Art by Chris Chen
A long year of passport stamps and educational field trip cards has come to a halt for much of the junior class whose International Program experiences and individual traveling ventures spread across the globe. No more hitchhiking through the streets of Bulgaria. No more tea parties with old Turkish ladies. No more safari treks for white rhinos.
My toothbrush is, for the first time in six months, in a drawer — the age of the Ziploc is gone. After a spring in Washington D.C. and Cuba, a summer in Istanbul and Uganda and a road trip through the Rockies, the solstice of travel and culture fades into the equinox of stability and home.
But the reason these trips are worth the mileage is because of the capacity for metamorphosis. Travel presents a unique opportunity to tear down the walls of prejudice and conflict through story and narrative.
Here is my story:
A Pakistani Muslim, a Turkish professor, a secular Jew and a Protestant Christian sit atop the wall that once separated Constantinople from everybody else. A half dozen mosques sing the warbling tenor of nightly prayer.
Dotting the Istanbul skyline are a thousand humming narratives and a single rushing wind. Cars speed through the arched entryway below — a sure sign that walls do not separate anymore. The globalized world prefers a more insidious division than water and stone.
It was not an easy climb. The footing on the ancient arch at the lowest point of the wall was indecisive of our motives. My fingers clutched the brick once set by the fear of invasion and change. Pass the camera. Lift the backpack. Don’t look down.
Nobody veered from talk of policy and religion as we gazed upon the minarets of history.
“I’m just wary of how religion weaponizes people into violence and intolerance.”
“I was arrested for six months for protesting against the government.”
“How sad is it when global politics steps between people? People! You and me.”
A shell falls for nine seconds before landing on the curb. “Pass the sunflower seeds,” I said.
The narrative is everywhere. The narrative that offers the false dichotomy between complete secularism and complete conservatism — agreement and chaos. It tries to pin political hatred onto a table of grape leaves and sea bass.
Pupils adjust from the sordid reality that, like light pulled into a supermassive black hole, convenience and greed can breach the efforts of humanity with relative ease. Our congregation lay cross-legged on the stone — a tribute to the humanity above the red, white, red, white wail of sirens.
This wall, rising high above trees and kebab stands, is worn and crumbling. The edges are no longer rigid. Those inside and those outside the façades of fear are now apt to sip çay together.
But the wall still stands.
________________________________________
Follow Nate Barton on Twitter: @TheNateBarton
