Walking to Samarkand: The Great Silk Road From Persia To Central Asia, by Bernard Ollivier

What sort of person is the author? This normally does not matter so much, because most authors do not make themselves the center of their works, the center of attention, the center of dramatic action, and so on. Yet this book is a memoir, part of a series, published at some length after the events it describes, and it is the author’s attention which draws us page after page. Moreover, although the author is traveling through some exciting places, and shares his perspectives, a great deal of this book is not very exciting. The author chooses to walk, for several months of the year (during his summer break, it would appear), traveling from his home in Normandy to places where he seeks to understand some part of the past, the romance and appeal of the Great Silk Road, while also dealing with the ravages of time. This puts a special burden on the author, in that he not only experienced the events of the book, but has to frame them for the writer. It is somewhat daring that he chooses not to frame himself most appealingly, but to discuss his almost nebbish and paranoid fears about the horrors of the desert he chooses to cross by foot, bravely, dealing with the thirst and the threat of scorpions and deadly spiders, to say nothing of vipers, as he travels among kindly people and corrupt police officials. As a fellow traveler who enjoys the experience of wacky and unconventional travels and finding out the heart of where one visits, there is a lot to enjoy here.

This book is almost 300 pages long and it discusses the author’s 3000 km or so walk between Anatolia, near the border between Turkey and Iran, and Samarkand. This journey is divided into sixteen chapters, more than half of which are devoted to the author’s experiences in Iran. The author begins with a discussion of his dark thoughts about entering Iran and walking in what is widely considered to be a very dangerous land for Westerners (1). What he finds, though, is that a lot of Persians are willing to express their own disdain, in one form or another, for the mojtaheds who run the country and in their desire to be free but unwillingness to fight and die for it, and the author comes off feeling that the Persians are a wonderful and friendly people who deserve a far better government than they have. This is even after dealing with a robber-cop who steals his camera and forces him to spend several days around Tehran waiting for another one to be delivered to him before he continues his walk to Mashad and then across the border into Turkmenistan. He was warned about that place too, and comments often on the ugliness of Russian canals and architecture and on the wide gulf between corrupt elites and ordinary people just trying to make it who end up being warm and friendly people. This general approach continues as he crosses the Karakum (14), reaches Bukhara (15), and then discovers the glories of Samarkand (16), where he apparently returned to France, a trip that he does not discuss, alas. Perhaps he saved it for the next book.

While there is a lot to enjoy, though, there are a few things that detract from my enjoyment of this book. One of them is that the author seems to be a bit disorganized in his writing. He talks about his travels, but sometimes leaves off what he goes to see on his detours and only reveals them later on. In addition to that, there are a lot of occasions, especially when the author talks about his experiences in Iran, where the author is hassled about a particular person I have never heard about, who appears as an anti-Semite Holocaust denier, but who appears to have been supported by many of the Iranians the author speaks to. This subplot somewhat distracts the reader from an account of what would be more interesting and more edifying. More to the point, as an American reader I find the author’s discussion of himself as a Frenchman, speaking in English as it is a common language between himself and others but seeking to distance himself from the hostility that he conveys being an American would bring, as a very irritating part of this book. Perhaps if one read this book as a European, it would make more sense that it would be frustrating to always be considered to be an American and have to deny it, but as an American, I tend to feel that the author being considered as an American should be considered to be a compliment, rather than an unwelcome burden to bear. Even so, despite this irritation there was a lot to enjoy about the book anyway, and it would be interesting to see how this book fits in with the other 3 (!) books that exist in the author’s series of travels that are discussed here.