The Turk Who Loved Apples (22 page)

I was working, and constantly. In total, I was spending three to six months a year on the road, away from Jean (whom I'd married a few weeks after returning from the round-the-world trip) and my friends in New York, but writing about fascinating places. And the more I wrote, the more I developed a formula for my Frugal stories. It began with the anecdote that opened the article. In a normal story, I would want something that simply evoked that sense of place, or set up the drama to unfold, but in a Frugal Traveler piece I had to add an economic angle.

When I wrote about Istanbul, for instance, I started off with getting the bill at a cybercafé: “One million lira!” piped the cashier. She meant, I quickly realized, 1 million
old
Turkish lira, which would be 1
new
Turkish lira, or about 65 cents. Whew. The Frugal Traveler
dodges a bullet—and also gets an opportunity to talk about how in Istanbul, it's not simply the hoary travel-writer trope of old and new clashing but is actually something weirder, more complex, and more interesting: old and new so jumbled up that no one really knows (or perhaps cares) which is which.

Likewise, when I first wrote about Rome, I described drinking a civilized Negroni at a tony piazza, a brief splurge that was interrupted when a seagull violently attacked a pigeon amid the well-dressed Romans, while the bells of a nearby church rang out. This show was worth the €10 price of admission, a cost that included not just my drink but a host of free snacks. Frugal Traveler paradise—plus a way to hint at the Felliniesque (or should that be Pasoliniesque?) turmoil lurking just under the surface of the Eternal City.

Now, “formulaic” is not necessarily the most laudatory way to describe a piece of writing, but for a very long time I was happy to be working within a formula. There's something comforting about knowing intimately your constraints (sense of place, frugal tips) and not struggling against them. Most professional writing—that is, feature stories written for newspapers and magazines—follows a formula, and the formulas exist because they work well for conveying information. The opening anecdote sucks you in, the nut graf explains why you've just been told the anecdote, and the rest follows through on the narrative premise, with the final few paragraphs wrapping everything up in a way that's neat, but not so neat as to seem preprogrammed. Fulfilling the formula so that it doesn't feel like a formula is just about the apex of professional writing.

Writing for the
Times
, however, involved additional constraints that tweaked my experience in unusual ways. The first, and most famous, of these was the Travel section's absolute ban on writers taking press trips, those junkets sponsored by airlines, hotel chains, tourism boards, and P.R. firms. No writer, says the paper's Policy on Ethics in Journalism, “may accept free or discounted services or preferential treatment from any element of the travel industry.” It didn't matter
whether you were working on a piece for the
Times
or someone else. The ethics questionnaire that freelancers were required to complete asked whether they'd taken a press trip within the last two years; if you had, the section simply would not—could not—hire you.

This caused some consternation among many travel writers, who relied on press trips to get around the world and report the stories they'd then pitch, to the
Times
or wherever. How could they afford to do research otherwise? To the
Times
, it didn't matter, and justifiably so: The paper was constantly under attack—usually politically, but sometimes from the standpoint of how it practiced journalism—and it didn't need any further conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Few writers, however, fell victim to this policy, as the Travel section's editors seemed to operate according to “don't ask, don't tell,” trusting prospective freelancers to come clean from the beginning and only acting when a contributor's “ethical lapse” inadvertently came to light.

For me, this was not a problem. Though I was a freelancer
*
, the paper had me traveling and writing enough that I didn't need to seek out alternatives, and the paper paid my relatively frugal expenses. (Expenses for cover stories rarely topped $2,000—that's airfare, food, lodging, supplies, and so on, for maybe two weeks of travel.) Once in a while, I'd receive an e-mail offering a trip somewhere—a twenty-two-day round-the-world-by-private-jet tour of Four Seasons resorts, for example—and I'd politely decline, citing
Times
policy. Although I occasionally wished for a bit more comfort on the road, I liked living by this rule, and not having to deal with the favor-trading world of publicists and comps. And besides, when it came to writing, I appreciated the built-in drama of traveling on my own, on a budget. What could I possibly say about a trip where everything was provided for me?

