The immutable joy of stomach-wrenching sickness

“All men dream: but not equally..."

It came on swiftly, for some, more slowly, for others, but eventually stomach-wrenching sickness came for the entire family. It was the classic varietal, gripped guts, sweating, waves of nausea punctuated by either frontside or backside vomiting followed by heavenly relief, rinsed with more fevered sweat, washed with an attempt to choke down water, repeated from the top. It is a fool’s errand to wonder where disease comes from when traveling to or through the globe’s most interesting bits, including, but not limited to, Morocco. Some food-borne naughtiness? Ice gone wild? An exotic virus just lingering, waiting to pounce on the hygienically pampered? It could be any or all but the result is the same.

The man or woman who curses the hours spent curled in fetal position, promising never to return to any port south of northern Europe is a silly one, though. This Moroccan disease, like all oriental diseases before, makes a woman or man stout, hearty, like being bit by a radioactive spider, superhuman.

It was my second trip to the Middle East and I was nineteen. The plan was to fly to Cairo, travel through Jordan into Syria then back around to Cairo with my best friends Josh and Andy. Josh was well-read in T.E. Lawrence and insisted that the way to do things was to drink the local water and develop a cast iron stomach. We cheersed our small glass cups on the sweltering rooftop of our $15 a night hotel and felt invincible. To life! Five days later, I acquired amoebic dysentery in Aqaba, where Lawrence surprised the Turks from the rear after crossing the Sun’s Anvil, and enjoyed seven days and seven nights hooked up to an IV in a tiny hospital.

A few years later, Josh acquired spinal meningitis in India.

I am no longer cavalier, and certainly not with the family, but, and again, there is something true about the cast iron. Not necessarily for the stomach, maybe, but for the whole being. The person inoculated with various fancy bugs from hither and yon is the same who will survive the approaching apocalypse and also a dreamer, or to quote the great Lawrence, “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”

To life.