They will just smile and laugh. Anyway, you shouldn't expect anything from an escort service. But luckily, you are with me. I will take care of you.”

Mr. Lee made a phone call while I sat in the taxi with the chastened Australian. Then we drove off to the suburbs to a quiet looking house and let him off. “Now,” said Mr. Lee, “Perhaps you will accompany me to a late meal as part at your evening's duties.” I agreed readily. “Perhaps something near your hotel. Where do you stay?” I told him the street, and we were on our way. Driving along, thinking about the evening, I began to wonder about the quiet house in the suburbs.

“What was that place you took Jim to?” I asked.

“They will take good care of him there,” Mr. Lee said mysteriously.

“Is it a massage place? He seemed awfully tense,” I said.

“I'm sure they will include massage if he asks for it. But, no. Since you ask, it is a house of prostitution.”

“Oh.” I was surprised and disappointed. “That's not nice.”

“Why do you say that? It was the nicest thing I could do for him.”

“A prostitute was the nicest thing you could do for him? That isn't what he needs. A man needs a relationship. He needs more than just to pay for sex.”

“Well, in principle you're right,” Mr. Lee agreed. “But this man had worked himself into such a state. He had been off in the Australian bush country mining for months. He was feeling his time away from women was so intolerable, he couldn't function normally. You danced with him. What did you think?”

“He was pretty awful. He didn't talk. He just fed me some lines.”

“You didn't like him. These women don't have to like him. They will take care of him, and maybe he will see straight tomorrow.”

I still disapproved, but held my peace and said, “Maybe you're right. It's too late to do anything anyway.”

When we arrived at my street, Mr. Lee seemed quite at home in this modest neighborhood. I would have thought all the restaurants would be closed at this hour, but he went right to an unobtrusive door that opened into a courtyard where the Chinese rice soup, congee, was served.

When I admitted I had never tried congee, Mr. Lee was surprised. “This is the national dish of these Chinese. You should eat some of this rice gruel as part of your tour.”

“Rice gruel doesn't sound too appealing. Why don't you call it rice stew? I never tried it because most of the things to mix in are meat. I don't eat meat.”

“You don't eat meat? We will find you something suitable.” He spoke to the old man behind the long pane of glass that separated us from the condiments, and we watched the choices deftly spooned onto our bowls of rice stew.

“Were you in India?” he asked.

“India.” I let my shoulders slump and put the weight of my despair with that country show in the word.

“India was not to your liking? Certainly there are many vegetarians in India.” We took our bowls and moved towards a table.

“Singapore is a lot better for me,” I said. “It's clean.”

“Singapore is very clean. It is government policy. They are very restrictive. I like Kuala Lumpur better. Have you visited Kuala Lumpur?”

“No, I came on a boat straight from Madras.”

“Have you been traveling alone?”

“Well, to tell the truth ...” I looked at him realizing it would be a lot easier to talk if I could say 'we'. Most of my decisions were not made alone. “I'm traveling with a man. We've been together for two years now.”

“Traveling the whole time?”

“Traveling for a year and a half. Now we've run out of money, and Australia won't let us in. We had hoped to work.”

“You're not married to this man?” I was impatient with this question, I would have said so if we were. I had said so many times to less sophisticated people around the world. Nevertheless, I answered politely. “We have a good relationship. We were too young, and we weren't ready for marriage.” I paused. “But things are changing. We might be getting married.”

“So. Now you've been together for some time. Maybe you're engaged. How does he feel about your going out on dates?”

“We need the money, and he trusts me.”

“Is he right to trust you?”

“Oh, yes.” There was no doubt in my answer, no smile on my face. I looked down, and there was a little silence while we sampled our late meal. Mr. Lee had managed to get a lovely selection of crunchy vegetables mixed with the thick, salty rice stew, making a perfect meal for the late hour. Then Mr. Lee continued. “You're a nice girl, and Australia should let you in.”

I looked up. “Australia would let me in, but not him.”

“Does he have long hair?”

“He did. He's just cut it. He had put on a turban for the Australian Embassy.”

“I expect that didn't help.” We laughed. “As a salesman, I have a lot of connections with Australia. Maybe I could help you. This is my card. You should come to Kuala Lumpur. It is lovely. Look me up, and I'll see what I can do.”

I was pleased with the offer, took the card and thanked him. Our meal over, we walked the short distance to the hotel and said our good-byes. Joe was asleep and didn't wake to hear the news. In the morning, I slept late, but found him having tea in the park across the street.

“I had a fun date. Look.” I handed him Mr. Lee's card. “He's nice and says he can get you into Australia maybe.”

“Maybe? What maybe? I wouldn't go to fucking Australia.”

“You wouldn't go to fucking Australia? Why not?”

