Ted Conover
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“ILLUSTRATED THE BREADTH OF EMPIRE”: see John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers, p. 57.
AS I WRITE, INDIA: see “Mile by Mile, India Paves a Smoother Road to Its Future,” by Amy Waldman, New York Times, December 4, 2005.
IN FACT, ALMOST 1.5 PERCENT: see “U.S. Constructed Area Ap proaches Size of Ohio,” by Christopher D. Elvidge et al., in American Geophysical Union, ESO Transactions 85, no. 24 (June 15, 2004), p. 233. The ratio is between impermeable manmade surfaces and the non-water area of the coterminous United States.
One FOREST PRIMEVAL TO PARK AVENUE
HE WATCHED THE MAHOGANY AVAILABLE TO HIM: The greatest demand for genuine mahogany comes not from furniture makers, but from shops doing architectural millwork—moldings, paneling, etc.—and from manufacturers of musical instruments, especially guitars. Louis Irion, a Pennsylvania dealer who specializes in wood for the furniture trade, said that artisans particularly prize mahogany from Peru. It is darker and denser than other true mahogany, and its grain is “wilder” (more interesting and harder to predict) than the lighter mahogany favored by millwork shops.
“THE QUECHUAN GUIDES I’VE WORKED WITH”: Hugh Thomsen, The White Rock, pp. 31, 34, 36.
A HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE BUS: A race against time in a truck filled with nitroglyc-erin, which is needed to extinguish oil derrick fires in an unnamed South American republic, is the premise of the French novel (1950) and film (1953) The Wages of Fear.
WE PULLED OVER AT OROPESA: “Oropesa” translates roughly as “gold is heavy”—perhaps the lament of someone who had to carry it.
TO THIS HERNANDO PIZARRO COLDLY REPLIED: William H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru, vol. II, p. 79.
JUST WHAT WERE THE BAD EFFECTS?: see Marc Dourojeanni, “Impactos Socioambientales Probables de la Carretera Transoceánica (Río Branco-Puerto Maldonado-Ilo) y la Capacidad de Respuesta del Perú,” p. 313 in La Integración Regional Entre Bolivia, Brasil y Perú.
A SCIENTIST FROM THE WOODS HOLE RESEARCH CENTER: Irving Foster Brown, Ph.D., personal communication, March 22, 2002.
“OCCASIONALLY, TO SEE HOW FAR HIS OBSESSION”: Mario Vargas Llosa, The Storyteller, pp. 21–22.
EVER SINCE THE CONQUISTADORS: Aldo Leopold, “The River of the Mother of God,” in Leopold, The River of the Mother of God & Other Essays.
ROAD OR NOT A ROAD?
SACBES: The plural of sacbe in Yucatecan Maya languages is sacbeob; I use sacbes for simplicity.
INSTEAD OF CURVING SLIGHTLY: Kathryn Gabriel, Roads to Center Place, p. 22.
EVIDENCE SUPPORTS THE IDEA: Richard E. W. Adams, Prehistoric Mesoamer-ica (Boston: Little Brown, 1977), p. 160.
THE LONGEST AND BEST-KNOWN: Anna Sofaer et al., “The Great North Road,” pp. 365-76. See also http://www.solsticeproject.org/greanort.htm. In his 1999 book, The Chaco Meridian: Centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest, Stephen H. Lekson posits that the north-south orientation was so central to the ancient Pueblo Southwest that the three sequential centers of culture aligned themselves on the same cartographic line: “first, Chaco (900-1225) in northwest New Mexico; second, Aztec (111-1275) in the Mesa Verde region; and third, Paquime (1250-1450) in northern Chihuahua. A ruling elite emerged at Chaco and perpetuated itself by moving a ceremonial city along Chaco’s meridian” (pp. 70-71). Later he speculates that this straight-line orientation goes even further-all the way south to present-day Culiacán on Mexico’s Pacific coast. “Is it yet another coincidence that the capital of the northeastern frontier of Mesoamerica lies practically due south of Chaco, Aztec, Paquime?” (p. 187).
