Three Days in July

by Richard Segal

Three Days in July is the tale of a ten-year journey to discover one's roots. From a London base, I scouted and scoured databases, joined ancestry forums and corresponded with archives in numerous countries, sometimes successfully. However, nothing can compare with understanding the land first hand. Accordingly, when I had time to spare this summer, I flew to Lithuania and rented a car, with a mission to absorb history with the aid of a contemporary personal lens and a smartphone, but no maps. Buy the ticket, take the ride. But wait, there's more. If one portion of the family was daring enough to live in 18th and 19th Century Belarus, I should be plucky enough to experience its 21st Century equivalent, no matter how many concentric mental loop-de-loops this entailed thanks to practice makes perfect bureaucratic madness. I encountered subtle reminders of civilizations past and common small urban emotions from my mostly rural upbringing to go with the tangible memories of understated national day celebrations, baby lambies acclimatizing themselves to the world in nature-ideal manor parks, and Belarusian crickets pleading for mercy in the blistering summer heat, as if all chronicled by an imaginary videographer. This is not your great grandfather's trip down memory lane or a meticulous depiction of a determined genealogy sleuth in for the long haul with nary the light by a miner's helmet to guide him. For one, I couldn't do it that way. For another, I didn't take any notes. This is the fictionalized version and on both counts, I think it's better that way.

204 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 2012