Review: Airplane Mode by Shahnaz Habib

This is a fun little collection of "braided" essays, weaving together history, social commentary, and the author’s own travel experiences. The author is a Muslim Indian woman who immigrated to the United States. She brings a fresh perspective to the discourse around travel, which, due to its costs and visa privileges, tends to be the domain of the white, wealthy denizens of just a select few countries.

Based only on the title, I probably would not have picked up this book: "an irreverent history" sounds like the sort of subtitle that would belong on some reddit-humoured drek. Instead, by "irreverent," I have to imagine the editor has in mind the author’s questioning of the West’s self-mythologizing, such as her critique of Marco Polo:

But if we set aside the question of whether or not Marco Polo was the first European to reach China, there is a more interesting question: Why is it an achievement to be the first European to reach China? Who is that an achievement for? We rarely hear about the first Asian to reach Europe or the first African to reach the Americas. But the first European to reach China and the first European to reach India by sea and the first European to reach the Americas? Their names are household names, not because this is a major achievement, but because of the European investment in the idea of the first European to reach these “other” places.

Or her analysis of "authenticity":

Pretty much every guidebook I have read for any Third World country will describe it as a tapestry of cultures or a colorful mix of ancient and modern. If more than half the world is a mix of ancient and modern, perhaps then we should accept that this particular hybridity is the norm, while the vapid industrial modernity of a Western suburb is the exception. If this constant and complex mixing of cultures is the real world, then why do guidebooks still lead us on wild-goose chases for the “authentic”? No one is as anxious about authenticity as a white tourist who rightly suspects that the world has been watered down for their benefit. But authenticity is a moving target; it has a talent for confounding the search. Perhaps the solution then is to understand and embrace the multiple hybrid shapes and forms authenticities can take within the limitations of the tourism project.

It is a critique that I find timely and essential in such an unequal world, where travel seems increasingly to become the point of life and the mode of self-actualization for the upper middle class of the West. 

The author interprets "travel" broadly, with each chapter standing alone as an essay on a particular angle. She covers topics ranging from travel guides, to visa privilege, to religious pilgrimage, to just riding public transit within one’s own city. She includes fascinating and relevant parts of history and literature in her accounts, however the balance leans strongly personal. Those readers uninterested in memoir and introspection would be advised to find a different book.

The author left me with one nagging question. As she points out, travel is something enjoyed primarily by a privileged few, and has destructive effects on the environment and on the culture and economies of touristy areas, and yet on the other hand, travel also provides the opportunity to broaden one’s understanding of the world and the richness of human culture and society. For the lucky traveller who is able to partake in expanding her horizons through travel, what is she to do but wring her hands over the negative externalities. Here, the author has not much to say, though like me, I imagine she also dreams of a world in which everyone can travel, at least occasionally.