A master class in telling travelers’ tales

Now, with a quick scan through the album, we can click on anything that catches our eye, linger on an image that really interests us, skip over any that are out of focus or cut off someone’s head and also avoid the long tale about some adventure the narrator finds really amusing. A few simple clicks of the “like” button, a few well-aimed comments and we have done our duty as a distant friend or relative.

I still recall as if it were yesterday the slide lecture given by an elderly lady about a trip she had taken. I don’t recall now where she had been. I don’t even recall any of the things she said. But I clearly remember, still with much amusement, her impatient rapping of the table with her walking cane every time she wanted the man operating the slide projector to move on to the next slide!

Why do people have the urge to inflict every scene from recent travels on an unsuspecting group of friends and family?

Perhaps it is the desire to relive happy memories when they return to their usual daily lives. Certainly, seeing pictures of summer sun and glorious beaches when back under cold gray skies can brighten up your day. Perhaps in their excitement about what they have seen, they assume everyone will be equally enthusiastic to live vicariously through the experience. I would agree that local color and scenes of amazing sights are awe-inspiring. But countless shots of airports, swimming pools and people sitting down to hotel buffets just don’t inspire. Perhaps it is a desire to impress…

Maybe now I am sounding just a little cynical and jaded. But as a book reviewer, I have to wade through what seems to me more than my fair share of lackluster travelers’ tales. Some people have the gift of observation and a gift for retelling an anecdote in a way that breathes life into it. Others, frankly, just don’t. Their mediocre stories state the obvious, stick firmly to the surface, refusing to try to understand what lies beneath, and often boil down to little more than a story imbued with the superior sneer, “Isn’t it strange how these funny people do things like this!”

I have had my fill of manuscripts that daren’t stray from the well-trodden path of describing a trip on a local minibus in Turkey, queuing in some form of government office, ubiquitous pictures and statues of Atatürk and Turks shrugging their shoulders to suggest there is nothing that can be done about the situation this angry foreigner insists must be changed…right now!

Tauris Parke Paperbacks, an imprint of Middle Eastern specialist IB Tauris, is reprinting some old classics. They have come to my rescue with a modern reprint of the 1920s story of Vita Sackville-West’s trip to Persia. Mindful of the many pitfalls awaiting the travel writer, she bursts onto the scene with an explosive start: “Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore.”

She then proceeds to write one of the liveliest and most vivacious accounts of a trip I have ever been blessed to read! Between January and May of 1926, she set out from England to visit her husband, Harold Nicolson, who was in the British diplomatic service in the country then known as Persia. She made a slow passage, taking a circuitous route, so her book details more than just the country of the Shah, including stories of neighboring countries such as Iraq and India.

Aware that she was not addressing what she calls “a suffering audience of friends,” this talented writer produced a triumph of a work. It is engaging and appealing, making the reader certain the author would be the ideal travel companion and more than a little jealous they were unable to physically accompany her on her travels.

Vita Sackville-West is successful because she describes pleasure. She really seems to love the lands she travels through, and avoids taking a superior point of view and analyzing everything through a lens of Western efficiency. In fact, she castigates many Europeans she meets -- both fellow travelers and those resident -- writing, “They thought and complained only of its inefficiencies and discomforts, blinkered to the beauty of the country, the gentleness of its people, its gardens, its literature, its art.”

She avoids the trap of name-dropping, too. As part of the Bloomsbury set, a clique of brilliant literary and academic stars who became synonymous with radical thought and challenge to the morals of previous generations and snobbish privilege, she could have been expected to write in a completely different vein. She never emphasizes her important husband or even the fact she was writing to her famous friend, Virginia Woolf. Instead of the sneer at life we come to link with Bloomsbury, her story reveals a love for Persia, based on its remoteness and lack of sophistication.

In Persia, she takes a trip to Isfahan. On her return to Tehran, she helps decorate Gulistan Palace for the coronation of Reza Khan, and a few chapters are devoted to describing this historic event.

She is a meticulous observer but only pauses to point out things that are poignant, striking or that genuinely amuse, such as a notice board in English at a station on the line from Basra to Baghdad that instructed the passenger to “change here for Babylon.”

Her delightful prose and amazing power of description transport you from wherever you happen to be sitting right into the middle of the Persia of a century ago. Her writing is atmospheric. “I was myself vividly aware of going into Persia. The nose of the motor pointed straight at the sun.” She almost encourages you to walk with her to visit her friend and political architect of the state of Iraq: “Then: a door in the blank wall, a jerky stop, a creaking of hinges, a broadly smiling servant, a rush of dogs, a vista of garden path edged with carnations in pots, a little verandah and a little low house at the end of the path, an English voice -- Gertrude Bell.”

Vita Sackville-West’s story of her travels radiates with an ardor that is as compelling as it is inspiring. She says of Gertrude Bell, “Whatever subject she touched she lit up, such vitality was irresistible,” but the same could be applied to her own pen.

On receiving a copy of the manuscript, her friend Virginia Woolf wrote to her, saying: “It’s awfully good… I didn’t know the full extent of your subtleties… The whole book is full of nooks and crannies, the very intimate things one says in print.”

No wonder I enjoyed it! If it is good for Virginia Woolf, it is wonderful for the rest of us. Budding travel memoir writers, take note…please!

“Passenger to Teheran” by Vita Sackville-West, republished by Tauris Parke Paperbacks 11.99 pounds in paperback, ISBN: 978-184511343-8