THE EARTHENWARE WAS NOT MADE LOCALLY: see http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/chcu/chcu_alltext.htm.
THEIR TRADITIONS VARY: F H. Ellis and L. Hammack, “The Inner Sanctum of Feather Cave, a Mogollon Sun and Earth Shrine Linking Mexico and the Southwest,” in American Antiquity 33, no. 1 (1968), pp. 31, 33; and Edmund J. Ladd, “Pueblo Use of High-Altitude Areas: Emphasis on the A’shiwi” in High-Altitude Adaptations in the Southwest, ed. Joseph C. Winter (Albuquerque: U.S. Forest Service, Southwest Region Report No. 2, 1983), pp. 168-76, both cited in Sofaer et al.
THE ROAD TO THE SHIPAPU, FREQUENTLY DESCRIBED AS “STRAIGHT” … “CROWDED WITH SPIRITS”: Matilda C. Stevenson, “The Sia,” in Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1889–90) (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1894), pp. 41, 145, cited in Sofaer et al.
MANY PUEBLO COMMUNITIE REENACT CREATION: Phillip Tuwaletstiwa, personal communications, November 30, 2006, and November 22, 2008.
“IT’D BE BETTER JUST TO CALL THEM PATHWAYS”: The Irish novelist Flann O’Brien played with the idea of alternative meanings for roads in The Third Policeman (written in 1939-40 but not published until 1967). The book’s narrator admires a fictional historian, de Selby, and says, “Elsewhere de Selby makes the point that a good road will have character and a certain air of destiny, an indefinable intimation that it is going somewhere, be it east or west, and not coming back from there. If you go with such a road, he thinks, it will give you pleasant travelling, fine sights at every corner and a gentle ease of peregrination that will persuade you that you are walking forever on falling ground. But if you go east on a road that is on its way west, you will marvel at the unfailing bleakness of every prospect and the great number of sore-footed inclines that confront you to make you tired” (pp. 37-38).
“CHANNEL FOR THE LIFE’S BREATH”: A. Ortiz, 1987, private communication, cited in Sofaer et al.
Two SLIPPING FROM SHANGRI-LA
AT ABOUT 11,500 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL: Henry Osmaston and Philip Denwood, eds., Recent Research on Ladakh 4 & 5: Proceedings of the Fourth and Fifth International Colloquia on Ladakh, Bristol 1989 & London 1992 (London: SOAS Studies, 1995), p. 370.
THE ROAD CONNECTING ZANSKAR TO KARGIL: John Crook and Henry Osmaston, eds., Himalayan Buddhist Villages, p. 52.
CROWED ITS SUCCESSES IN LARGE SIGNS: Also notable were the road builders’ small yellow public-service signs. “After whisky, driving risky,” you would be reminded alongside some steep hairpin turn. “Better Mr. Late than late mister.” Or “Safety on road, safe tea at home.” I appreciated these particularly because of a family legacy (which perhaps inspired them): my mother’s grandfather, Clinton Odell, and her uncles, Alan and Leonard Odell, had innovated the use of rhyming doggerel to sell a brushless shaving cream, Burma-Shave, starting in 1925. The small wooden signs were set up in a series alongside American rural roads: “The bearded lady / Tried a jar / Now she’s famous / Movie star / Burma-Shave.” Highway safety was a recurring theme: “He tried / To cross / As fast train neared / Death didn’t draft him / He volunteered / Burma-Shave.” And “Don’t lose / Your head / To gain a minute / You need your head / Your brains are in it / Burma-Shave.”
NOMADS … WITH WHOM THEY EXCHANGED GRAIN FOR SALT AND WOOL: see Janet Rizvi, Trans-Himalayan Caravans, pp. 120 ff.
GADDI SHEPHERDS … FROM WHOM THEY GOT WOOL: John S. Mankelow, private communication, June 19, 2004.
