Riding in the face of fear for faith
Jeremy Kroeker’s Middle East motorcycle journey a tale we can all benefit from
I met Jeremy Kroeker a few years ago at a bike show, where he was selling a self-published book called Motorcycle Therapy.
It was a jovial yarn about riding his Kawasaki KLR650 down to Central America from his Alberta home, but he was much more interested in telling me about another ride.
Kroeker had just returned from Syria and Iran, travelling with the same bike, and he wanted to write a serious book about his journey.
It would be a tale of his search for spiritual meaning as a lapsed prairie Mennonite in a Middle-East world where religion is everywhere.
And about motorcycles, too, of course.
It took a few manuscripts to get it right, but Through Dust and Darkness: A motorcycle journey of fear and faith in the Middle East is a highly worthwhile read for any armchair traveller.
Kroeker tells of riding through Europe on his dubiously reliable motorcycle, which he names “The Oscillator” for its shaking vibration, and then stalling against bureaucracy in his attempts to reach Iran.
That he makes it at all is remarkable; that he can come home and tell us about it is laudable; and that he can write about it in such an engaging way is wonderful.
Kroeker comes across as a likeable but very fallible traveller and his style can be captivating. Consider this, as he waits with a water pipe in Istanbul for confirmation he can continue east:
“I took the mouthpiece and drew a long, deep breath through the hose. The smoke melted on my tongue like apple-flavoured cotton candy.
“It felt cool and soft as it flooded my lungs, where it remained for a moment before emerging again in a series of perfect smoke rings.
“I watched each one rise into the warm night air over the Bosporus. So desperately I wanted one of them to beat the odds somehow and survive the night. With luck, my little smoke ring might attach itself to an adhan in the morning and carry all the way to God.”
It’s his search for God that dominates the theme of his book — “Riding through the Middle East without considering God,” he writes, “is like sailing around the world ignoring the ocean” — but it’s the ride there that dominates the book’s character.
This is a motorcycle journey first and foremost, with all the challenges and adversities that entails.
Kroeker is no Middle East expert and his observations are refreshingly simple, sometimes even naive.
He travelled through Syria before the current war and experienced life there as it should be, before finally reaching Iran and fulfilling his journey.
He generally avoids politics, but he confronts his god many times: in a mosque, in a dark hotel room, out on the highway in a dust storm.
He’s a guy so racked by religion he once carved the words “No More” into his shoulder with a knife, and who openly questions a god “who lives between the nails of a suicide bomber’s vest. He’s in the semen of a rapist and the bloody tissue beneath the fingernails of his victim. How can that God be good?” But Kroeker keeps his thoughts accessible as he journeys on to their page-turning conclusion, and he writes with both keen humility and self-effacing humour.
Through Dust and Darkness is a very different book from his first thin effort and it’s all the better for it.
This time around, it’s an adventure with meaning and a tale from which we can all benefit.
Through Dust and Darkness is published by Rocky Mountain Books, RMBooks.com, 320 pages, $20. Mark Richardson is the author of Zen and Now and Canada’s Road. Email wheels@thestar.ca.