"Welp, back in Iraq..."

Savage threw together this little masterpiece for you to look-see. I also highly recommend taking a second to peruse his breakdown of our trip, as I am completely incapable of writing anything nearly as accessible...

 

[Editors note: can you imagine a police officer in the states flagging you down out of traffic, then asking where you're going, and if you happen to say the place he's thinking of, requiring you to take two American's who speak close to none of your language, and who have managed to brew up the penultimate dudesweat scent, along with you?]

After breaking bread with the two laconic Turkish truck drivers (they insisted, and paid), we returned to the truck bed, where we belonged. Prime, and curled up like sacks in the flatbed of the truck, I began to consider our collective journeys.

We offer our stories as currency on the road -- where we're from, what we're doing, and where we're going -- and while these stories say close to nothing about who we really are, they allow us to open to the stories that life might tell us if only we allow it. These stories grow us.

After this trip, I've got a whole new set of stories to tell, and most all of them revolve around the generosity of others. While I brew some word sketches of our experiences (I've been shooting with my film camera, so who knows when those images will surface), it's overwhelming, despite the relative brevity of our trip (10 days), to consider the amount of information and experience we've absorbed. There was laughter, awe, and a thousand moments of being extraordinarily lost in translation. It is safe to say that we managed to strike a rather precarious balance between the downright zaniness of hitch-hiking/traveling in general (should we have accepted the invitation to stay with the transvestite and gigolo for the nightwhat), and the fulfilling lessons/edifications imparted by those who drove and fed us all the way across Turkey. The latter's hospitality knew no boundaries -- we were comped the umpteenth cup of cay, given the living room heated by the wood stove, you name it -- which reminds me that, despite the distance our languages might create, we are all far closer than we think.