“Fuck it. Australians are assholes.” That shut me up. Maybe he was a little upset with me for going on dates after all. The Australian Embassy had been stuffy, but the country was probably fine. If he hadn't lost his money, we might have gotten visas. We had planned for a long time to go to Australia. However, if he didn't want to travel any more, that was fine with me. I'd seen enough of the world for a while.

He sat for a while in silence until I said, “Okay, no Australia. But do you still think I should go on dates?”

“Sure, go on dates. I'm not mad at you. But I don't think this card is much of anything. The address is Kuala Lumpur.”

“He said I would love Kuala Lumpur.”

“Just forget it.”

That evening, Joe felt ill and took to bed. I went off with Ursula. As were waiting at Pang's, the tall Chinese boy from Mr. Lee's party came in and motioned to me. He didn't talk to Pang, but I thought maybe Mr. Lee had arranged something, so I followed him outside. The young man took my hand to walk me across the empty street.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Come on,” he smiled at me.

“Where's Mr. Lee?”

“No Mr. Lee. Come on.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Come on,” he urged.

“No.” Halfway into the empty street, I freed my hand and asked, “Are you going to pay?”

“No pay. Come on.”

I realized now he was drunk. He seemed pretty sure of himself, probably because he was as tall as me. “I'm not coming,” I told him. “If you want a date, you can see Mr. Pang”. I turned to see Pang watching from the doorway. I walked back. My non-date left, and Pang told me I was a good girl.

A little later, Pang got a phone call. It seemed the customer didn't want to come into the agency, and he asked Pang to just send someone to his hotel. Pang looked doubtful, but I guess he decided I could handle it. Pang put me into a taxi, and I went off. I thought I would be met in the lobby, at least, but I was sent up. I left the door open, standing just inside to announce, “I'm from Pang's Escort Service.”

Looking up from the desk, the young man was startled into saying. “I didn't know you would be so tall.”

I sat down in a chair by the open door. “If you didn't want a tall Western girl, you should have gone in to choose for yourself.” I sighed. “You could have asked for a Malaysian or a Chinese. They're all short.”

“I have dates with Malay and Chinese girls all the time. I don't need an escort service for that.”

“Well ... There are a few short Western girls, but they are very popular. They're probably gone by now. You really should have gone in.” I didn't know what to suggest.

“That's all right.” He had recovered from his shock. “You're fine. I like you. We won't go dancing. What do you like to do? What's your name?”

“I'm Ellen. I'd like to go out to eat. How about pizza?”

“My name is David. I don't know about pizza. What is it?”

“It's Italian bread with tomatoes and cheese. Americans love it. If you want a typical American date, we should have pizza. And Coke.”

“I know Coke,” said David. So we looked up in the Yellow Pages where the pizza places were and had a quiet evening. He wondered why I didn't wear make-up. But I was. I pointed out the eyeliner, and told him I worked very hard to keep the make-up from showing. Singapore style is much more painted, but I had to enjoy looking at my face, too. I told him the natural look was the fashion in the United States. By the end of the evening. I had invited him to visit us in the USA, and given him an address, but I never heard from him.

The climate of the city changed quickly when the enormous nuclear powered Navy aircraft carrier, the Enterprise, docked for a week of “R and R”. Sailor boys on leave crowded all the shops. My date was with two navy men, nice boys who had joined up because there wasn't anything else to do in their small towns in Minnesota. At the nightclub, I was amazed that suddenly the dance floor was full of beautiful young black women. I couldn't understand it. My next date, a black officer from the ship, was able to explain it easily. Those were men from the ship.

I wrote home. “Until our charter flight leaves, I have a job. Just talking to men in nightclubs. Western girls are very popular. I make eight dollars a night, but Singapore is expensive (cheap for an international city), and I had to buy some clothes, so working eight days, I've only saved $40. It's easy work, but bad hours: 8:00 to 1:00. I discover how much shyness I've lost in a year and a half. It's easy to make conversation. Don't worry. I don't drink. Believe me this isn't the first job I would have picked, but it's the only one available. I'm happy to be making money after all this time. A huge American aircraft carrier, biggest ship in the world, the nuclear Enterprise, just came into town for a week. These sailor boys are rich, lonely and very unsophisticated. They are easy to talk to for my job, and half of them don't drink either, but they are a bit boring. My last date fell in love with me.”

Sandy-haired John was the tallest but most insecure of a group of navy men who came in and swept away all the English-speaking girls. John's buddy drew me aside to tell me they were worried about him. The boy was depressed. I was nice to him and listened to his troubles. The ship was so huge; he worked below decks and never saw the sunshine; nothing was interesting, and he wanted to go home to Mississippi. We all had dinner in a restaurant's private dining room, and then sat around with drinks. As the evening wore on, the guys made plans for their next day off. They were going to rent rooms in the biggest hotel in town on Thursday, and spend the day at the pool. We girls were invited. I promised to go.