Another
Times
rule was more troublesome. “Writers of travel articles,” the ethics policy says, “must conceal their identity as journalists during the reporting, so that they will experience the same conditions as an ordinary consumer.”

In theory, this made sense, especially for my Frugal Traveler stories. If I was to help
New York Times
readers travel smarter and cheaper, I couldn't rely on my vaunted status to get better treatment. I had to be—and to write as—an Everyman. But in practice, that was not so simple. While I could easily hide my identity from hotels and restaurants—the professional travel world—many of my stories revolved around civilians: friends of friends, random strangers, normal people whose livelihoods did not depend upon a favorable mention in the
New York Times
.

How should I treat them? Should I simply lie when they asked what I did for a living, or would that violate other clauses of the ethics policy? And if I told them the truth, wouldn't that, too, alter how they treated me? No longer was I just that interesting (or dull) traveler but the one and only Frugal Traveler, in need of aid and advice! Or was this just a fantasy? Would anyone care who I was?

Early on, I got a sense of how this all worked. In September 2005, I flew to Jamaica to explore the area around Port Antonio, a region that was the first to develop tourist facilities but, because it was always hit hardest by hurricanes, had failed to keep pace with Negril and Ocho Rios. It was a rough, wet, wild, and beautifully green place, at once rundown and vibrant. Hotels could be damp and crummy—or pristine and far beyond my budget. I sat on the sidewalk talking with old barefoot Rastas, and I drank Hennessy from fresh-cut coconuts in rented villas, and I heard famous names: India Arie, Francesca von Habsburg, Ian Fleming.

My guide through the area was Jon Baker, a British music producer and a friend of a friend. With him, I saw no reason to hide my identity, nor with his weird circle of friends and acquaintances, ranging from Kingston high-society types to strippers. And for one
week of hiking, dancing, and eating jerk chicken, the fact that I was a
New York Times
writer did not matter to anyone.

But on my last night in Jamaica, I checked in to Strawberry Hill, a luxurious resort in the mountains right above Kingston, fairly far from Port Antonio. Owned by Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records and discoverer of Bob Marley, Strawberry Hill was a collection of studios and villas straight out of some nineteenth-century colonial fantasy, and in line with that fantasy, the first thing I did after putting my bags in my room was head to the bar for a gin-and-tonic.

After placing the drink in front of me, the bartender asked for my room number. I told him, and his response was, “Oh! Hello, Mr. Gross.”

This was strange, I thought—or maybe it wasn't. Maybe at these small high-end resorts, it was standard practice for employees to know the names of guests.

“So, Mr. Gross,” the bartender went on, “what brings you to Strawberry Hill?”

“Well,” I told him, “I've been in Jamaica a week, and I'm leaving tomorrow, and I just wanted to spend one night somewhere beautiful and quiet where I could relax.”

The bartender wiped down some glasses, then said, “Are you by any chance a writer?”

“Yes,” I said, slowly and with great suspicion. “How did you know that?”

“Oh, no reason,” he said. “It's just that when people come here for quiet, solitude, and relaxation, they tend to be writers. That's all.”
Uh-huh
, I thought. “Excuse me,” he said, and went to take an order down the bar.

This was beyond strange—this was nerve-wracking. Had I really been made? What would this mean for my story? Could I even spend the night here, or would I have to check out?

“Look,” the bartender said a few minutes later, “I knew who you were when you walked in. They told me, ‘If Matt Gross comes in here, he's a writer—take good care of him.'”

My mind raced. Someone I'd met had told someone else who I was, and the news had spread through secret channels around the island. But where was the link? How could I trace the trail? “Who,” I asked, “is ‘they'?”

He didn't want to answer, but in the end he said, “the chef.” I told him I'd need to talk with this chef—but first I had to eat dinner: a marvelous jerk lamb with guava sauce. Was it always this delicious, or was I getting a special cut of meat?

