Caravansary

Just in time for the ghostly visions of Halloween, and the even more fantastic visions of Election Day 2018, an immense group of people is walking across Mexico, drawing our attention ever more as it draws ever closer.

It’s a group of travelers, a company, a crowd, a society, an army, an assemblage; a collection of refugees from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Whatever you call it, the 7,000 people moving north have captured the attention of President Trump and the media.

And they are calling it a caravan.

Why? For one thing, caravan is a distinctive designation. At the moment, if you say the word caravan, everyone knows exactly what you mean.

But more important, I think, is the fantasy and romance of the word. Caravan conjures exotic adventure, evident even in the Oxford English Dictionary’s first definition:

“A company of merchants, pilgrims, or others, in the East or northern Africa, traveling together for the sake of security, esp. through the desert.”

More specifically, the OED adds this, labeled U.S.:

“A company of travelers, traders, or emigrants, with their wagons, mules, or packhorses, esp. in the Western States; a train (of wagons, etc.).”

These definitions explain the familiar yet romantic and adventuresome images that go with caravan — which, appropriately, came into English from the Persian language more than 400 years ago. At this moment we may be agog at the prospect of the caravan making its way to the U.S.-Mexico border and attempting to cross. For the people in the caravan, there is nothing romantic about their journey, of course. Caravan could be the Euphemism of the Year.

President Trump deserves credit for awakening us to the supposed horrors of the caravan’s approach, in a tweet:

For Trump, a fantasy like this is business as usual. For the rest of us, the caravan is something to marvel at. And for pragmatists who would like to solve the problems that created this caravan, good luck.