I went to Pakistan for the mountains and to Jordan for Petra. I didn’t plan those trips around hospitality, though it became one of the things I remembered most clearly. A taxi driver in Pakistan once got out of his car to hug me goodbye.
In Tunisia, two brothers I met from the street heard that I liked shakshuka and made some for me. I had gone out to run an errand; by the time I came back, they had food waiting.
In Mauritania, I came back from roughly twenty hours on an iron-ore train wearing a good portion of the cargo. My host gave me somewhere to wash, let me do laundry and fed me. He had already helped me prepare for the ride. I had very little useful to offer in return beyond thanks and a bag full of dirty clothes.
Then there was a night camping in Wadi Rum in Jordan, drinking tea with people I met there. We talked and laughed. I remember the landscape, but I also remember being invited to sit down in it. I’ve had enough hurried conversations while traveling to know the difference between being served something and being made to feel welcome.
These were four encounters in different places, with people who had lives I knew only a little about. I don’t want to turn them into a claim about everyone in a country or religion. The taxi driver, the brothers, my host and the people I met in Wadi Rum each made a choice to be generous with a stranger. I was lucky enough to be on the receiving end.
I’d spent years traveling for mountains, ruins and long roads. Those things got me there. The people who made room for me are a big reason I still talk about the trips. I think about the brothers most often: I told them I liked a dish, left for a bit, and came back to find they’d made it. It was such an ordinary way to be kind, which may be why it stayed with me.