Tanya Shaffer on the kindness of strangers

“Here’s what I love about travel: Strangers get a chance to amaze you. Sometimes a single day can bring a blooming surprise, a simple kindness that opens a chink in the brittle shell of your heart and makes you a different person when you go to sleep — more tender, less jaded — than you were when you woke up.”
—Tanya Shaffer, “Looking for Abdelati” Salon, Feb. 7, 1999