Brightening the Corner Where They Were

I've read two books recently that shed light on oft-untravelled parts of the globe.  One is fiction that feels like autobiography, and the other is autobiography that's crazy enough to be fiction.

I had the good fortune to chat with Nicholas Schmidle a couple times while we both lived in Pakistan.  His tales of adventure as an independent writer and inquiring American there made me shake my head in disbelief.

Now he's put his stories in a brand new book - To Live or To Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan - and it's a ride.

Nostalgic for the scent of tear gas (because he knew then he was close to the action)?  Check.  Interviewing a policeman while protester's rocks (and bullets) pinged around in rioting urban slums?  Check.  Making friends with a jihadi who raised an armed rebellion in Pakistan's capital?  Yup, did that too.

Unfettered by formal ties to news outlets, Nicholas wandered Pakistan at will, taking his freelance reporter's notebook into the unlikeliest of places.  His ability to speak Urdu (the national language) and willingness to travel in 'unsafe' areas gave him unparalleled access to Pakistan's life and politics.

The result?  A taut and penetrating look into an endlessly fascinating and deeply complicated country, with stories and insights you'll find nowhere else.

And it ain't fiction.

The next book, though, is: Whiteman, by Tony D'Souza.  Yet in its illumination of real-life experience, it reads like more than a novel.

The autobiographical feel is no accident.  About an aid worker (Jack) from the US who lives in a remote Ivory Coast village for three years, Whiteman is written by a former Peace Corps volunteer to, of course, Ivory Coast.

Since I live on the periphery of the international development culture myself, I've heard plenty of Peace Corps stories.  Yet, as so often, it was in this fictional setting that I began to really understand the plopped-in-a-village life that I've heard so much about.

But that's what good literatures does, right?  It gives us a way to imagine - and so comprehend - the lives of others.  And the book is pretty decent literature, I'd say; I wanted to read it all day, and did.

Structured as free-flowing chapters on Jack's integration into local life, Whiteman lays bare the realities of international 'development,' and not always in complimentary fashion.  There's corruption, misunderstandings and mismanagement, sex aplenty (that'll keep you reading), and of course a little redemption - but never too much.

In the end, D'Souza's character bribes his way past armed checkpoints to fly home as Ivory Coast devolves into civil war.  As for Nicholas Schmidle, he gets booted out of Pakistan (twice) for his push-the-limits reportage.

Unfortunately there's too much conflict in the world, and too much world to visit to comprehend it all.  But thankfully we have writers like D'Souza and Schmidle to help us travel, and understand, without having to brave the tear gas and the checkpoints ourselves.