He did escape and began to master the culturally difficult profession of trade, which required mastering local languages and customs. Tommo began to come out of his depression, too–his leg cleared up, he began to take exercise, he participated more in the life of the valley, adopted his own version of native dress in tappa cloth, and even began a love affair with the beautiful Fayaway.


My own weak will and the miracles of jet travel saw that I adjusted without adaptation. Tommo did not have that option immediately, but the stages of culture shock are recursive. When the traveler, Marnoo, arrived in the village and aroused the possibility of escape in his mind, Tommo began to fall back into thoughts of escape, depression, paranoia, and his leg injury reasserted itself. Finding a shrunken head that his hosts had hidden in the house and witnessing a real cannibal feast didn’t help his frame of mind, and he began to worry anew about becoming dinner.  He returned to the crisis stage until he finally escaped.
 
Cabeza de Vaca didn’t have it so easy. No ships came to affect a rescue. Only a few enslaved Spaniards survived the first year, not enough in numbers or strength to form a cultural enclave. He and three companions had to persevere to the fourth and final stage, “ the adaptation, resolution, or acculturation phase.” It was in this way they became traveling medicine men by mixing Catholic ritual with Native American custom, were respected and revered by many native tribes, and were able to make their way across what is now the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. Many scholars have pointed to Cabeza de Vaca’s journey as the beginnings of Mestizo culture.
 
Even those of us who ran away, though, Melville and I, were forever changed. I’ve spoken up many times for the dignity, respect, and common humanity of Pakistani and Muslim people against the bigotry I’ve been witnessed since 9/11. It’s my duty as one of the rare Americans who’ve actually lived amidst the nuances of an Islamic culture, if only for a short time, and read the key Islamic religious texts, the Koran and some of the Hadith. Melville went on to draw the Polynesians favorably in his writings, Typee and Moby Dick, among others.

The experience of traveling, the experience of culture shock, the real experience of another place and people forever changes you. Strangers become no longer strange; the Other becomes part of the We.
