Parting Shot:

In the corner of my room

In the corner of my room sits a wine crate filled with books. Most people would take a glance at the titles of those books and surmise that I am a student of world literature and history. To me, though, these books are less about intellectual life and more about real living. The poetry of the ages still sings from the men and women who’ve gone before us, such that it isn’t the past they speak of but the very present.

In their words, we see the beginnings of our Modern Tale, clearly tethered to their exploits in the 1400s when men took to the seas to reach its ends. Extraordinarily large Chinese ships went all the way to Africa and, decades later, unaware of each other’s discoveries, Europeans – the Portuguese – found their own way to Asia via the seas for the first time in their tiny Caravels. What ensued for the next 400 years, because the world was found to be round and filled with easy transport (ships on seas versus camels on foot), would usher in our new modern age.

And in this age was large-scale trade and conquest, but also, hardly mentioned, large-scale migration. Europe, poor and constantly at war (once every decade) with meagre resources, saw millions migrate to Asia over the years. The largest numbers (an estimate of 60 million over a span of 300 years) went to the Americas.

But, of course, it wasn’t only the Europeans that were migrating. Everyone was. The “expatriate” is hardly a sign of current times. Migration has always been happening, just that most countries didn’t exist (over 120 countries today only began their existence after World War II) and so you couldn’t be “ex” of anything. One simply gathered the family, packed the little stuff they had, and moved.

You moved because of opportunity. You moved because of pain and suffering. You moved to where there was plenty. You moved to where there was no war or ravaging disease. You moved for adventure. You moved for love. You moved because you could.

Isn’t that story also ours?

We are still the same people shuffling around the world for all the same reasons, except now we cross borders with papers and the amazingly powerful scribble of our pens. As for those with no papers, they will find another way to move, or another time, but move they will and move we do.

In the corner of my room sits a discarded wine crate, tilted on its side to make room for big picture books, large maps of lands I have yet to move towards. But, as with everyone else, all my movement this past year has been restricted and yet rather special, for I have been to places where no ships, trains or planes can go, and I am not ready to head home.