summary

Summary of chapters 1 to 13: On Buddha’s Head

1. Context and departure: Breaking with the West

In 1972, two young Frenchmen, the narrator and his friend Pierre, left a stifling Europe still marked by the aftermath of May 68 and authoritarian regimes (De Gaulle, Pompidou, Greek and Turkish dictatorships). Their journey to Asia is an escape: a rejection of consumer society and political ideologies (capitalism, Stalinism), and a quest for absolute freedom. Their itinerary, inspired by the Beat Generation and the backpackers of the Hippie Trail, takes them from Tito’s Yugoslavia to Afghanistan, via Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.

2. Eastern Europe and Turkey: First disappointments

  • Yugoslavia: They travel through a country where Tito’s “self-managed” socialism coexists with capitalist tourism on the Adriatic coast.
  • Turkey: In Istanbul, the culture shock is immediate. The noisy and chaotic city is a mix of modernity and tradition. They discover the Pudding Shop, the epicenter of the Hippie Trail, where drug addicts, adventurers, and spies rub shoulders.

3. Iran: Between modernity and oppression

  • Tehran: A city undergoing rapid change under the Shah, where Westernized youth (girls in miniskirts, boys fascinated by Europe) coexist with political repression (the secret police, SAVAK). They stay at the Hotel Bagdhad, a hangout for junkies (including a couple from Marseille with their heroin-addicted baby) and freaks in transit.
  • Mashhad: Shiite holy city. Opium and executions of “terrorists.”

4. Afghanistan: Shock and Ecstasy

Band-e Amir: Turquoise lakes and white cliffs, described as an earthly paradise. They live there as hermits, fishing, smoking, and gazing at the stars. But an old Afghan man reminds them of anti-Israeli hatred (a premonition of future conflicts), and a sudden flood forces them to flee.

  • Islam Qala border: Passage into another world, medieval and anarchic. The Afghan customs officers, dressed in rags, seem to have stepped out of a tale from the Arabian Nights. The narrator describes a feeling of traveling back in time (1392 AH).
  • Herat: A quiet, artisanal city, where they buy chiloms (hashish pipes) and traditional clothing. The chaikana (tea house) becomes a place of collective trance, where music, Sufi dance, and hashish transport them into a state of shared grace with the Afghans.
  • Kabul: Chicken Street is the neighborhood of freaks, where they rub shoulders with junkies and travelers in search of meaning. The extreme poverty (crippled beggars, dying children) revolts them, but they sink into drug use, fleeing reality.
  • Bamiyan: The high point of the trip. The Great Buddhas, carved into the cliff, fascinate them despite their destroyed faces. They climb to the head of the Great Buddha to smoke a chilom, a moment of absolute ecstasy (“the Great Flash”). The valley, unspoiled and peaceful, offers them a timeless interlude

5. Pakistan: Between enchanted valleys and fanaticism

Quetta and Baluchistan: Crossing the desert by bus, where thirst and heat exhaust them. An incident illustrates the religious tensions. The Iranian border marks a shock: on one side, Pakistani chaos; on the other, the orderly police state of Shah’s Iran.

  • Peshawar: A border town saturated with junkies stranded by the Indo-Pakistani war. They release their fox cub there before heading into the Swat Valley.
  • Swat and Matiltan: A mountainous region described as the “Swiss Alps of Pakistan.” In Matiltan, they rent a basic room and live according to the rhythm of daily tasks. The narrator falls ill (dysentery, fever), and his delirium reveals a poetic introspection. The beauty of the landscape contrasts with the rise of fanaticism.

6. The Return: The End of the Dream

  • Turkey and Europe: The Van Gölü train takes him back to the West. In Istanbul, the Pudding Shop seems sordid to him, a symbol of a journey coming to an end.
  • Germany: The narrator deserts the French army and settles in Germany, where he is sentenced in absentia to one year in prison (pardoned in 1981). His friend Pierre returns to Switzerland, but later succumbs to Korsakoff’s syndrome (due to alcohol and drug abuse), losing his memory.

Central themes:

  1. The quest for freedom:
  2. Drugs:
    • hashish and opium as means of ecstasy and escape.
    • Junkie culture: self-destruction and despair.
  3. Culture clash:
    • Opposition between modernity and tradition
    • Religious fanaticism
    • Oppression of women

In summary:

An odyssey through 1970s Asia, between ecstasy and disillusionment, where the quest for freedom collides with the reality of war, fanaticism, and destruction. A poetic and political testimony that links past and present, reminding us that the struggle for a better world is never over.