living hell surveyed from the saddle

Through The Embers of Chaos by Dervla Murphy(John Murray, (pounds) 20)

DERVLA Murphy is a septuagenarian Irish grandmother from County Waterford who is addicted to bikes and books. Since 1964 she has travelled extensively at home and abroad, in Africa, the Far East, South America and in troubled Ireland. Usually she goes alone, pedalling into hostile terrain where the Foreign Office is reluctant to guarantee tourists' safety. She is a fiercely independent, low- tech traveller who prefers bikes with fewer gears because less can go wrong with them.

Fond of a drink, she is always ready to pull over and chat. Wherever she goes she makes instant friends who recommend her to their friends. Often these people are poverty-stricken. All they can offer is a roof for the night, some local brew and a meal at which most dogs would turn up their noses.

No one can accuse Murphy of looking for a cushy life. Indeed, she finds luxury almost embarrassing. I spent a week or so in her company several years ago at a writing festival in Toronto. She arrived with her belongings in a couple of carrier bags. In the airport departure lounge she discovered she still had a large amount of the per diem which the Canadian government had given her to get by. Reckoning she'd already been well-recompensed for her contribution she stood everyone a drink. It is hard not to admire so spontaneous a woman.

Generosity is a quality which shines throughout Murphy's work. But she is no soft touch or bleeding-heart liberal. While she exudes compassion and empathy she can be formidably hard-headed and short with bullshitters. In her latest - perhaps finest - book, which describes several bicyling journeys in the Balkans from 1991 to 2000, she has her fair share of hairy moments. Invariably, she is prepared to stand her ground with bullies. In one case, in Bosanka Gradiska on the border between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, three "policeman" take away her passport in the hope of pocketing a "passport fee". When Murphy, unfazed, tells them that she can easily get a new one in Sarajevo, the passport is returned.

Nevertheless, in Albania she was robbed three times. It is one of the realities in the more lawless parts of the Balkans, where banditry and harassment are commonplace. But despite her experiences, Murphy agrees with the author of a guidebook published in 1989 who noted that the crime rate within Yugoslavia is unusually low. "Even now," writes Murphy, "after a decade of impoverishing conflict and social chaos, one feels safe throughout what was Yugoslavia. When you delete war-associated crimes, the region remains remarkably law- abiding."

Be that as it may, it is also a deeply scarred part of the world. Graffiti and litter may seem trivial in comparison with bomb damage and mass killings but to Murphy they can be as dispiriting, offering no relief from the misery that continues to haunt the Balkans. Neighbours remain suspicious of neighbours, thugs roam unchecked, parents grieve for their dead children, opportunities to earn a living in towns still rubble-strewn are few.

There are times when Murphy could be cycling through hell but wherever she goes she finds random acts of kindness; strangers who go out of their way to help her repair a puncture or offer her a meal or help her find lodgings. Everyone has a story of an atrocity, an opinion on why things turned out the way they did, about Milosevic, the Nato bombings, the possibilities of long term stability, the prospect of normality.

Murphy reports bleakly on the uneasiness of the peace and the confusion of a traumatised population. It makes grim reading. She herself is critical of the way the Great Powers - the US, Britain and Germany - behaved and whose leaders - Clinton, Blair and Schrder - were generally judged to have had 'good' wars. "Where are we," demands Murphy, "when 'success' in international affairs is measured by the image-enhancement of national leaders, regardless of human suffering?"

She was not in favour of the bombing of Kosovo in 1999. But what was the alternative? Her answer is that had more been done sooner, before the Serbs' first major attack on Kosovars, then 10,000 lives might have been saved. But they weren't. As facts go about the Balkans, that is one of the few that's beyond dispute.

Copyright 2002
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