EVERY DAY THE RIVER CHANGES

A Colombian journey downriver, into the soul of a country.

In 2018, Salama, then an undergraduate at Princeton, determined to travel as much as possible of the 950-mile length of the Magdalena River, from its source in the Andean highlands to the Caribbean coast. The river was an epicenter of the Colombian armed conflict among Marxist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and outlaw groups that claimed 260,000 lives and displaced countless others over the course of 60 years. It is also the nation’s heartbeat, albeit scarred by decades of continuing environmental degradation, and it is central to the history of Colombia and much of South America. The author was born and raised in suburban New York, the son of a Syrian Argentine father and an Iraqi mother, doctors and scientists both, who moved to the U.S. and flourished, instilling in him a sense of adventure. Venturing by boat and overland, Salama witnessed “a country that defied common evocations,” proving himself a fine reporter and arbiter of history, attentive to nuance as well as detail, and a keen observer of flora and fauna. Salama’s account is by turns joyous and sad. We meet craftsmen, artisans, folklorists, boat-builders, subsistence fishermen, and one astonishingly devoted teacher, among others, chiefly in rural settings. Without fail, Salama finds what is interesting, sometimes noble, in each of them. Yet his regard for those he encounters never slips into sentiment or romanticism. “Traveling in this way,” he writes, “and trading in stories, is, inevitably, a journey of selection—it was not lost on me that for each voice I heard, many others would be left out.” The book is more than a notable achievement in travel literature and more than a clarifying window into a misunderstood culture; it is a book of conscience and open-heartedness. Pair it with Wade Davis’ Magdalena (2020).

It is a privilege to savor, if vicariously, this harvest of a promising writer’s vivid journeys.