Memory Lane

So, I already posted some stuff from my travel journal (about lots of non-travel stuff).

This blog was definitely NOT going to be a place for my nostalgia about traveling. Not. And it still won’t be.

But, as I said in that other post, I was skimming through some of the old stuff recently, and I guess I want to post some of it. This isn’t the right place for it at all, but this is where I post stuff, so there ya go.

The following bit of writing is about the worst day of my traveling life, and I wrote it to get it out of my head. I did actually send it off to a Web site that publishes short little autobiographical stories, but they didn’t want it. Bastards.

Here ya go:

Mozambique wasn’t as easy as Zimbabwe had been. In Zimbabwe, everyone smiled. People were poor, but they weren’t sullen. You didn’t wonder what they were thinking and whether they hated you. But Mozambique had suffered too many years of war, too much experience with violent poverty, to grin at travelers tramping by. I don’t think they resented us, but they didn’t welcome us.

My girlfriend Pauline and I were backpacking through the area, without plan or preparation. Three weeks in Zimbabwe had ended abruptly when we hitched a ride across the border and headed to the Mozambican coast. We had been dreaming about the ocean, but once we reached it, we realized that it wasn’t what we had imagined. The beach seemed as desperate and unapproachable as the people. Mostly empty. Some hungry dogs.

We were staying in a little hut about fifty yards off the beach. The third morning, we awoke to see a crowd of people standing in a circle near our well. They stood silent and unmoving, and Pauline and I could see right through to the center of the group. A man was beating a woman.

He would yell a little, then hit her. She cried. He shook her, hit her again. Everyone watched.

And me? I had so many things running through my mind: I’m a foreigner and not beloved – would the crowd allow me to interfere? Would they attack me? Would I be quietly murdered in my sleep tonight? Would I be arrested? And hell, forget about the crowd; the guy might be able to beat or kill me all by himself. I’m not a weakling, but I’m decidedly unproven in street brawls.

But then what would happen to me if I did nothing? If I failed a Right vs. Wrong test when the sides are so clear, what will I do when the waters are murky? Could I handle that? What kind of person would that make me?

I watched for a little while, wrestling with myself, and rationalizing that he wasn’t doing anything that put her in real danger.

Until the head-butt. He jerked her shoulders toward him and cracked her nose with his forehead. It took a couple of blinks to realize what had happened, but then her cries changed from those of a spanked child to something throaty and terrifying. Oh, she’d been batted about before, but this was new. She fell and he dropped over her. Put his hands to her throat. Tightened his fingers. The blood. The strangled sounds she made.

I yelled. At the crowd and at the sky. I ran frantically around the circle, grabbing arms and lamely trying to shove people into action. They shuffled and looked away from me. What do I do what do I do? I screamed for the police, and a few villagers nodded heads, “yes, go police! You!”

I ran. Barefoot and enraged, tearing down the dirt road. I desperately hoped that instinct would lead me to a cop, but seeing people, I asked the way and was pointed along. Pauline, Jesus, was still back at the hut alone. Where are the cops? Further.

Time ticked, then slowed, and I was walking when I reached the police station. Went inside and was asked to wait. I did not wait. “There’s a man beating a woman, come help.” Only glances and imperious gestures from the cops. One of them spoke English and asked me to sit down. Took his time, then asked the question that still stuns me:

“Why was he beating her?”

Why. The question spun in my brain. He could have asked what color was the surf this morning and it would have seemed as relevant. But this question was important to him and maybe to the onlookers as well. To them, maybe the man had a good reason to hit her, to choke her. Maybe she had treated him poorly.

I don’t remember my own voice, but I assume that I became strident. That my contempt for his question was obvious and unhelpful to my cause. After a few minutes of trying to make the man act, I gave up and walked out while he stared, visibly surprised at my impatience.

Trudging back to the hut I was overwhelmed by a rush of emotions. Hatred and disgust for the police, disgust in myself, fear of retribution for going to the cops. And oh yeah, by the way, there might be a dead woman lying by the well.

But there wasn’t a dead woman lying by the well. There weren’t any people around at all, except Pauline, who told me that everyone had simply walked away. The guy’s brutality spent, he had wandered off, another beating accomplished. The woman, bruised and bloody, would apparently heal until the next time. She was his wife.

And I was left with sadness for the woman (for all the women), and also for myself. I couldn’t figure out if I had done the right thing, or nothing at all. Was I heroic, smart, cowardly, irrational? Was it possible to be all those things at once? I had been tested, and I had no idea whether I had passed or failed. Maybe there’s no such thing.