Letters Hold More Than Words

Poste Restante was my international lifeline to family and friends for many years. Letters are guardians to memories only snail mail can provide

“Salam, hello, anyone here? Is this Poste Restante?” It’s 1973, the Shah still reigns in Iran and Afghanistan is experiencing a brief period of peace in its war torn history.

I had arrived in Kabul late at night and drifted off to sleep, excitedly anticipating letters I was hoping to receive in the morning.

I traveled without itineraries, letting my heart and intuition lead the way. This unfortunately meant some letters arrived in bypassed destinations without being seen.

When I decided to head East from Istanbul I studied the map and decided on Kabul as a future Poste Restante. Now, standing at the counter, I wasn't sure I was even in the right building in this fifth world country.

I called out again in Farsi, then English.

A man suddenly emerged from another room and I showed him my passport. He thrust a hefty box of letters my way and gestured I should look through them to find mine.

They were completely disorganized and I could’ve taken anyone’s mail, which didn’t bode well for mine. But there they were, one after another appearing out of the chaotic pile.

My heart began singing as I glanced at the return addresses. Family, friends, more friends and again family. Seventeen letters to relish from people I hadn’t heard from since Athens, Greece months prior.

Done with sorting, I tried showing my collection to the clerk who waved me onward. This took the trust system to new levels and yet it worked.

I tucked the letters away and rushed back to my lodging where I could lay them out in a fan. Savoring news from home slowly, to prolong the gold I was gleaning.

Oh no! A dear friend’s mother had passed away unexpectedly and uprooted her world. Her emotions and grief spilled through her words. Her pen moved shakily, describing how a sudden stroke ended her mother’s life.

I could see where her tears had dripped and blotted the ink. I felt her angst as I held the pages. Her senses translating through the slant of her letters. Some printed, others in cursive.

“Forgive me for this discombobulated mess,” she wrote. “I can’t pretend I’m doing well. I’m not. Maybe I will be feeling better by the time you read these words. What the hell are you doing in Afghanistan btw? Keep breathing and come back home in one piece. That’s all I ask. I can’t lose you too.”

I reread this paragraph several times, tears leaking from my eyes just as they were from hers months before. Emotional transmission and connection.

Cell phones didn’t exist during my global trekking years in the 70’s and 80’s and into the 90’s as well. International calls were too expensive for a backpacker on a shoe string budget. They were only resorted to in imperative situations.

Poste Restante reigned supreme and I could only hope my calculations for a future destination would work out. Many times I experimented with the system. Sending a notice to the Postmaster General in a locale I hadn’t reached. Asking them to reroute mail to the new destination I provided.

I thought I was flying on the wings of a prayer the first time I attempted it. Is there such a thing as forwarding a Poste Restante address? Or would it get thrown on a random pile, discarded as confusing?

Trust, I told myself as I reached each designation and once again found a pack of forwarded letters. It worked! A postmaster had opened my request and filed it for reference. Diligently crossing out the old address and writing in the new one. Hallelujah!

A two month journey down the Amazon River meant rerouting mail originally directed to Quito Ecuador, then on to Leticia, Colombia. The Central Post resembled a jail in Leticia, the most wild west town in South America.

A true spaghetti western scene under the Southern Cross, minus Clint Eastwood saving the day. I don’t recommend it.

Gunshots during the night. Gangsters in every form selling fake currency and guns from a multitude of countries. Along with “emeralds” made from fine cut glass. No mail awaited me there and a money order went missing as well.

I harbored little hope when we reached the mouth of the Amazon, exhausted by our two month saga. The first thing we did was hotfoot our way to the Central Post in Belem, Brazil.

I nearly swooned in ecstasy when the Postmaster handed me a bundle of forwarded letters. All of them from Quito. None from Leticia.

The Amazon River had tested and challenged our intrepid selves. We felt fortunate to remain among the living. Our legs were still wobbly from the last and final four day boat passage.

Trying to sleep in our hammocks strung on the third tier, overbooked boat. Rocking peas being tortured in their pods. Stepping on bodies in the two hammocks below if you needed to pee in the night. Most unpleasant for all.

Our treasure trove of correspondence in hand, we found the perfect place to settle in a quiet graveyard. Underneath a mango tree dropping its ripe fruit. We sat in its shade, ate juicy mangos, rinsing and wiping our dripping hands carefully on the grass before opening our mail.

The pleasure in the anticipation. Each precious letter I read that day is sealed in my memory forever.

Protected by ample shade our generous tree provided. The piercing equatorial sun no longer boring a hole through the center of our heads.

We had been on the road for close to two years, living a reality I couldn’t have imagined when I started out. I tried to describe our passage down the largest, most formidable river in the world a day later. After receiving my mother’s letter and plea in the bundle.

“Please write as soon as you can. I know you are an experienced traveler, but I can’t shake the strange feelings I’m having regarding your safety. When you told us you decided to journey down the Amazon we had just posted a letter to Quito. If this letter reaches you, I will be very surprised and overjoyed to know you are holding it in your hands and reading these words.”

I finished my letters and hustled off to our hotel room where I wrote a 17 page chronicle of our trip. Editing the hairiest parts to spare my parents.

Little did I know how far that letter would travel. Not only into the hands of my parents and family members, but copied over and over and sent to their friends as well.

Letters were an entry point into the hearts and souls of beloved family and friends. Mine that I sent and theirs I received.

A two way channel plumbing the depths of our being. Often expressing sentiments we might not have voiced in person, but were brave enough to do so with pen and paper.

We took the time to sit down and think about what we wanted to express. Perhaps selecting hand made paper and special stamps to show how much we cared about one another. We valued our relationship enough to write, address the envelope, stamp it and deliver it to the post.

I was an odd nomad. I didn’t want to set myself apart from others by dragging out a camera and shooting the scene. I didn’t journal but trusted my memory to record the gist of a trip.

The only valuables I carried were my passport and money. My true wealth lay in my letters and memories.

In this manner I was often able to leave people wondering who I was and where I came from. This was a benefit when I was alone on the road.

Letters became my documentation of the lands I wandered through and the experiences I had there. Many were saved, copied and resent to me after returning home. They became my journal and quite a unique one.

They provided a shared perspective in their feedback. A friend’s impression of what I wrote in a previous letter adding to the mix. In this way letters became a lifeline and connector to myself as well as others.

I still ocassionally shuffle through the ones that survived countless moves and mysterious disappearances.

Emails, texts and phone calls don’t hold the same magic I feel when I open the mailbox and see a personal card. One picked out with me in mind as I do with my friends.

I now store these messages of love and care in my desk drawer. Every time I add one to the pile I have an image of myself reading them again 10, maybe 20 years from now. Will I still be alive? Who knows.

If I am, I will be delighted to open the drawer and pick that special letter up. Rereading a message from one who may have passed before me but will still seem alive when I hold their words in my hand.

Maybe that letter will still hold their scent on the paper. I will think of how our faces lit up when we saw one another again after a long period of absence.

They might walk in holding a returned letter in their hand. Sent but never received. It flew its way back to their home, only to arrive at my door a year later. Passed directly from their hands to mine.

Personal letters are almost extinct. Few of us take the time to write by hand, stamp an envelope and make sure it goes in the mail.

May I suggest you make someone’s day by sending a hard copy piece of your time and heart their way.

Believe me. They will love and appreciate your effort.