The World Is My Home: A Memoir

by James A. Michener

  I have an urgent wish that I might respond ‘I’ll be there’ to each invitation that comes my way, for I follow in the footsteps of Ulysses, whose call to action as sung by Tennyson I memorized long ago and often recited as I trudged down some glen:

  … Come, my friends,

  ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

  Push off, and sitting well in order smite

  The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

  To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

  Of all the western stars, until I die.

  It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

  It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

  And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

  I have known the world, have loved it and would happily visit once more its farthest corners, but sooner or later the sands in the mariner’s glass will run through and even Ulysses’ ship must come to dock.

  * * *

  * Later in my books I would extol Dundee. It made the best orange marmalade, and its canny merchants owned many of the vast cattle ranches in the American West. When John Wayne fights to protect his ranch in Texas, his boss is giving orders from his office in Dundee.

  V

  People

  I once made a long trip over the Dasht-i-Margo, the desert in Afghanistan, to the ancient city of Herat, where I lodged in a former mosque with earthen floors. I had been in my improvised quarters only a few minutes when a very thin, toothy man with longish black hair and a perpetual smile entered and started throwing onto the dirt floor twenty or thirty of the most enchantingly beautiful Persian rugs I had ever seen. Their designs were miraculous—intricate interweavings of Koranic symbols framed in geometric patterns that teased the eye—but their colors were also sheer delight: reds, yellows, greens and especially dark blues that were radiant.

  They made my room a museum, one rug piled atop another, all peeking out at me, and when they were in place and the smiling man was satisfied with his handiwork—I supposed that this was a service of the so-called hotel—to my amazement he handed me a scrap of paper on which was written in pencil in English: MUHAMMAD ZAQIR, RUG MERCHANT, HERAT.

  Aware at last of how I had been trapped, I protested: ‘No! No! No rugs!’ but without relaxing his smile the least bit he said in English: ‘No necessity to buy. I leave here. You study, you learn to like,’ and before I could protest further he was gone. I ran out to make him take back his rugs, for I wanted none of them, but he was already leading his laden camel away from the old mosque.

  I assumed he had learned from the hotel manager that I was to be in Herat for five days, and it was obvious that he felt confident that within that period he could wear me down and persuade me to buy a rug. He started on the evening of that first day; he came back after supper to sit with me in the shadowy light cast by a flickering lamp. He said: ‘Have you ever seen lovelier rugs? That one from my friend in Meshed. Those two from the dealer in Bukhara. This one from a place you know, maybe? Samarkand.’

  When I asked him how he was able to trade with such towns in the Soviet Union he shrugged: ‘Borders? Out here we don’t bother,’ and with a sweep of his hand that encompassed all the rugs he said: ‘Not one woven in Afghanistan,’ and I noted the compelling pronunciation he gave that name: Ahf-han-ee-stahn.

  He sat for more than an hour with me that evening, and next day he was back before noon to start his serious bargaining: ‘Michener-sahib, name German perhaps?’ I told him it was more likely English, at which he laughed: ‘English, Afghans, many battles, English always win but next day you march back to India, nothing change.’ When I corrected him: ‘I’m not English,’ he said: ‘I know. Pennsylvania. Three, four, maybe five of your rugs look great your place Pennsylvania.’

  ‘But I don’t need rugs there. I don’t really want them.’

  ‘Would they not look fine Pennsylvania?’ and as if the rugs were of little value, he kicked the top ones aside to reveal the glowing wonders of those below.

  When he returned that second night he got down to even more serious business: ‘The big white and gold one you like, six hundred dollars.’ On and on he went, and when it was clear that I had no interest whatever in the big ones, he subtly covered them over with the smaller six- by four-foot ones already in the room; then he ran out to his camel to fetch seven or eight of the size that I had in some unconscious way disclosed I might consider, and by the end of that session he knew that I was at least a possible purchaser of four or five of the handsome rugs.

