The Nomadic Impulse

I discovered Jordi Esteva in 2017, when I was preparing a trip to Oman, and a mutual friend, the journalist Juan Manuel Sáenz (former TVE correspondent in Colombia), recommended, with good judgment, reading his book Los árabes del mar. Tras la estrella de Simbad: de los puertos de Arabia a la isla de Zanzíbar. Esteva is a magnificent travel writer, although his passion for Eastern and African cultures has also led him to cultivate photography and cinema. He is an inveterate traveler. Reading Los árabes del mar, I remember thinking that Esteva was the kind of travel writer or traveling writer I would like to be, or perhaps I should say I would have liked to be. Reading Esteva, especially when you're over forty, has something painful about it. More than thinking about what you'd like to be when you grow up, you start thinking about what you would have liked to be when you were young because, let's face it, you're already grown up. Anyway, I suppose reading Esteva's latest book as I'm about to close a second pandemic year with no big trips on the horizon has made me nostalgic for when everything was yet to be done and everything was possible, as the poet wrote.

Unlike Los árabes del mar, El impulso nómada, more than a travel book, which it is, I believe that, above all, it is a book about the great journey: life. Esteva, who turned seventy this 2021, narrates from his first childhood and adolescence memories ---when the nomadic impulse awakens in him---, to a series of extraordinary journeys that take him to India, Iran or Sudan, but, above all, to Egypt. He also recounts the awakening of desire and, as a homosexual, I have been especially interested in the way he explains relationships between men in traditional societies.

Esteva's memoirs ---presented by the author himself, last week, at the Altaïr bookstore--- are those of a traveler fascinated by distant places that, in some cases, mass tourism has not yet finished sweetening and turning into a kind of Disney movie suitable for all audiences and within reach of all pockets. He often has to face dangers, miseries and diseases, but the reward is reaching remote paradises like the Egyptian oasis of Siwa or Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Since the Olympic Games, we are so used to having the excellences of Barcelona sung to us, or singing them to ourselves because we are delighted to know ourselves, that we run the risk of forgetting that Barcelona is also a city to flee from. "One day I will leave and you will not see me again," Esteva used to say as a child, and so he did, as soon as he could. Fascinated by the promise of adventures, he left a gray and deeply castrating Barcelona for a free spirit like his. The return, a few years later, will not be easy for him ---mainly, because it will not be a desired return---. However, from a certain moment, it will become the base camp from which to undertake new adventures.

Whether you have felt the nomadic impulse or not, if you have a minimum of curiosity about this big house that is the world and about the neighbors with whom we share it, I recommend that you read El impulso nómada, Esteva's new book.