Travels with Myself and Another: A Memoir

by Martha Gellhorn

There can have been nothing else like CNAC in the history of civil aviation. I doubt if there were ever any other pilots like those. They flew by compass, eyesight and experience; help from the ground was limited to contact when nearing cities, the all-clear signal for take-off, and whatever weather reports they could pick from the air. I remember one weather report: “The moon is beaming,” not really much help. The pilots earned one thousand dollars a month for eighty-five flying hours and ten dollars for each extra hour. Men do not risk their lives every week for such money.

Local customs charmed him, for instance ear-cleaning. Salesmen with trays of thin sticks, topped by tiny coloured pom-poms, roamed the streets; these sticks were ear cleaners. Customers would pause, in the middle of those bustling crowds, to prod away at their ears with the detached expression, U.C. said, of people peeing in a swimming pool.

“They look about ten years old,” I shouted at U.C. “It takes three months to make one of those damned things, I think it’s eight balls within balls. They’ll be blind before they’re twenty. And that little girl with her tortoise. We’re all living on slave labour! The people are half-starved! I want to get out, I can’t stand this place!” U.C. considered me thoughtfully. “The trouble with you, M., is that you think everybody is exactly like you. What you can’t stand, they can’t stand. What’s hell for you has to be hell for them. How do you know what they feel about their lives? If it was as bad as you think, they’d kill themselves instead of having more kids and setting off firecrackers.”

“Lunch with General Yu. Looks like Buddha. Staff of generals, Chu, Chiang, Wong, Chen etc. Bottoms up on Chinese fire-water.

Under a china-blue sky, I sat naked in the shallows to watch schools of fish, recognizing only silver baby barracudas. And waded out to swim through glass-clear Nile-green water, where you could see below to the sand and more passing fish, into silky deep sapphire sea.

was in that state of grace which can rightly be called happiness, when body and mind rejoice totally together. This occurs, as a divine surprise, in travel; this is why I will never finish travelling.

The trader, who is an importer as well as exporter, has to be on his toes to lure the ladies’ fancy. What fun. Buying for Neimann Marcus or Selfridge’s, on the other hand, would seem to me a crashing bore.

“Mais oui. Londres est très connu.”

the blacks have lasted and know their place in the land, and fit. No one else does; and I doubt if civilization, our kind, ever will.

To note: it takes time, great determination and a lot of money to escape civilization.

Ibrahim and I were driving along, sick with thirst and silent from misery, when I saw in the road a man with two large horns growing out of his chest. I thought maybe I’d gone off my head and told Ibrahim to stop. No by golly, he did have two large horns, just above his nipples; they were made of leather and this must be the ancient art of cupping to cure sickness.

I spend and waste time like a millionaire; plenty of capital on deposit, I will never run short. And forget with the same lavishness; no need to save old memory since new memories pile up, an unlimited supply of money in the bank, a bank as big as the world.

Through the trees I saw zebra grazing and held my breath in wonder and delight. I would never be able to go to a zoo again, I would feel too sorry for animals kidnapped from where they belonged. And the poor animals would never again look right. The brief interlude at Waza in Cameroun, giraffes on the Nairobi-Kampala road and this herd of zebra had already shown me the difference between the imprisoned and the free: the shine of their coats. And the movements, the grace of everything they did when living as they were meant to. I was seeing animals for the first time, before I had seen sad copies of the original creation.

The machinery that keeps me going is not geared to cope with infinity and eternity as so clearly displayed in that sky.

don’t own a car because I don’t need one. I regard the getting and keeping (and the upkeeping) of possessions as a waste of life. No one can be wholly free but one can be freer, and the easiest trap to open is the possessions trap. I have the things I require and neither covet nor collect from choice. Or rather I only covet airfares and would not say no to a season pass on all airlines. Now I saw that fewer and simpler needs is an idea that comes from living in an Affluent Society, up to its ears if not half-drowned in excess things.