  ‘Ah, Michener-sahib, you have fine eye. That one from China, silk and wool, look at those tiny knots.’ Then he gave me a lesson in rug making; he talked about the designs, the variation in knots, the wonderful compactness of the Chinese variety, the dazzling colors of the Samarkand. It was fascinating to hear him talk, and all the while he was wearing me down.

  He was a persistent rascal, always watching till he saw me return to my mosque after work, then pouncing on me. On the third day, as he sat drinking tea with me while our chairs were perched on his treasury of rugs, four and five deep at some places and covering the entire floor, he knocked down one after another of my objections: ‘You can’t take them with you? No traveler can. I send them to you, camel here, ship Karachi, train New York, truck to your home Pennsylvania.’ Pasted onto the pages of his notebook were addresses of buyers from all parts of the world to whom he had shipped his rugs, and I noticed that they had gone out from Meshed in Iran, Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan and Bukhara in Russia; apparently he really moved about with his laden camel. But he also had, pasted close to the shipping address, letters from his customers proving that the rugs had finally reached their new owners. In our dealings he seemed to me an honest man.

  On that third night, when it began to look as if I might escape without making a purchase even though I had shown an interest in six rugs, he hammered at me regarding payments: ‘Now, Michener-sahib, I can take American dollars, you know.’

  ‘I have no American dollars.’ Rapidly he ran through the currencies that he would accept, British, Indian, Iranian, Pakistani, Afghani, in that descending order, until I had to stop him with a truthful statement: ‘Muhammad, my friend, I have no money, none of any kind,’ and before the last word had been uttered he cried: ‘I take traveler’s checks, American Express, Bank America in California,’ and then I had to tell him the sad news: ‘Muhammad, friend. I have no traveler’s checks. Left them all locked up in the American embassy in Kabul. Because there are robbers on the road to Meshed.’

  ‘I know. I know. But you are an honest man, Michener-sahib. I take your personal check.’

  When I said truthfully that I had none, he asked simply: ‘You like those six rugs?’

  ‘Yes, you have made me appreciate them. I do.’

  With a sweeping gesture he gathered the six beauties, rolled them deftly into a bundle and thrust them into my arms: ‘You take them. Send me a check when you get to Pennsylvania.’

  ‘You would trust me?’

  ‘You look honest. Don’t I look honest?’ And he picked up one of his larger rugs, a real beauty, and showed me the fine knots: ‘Bukhara. I got it there, could not pay. I send the money when I sell. Man in Bukhara trusts me. I trust you.’

  I said I could not impose on him in that way. Something might happen to me or I might prove to be a crook, and the discussion ended, except that as he left me he asked: ‘Michener, if you had the money, what rugs would you take with you?’ and I said ‘None, but if you could ship them, I’d take those four,’ and he said: ‘Those four you shall have. I’ll find a way.’

  Next day he was back in the mosque right after breakfast with an astonishing proposal: ‘Michener-sahib, I can let you have those four rugs, special price, four hundred fifty dollars.’ Before I could repeat my inability to pay, he said: ‘Bargain like this you never see again. Tell you what to do. You write me a check.’

  When I said, distressed at losing such a bargain: ‘But I really have no blank checks,�
� he said: ‘You told me yesterday. I believe you. But draw me one,’ and from his folder he produced a sheet of ordinary paper and a pencil. He showed me how to draw a copy of a blank check, bearing the name of the bank, address, amount, etc.—and for the first time in my life I actually drew a blank check, filled in the amount and signed it, whereupon Muhammad Zaqir placed it in his file, folded the four rugs I had bought, tied them with string and attached my name and address. He piled the rugs onto his camel, and then mounted it to proceed on his way to Samarkand.

  Back home in Pennsylvania I started to receive two different kinds of letters, perhaps fifteen of each. The following is a sample of the first category:

  I am a shipping agent in Istanbul and a freighter arrived here from Karachi bringing a large package, well wrapped, addressed to you in Pennsylvania. Upon receipt of your check for $19.50 American I will forward the package to you.