“SINCE LADAKH IS IN MANY WAYS A MODEL SOCIETY”: Helena Norberg-Hodge, “Appropriate Technology and Co-operative Culture in Ladakh,” in Replenishing the Earth: The Right Livelihood Awards, 1986-1989, ed. by Tom Woodhouse (Bideford, U.K.: Green Books, 1990).
THEIR ISOLATION AND LACK OF KNOWLEDGE: In his book Cosmopolitanism, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a native of Ghana and professor of philosophy at Princeton, bemoans the small-mindedness of many traditional communities and asserts, “People who complain about the homogeneity produced by globalization often fail to notice that globalization is, equally, a threat to homogeneity” and, therefore, a good thing (p. 101). The “ideal of contamination,” he continues, “has no more eloquent exponent than Salman Rushdie, who has insisted that the novel that occasioned his fatwa ‘celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Mélange, hotchpotch,
a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world, and I have tried to embrace it’” (p. 112).
TRADITION HAS IT THAT CHILING’S SMITHS: Janet Rizvi, Ladakh, p. 160.
ROAD ECOLOGY
THE FLORIDA PANTHER, DOWN TO FEWER THAN A HUNDRED INDIVIDUALS: “Florida panther deaths increase from collisions with vehicles,” news release from Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, June 29, 2007.
EDWARD O. WILSON’S RESEARCH: Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson, The Theory of Island Biogeography.
OTHERS HAVE SINCE APPLIED: see David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo, pp. 443 ff.
EDGE ZONES CAN ALSO BE AFFECTED BY CHEMICAL RUNOFF: Richard T. T. Foreman et al., Road Ecology: Science and Solutions, p. 4. Roads also change patterns of water runoff and erosion, which affect the immediate landscape and may also impact the downstream flow of a watercourse.
TUNNELS FOR MIGRATING REPTILES: Ibid., pp. 17, 19.
“AS COLLABORATING TRANSPORTATION SPECIALISTS”: Ibid., pp. xv-xvi.
Three THE ROAD IS VERY UNFAIR
KENYANS WERE TOLD BY THEIR GOVERNMENT: See “Death of Kenyan Vice President Leaves Hole in Country’s Coalition Government,” by Matthew Rosenberg, Associated Press Worldstream, August 24, 2003. Rosenberg cites a government source for kidney failure as cause of death.
UGANDA’S GOVERNMENT-OWNED new vision NEWSPAPER: see “Kenya: Vice President Dead,” New Vision (Kampala, Uganda), August 24, 2003.
NAIROBI’S the nation DID POINT OUT: “Lessons from Wamalwa’s Death,” by David Makali, The Nation (Nairobi, Kenya), September 9, 2003.
DEATH BY AIDS WAS STILL DEEPLY STIGMATIZED: Kenyans, of course, have no corner on denial of AIDS: the pocket notebook I used on this trip came with packaging that boasted the brand had been the favorite of Bruce Chatwin, a writer I much admire but one who denied his own AIDS up until his death from it, saying, among other things, that he was sick from the bite of a Chinese bat.
“LAST WEEK THE POLICE SHOT TWO ROBBERS HERE”: Carjackings had been on the rise in Kenya ever since insurance companies, trying to combat car theft, required owners to install anti-theft transmission locks. The effectiveness of these locks had resulted in more thefts of cars with people in them.
MOST DRIVERS SPOKE SWAHILI: A concise and nuanced history of the language can be found in John E. G. Sutton, A Thousand Years of East Africa (Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1990), pp. 57-60.
TRUCKS CARRIED GOODS IN FROM THE COAST: Freight transport in Africa is famously inefficient. The Economist of October 16, 2008, citing an unnamed U.S. government study, said that it costs less to ship a ton of wheat from Chicago to Mombasa than it does from Mombasa to Kampala.
WE CAME TO THE LIP OF A HUGE ESCARPMENT: Parts of the road between Nairobi and the Great Rift Valley were paved by Italian prisoners of war during World War II. They had been captured by British colonial forces in Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland; they were held in camps in Nanyuki and Nyeri. See Christine Stephanie Nicholls, Red Strangers, p. 231.