Afterward, the chef—Darren Lee, a third-generation Chinese-Jamaican—came out of the kitchen to chat. And although he was incredibly friendly and open, he did not disclose his source—“blame the bush network,” he joked—adding that he was the only one at Strawberry Hill who knew, not the front desk or management. Then he handed me a bottle of his homemade chili sauce, a fiery green slurry of Scotch bonnets and vinegar that was the best I'd ever tasted.

Fine, I thought, I guess I can spend the night here. And luckily, when time came to write the story, I found I didn't have space to mention Strawberry Hill at all. Ethical dilemma averted!

In the future, though, I swore to be more circumspect. From then on, when people asked me what I did back in New York, I'd deflect. I'd answer, “Not much!” Then we'd all laugh and move on to the next topic. (Once, a fellow New Yorker sitting next to me in a cruise-ship hot tub said, “No, seriously, you live in New York. What do you do for work?”) Sometimes I varied my response: “I have a small regular income that allows me to travel regularly, but not luxuriously.” After my daughter was born, I'd explain that I was a stay-at-home dad (mostly true), that my wife's job supported us (very true; at best, I was making no more than I had at
New York
), and that for every thousand diapers I changed, I earned myself a
week's vacation (less true). Usually, these quips were amusing enough that no one delved deeper.

Still, I hated deceiving civilians, especially those I quickly grew to consider friends, and often, after I'd sussed them out, I'd reveal my true identity, like Spider-Man lifting his mask to Mary Jane—if slightly less exciting. Usually, people demonstrated little surprise. It never seemed much of a stretch, I suppose, for me to be, at one moment, a funny sort of traveler, and at the next a funny sort of professional traveler. For a second, the news might impress them, and they might remark on how awesome my job was, or even mention they'd read me, but soon they'd realize: Matt Gross was just Matt Gross,
New York Times
or not, for better or worse.

This is not, however, how Hannity reacted. I met Hannity (not his real name) outside Columbus, a small town on the American side of the New Mexico–Mexico border, during my cross-country Frugal Traveler road trip. Columbus was famous for two things: In 1916, it was raided by Pancho Villa's forces, prompting a retaliation that included the first military deployment of airplanes. And partly because of this history, Columbus had become a mecca for hobbyist pilots, who lived together in compounds, their houses equipped with hangars that opened onto central runways.

After a few days in Columbus, wandering its history museum and crossing the border for street-taco dinners, I was anxious to find a pilot who could take me up in a plane. The owner of my $40-a-night bed-and-breakfast suggested Hannity, who lived not in a compound but in a trailer on a big, empty, dusty lot outside town. When I found him and broached the idea of going up in his ultralight, Hannity was amenable, although he noted it had been raining, and his runway was a little soft. If it didn't rain overnight, though, we could go up the next morning.

Great, I said. Do you mind if I shoot some video while we're airborne?

“Sure thing,” he said, then: “Wait. You're not from the media, are you?”

Faced with such a direct question, I couldn't lie. In less than a week, this video would soon be on the
New York Times
Web site, seen by hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, and Hannity had a right to know what he was getting into. So I told him who I worked for.

“The
New York Times
?” he said. “Why, I'd just as soon shoot you as talk to you.”

Evidently, Hannity had a problem with the paper. Whether it was the
Times
' political coverage or something else (the
Times
tends to attract cranks), I didn't know, but I tried to explain things to him: what I was doing, which section I was writing for, my mission this summer—to stay off the interstates, see how people lived in different parts of the country, and save money. I offered to show him the Frugal Traveler site, and we moved into his trailer and turned on his satellite-Internet-linked computer. All the while, Hannity kept nodding and listening and not shooting me in the face, and I got the sense that, out here alone with the dust, his plane, and his dog, he craved company, even if it was that of a liberal
New York Times
writer.