En Madrid, siendo las 1 horas 40 minutos del día 12 de Agosto del año 2008, ante el instructor y el Secretario mencionados, comparece quien sin acreditarse, dice ser Kevin Andrew Bryan, país de nacionalidad Estados Unidos de America, varón, nacido en Boston (Estados Unidos), quien declara:

Commissaries are not designed to be enjoyable. They all are lit in shadow-deadening florescence, whose unnatural tint is compounded by off-white walls, and whose unnatural strength overpowers what life attempts to enter through small windows. During late night shifts, there is little sound; faded laughter from a distant hallway, the white noise of a television set found only in the office of the chief. Decoration is limited to the functional. A series of posters identify the most wanted, and those unfortunate female perpetrators attract drawings of beards and mustaches, the artist inevitably also from the overnight shift.

No work is done in these late hours except what must be done. It is not common at this hour for criminals to be apprehended, for testimonies to be given, for grievances to be assuaged. Crime, after all, is a nighttime performance because the dark sky offers more shadowy corners, more black alleys, from which escape – some say success – can be carried out.

…que se encontraba sobre las 00:30 horas del día 12/08/2008 y en compañia de varios amigos en la Plaza de Lavapies, que de repente se le acercó una persona por atrás y comenzo a hablarle en árabe, mientras que le ponia la mano en el hombro…

In Spanish, an Officer does not take down Witness Accounts. Rather, the Instructor has the witness poner una denuncia - the most entertaining translation being to Create a Denouncement. In the days of Franco, in the days before the First Republic, in the days of Torquemadas and Inquisitions, the Instructor would no doubt have better instructed the victim as to who the guilty party would be. Today, the interview is more clinical.

My Instructor is middle-aged, bearded, serious. Jobs involving endless paperwork require some measure of serious. Where are you from, I ask. Madrid. But your accent, it sounds like you’re from the South. The Spanish in Andalucia, final bastion of the Moors, predecessor of many of the accents of Latin America, is quite distinct. Words are chopped so that entire sentences flow gracefully. The letter “s” is often swallowed whole. Ah. His parents are from Málaga.

…que esta persona continuó hablándole, a la vez que intentaba realizarle la zancadilla, que este acto lo repitió una segunda vez más, reaccionado y quitándose a esta persona de encima, que este individuo comenzo a correr, momento en que se percató de que le había sustraído la cartera que portaba en el interior del bolsillo derecho de su pantalón…

And when did you realize you wallet was missing, he asks. A friend saw my pocket was pulled out, but I didn’t feel him do anything. Pause. The clinician types. And when you looked back, he was running? Yes, but he was not a big guy, so another American and I gave chase. Pause.

Neuroscientists discuss the distinction between instinctive and rational reactions. Breathing, looking away from blinding flashes of light, enjoying the taste of sugar – these do not require cognitive effort. They are genetically ingrained. I’ve wondered before what I would do if I were robbed. It turns out that no cognitive effort is needed. When someone flees down an alley with my wallet, I start giving chase. And yelling ladron, ladron, thief, thief. And hoping some Spaniard – alas, alas, this is not America – will stop the sprinter. And no matter, for his desire to escape is smaller than my desire to catch him. The alleyways of old Madrid are not making this chase easy, but my instincts match his and I continue to guess right. A half mile in, after I’ve made up more than half the distance separating us, an undercover police car springs into action. The thief dives under a dumpster, and hides my wallet. The police kick him out from underneath, and find my wallet nearby. The thief is handcuffed, and led away. Mohamed, I yell. He turns. I yell at him in Arabic: theft is haram, forbidden by Allah. He looks down at the ground.

There is a second instinctive reaction, beyond giving chase. That is the desire for revenge. I say this not with pride but merely to report a fact. I wanted to grab Mohamed’s shirt collar, turn him around and punch him square in the nose. Once I knew that I could catch him, I didn’t want any police. I didn’t want any help. Instinctive Self finds it gratifying to handle his own business. The thief looked devastated as he was led away by the police. And I was glad that this was the case.

Revenge is a base emotion, the emotion that halts compromises and reopens closed wounds. It is also an emotion that is very difficult to control.

…que ha salido corriendo detrás de el, por varias calles y en una de ellas el autor de los hechos estaba retenido por una patrulla de Policia, que la Policia le ha enseñado una cartera que ha reconocido como de su propiedad, que del interior de la cartera solo le falta el poco dinero en monedas que portaba, pudiendo ser esta cantidad de entre tres y cuatro euros, que el presunto autor de los hechos en un varón de raza árabe, de una altura aproximada de ciento setenta y cinco centimetros aproximadamente, complexión delgada, reconociéndole otra vez sin ningún género de duda si volviera a verle…

In the early 8th century, the Moors, a group of North African Muslims, swept across the Pillars of Hercules and conquered through to Tours, France, before being turned back by a Christian army. Their rule of Southern Spain and Portugal as al-Andaluz would last nearly 800 years. In the midst of the European Dark Ages, Córdoba may have been the most learned and populous city in the world, and tremendous feats of geometric architecture such as the Mezquita and the Alhambra were constructed. In 1492, Isabel and Ferdinand at last pushed the final Moorish leader across the Sierra Nevada mountains and back into Spain, completing the Reconquista, the Reconquest. Those last Moorish holdouts were forcibly converted during the following four centuries of the Inquisition. Over the past three decades, however, and particularly over the last ten years, large numbers of immigrants from Arabia and North Africa have moved back into Spain. Today, in the medieval quarter of Granada, the only tapas available are falafel and doner kebap.