VICTORIAN EXPLORERS TO EAST AFRICA: Charles Miller, The Lunatic Express, p. 116.
OBADIAH’S TRIBE, THE LUO: The father of Barack Obama was a Luo. A senior economist for the Kenya government, he died in a traffic accident in Nairobi in 1982.
“IT WAS A GRAVEL ROAD”: Richard Preston, The Hot Zone, p. 383. The next long quotation (“If the [AIDS] virus had been noticed earlier … ribbon of tar”) comes from the same page.
“THEY DIDN’T HAVE THE VIRUS OR THE ANTIBODIES”: “Aids Vaccine Gives Africa Ray of Hope,” Observer, February 18, 2001, news pages, p. 22.
“IT WAS AT THAT TIME THAT PROF. BWAYO”: “Top Aids Researcher Killed in Another Violent Attack,” The East African Standard, February 5, 2007.
“KENYANS ARE VERY GOOD AT MARATHONS”: “Job Bwayo: Kenyan Scientist at the Cutting Edge of AIDS Research,” The Guardian, February 23, 2007, obit uaries, p. 45.
DOUBLE-EDGED ROADS
ROADS WERE KEY TO HIS IMPERIAL DESIGNS: see M. G. Lay, Ways of the World, p. 96.
THE CHAMPS-éLYSéES HAD BEGUN TO TAKE SHAPE NEARLY TWO CENTURIES BEFORE: see http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/105234/Champs-Elysees.
“SPACES, AIR, LIGHT, VERDURE AND FLOWERS”: See Lay, Ways of the World, p. 97.
NAPOLéON III HALTED STREET WORK: Henry Law and Daniel Kinnear Clark, The Construction of Roads and Streets (London: Crosby, Lockwood & Co., 1877), p. 321.
“WOULD SLASH THE BELLY”: Lay, Ways of the World, p. 97. “Boulevard,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “originally meant the horizontal part of a rampart; hence the promenade laid out on a demolished fortification.” It apparently derives from a Teutonic word, as does the German Bollwerk, meaning bulwark, “a substantial defensive work of earth, or other material.”
FORCIBLY REMOVED FROM THEIR LANDS: The tribes affected were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole, who had been living in the Deep South; they were “removed” to present-day Oklahoma.
THE TALIBAN HAD KILLED FOUR AFGHANS WORKING ON THE ROAD: “Link Between Afghanistan’s North and South Is Restored,” by Amy Waldman, New York Times, December 17, 2003, Sec. A, p. 10.
CONDITIONS ALONG THE ROAD HAD VASTLY DETERIORATED: “Scars of a Deadly Insurgency Line Afghanistan’s Main Road,” by Carlotta Gall, New York Times, August 14, 2008, Sec. A, p. 1.
SOLD IT TO CONGRESS IN 1955: Lay, Ways of the World, p. 99.
Four A WAR YOU CAN COMMUTE TO
BOMBERS EN ROUTE FROM JENIN TO HAIFA: “Bomb That Exploded at W. Bank Checkpoint Was Meant for Haifa,” by Amos Harel, Ha’aretz, August 15, 2004.
A PALESTINIAN WOMAN HAD BLOWN HERSELF UP: “Female Suicide Bomber Kills Two Policemen in Jerusalem, Injures 30,” Ha’aretz, September 23, 2004.
ABOUT SEVENTY CHECKPOINTS: “Forbidden Roads: Israel’s Discriminatory Road Regime in the West Bank,” B’Tselem Information Sheet, August 2004, p. 10. The same figure is used by an IDF spokesman cited in “IDF: 29 Palestinian Civilians Killed in W. Bank in 2004,” by Amos Harel, Ha’aretz, August 12, 2004.
THE ISRAELI MILITARY CONVICTED THE COMMANDER: “IDF: 29 Palestinian Civilians Killed in W. Bank in 2004,” by Amos Harel, Ha’aretz, August 12, 2004.
