Free Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuściński Page B

how I had felt in India. There too I could not penetrate the thicket of the local Hindu alphabet. And were I to travel farther still, would I not encounter similar barriers?
    Where did this linguistic-alphabetical Tower of Babel come from, anyway? How does a particular alphabet arise? At some primal point, at the very beginning, it had to start with a single sign, a single character. Someone made a mark in order to remember something. Or to communicate something to someone else. Or to cast a spell on an object or a territory.
    But why do different people describe the same object with so many completely different notations? All over the world a man, a mountain, or a tree look much alike, and yet in each alphabet different symbols, images, or letters correspond to them. Why is it that the very first individual who wanted to describe a flower made a vertical line in one culture, a circle in another culture, and in a third decided on two lines and a cone? Did these first scribblers make these decisions on their own, or collectively? Did they talk them over beforehand? Discuss them around the fire at night? Request endorsement during a family council? At a tribal gathering? Did they seek counsel from the elders? From charlatans? From soothsayers?
    It would be good to know, because later, once the die has been cast, one cannot turn back. Matters acquire their own momentum. From that first, simplest decision—to make one line to the left and one to the right—all the rest will follow, increasingly ingenious and intricate, because by the alphabet’s fiendish evolutionary logic the alphabet with time grows more and more complex, less and less legible to the uninitiated, even to the point of finally becoming, as has occurred more than once, utterly indecipherable.
    Although the Hindi and the Chinese writing systems caused me equal difficulty, the behavior of people in the two countries could not have been more different. The Hindu is a relaxed being, whilethe Chinese is a tense and vigilant one. A crowd of Hindus is formless, fluid, slow; a crowd of Chinese is formed before you know it into disciplined marching lines. One senses that above a gathering of Chinese stands a commander, a higher authority, while above the multitude of Hindus hovers an Areopagus of innumerable and undemanding deities. If a throng of Hindus encounters something interesting, it stops, looks, and begins discussing. In a similar situation, the Chinese will walk on, in close formation, obedient, their eyes fixed on a designated goal. The Hindus are significantly more ritualistic, mystical, religious. The realm of the spirit and its symbols is always close at hand in India, present, perceptible. Holy men wander along the roads; pilgrimages head for temples, the seats of the gods; masses gather at the feet of holy mountains, bathe in holy rivers, cremate the dead on holy pyres. The Chinese appear spiritually less ostentatious, significantly more discreet and closed. Instead of paying homage to gods, they concern themselves with observing proper etiquette; instead of holy men, works march along the roads.
    Their faces, too, I found are different. The face of a Hindu contains surprise; a red dot on a forehead, colorful patterns on cheeks, or a smile that reveals teeth stained dark brown. The face of a Chinese holds no such surprises. It is smooth and has unvarying features. It seems as if nothing could ruffle its still surface. It is a face that communicates that it is hiding something about which we know nothing and never will.
    One time Comrade Li took me to Shanghai. What a difference from Peking! I was stunned by the immensity of this city, by the diversity of its architecture—entire neighborhoods built in the French style, or the Italian, or the American. Everywhere, for kilometers on end, shaded avenues, boulevards, promenades, arcades.The scale and energy of urban development, the metropolitan bustle, the cars, the rickshaws, the untold multitudes of