After The Nomad Impulse (2021), Jordi Esteva resumes the narration of his life and travel memories, focusing on those magical and forgotten worlds that he was able to know. From the island of Zanzibar to Mombasa, passing through remote Socotra, in Yemen.
The personal adventure reads like a novel, narrated by an antihero who strips naked and has the courage to recognize how much the city sinks him or is immobile, even if he is working on a cultural magazine as fun and exciting as Ajoblanco. Confessions such as celebrating an entire day with Leonard Cohen are moving, regardless of whether or not his portrait made it to the cover of the magazine.
Esteva speaks from that desire to wander that overtakes many of us. It is not traveling as an escape, but to find oneself or the other. The book is a love letter to those unknown worlds that teach us so much. Today, when all large cities have the same centers, with identical shops and serialized streets, it is good to remember that other worlds are possible.
The chapters of V take us to initiation rituals, to the sacred forest or to the encounter with the goddess of water. In the Ivory Coast, for the Abissa festival, the seven clans of the N’zima, belonging to the Akan group, gathered around the king to celebrate the arrival of the new year. Thus, following that perennial wisdom of the so-called primitive societies, the ties with the ancestors were renewed, the mistakes committed by oneself were contemplated and the geniuses were asked for prosperity for the next cycle. Festivals considered as rituals of truth, where spirits are part of everyday life. Africa is presented as one of the last non-globalized places on the planet, a haven of hidden traditions that reveal the nature of the human being, before becoming an avatar of a matrix that confuses us. Wander in the dharma to become human beings, curious and restless.
Discover places where time is ancient and slow, like in that heat of the fire on the heights of Al Haggar, on the island of Socotra. Remote paradises where you can rediscover yourself, feeling that the barriers are dissipating. We tend to label and differentiate, but when you travel, you learn to understand. In this context, the camera witnesses sensations, moods and geographies, while the pen fixes what one carries inside. This is how Esteva’s writing was born, as happens with almost all the great travel writers, a genre that gains more followers every day.
Towards the middle of his diary, he confesses to us how his way of working changes. In his early days, when he visited African oases, he limited himself to capturing images. Later, after his years co-directing the magazine Ajoblanco (1987-1993), he learned to interview, listen and synthesize. Thus arises the vocation to tell stories of societies and human beings.
That’s probably the real journey. Stay to be part and understand. Not the contemporary superficiality of photography as a trophy. However, to do this you have to abandon the status of tourist and become a traveler. Someone who lives off it or makes their life a journey. It is not always possible. Jordi Esteva seems to have achieved it. Both his books and his documentaries or exhibitions show this.
In the last chapter, he gives us one of those harsh realities that travelers experience today. It has to do with the crisis of two worlds, that moment when you return home and feel that everything has changed, or maybe you are the one who is not the same. “It is a curious feeling to arrive in a city where I have never felt strange and realize that years have passed and I no longer have a phone number to call… It happens to me even in Barcelona where I was born, when I can no longer find the shops or cafes that I thought would never disappear and that made it so special. Streets and squares of the Gothic quarter that I associate with nocturnal adventures or with beloved and eccentric characters who no longer exist.”
Every day it is more difficult to feel home. Just as Matsúo Basho says in his Sendas de Oku (1694), the answer is to understand that every day is a journey and our house itself is a journey.
Jordi Esteva Journey to a forgotten world Gutenberg Galaxy 304 pages 22 euros