ACCORDING TO THE PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS MONITORING GROUP: “Checkpoints Take Toll on Palestinians, Israeli Army,” by Molly Moore, Washington Post, November 29, 2004, p. A1.
IN 2003 TWO WERE SHOT DEAD: Ibid.
MEMBERS OF HAMAS AND FATAH TUNNELED: “5 Soldiers Killed in Rafah Tunnel Attack,” by Amos Harel, Ha’aretz, December 13, 2004.
SUICIDE BOMBERS FROM HEBRON: “16 Die in Be’er Sheva Bombings,” Ha’aretz, September 1, 2004.
AROUND 70 PERCENT OF U.S. COMBAT DEATHS: “IED Casualties in Iraq Drop Sharply,” by William H. McMichael, Army Times, September 28, 2008. Online at http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/military_ied_statistics_iraq_091708w/.
EVERY DAY FIVE THOUSAND PALESTINIANS: “Checkpoints Take Toll on Palestinians, Israeli Army,” by Molly Moore, Washington Post, November 29, 2004, p. A1. Omer said the number was between 5,000 and 6,000.
THEY PROMISED ME 72 VIRGINS IN HEAVEN: “The soldiers of August 03” refers to the group of Omer’s troops who enlisted on that date. The army encourages soldiers to self-identify by enlistment date as a morale booster.
A BUILDING THAT THE SOLDIERS CALLED THE DISCO: Per Omer, in e-mail communication, March 25, 2005.
MANY SETTLERS HAD BEEN SHOT: From a list of incidents with casualties along the 60 Road from September 2000 to September 2004, supplied to me by the IDF press office.
A PALESTINIAN SNIPER HAD OPENED FIRE: From an announcement by the IDF press office, March 3, 2002.
AWNI IS A SCIENTIST: In 2010, Awni Khatib became president of Hebron University.
“RADIO INTERVIEW WITH THE CHILDREN”: See “Climate of Hate Still Seethes on Israel’s Right,” by Patrick Coburn, The Independent (U.K.
), November 26, 1995. Online at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/climate-of-hate-still-seethes-on-israels-right-1583739.html.
DAYS LATER, THE IDF RESPONDED: War Without End: Israelis, Palestinians, and the Struggle for a Promised Land, by Anton La Guardia (New York: Macmillan, 2003), pp. 348, 355.
SUICIDE BOMBINGS INSIDE ISRAEL HAVE DWINDLED: “Shin Bet: Number of Terror Attacks on Israel Swelled in 2008,” by Jonathan Lis, Ha’aretz, January 4, 2009. However, as the article reports, the number of Israelis killed inside Israel rose from thirteen in 2007 to thirty-six, eight of them victims of the shooting at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva on March 6. Others were killed by rockets launched from Gaza.
AL-JAZEERA POSTED A MANIFESTO: “Transcript: Translation of Bin Laden’s Videotaped Message,” Washington Post, November 1, 2004. Online at www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/a16990-2004nov1.html.
SPEED UP!
“WHOLE CITIES BURN, / AND PEOPLED KINGDOMS INTO ASHES TURN”: Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book II, translated into English verse under the direction of Sir Samuel Garth by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, William Congreve, and others, 1713. Online at http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_ovid_meta_2.htm.
THE FRENCH WERE LEADERS IN THIS DEVELOPMENT: Wrote historian Fernand Braudel, the French “thought them dangerous, demoniacal… They went at an insane speed. Accidents were numerous, and no one compensated the victims. Furthermore, only a narrow central carriageway was paved on main routes. Two carriages could not pass at the same time without a wheel plunging into the mud at the side of the road.” Civilization and Capitalism, 11th–18th Century, vol. I: The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible (London: Collins, 1981), pp. 424-25.
AND THE TURGOTINE, A NARROW STAGECOACH: Of the turgotine a contemporary wrote, its “body is narrow and seats get so crowded that everybody asks his neighbor for his leg or arm back when it comes to getting down … If by ill chance a traveller with a big stomach or wide shoulders appears … one has to groan or desert.” L. S. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, vol. V (1781-1788), p. 331.