The author found the idea of islands impossibly romantic ? until she discovered that they can also be hellOpening an atlas at a random page or spinning the globe and picking out a destination with eyes closed ? who hasn't done that? I grew up in East Germany ? on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. Before the wall fell, living here meant most of the world was out of reach. I was desperate to travel when I was a girl, but the only way I could escape was through the pages of my atlas. The first time I did this was after watching a television documentary on the Galapagos Islands. I looked for them in the atlas. Then I tried to find my home ? the German Democratic Republic. I realised for the first time how small my country was when compared with the rest of the world. My domain ended at the shores of the Baltic Sea, with seemingly insurmountable barriers separating me from the outside world.I spent my childhood holidays on the shores of the Baltic with my grandparents, who lived on the island of Usedom. Two bridges chained it to the mainland ? and to my romantic, girlish mind, it didn't feel like a proper island. After all, I reasoned, surely an island should be a place that can only be reached by ship? Like the island's lighthouse on a tiny rocky outcrop near the coast. But I couldn't get to it because it was frontier territory for my country and as forbidden as the Berlin Wall. I just had to imagine what it might be like.Islands, especially those that seem the most remote, are perfect places. After all, most island societies were originally set up by people desperate for a new beginning, for a chance to do everything differently. The idea for my Atlas of Remote Islands grew out of my childhood belief that there must be somewhere in the world that is truly beautiful. Three years ago I stood in front of the huge globe in the Berlin State Library, and wrote down the names of all the tiny little spots of land that looked most forgotten in the vast spread of the seas. I was well aware, of course, that any such arbitrary list could only be a question of perception or position: the inhabitants of Easter Island call their home Te Pito O Te Henua ? or "the navel of the world". My work on the Atlas of Remote Islands took me on an adventure, an expedition through dusty tomes, travellers' journals and obscure scientific reports on tiny islands. I drew 50 maps all to the same scale, and I researched and wrote 50 stories.What I did not expect was that so many of the island stories I would dig up would be so horrendous: shipwrecks, failed expeditions, prison colonies, megalomaniac conquerors, cannibalism, murder and mayhem. Most of these islands are barren, without drinking water. In fact, many islands are unsuitable settings for finding paradise: hell is an island too. Sooner or later, man's will to survive turns him into a beast, and his dream into failure. Men go mad, start rebellions or choose to drown themselves in the sea.And I realised that all our perceptions of freedom are to do with living on the mainland. If a ship calls only three times a year, there can be no freedom. Freedom means choice. I will never visit any of the 50 islands I wrote about. Mine is a book for the armchair explorer, describing places that exist in reality, but only come to life in the imagination.A couple of years ago, I finally visited the small lighthouse island I had so longed for as a child. The lighthouse was made of red brick; the vegetation was lush, overgrown and wild. Wherever you stood, you could hear the sounds of the sea. It was a lovely place. But I wouldn't have wanted to stay there any longer than I had to.Germanyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
No comments:
Post a Comment