By Ashley Seashore Doing Good or the Kindness of Strangers Gold Winner in the Thirteenth Annual Solas Awards Half of my money is in my right shoe. My passport is in my left. The other half of my money is in an envelope in my underwear, and my credit cards, family photos, and one traveler’s […]
By Matthew Félix Nine hours after leaving Fez, my French friend Sophie and I arrived in Tangier. Although we had walked to the train station the morning of our departure, this time we were arriving late at night. We opted to get a cab, a ride that shouldn’t have cost more than five or six […]
By Kevin Dimetres He was seeking a new level of travel. The reflection in the mirror was virtually unrecognizable; the spelling of my name remained obscure; what might happen next had become a perpetual mystery. Before I could make sense of it all, Burgundy-robed monks whisked me away, up a dusty spiral staircase, to their […]
By Rosie Cohan One man’s efforts to preserve traditional culture as tourism changes his community. Pink skid marks faded to purple in the blackening sky as lights popped on across Goreme, the stony Turkish village below me. I had checked into my room and then saw my friend, Ali, sitting alone on the terrace of the […]
By James Ullrich In a corner of eastern France, a unique, hybridized culture has evolved from two very different sources. Jean-Claude Schroeder, the kind old man with the French first name and the German surname, looks out over the tree-carpeted Vosges Mountains. The Black Forrest is in the distance. He can see into Germany. Squinting […]
By Sasha Vasilyuk As she made her way to the Wailing Wall in the middle of her mourning, a shopkeeper stopped her with a question. The hot wind whistled quietly through the row of Jerusalem’s labyrinthine cemetery, built into the dusty yellow mountainside. I would have never found my grandmother’s grave if it weren’t for […]
By Ted Beatie It was midnight in a nearly deserted bus station on the outskirts of Marrakesh, and my fiancee and I had one-way tickets to the edge of nowhere. We knew we wanted to see the great Sahara–after all, that was why we had come to Morocco–but plans? Provisions? We hoped the Universe would […]
By Margaret Wagner On the morning of my sixth birthday, before I stepped off the airplane in Mumbai, India, then known as Bombay, my mother gave me a present, a Tammy doll. Tammy, more wholesome and sweet than a Barbie doll, had blonde hair, a comb and several outfits. Even more exciting was the carrying […]
By Michelle McAlister NINE-YEAR OLD Misha thinks no one is watching. His unusually large, round blue eyes scan the kitchen. His papery, quasi-translucent hand reaches out to steal fruit from atop a plastic table. The muscles of his tiny hand tremble as he jerks a banana from its bunch. He sticks it down his pants, […]
by Erin Byrne Dear Madame Renaud is the story of a woman in Normandy, France who eased the suffering of American families whose loved ones died during the Liberation of France. After she had been dead for over twenty years, she did the same for me. She took on the grief of others. Six decades […]
