"Neither Here Nor There" is a very funny story of Bill Bryson's
travels through Europe. It's nearly as good as his classic "The Lost
Continent."
"The Majic Bus" tells the story of a Hofstra University prof
who fills a bus with students and drives across country.
"A Fez of the Heart" is an intriguing tale of travel in Turkey,
where hats have historic significance.
Katz was in a tetchy frame of mind throughout most of our stay in Paris.
He was convinced that everything was out to get him. On the morning of
our second day, we were strolling down the Champs-Elysées when a
bird shit on his head. "Did you know," I asked a block or two
later, "that a bird's shit on your head?"
Instinctively, Katz put a hand to his head, looked at it in horror, and
with only a mumbled, "Wait here," walked with ramrod stiffness
in the direction of our hotel. When he reappeared twenty minutes later,
he smelled overpoweringly of Brut aftershave and his hair was plastered
down like a third-rate Spanish gigolo's, but he appeared to have regained
his composure. "I'm ready now," he announced.
Almost immediately another bird shit on his head. Only this time it really
shit. I don't want to get to graphic, in case you're snacking or anything,
but if you can imagine a pot of yogurt upended onto his scalp, I think
you'll get the picture. It was running down the sides of his head and everything.
"Gosh, Steve, that was one sick bird," I observed helpfully.
Katz was literally speechless. Without a word he turned and walked stiffly
back to the hotel, ignoring the turning heads of passersby. He was gone
for nearly an hour. When he returned, he was wearing a poncho with the
hood up. "Just don't say a word," he warned me and strode past.
He never really warmed to Paris after that.
As word of the American Odyssey course offering spread through the Hofstra
campus, my office became a virtual wailing wall of student petitioners.
Everyone had reason why he or she had to go on the trip. Pundits may brood
that we are producing a generation of inarticulate, unmotivated young people,
but if we were to use lobbying skills as a measure of fitness, today's
young Americans hold their own. Persistant begging was the most common
tactic, with crying and bribery close seconds.
The fezzes were piled forlornly in a shop corner, gathering dust. I lifted
one from the pile, and ran a hand across the felt, the dust retreated ahead
of my fingers, furling up like a reefed sail into a discernible line of
grey fluff. Now the felt appeared as a deep, lustrous maroon, and the tassel
gleamed snake black. . .
"I understood these hats were forbidden in Turkey," I told him,
vaguely remembering that Atatürk had outlawed the fez in 1925.
"For us, they are forbidden," he replied in halting English.
"For tourists, they are . . ." He searched for the word in vain.
"Bidden. But we don't like fezzes anyway. They are not modern. Fezzez
are Ottoman. Fezzes are Islam."
The young man directed me through the trinkets. "I think you prefer
one of these," he said, placing a baseball cap on my head. A supine,
scantily clad girl had been embroidered above the peak below the old refrain,
"No Problem in Turkey." The full force of her rounded buttocks
weighed upon my brow.
"No I replied. "I'll take a fez, thank you."
"I think you are not modern," pronounced the shopkeeper, making
my predicament sound like a will-making condition. Ashamed that he stocked
such things, he wrapped my illicit headgear in a brown paper bag and saw
me on my way. . .
My fez was cheap, and not very well made, as if to accord with its banal
trinket status. How had it come to such a pass, this once grand hat, the
hat of the greatest empire of the East, of the sultan and of Allah? What
was the untold thread of history that had lead to this humiliation, now
serving as a brief distraction for tourists? Hearteningly, however, I recognized
that my fez had embarrassed the young shopkeeper. Evidently, the old associations
still clung to it, enough of them at least so that it sounded a tellingly
discordant note in the glossy melody that was modern Pomegranate.