By Martin Fletcher
There’s something about the worn cobbled alleys, the enchanting courtyards, and the time-pocked walls of San Miguel de Allende that inspires reflection. It is a soulful place, a timeless place, that asks timeless questions.
And so it was here, last year, in sweet-smelling patios and on breathtaking rooftops, sipping macchiatos by the dozen, that I wrote the book that I had long wanted to write—about what I learned in my four decades of reporting around the world. Of course I joked that it would have to be a very slim book.
I’ve certainly seen a lot. My business was to meet people on the worst day of their lives, tell their story, and move on often to a different tragedy in a different country. I needed thick skin, but many left a scratch on my soul. I learned from their lives and they changed me.
It is from this well that I draw.
For our world is made of tiny stories. Some are happy and funny, some are tragic, some merely unfortunate.
We are told the road to success is paved with failure, that is where the lessons are. Well, that’s where I come in.
Take the Greek women’s relay team. In the 4×400 relay at the 2004 Athens Olympics, the United States women won gold, Russia silver, and Jamaica bronze. But the stadium’s loudest cheer came a full half-minute later for the last Greek runner. While the press pounced on the victors, my attention was on the losers. Who were these Greek duds? How did it feel to fail so fully?
All winners celebrate the same way. They leap and hug and laugh and drape themselves in the national flag before the cameras. But what do the losers do?
My teachers, the people I learned from, lost. They may have been defeated, scared, weak, alone, but none gave up. They put one foot before the other and then another in the hope that tomorrow would be a better day, however unlikely.
Like the mother who waved away her new-born because she hated the thought of bringing her son into war and exile. Yet two days later, in her freezing tent in Kosovo, I watched as she nursed her baby and beamed with joy. The father in Somalia whose wife and four daughters died of starvation yet told me his dream was to go home, plant his crops, find a new wife, and sit under the tree. The little girl in Macedonia who lost her family yet never stopped smiling. Every day in the refugee tent she drew stick figures of her mother and father and, after two months, found them again. All these people and a thousand more taught me never to give up hope, that every problem has a solution, and that if you don’t find it, keep looking.
My guiding thought, as I raced from one disaster to another, was from a French existentialist philosopher who wrote: “I can’t stop this from being a world that tortures children, but I can stop some children from being tortured.”
I felt that what little good I could do was good enough.
But I carry guilt too—for all the things I did not do, the people I did not help. In a feeding center in Mogadishu, where dozens of people were dying a day from diseases related to starvation, a little boy followed me everywhere. His belly was distended, his hair grew only in clumps, and flies plagued his eyes. I offered him my sandwich. He gestured No. Water? No.
Finally I said to my translator, “Please, ask him what he wants.”
He wanted my pencil.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Tell him I can’t give it to him. I’ve only got one.”
Later I could have shot myself. I came halfway around the world to observe the famine and civil war, and I couldn’t see further than my notebook. That pencil must have meant so much to that starving child, and I denied him. I looked for him for days to give him my pencil, but I never saw him again. It’s one of my worst memories.
And that’s why I support the charity, Artolution. They give not pencils but paint brushes and buckets of paint to refugees and disadvantaged children all around the world. They understand what I did not—that we must feed the mind as much as the body.
So all the profits from my book will go to Artolution.
That hungry little boy taught me the greatest lesson. He is my most powerful teacher.
Meet Martin Fletcher at the Biblioteca March 11, 4pm when he’ll introduce his new book and a related short movie, followed by Q&A. Tickets 110 pesos.
Book Presentation
“Teachers. The one’s I can’t forget” by Martin Fletcher
Sat., Mar. 11, 4pm
La Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
110 pesos
