Hell-bent for nowhere

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON

-The immigration officer at Ndola stared glumly at my entry form. How long did I want to stay in Zambia? A week. How much money did I have with me? I named a sum. Did I have anything to declare? Nothing. What was my purpose in enter- ing the country? Tourism.

Afterwards, as I stood in the departure lounge awaiting my connection to Lusaka, it occurred to me that none of the answers I had given had been correct. I wasn't a tourist and I had no clear idea of how much

money I had with me or how long I wanted

to stay in the country; nor had I any know- ledge of what articles were considered duti- able by the Zambian government. The inter- rogation had been as formal and repetitive as the Latin responses I had returned to the priest when I had served Mass as a small

boy. I looked at my fellow passengers and they seemed to me like fellow members of

a devout yet sleepy congregation. Soon a voice would call out over the loudspeaker and we should all rise and troop together towards the aircraft. Music of a devotional nature would play us into our seats. And shortly the priestess would lay in front of each of us the tasteless sacramental wafers, the ritual glass of Scotch....

For travel, nowadays, is not just a method of getting from place to place—it has be- come a rite. The pointless questions at the immigration desk are not meant to be taken literally. They are of no more practical significance than those incomprehensible instructions on how to fasten a life jacket by tying Tape A to Tape B before making one's way through the Emergency Exit. They are methods of adding solemnity to the process of flight and reminding us that we are taking part in a twentieth century substitute for a religious experience.

Like going to church in an earlier time, travel is assumed to deepen our understand- ing and give us philosophical strength. It is not considered essential to have a clear idea of what is going on; benefit can be obtained by merely being present. This re- liance on faith and devotion in preference to a more questioning attitude is best seen in those very devout peoples, the Americans and the Russians.

In the Russian rite the celebrant is usually a woman and the congregation is often of a single ethnic group. Kurds and Georgians, sloe-eyed girls from Tashkent and bow- legged Mongols from the far East, wander in apathetic groups round the Kremlin or the Hermitage, gaping at suits of armour or rows of French Impressionists. The endless gabbled commentary arouses no reaction in them, and it is plain that most of them could not distinguish Dejeuner sur l'Herbe from The Stag at Bay, much less exhibit any form of aesthetic appreciation. Yet be- hind their apathy lurks a certain aboriginal awe. They are being exposed to culture. They are confident that, however meaning- less this process may appear to be on the surface, it is in some secret way lifting them up on a higher moral plane.

But communist travel rituals are still in a relatively primitive stage of development. They have not yet attained the florid ela- borations one sees in the West. These 'in- clude a vast literature, based on publica- tions such as Fielding's Guide and Holiday magazine, and spread into every newspaper and colour supplement that hopes to attract travel advertising. As in the great days of mediaeval Christianity, there is a flourishing trade in souvenirs and relics, of ikons and holy pictures which can be shown through projectors at home to demonstrate to friends and neighbours that a pilgrimage has been genuinely carried out.

It is not my desire to disparage this ex- perience. I have myself been a pilgrim for many years. I started my wanderings as a ship's doctor and since then I have indulged in every form of travel short of the mass conducted tour. I have explored Europe by car in the days when that was possible, I have travelled on business, on holiday, to academic meetings, I have meandered around continents in search of literary in- spiration. But increasingly as the years go by, I am assailed by doubts. Can it possibly be that this modern religion, like so many of its predecessors, will eventually be ex- posed as a fraud? When one comes down to it, is there any real or permanent benefit obtained from shuffling aimlessly around the world?

One thing I am certain of is that one learns surprisingly little about the real habits and mental processes of foreigners. The language barrier alone precludes all but the crudest form of contact, which may well be more misleading than enlightening. Even where language is shared, differences in usage and educational background can lead to constant misunderstanding. As for making any kind of meaningful contact with uneducated peasants, this is a com- plete illusion. In countries like Mexico or Turkey one meets students who proudly announce that they have been travelling rough through the country to get close to the common people. It is usually found that they hardly speak a word of the local dia- lect and have to converse by means of signs. They have all had the same kind of experiences and have come to the same banal conclusions. They have discovered that the peasants are poor, illiterate, and on the whole tolerant to impecunious young people who wander about the country ask- ing silly questions.

On a more luxurious level the natural psychological isolation of the traveller is

being fortified by an increasing physical re- moteness from the actualities of life. The airport lounges and tourist hotels form a world within a world; they resemble each other far more than they resemble anything in any individual country. The airlines and the international hotel chains have between them ushered in an era of what one might call encapsulated un-travel, which aims to give the sensation of movement over vast distances without any of the disturbing complications of being away from home.

Those of us who retain a perverse crav- ing for individuality try to fight against this, but it is not easy. Economics, the dominant factor in our twentieth century world, are heavily against us. Both hotels and aircraft have grown so elaborate that they are only profitable when working at full capacity. For this reason, the attention of the com- panies is directed exclusively towards mass bookings. Nowadays the individual travel- ler paying the normal rate is regarded with far less favour than members of a con- ducted tour who obtain the same accom- modation at bargain basement prices.

From being a nuisance, the individual traveller has graduated to being an object of actual dislike and suspicion. The civil servants, with whom he has to deal on an increasing scale, are only happy when it is possible to divide human beings into cate- gories. The British government, and its ser- vants in the Bank of England, are indulgent towards businessmen and those who patro- nise travel agencies; special forms have been devised to exempt them from many of the rigours of exchange control. Without either a firm to sponsor him or a travel agency to protect him, the traveller abroad feels naked and defenceless. His aimless wanderings are a source of shame to him. In self-protection, he becomes deceitful. When the immigra- tion officer fixes him with a gimlet eye and asks him what he is doing here, he panics. It seems hopelessly inadequate to say that he has come to meet friends, to have a look at the country, or to see what happens to him in a different environment. He is overcome by a sudden fear of being taken for a spy. He swears mendaciously that he wants to visit ruins or to shoot big game.

In spite of all the conveniences suppos- edly arranged for his benefit, the modern Marco Polo is a man on the defensive. He is tormented constantly by physical malaise and vague ill-formulated apprehen- sions. He is loaded like an Arab's donkey with parcels, books and bottle of duty-free liquor. He no sooner gets all his burdens suitably distributed about his person than somebody comes up and asks him in a per- emptory fashion for some document he has completely forgotten about—his air ticket, his passport, his boarding pass, his immi- gration form, his book of traveller's cheques. He is miserably conscious of hav- ing been cheated by the taxi driver or of having undertipped the porter in his hotel. His wallet is bulging with filthy notes in different currencies of which he has long forgotten the rate of exchange.

He has eaten the same meal three times in eight hours and has dyspepsia from the cups of coffee he drank in the airport lounge to use up the foreign coins which the bank back home always refuse to change for him. His plane is called and he shuffles out across the tarmac. He takes his seat and fastens his belt. The Musak rises in volume, the engines accelerate, he grips the arm of his seat and off he goes again—hell-bent for nowhere.