You need to be careful, the Instructor says. The Arabs and Africans here are bad people. They’re nothing but criminals. Really, watch out for the Arabs.

Mohamed claimed first to be Spanish, then Algerian. His identification later shows him to be born in Tangier, Morocco, and living illegally in Spain. The difference in the experience of immigrants in Europe and in the United States is surprising. Immigrants in the US tend to be wealthy, highly educated, hard working; they tend to rapidly integrate into mainstream American culture. This may be because American culture is by definition a melting pot, while European culture has a distinct ethnic component. Even with clogs and two pigtails, an Egyptian girl will never seem Dutch.

Immigrants in Europe – and this is clear after a single day on the Continent – are not seen as hard-working future leaders of society. All four robberies that I’ve witnessed have been the work of immigrants. All of the dozens of men who have offered to sell me drugs, often in broad daylight in the middle of major European cities, have been immigrants. The unemployment rate among European immigrants is far higher than among their American counterparts. It is not surprising that European attitudes toward immigration are much more conservative than those in America. But why immigrants have fared so poorly in Europe is a question for which I have no answer.

…que no tiene más que decir, firmando su declaración en prueba de conformidad, y firman la presente el Instructor, de lo que como tal CERTIFICO.

Two policemen drop me off. Really, they say, watch out. These immigrants are no good.

Twain writes that “if you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal for a year.” I must therefore follow that greatest of American authors and keep only brief notes rather than some profound journal. On July 31, I leave my office for the final time and head straight to the airport to begin this year-long trip, which will cover all the non-arctic continents and dozens of countries, colonies, and cultures which have long tantalized me through image, essay and name.

The question, Why Travel, is an important one. I am not the type who enjoys vacations spent lazily on the beach. This is not because of some animosity toward sunsets, caipirinhas and soft sand, but rather a preference for novel experiences. The world may be getting smaller, but it is still unimaginably large; seeing every site worth seeing and meeting every person worth meeting is an impossible task. Time spent lounging on the shore is time spent not seeing those sites and meeting those people.

But even with a mind made up to leave, travel is still constrained twice, by time and money. By time, I don’t mean simply sorting out time in which to hit the road, but also that we must travel in 2008, not 1978 or 1958 or 1308. It is not possible to retrace the steps of those great travelers in history - Zheng He, Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, Henry Stanley, among many others - at any price. Humanity has had its state immeasurably improved by the globalization that has brought modern medicine, technology and opportunity to all but the most secluded villages. But modernity has also brought an increasing sameness to place, and in doing so made travel less interesting. A century ago, a traveler could move from the pious barjeel of Arabia to the wild West nomadism of the Steppe to the grandeur of the treaty ports lining the East Asian Sea, with every step of the journey bringing truly novel experiences. Even fifty years ago, significant areas of the world were so unexplored that weeks of overland travel, at a minimum, were required simply to reach them. That being the case, I am compelled to travel now rather than later, before the variety I seek vanishes completely. Of course, some writer fifty years hence will make similar historical claims about the bounty of travel available in 2008, and the pains he would take in order to travel during that illustrious year!

Money also limits what travel is possible. I should love to spend two months skiing from the edge of Antarctica to the South Pole, but the $62,000 required is, I’m afraid, a bit outside what I can afford. Nonetheless, ninety-nine percent of the world can be visited on any reasonable budget, and my planning philosophy is simply to list where I would go given an unlimited budget, and attempt as many of those places as possible. My country, the United States, is the richest large country in the world, so it is unsurprising that traveling in most of the world - with proper budgeting and some lack of luxury - is cheaper than simply living at home. Over the next year, I will spend less traveling that I spent simply living during the past year.

Once this trip begins, I will be posting stories here about once a week, conditional on having interesting stories to tell! The about page has more information about who I am and what this site is meant to be. Under details, you can find my anticipated route, notes on packing and expenses, and a list of books that I plan to read as I go. The images section is as you’d imagine it would be.

Finally, I need some help from you. If, after glancing at my route, you have any contacts where I will be going who might shed some light on the local culture and economy, I would be grateful for the introduction. We no longer live in the days when letters of introduction were required for a journey to make safe passage from caravanserai to caravanserai, but my experience has been that friends of friends provide the most interesting view of any new place.

I will have regular email access during the trip, and can be reached at kevincure@yahoo.com.