The Wonder Chronicles: 20
Maria Chabot, Georgia O'Keeffe Hitching a Ride to Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch, 1944, © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Subversion
I moved to the U.S. in July 2000 with two suitcases and a husband waiting for me in Seattle. A year later, at the age of 34, I finally learned to drive and got my driver's license on the second attempt.
Two years after I arrived, I divorced the husband, packed my two suitcases into my car and spent 18 days driving across this new country by myself. I did not want to start my new life in New York City after just five hours on a plane. I had to wander; I needed time to get to know America. Alone.
The day before I left for the drive, my brother was delegated to convey my family’s collective concern. "Mona. We know you're strong. We know this is a hard time. But you don't have anything to prove to us," he told me.
I understood that for someone who had been driving for just a year, an 18-day solo road trip across the U.S. was ambitious. And I also understood it was absolutely necessary. I had to wander, alone, because the muscle that is my heart had to stretch and strengthen.
I was driving toward myself.
June Jordan ended her Poem for South African Women in 1981 with words that I now have tattooed on my right arm next to a tattoo of the ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet: We are the ones we have been waiting for.
I missed my family and friends, missed who I had been in Egypt and I needed an 18-day solo road trip to figure out, care for, and nurture who I was becoming in the U.S.
In Santa Fe, a stop I chose for Georgia O’Keeffe, at her eponymous museum, I saw a photograph by Maria Chabot of the artist hitching a ride to Abiquiu, Ghost Ranch, in 1944. It had been used for an exhibit of women artists, featuring O'Keeffe, that was called ”Women Who Rode Away.”
And there I found the theme of my solo road trip. And most of my life.
Only NYC could contain my exiled heart because only in NYC could this wanderer be both at home and still long to wander
I had never planned to ever move to the U.S. I had vowed never to get married. And yet in 2000 I did the latter, quickly followed by the former. When I left him, I knew there was only one city in the U.S. that could possibly contain my restlessness.
And I knew I had to drive to get there. I was both Thelma and Louise but I wasn’t going to drive off a cliff. I wasn’t done wandering. I had places to roam and patriarchal fuckery to fight.
Only NYC could contain my exiled heart because only in NYC could this wanderer be both at home and still long to wander, could feel the muscle she calls her heart soften as it continued to stretch, longing for other homes.
Wander, and push your heart to stretch. Wander; drive toward yourself.
My goal: that you are found by wonder.
My wish: that you intensely live.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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