Travels with Herodotus Read Online Free
Author: Ryszard Kapuściński
barefoot man entered the room bearing a pot of tea and several biscuits. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. He placed the tray on the table, bowed, and, having uttered not a word, softly withdrew. There was such a natural politeness in his manner, such profound tactfulness, something so astonishingly delicate and dignified, that I felt instant admiration and respect for him.
Something more disconcerting occurred an hour later, when I stepped out of the hotel. On the opposite side of the street, on a cramped little square, rickshaw drivers had been gathering since dawn—skinny, stooped men with bony, sinewy legs. They must have learned that a sahib had arrived in the hotel. A sahib, by definition, must have money, so they waited patiently, ready toserve. But the very idea of sprawling comfortably in a rickshaw pulled by a hungry, weak waif of a man with one foot already in the grave filled me with the utmost revulsion, outrage, horror. To be an exploiter? A bloodsucker? To oppress another human being in this way? Never! I had been brought up in a precisely opposite spirit, taught that even living skeletons such as these were my brothers, kindred souls, near ones, flesh of my flesh. So when the rickshaw drivers threw themselves upon me with pleading encouragement, clamoring and fighting amongst themselves for my business, I began to firmly push them away, rebuke them, protest. They were astounded—what was I saying, what was I doing? They had been counting on me, after all. I was their only chance, their only hope—if only for a bowl of rice. I walked on without turning my head, impassive, resolute, a little smugly proud of not having allowed myself to be manipulated into assuming the role of a leech.
Old Delhi! Its narrow, dusty, fiendishly hot streets, with their stifling odor of tropical fermentation. And this crowd of silently moving people, appearing and disappearing, their faces dark, humid, anonymous, closed. Quiet children, making no sound. A man stares dully at the remains of his bicycle, which has fallen apart in the middle of the street. A woman sells something wrapped in green leaves—what is it? What do those leaves enfold? A beggar demonstrates how the skin of his stomach is plastered to his spinal cord—but is this even possible? One has to walk carefully, to pay attention, because many vendors spread their wares directly on the ground, on the sidewalks, right on the edge of the road. Here is a man who has laid out two rows of human teeth and some old pliers on a piece of newspaper, thereby advertising his dental services. His neighbor—a wizened, shrunken fellow—ishawking books. I rummage through the carelessly arranged, dusty piles and settle on two: Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls
(useful for learning English) and the priest J. A. Dubois’s
Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies
. Father Dubois arrived in India as a missionary in 1792 and stayed for thirty-one years, and the fruit of his studies of Hindu ways of life was the book I had just purchased, which was published in England in 1816 with the assistance of the British East India Company.
I returned to the hotel, opened the Hemingway to the first sentence: “He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.” I understood nothing. I had a small English-Polish pocket dictionary, the only one that had been available in Warsaw. I managed to find the word “brown,” but none of the others. I proceeded to the next sentence: “The mountainside sloped gently…” Again—not a word. “There was a stream alongside …” The more I tried to understand this text, the more discouraged and despairing I became. I felt trapped. Besieged by language. Language struck me at that moment as something material, something with a physical dimension, a wall rising up in the middle of the road and preventing my going further, closing off
Something more disconcerting occurred an hour later, when I stepped out of the hotel. On the opposite side of the street, on a cramped little square, rickshaw drivers had been gathering since dawn—skinny, stooped men with bony, sinewy legs. They must have learned that a sahib had arrived in the hotel. A sahib, by definition, must have money, so they waited patiently, ready toserve. But the very idea of sprawling comfortably in a rickshaw pulled by a hungry, weak waif of a man with one foot already in the grave filled me with the utmost revulsion, outrage, horror. To be an exploiter? A bloodsucker? To oppress another human being in this way? Never! I had been brought up in a precisely opposite spirit, taught that even living skeletons such as these were my brothers, kindred souls, near ones, flesh of my flesh. So when the rickshaw drivers threw themselves upon me with pleading encouragement, clamoring and fighting amongst themselves for my business, I began to firmly push them away, rebuke them, protest. They were astounded—what was I saying, what was I doing? They had been counting on me, after all. I was their only chance, their only hope—if only for a bowl of rice. I walked on without turning my head, impassive, resolute, a little smugly proud of not having allowed myself to be manipulated into assuming the role of a leech.
Old Delhi! Its narrow, dusty, fiendishly hot streets, with their stifling odor of tropical fermentation. And this crowd of silently moving people, appearing and disappearing, their faces dark, humid, anonymous, closed. Quiet children, making no sound. A man stares dully at the remains of his bicycle, which has fallen apart in the middle of the street. A woman sells something wrapped in green leaves—what is it? What do those leaves enfold? A beggar demonstrates how the skin of his stomach is plastered to his spinal cord—but is this even possible? One has to walk carefully, to pay attention, because many vendors spread their wares directly on the ground, on the sidewalks, right on the edge of the road. Here is a man who has laid out two rows of human teeth and some old pliers on a piece of newspaper, thereby advertising his dental services. His neighbor—a wizened, shrunken fellow—ishawking books. I rummage through the carelessly arranged, dusty piles and settle on two: Hemingway’s
For Whom the Bell Tolls
(useful for learning English) and the priest J. A. Dubois’s
Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies
. Father Dubois arrived in India as a missionary in 1792 and stayed for thirty-one years, and the fruit of his studies of Hindu ways of life was the book I had just purchased, which was published in England in 1816 with the assistance of the British East India Company.
I returned to the hotel, opened the Hemingway to the first sentence: “He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.” I understood nothing. I had a small English-Polish pocket dictionary, the only one that had been available in Warsaw. I managed to find the word “brown,” but none of the others. I proceeded to the next sentence: “The mountainside sloped gently…” Again—not a word. “There was a stream alongside …” The more I tried to understand this text, the more discouraged and despairing I became. I felt trapped. Besieged by language. Language struck me at that moment as something material, something with a physical dimension, a wall rising up in the middle of the road and preventing my going further, closing off
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