  From Karachi, Istanbul, Trieste, Marseilles and heavens knows where else I received a steady flow of letters over a three-year period, and always the sum demanded was less than twenty dollars, so that I would say to myself: ‘Well, I’ve invested so much in it already, I may as well risk a little more.’ And off the check would go, with the rugs never getting any closer. Moreover, I was not at all sure that if they ever did reach me they would be my property, for my unusual check had never been submitted for payment, even though I had forewarned my local bank: ‘If it ever does arrive, pay it immediately, because it’s a debt of honor.’

  The second group of letters explained the long delay:

  I am serving in Kabul as the Italian ambassador and was lately in Herat where a rug merchant showed me that remarkable check you gave him for something like five hundred dollars. He asked me if I thought it would be paid if he forwarded it and I assured him that since you were a man of good reputation it would be. When I asked him why he had not submitted it sooner, he said: ‘Michener-sahib a good name. I show his check everybody like you, sell many rugs.’

  These letters came from French commercial travelers, English explorers, Indian merchants, almost anyone who might be expected to reach out-of-the-way Herat and take a room in that miserable old mosque.

  In time the rugs arrived, just as Mohammed Zaqir had predicted they would, accompanied by so many shipping papers they were a museum in themselves. And after my improvised check had been used as an advertisement for nearly five years, it too came home to roost and was honored. Alas, shortly thereafter the rugs were stolen, but I remember them vividly and with longing. Especially do I remember the man who spent four days ingeniously persuading me to buy.

  In my travels I have met many fascinating people like Zaqir, and while the escapades of some of the more exotic types might be amusing to recount, I have never treasured people simply for their peculiarities, and so the ones I will introduce briefly are those not only of interest in themselves but also of importance in developing my understanding of people. For example, my experience with the Afghan rug merchant and his ethical behavior led me to rethink my stereotypically negative attitudes toward Islam, and this reflection led me to compose a brief statement that circulated through the Muslim world as Islam, the Misunderstood Religion. This essay gained me entry to corners of Islam that would otherwise have been closed to me.

  On the night when our dismal transport, the Cape Horn, anchored in Luganville Channel at Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides, it stood not far from the copra plantation of the Frenchman Aubert Ratard. When I returned to work on that island, I met M. Ratard by chance and spent more than a score of days and nights with him and his family. He told me after my tenth or fifteenth visit that he was surprised by my intense interest in his Tonkinese plantation workers, and I remember telling him: ‘Frenchmen I can meet anywhere, but Tonkinese are not so easy to come by.’ And I made myself proficient in the problems of these handsome people.

  It took me only a few days, despite the fact that my French was almost nonexistent, to learn that the Ratard Tonkinese were not happy, but this had nothing to do with either Ratard or the way he ran his plantation. The trouble was the war: ‘We leave Tonkin three years. Sign paper, three years. Come here, work hard, save money, go home three years rich.’ I told them that this was not a bad system and that it had proved useful in different countries, but they had a real complaint: ‘War come. Three years finish. No go home. Four years, five years, no damn good.’ Ratard, like his fellow Frenchmen, had been prepared to pay off his indentured Tonkinese and repatriate them, but the war made this absolutely impossible. So an ugly situation developed, for when the French colonial government extended the indentures to continue until the ‘end of the war,’ the planters received the benefit of keeping on their plantations Tonkinese men and women of long experience, workers of considerable increased value, but at the same old rates negotiated in some cases as long ago as six years. The situation was understandable, but it was not just.

  The Tonkinese woman who explained this to me in her voluble French was about thirty-five, roundish in shape and outspoken in her advocacy of Tonkinese rights. I doubt that Ratard was pleased to have me talking with her, but he’d had proof of my respect for French positions and my willingness to help him procure from the Navy tools and other necessities he needed for his plantation. And he did admit, grudgingly perhaps, that this particular Tonkinese was one of the ablest of his work force. I never learned her real name, but because of her strong resistance to exploitation, she had come to be known as Bloody Mary, and that is how I still recall her.

