Stranger in the Desert

 

Source: Jordan Salama.

The December 2024 issue of National Geographic magazine includes an essay by Jordan Salama, adapted from his own book released earlier this year titled Stranger in the Desert: A Family Story. The Nat Geo story is titled "What I found searching for my family story." The essay draws you in, describing how Jordan found his grandfather's narrative of the family's oral history, detailing their journeys across places and time, dispersed from the Middle East to Latin America and the United States. The photo of his grandfather Moisés sitting in his basement workshop/office adds a dimension to the essay. The writer has channeled his Abuelo's experiences and oral traditions from others, along with his own adventures in the Andes to bring these important family connections to the surface.  

Jordan writes that "family stories are currency for survival. They are embedded within the traditions we pick up along the journeys of our lives." 

After reading the essay, I bought the book. This is a really moving story. The way he writes about the family's immigration journey and yearning to understand what drove his ancestors to leave Ottoman Syria for Israel, then Argentina, and later, the United States, is very powerful. I felt myself thinking about parallels with my Campuzano, Vasquez, Amado and Suastegui ancestors and the different paths taken to arrive in the United States.

I found myself looking up the music of the Argentine folk singer Atahualpa Yupanqui mentioned in the book, listening to Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, Sephardic pizmonim, and relistening to Residente's 2017 album, inspired by his own DNA test. As I am following my own family's various journeys, the narrative and music left me with a lot of thoughts. 

In Jordan's Abuelo's words "Everything begins with one story. Whether that story is true, one can never be sure, but as it gets passed from generation to generation, despite being somewhat distorted, there can be some truth. And then people live and dream..."

His Abuela's words also resonate "to feel at home in more places than one. It breaks you in half and it completes you, at the very same time." A recurring theme of the book is about being more than one thing and having an intermix of cultures and experiences. Feeling at home and feeling a part of more than one culture and community at the same time.

The quote shared above from the Nat Geo essay is stronger in the epilogue of the book, "Our stories are embedded within the traditions we pick up across the journeys of our lives and the languages we carry with us in the soles of our shoes. They are the identities we create in worlds foreign and familiar, remembered now but forever at risk of being forgotten. ..." 

I highly recommend this book and the accompanying essay. Please do read it. I'm now passing this book on to my daughter to read over Christmas Break, and thinking about how this is inspiring me to continue digging into my family's stories, to save them from being forgotten.

One more note - Jordan's book reminded me of my earlier visits to Buenos Aires in 2013-2015 (see also here). I'd love to go back and see more of the country. It would be really cool to pair that with a visit to neighboring Chile.