Roughing It in Asia
Peretz, Don
Roughing It in Asia West of the Indus, by William O. Douglas. Doubleday. 513 pp. $5. Reviewed by Don Peretz Oupreme Court Justice William O. ^ Douglas is still in love with Asia, with travel,...
...Wherever possible they lived with Ali or his likes...
...But his wife, no doubt because she was new to such experiences, was hit on more than one occasion...
...They were well-dressed—indeed overdressed for the Middle East . . . They were intrigued with Asia but full of misgivings...
...Public Health Service into fits...
...But they would never get close enough to the villages to feel the heartbeat of the people...
...Ali represents to the author the average man whom he set out to meet—and did meet in the threshing floors, market places and bazaars, and remote hamlets along the way...
...He is indeed uncritical and uncyni-cal...
...He and his two companions probably make up for dozens, no hundreds, of Americans who follow the embassy tea parties...
...Only occasionally are there observations about contemporary politics—most of them recounting conversations with various individuals who raised the subject...
...Ali, the Persian peasant to whom the book is dedicated, "offered me his jug of cold water on a blistering hot day...
...The three travelers had dozens of their own little tea parties which really counted in making friends in lands where Americans are almost as remote as men from Mars...
...northward again through Turkey to Istanbul, where they finally broke camp...
...They were fascinated by the colors and mysticism of Asia but nervous about its stench and dirt...
...One can't call him the "quiet American" because he is much too boisterous...
...As he was leaving Istanbul, he met a group of newly arrived fellow countrymen...
...Even if his political, economic, and social reporting leaves much to be desired, his ability to make contact with simple people, as well as the big shots, and his fervent desire to make such contact, compensates for his shortcomings on the side of naivete...
...Bill Douglas (after reading these adventures, you can't call him anything but Bill) was probably taken in by much that he saw and heard...
...This is an unsophisticated account of daily life for three travelers who are roughing it through central Asia...
...Mary Watkins...
...The book is a diary of a 7,000-mile jaunt he made by automobile in the summer of 1957 with his new wife, Mercedes, and Mrs...
...They would go to teas in embassies and see something of the social whirl of the capitals...
...That meant that they would see Asia from luxurious hotels, not from the highways and byways...
...It is spiced with native folklore and humor, and the author's own pranks...
...The pages of personal vignettes are interspersed with all kinds of accessory tidbits—art criticism, archaeology, history, anthropology, agricultural information, and what not...
...But such will not be the case if Douglas can help it...
...Moreover, they feared dysentery...
...Of course, being a V.I.P., the Supreme Court Justice could not evade the official welcomes put on by big-wigs along the route...
...Justice Douglas is worried about the way in which most Americans travel through Asia...
...The three were rather fearless— often treading where the old axiom about "discretion being the better part of valor" would seem to have warned them off...
...The chances they seemed to take in sharing local food and drink would have thrown the U.S...
...But whether they were local justices or cabinet ministers, he charmed them with his homespun humor and lively interest in their activities...
...Perhaps Douglas, singing the praises of the "little man" everywhere he went, is naive—but he is also loved, as he seems to love those peasants with whom he breaks bread and shares water...
...Most of the book is about the "Alis" whom Douglas met along the trail...
...Their attitudes toward communism and socialism were antediluvian...
...Douglas' luck held out all along the way—probably by now, after so many trips through the back roads of Asia, he has become immune to the intestinal "bugs" which would knock out any normal American...
...The three Americans tried to live off the land, as it were...
...Such was the case when they followed the path of Peter Winant and his fiancee up to the spot of their sinister disappearance in northern Afghanistan...
...They wanted to enjoy in Asia the American standard of living...
...Between June and September, 1957, the three travelers drove from Karachi, Pakistan, northward up the Indus river, then followed the Soviet frontier through Afghanistan and Iran into Iraq...
...Reviewed by Don Peretz Oupreme Court Justice William O. ^ Douglas is still in love with Asia, with travel, with adventure, and with youth—so we gather from the account of his latest travels through the Orient in West of the Indus...
...They "were so far behind world trends as to be tragic figures...
...They would meet their own kind in Asia and not come to know the men and women who are making their revolutions come true...
...They did not stay in plush hotels or look for the most sanitary restaurants—indeed, there were none along most of the route they followed...
...Rather than an analysis of the latest international political machinations, the trend of power politics, or an interpretatiton of the most recent shifts of government, Justice Douglas has written his day by day impressions of all that he saw, heard, tasted, smelled, or felt...
...In the author's view these men and women he met in the hotel lobby "were symbolic of the growing gulf between America and the East, the gulf that threatents to leave us in lonely isolation...
Vol. 23 • January 1959 • No. 1