  She said that when the war ended, she would go to Tonkin, the area that would later be known as North Vietnam, and I got the strong impression that when she got there she intended to oppose French colonialism. She said further that in both New Hebrides and New Caledonia, the big French islands to the south, there would be trouble in the postwar years if the colonial governments tried to extend the indentures for another period: ‘We go home. Plantation all finish.’

  I would often think of her in later years when American troops were fighting their fruitless battles in Vietnam and I wondered if our leaders realized that the enemy they were fighting consisted of millions of determined people like Bloody Mary. But even I was deficient in my understanding, for when I wrote about her in Tales of the South Pacific I depicted her not as a potential revolutionary but as a Tonkinese woman with a pretty daughter to care for. The original Bloody Mary had no children—at least there were none in residence on Ratard’s plantation.

  · · ·

  On that stormy winter’s day when I first crossed the Minch from Oban on the mainland of Scotland to the small island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides, I landed at dusk with no place to stay and no letters of introduction. A local man who met our ship said: ‘Go see the Catholic priest. He pretty much runs things on this island,’ and when I did I found a man in his forties, wise, congenial and understanding: ‘It’s a most unusual request. We’ve never had an American in my time here, and almost never a tourist in winter, no matter from what country. But I have in my church two fine women, sisters, who have a wee cottage near here, and sometimes in summer they take in hikers who come this way for a go at our heather hills. Maybe I can persuade them to take you.’

  He left his manse, walked me along a rocky road that was almost in darkness, and led me, after about half a mile, to a low, stone-walled, thatch-roofed cottage with two windows and a stout door made of some heavy wood that must have been imported from the mainland, for Barra had no trees. It was a snug island dwelling of the kind used there for the past five centuries. Furthermore, it was exactly what I had hoped to find, so with enthusiasm I followed the priest to the door, which he banged on stoutly with his walking stick.

  When the door opened, a woman in her sixties, somewhat unkempt, stared out at us. She was of average height, plump and with dancing eyes that greeted her much-loved priest warmly. When she spoke in Gaelic her voice was low and hoarse, so that she seemed a character such as the Brothers Grimm might have created.

  �
��This is Morag Macneil,’ the priest said, ‘of the famous Macneils of Barra. But don’t let the name awe you, because everyone hereabouts is a Macneil of Barra.’ As the woman moved forward I saw with a shock that she had clubfeet, which were so deformed that she walked with an ugly clump.

  When the priest explained who I was as well as the nature of my mission—to understand Hebridean life—she brushed him aside, surveyed me with a calculating eye and cried in English: ‘Och! It’ll be comfortin’ to have a man about the house again, American and all.’ Thus began one of the happiest spells of my wandering years. Leaving the priest standing at the door, she led me into her tiny two-room cottage, which had a small shack aft for storage, and showed me the bed I would have. As I tested it, she repeated her name, pronouncing it More-ock, and then she introduced her younger sister, Kiltag, pronounced Kill-tock. I found them to be a talkative pair. Just before the priest left, he asked me to join him at the door, where he said quietly: ‘Apologies to a guest on our island, but I must be assured that you have the money to pay these two good women. Strangers have been known—’ I showed him my wallet and he said: ‘Would you be prepared to pay in advance? Fruitless to think about lodging elsewhere if you don’t like it here, because there is no elsewhere.’ I handed him the money for four weeks, which he turned over to Morag.

  The weeks went like this. On Sunday the three of us went to mass and returned to a special meal consisting of wheaten cakes baked over a peat fire, fish, jam from a big crock shipped in from Glasgow, and gallons of hot tea made so dark that Kiltag said: ‘We don’t like it unless it’s so strong a mouse can walk on it.’ On Sunday afternoon I took a stroll on the hills, and at night we had a ceilidh, which two girls who interested me very much attended. They were Campbells and suffered a degree of ostracism because of an evil act perpetrated by their clansmen two and a half centuries earlier in a glen far across the Minch. (Memories live long in Barra.) They were a delightful pair. Each had left Barra from time to time to work as maids on the mainland, and they had raffish opinions of some of their mistresses. They were great fun to be with, and on some nights when they and the Macneil sisters held ceilidh, the stories flew.