The Best American Travel Writing 2014 - Plot & Excerpts
On an empty stretch of road outside of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, out of the back seat of a four-wheel-drive Mitsubishi by a dozen or so men whose faces were swaddled in checkered scarves. Each one of them carried an AK-47. The truth of it dawned slowly on me, as the men seemed to rise up out of the sand, circling the car with their guns hefted, as they shouted a few words at our driver, as someone tugged open a door. We—me, my traveling companion Nigel Brennan, and the three Somali men helping us with our work—were headed that day to a sprawling settlement just outside the city to do some reporting. We were waved out from our air-conditioned vehicle into the sweltering equatorial heat. I remember in that instant a narrow-shouldered woman dressed in a flowing hijab hurrying past on foot. She pointedly looked away, as if a couple of white Westerners getting pulled from a car and being forced to lie spread-eagle in the ditch at the side of the road were an everyday occurrence or, in any event, something she had no power to stop.
What do You think about The Best American Travel Writing 2014?
