Some journeys are short, a couple of hours or a couple of days; other journeys, such as what Nancy Hayes experienced on the Silk Road, last a lifetime.
At the age of 24, Hayes and her husband, Ross, set out in 1965 to retrace Marco Polo’s journey along the famed Silk Road. They began in Venice with a Volkswagen Beetle and head towards Turkey, Syria and the Middle East, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and then into Pakistan where, on Sept. 6, 1965, the Indo-Pakistani war began.
They were forced to flee back across the border into Afghanistan after being trapped in Lahore, Pakistan with no gas for the Beetle. They escaped through what becomes the refrain from Hayes’s recently published book, Weaving Threads: Travels Along the Silk Road – their own resourcefulness and the kindness of strangers.
Their journey would end in Afghanistan in 1965, but they did not allow their dream to die. Instead, they returned in 2005 and picked up where they left off.
Hayes was inspired to write her story as a way to counter what the world was seeing following 9/11 and the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, both of which occurred in 2001.
“When the Buddhas were blown up in Bamiyan we were devastated. It had a powerful effect on me because I knew there was something very bad going on in the world,” she said. “This was such a wonderful experience being there. We talk about them with our friends.
“And then, of course, 9/11 happened shortly after that and I knew I had to write my stories down as I wanted my family to understand that there was a very kind and beautiful world out there that we weren’t seeing in the news, another way of being in the world.”
Hayes wrote a story about Afghanistan, which she set aside for quite a while, but she pulled it back out to submit to the 2010 Surrey International Writers’ Conference competition at the urging of her writers’ group.
The story, Salaam Aliakum: Peace to You, won the top award for non-fiction.
In the years following that win, Hayes wrote more stories, all of which would form the backbone of Weaving Threads.
Even though she began writing the book for her family, she broadened her scope, choosing to self-publish it and share it with a wider audience. Along the way she also sought lots of advice and feedback from friends who are writers, publishers and instructors. The advice paid off: one instructor told Hayes to put more of her heart into it, and so she did. And it shows.
“I’ve been telling these stories for years, so these stories like Desert Coffee, it’s always good conversation, or the guns and lemons story, a lot of these we’ve told forever. What I was surprised with was how pleased I was with the way it eventually came out on the page and that people actually liked reading it,” she said.
There’s a reason for that, Hayes’s writing is lovely and perceptive and she nicely weaves all her threads together.
She shares her story, bumps and all, and the stories of the people they encounter.
Even though the Hayes get themselves into and out of tight spots, this is not a typical travelogue. Hayes does not particularly focus on the adventure. She’s more interested in the people and their stories.
Weaving Threads: Travels on the Silk Road is available at Café Books for $20. It is also available at the Canmore Public Library.
Hayes, a retired nurse and former volunteer president of UNICEF, is donating proceeds from Weaving Threads to Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. Go to www.nancyhayes.com for more information.