I took Wednesday night off, and when Thursday came, I kept my promise. John was still depressed. He cheered up a bit in the brilliant sunshine on the roof of the hotel. I took a short dip in the crowded pool, and then we had drinks poolside. When it was time to go, John showed me a room to change in and made a clumsy pass which I turned down. Then he complained about my going to work. “I shouldn't have to pay to take you out,” he said.

“Look,” I said. “You haven't. Here I am. But I'm short of money, and escort service is the only job I can get. You don't have to take me out.” He backed down. “Oh, all right, I'll get you tomorrow night, and we can go to a movie.”

Pang must have been pleased with me when John showed up to take me out for “The Poseidon Adventure”. I let him hold my hand. This empty charade was not my style, so I told him I was leaving town, but would write. We exchanged addresses, and I kissed him good-bye. I wrote to him for a while, finally saying I was engaged. I offered to continue the correspondence, but never heard from him again. I never went back to be an escort again either. I also stopped writing in the journal. We would leave in two more days. Somehow, knowing we were going back made the record less important. Also, the book was filled. The 1973 entries would have overlapped with the previous year on Gran Canaria.

The day before we left, we took a harbor boat trip out to a tiny empty sandy island for a picnic lunch. We didn't go so far that we couldn't see the huge oil refineries, but the water was as clean and clear as we could wish. Diving with a mask, we could see exotic fish that brighten aquariums flashing about like flowers blooming unseen - except that the fish see each other, just as insects see the flowers, the colors broadcasting clear messages.

After a morning in the market, we had more than enough to think about carrying. I bought batik sarongs and t-shirts, export quality, unique, of a style I have never seen again. Joe found the right price for a guitar and a cassette recorder from Japan. We boarded our plane in the tropical night of March 11. The flight to London was broken by a midnight fuel stop in Bahrain. We got off to stretch our legs in an empty desert station with an incredibly expensive snack bar patronized by a few men in turbans.

I can't recommend England in early March. We went from sweltering heat to a definite chill, starting with immigration. The English officials wanted to know our plans and were not thrilled to hear we were planning to take the $79 flight to New York, saying it was illegal, but explaining no more. And we had only one hundred dollars apiece, plus a few trade goods. They were doubtful what to do with us.

Meanwhile, I was freezing in my sleeveless traveling dress, so I excused myself and changed in the Ladies. New Singapore-tailored black pants, a clean blouse and a little make-up may have helped decide our fate. I certainly felt more able to face England. It may be, as Joe said, that they had been giving us a hard time on principle. Finally, rather than make a scene, they gave us seven day visas.

We had two addresses in England. One was the office of Bit Information, publisher of a traveler's newsletter, helpful hints about the overland route to India. We figured we could exchange hints about how to get along in Singapore for hints on how to get along in London. We were pleasantly surprised to find they kept a free dormitory, a room with cots. We could only stay one night - their rule kept the place from being overrun. In fact, we had the place to ourselves.

The people writing Bit Information were able to send us to the travel agent for the $79 flight to New York, a tiny office up a long flight of stairs. The travel agent explained why it was illegal and how it worked: our tickets were made out to an imaginary airline, but a company with empty seats would accept the transfer. We booked tickets as early as possible, Thursday, and had two more nights to provide for in England. London is not a cheap city, so we went off to visit our friend in Oxford. He was good for a night's shelter and an evening of hilarity.

Then we were eligible to stay at Bit Information again. This time we had company. A young Scottish couple who were eloping and some street people shared the quarters. They noisily examined the dinner donated by a vegetarian restaurant and rejected it in favor of Heinz beans from a can.

We left Thursday morning for an open air market where the Hare Krishna people were to hold a street festival. The market was depressing because I couldn't buy anything. When the Hare Krishna group arrived, we recognized one of the saffron-robed devotees. Fred, whom we had met on the Black Sea and again in Vrindaban, was back from India and greeted us as old friends, friends who had been favored with a sight of the guru. Fred had gotten sick in India and had had to come home.

We followed the chanting crowd to a grassy underpass for free food: gooey Indian sweets, fried dough in syrup. By three o'clock, we were ready to go to the airport. We would be five hours early, but our luggage was weighing us down. Our flight was Air India, an almost empty 747 jumbo jet with the windows decorated by painted frames resembling the Taj Mahal. A different era, regulations allowed us the run of the plane, a tour of the cockpit and packets of cashews from first class.

In Kennedy Airport, we saw more people of African descent than we had in our eighteen months of travel. Customs looked at everything and let us in. A bus home took our last $40. I was astounded at the size of the highway and trucks. Everything seemed twice as big as it needed to be, except, at the end, my childhood home which was twice as beautiful as I remembered. Ready to relax at last, we settled into plans for our wedding.

Ellen's Dancing

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

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